Contents: (Volume 19, number 1 -- Spring 2003)
- Sanger Room Restored by Sally Blumberg Linden '56, Special Projects Manager
- April 15: Godine on English Illustrated Book by Georgia Brady Barnhill '66
- From the Co-Chairs by Ruth R. Rogers, Special Collections Librarian, and Polly Gambrill Slavet '67
- Study Break in the Library !
- New Department to Unite Asian Studies by Eileen Hardy, Library Liaison to the Chinese Department, & Graham Henderson, Library Liaison to the Japanese Department
- Calendar
- Profile: Sally Blumberg Linden by Dorothea Widmayer '52
- SRO Greets Sherr on Bates
- Mona Lisa Smiles on Wellesley
- Snake-Charmed Kaufman Reads
- Honor with
Books
- Time to renew ?
- Notes 'n Totes
- Go to the Library in your Underwear ! by BethAnn Zambella, Research & Instruction Librarian & Group Manager
- Friends of the Library Steering Committee 2002-2003
by Sally Blumberg Linden '56, Special Projects Manager
|
In December 2002, a Wellesley senior stopped at Clapp Circulation to ask, "Can we use that little room in the back?" Though the Sanger Room has never been out of bounds to students, few have discovered it. April 2003, however, will see a secret hideaway transformed by Friends of the Library to welcome all. Named in honor of birth-control activist Margaret Sanger, the room was proposed and underwritten at the end of World War I by Katherine McCormick. Heir to the International Harvester fortune and early feminist, McCormick was also a friend of Lois Olds, President Margaret Clapp’s sister. This friendship prompted her to offer to re-create an authentic eighteenth-century room in the Wellesley College Library’s 1916 wing. |
|
Students can curl up in club chairs or work at Sanger’s large table. Modern lighting will dramatize the room’s carved frieze and linenfold panels while providing proper illumination for reading or tapping on a laptop computer. Upgraded heating, ventilation, and air conditioning will moderate an atmosphere formerly too warm in summer and too cold in winter. Even with glass doors closed for group projects or meetings, though, the Sanger Room will be visible --- a comfortable space as well as a jewel to behold.
|
|
| Without giving up any of its seventeenth-century English woodwork or Arts-and Crafts era special features, the Sanger Room will now reveal in ample light McCormick’s gifts --- its stained-glass windows, hand-crafted wall sconces, fireplace, and checkerboard ceiling --- through folding glass doors opening into the newly renovated Reading Room. | |||
|
April 15 : Godine on English Illustrated Books by Georgia Brady Barnhill '66 When I met David Godine in his professional capacity as a book designer and printer in 1971, his face was familiar to me. We explored this curiosity for a minute or two before I realized I had seen David frequently during my Wellesley years. He remembered spending almost as much time on this campus as he had in Hanover. One of his mentors, in fact, was Hannah Dustin French, Wellesley’s Special Collections Librarian until 1972, who nurtured the love of early printing that began David’s lifelong dedication to making, as Newsweek has noted, "flawlessly produced examples of the arts of printing and bookbinding, exquisitely understated."  On April 15, at 4:15 p.m. in the Clapp Library Lecture Room, David will present an illustrated lecture on English illustrated books published between 1846 and 1896, an era not only of gifted illustrators, but also of some of David’s precursors in producing fine books. After a brief apprenticeship with the late, renowned printmaker Leonard Baskin at the Gehenna Press, David Godine went into business for himself in 1970 in an abandoned Brookline cow barn. In 1978, he introduced Nonpareil Books, a series featuring softcover reprints of classic works of fiction, criticism, and nonfiction by such authors as William Gass, Stanley Elkin, William Maxwell, and Donald Hall. In 1980, David’s company began publishing children’s books, again reprinting classics by Dylan Thomas, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and James Whitcomb Riley. Two of his newer series include Imago Mundi, a line of books on art, photography, and the graphic arts; and Verba Mundi, a series devoted to world literature in translation. As a collector, David’s interests focus on books from the fifteenth century to the present that demonstrate the typographic art and on the many reproductive illustrative processes. Illustration from "The Squire’s Tale," Canterbury Tales, designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and engraved on wood by W H. Hooper. Taken from the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, now newly imprinted. Hammersmith: Printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, 1896. Special Collections,Wellesley College Library. Quality of design and production is paramount in David’s books. His prestigious awards include the Carey-Thomas Award for Excellence in Publishing, the first Boston Globe Literary Press Award, the first New England Booksellers Annual Award, the Leipzig Internationalen Buckkunst-Austellung, and the W.A. Dwiggins Award for maintaining standards of excellence in book production. Friends of the Library are delighted to welcome David Godine back to Wellesley College! |
|||
From the Co-Chairs
Ruth R. Rogers, Special Collections Librarian, and Polly Gambrill Slavet '66
2002-2003 Steering Committee
Front row, left to right: Fenster, MacDonald, Widmayer, Campbell, Rogers,
Cross, Stobaugh, Carbarnes, Holman.
Back row, left to right: Turner, Barnhill, Triant, Wickwire, Pierre, Rempis,
Slavet.
At every opportunity, Friends are providing support for the Wellesley College libraries. Be sure to visit our lively Web site - http://www.wellesley.edu/Library/friends.html constructed with help from Electronic Access Committee Chair Janet Si-Ming Lee. Continually updated and improved by Digital Library Specialist Mac Stewart, this site makes information about our many ongoing programs accessible to interested members. Log on to learn about our excellent fall 2002 lectures planned by Gigi Barnhill and the Program Committee: Author Lynn Sherr ‘63 discussed America the Beautiful and poet Margaret Kaufman ‘63 read from Snake at the Wrist. This spring, Gigi has planned a lecture on April 15 by noted publisher David Godine. Watch for mailings shortly about this and other programs.
Other first-semester activities: Shari Isaacs and Debby Rempis held a successful sale of "Notes ‘n Totes" at Clapp Library. Acting on a suggestion from College Librarian Micheline Jedrey, Gina Wickwire and Elizabeth Pierre of our Student Involvement Committee and Friends’ administrative assistant Debra Carbarnes organized two student refreshment breaks during reading period. Over 170 hungry students attended. Honor with Books, brainchild of Steering Committee member emerita Janice Hunt, continues to flourish under Julia Hanna’s leadership, with over one hundred new books given in praise of friends, mentors, and loved ones.
Co-chair and Special Collections Librarian Ruth Rogers co-taught a new, experimental history of written communication, "From Papyrus to Print to Pixel," with Raymond Starr, Theodora Stone Sutton Professor of Classical Studies. Book Arts Program Director Katherine McCanless Ruffin and additional guest instructors conducted weekly labs. Ruth, Ray, and Katherine will host an exclusive slide presentation on May 7 to introduce Friends to this exciting course.
Our biggest initiative, suggested by Co-Chair emerita June Stobaugh and heartily supported by the Steering Committee, is funding renovation of the Sanger Room at the back of Clapp Library’s main floor. A new set of glass doors connecting it to the renovated Reading Room will let light and life into a lovely space often overlooked by the Wellesley community. In our upcoming mailing to the membership, we’ll specify a time and date in early May to unveil the completed room to Friends. On June 7, our annual reunion tour of the Library will culminate in a lemonade social in the restored Sanger Room.
Thank you for your continuing commitment to Friends of the Library. The generosity of you, our wonderful Friends, supports work central to a liberal education: the work of the Wellesley College libraries.
 |
Study Break in the Library! On December 11, 2002, The Friends of the Library sponsored an evening study break for students at Clapp Library. Elizabeth Pierre, center, is the Co-Chair of the Student Involvement Committee. Many students took a break from their studies to have a snack and talk with Elizabeth and the Library staff. |
New Department to Unite Asian Studies
by
Eileen Hardy, Library Liaison to the Chinese Department, &
Graham Henderson, Library Liaison to the Japanese Department
From 1888, when the first Japanese student arrived at Wellesley, to the 1966 founding of the Chinese Department and the 1985 establishment of the Japanese Studies Department, Asian history, languages, and cultures have interested Wellesley’s academic community. Today, approximately one fourth of Wellesley’s students are of Asian descent. To consolidate and extend interest in Asia, the Trustees are now considering a proposal to create a Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. If approved for 2004, this department would provide an umbrella for existing programs, introduce Korean language instruction, and serve as the locus for future Asian studies offerings.
The existing curriculum relating to Asia is extensive. It includes "Landscape Painting of China and Japan," "Introduction to Asian Religions," "Gender and Writing in South Asia," "International Development in South Asia," "The City in Modern China," and "The Musics of China, Korea and Japan." Other courses-"Mothers and Daughters in Asian American Literature," for example-reflect interest in the stories of Asian immigrants to the United States. Student interest in all of East and South Asia resulted in the Wintersession program, "Grassroots Development, Conflict Resolution, and the Ghandian Legacy in India," offered within Peace and Justice Studies.
These and other courses have driven growth in Wellesley’s collections of Asian materials. Clapp’s Chinese book collection is one of the Boston area’s oldest. Owing to the prominence of its Chinese curriculum and collections, Wellesley was the only undergraduate institution invited to join the Boston Library Consortium at its founding in 1970. A 2002 grant from the Freeman Foundation to support faculty appointments, postdoctoral fellows, curriculum development, and student financial aid also provides $100,000 for Library acquisitions over a four-year period and funds an Asian acquisitions specialist. Along with books, media, and periodicals, we’ve recently added the online Bibliography of Asian Studies to our array of online databases.
|
Calendar
|
|
February 14-May
15 May 7 Slide Talk May 26-August 16 June 7
Library Tours and Social Tours: 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Lobby, Knapp Media and Technology Center Lemonade social: 3 p.m. Sanger Room |
Profile: Sally Blumberg Linden
by Dorothea Widmayer ‘52
 |
A petite dynamo in a hard hat, longtime Research Librarian and Special Projects Manager Sally Blumberg Linden ‘56 has spent most of her time since 1993 overseeing major changes to Clapp Library: renovations to Archives, Book Arts, and Special Collections; installation of the fourthfloor Conservation Facility; and now an overhaul of the main floor. She also oversaw 1997 changes establishing the Knapp Media and Technology Center. Sally makes clear in conversation that she loves the challenge to listen to ideas and hopes of potential users, to imagine creative uses of space and light, and to help faculty, students, librarians, and architects translate these into the-"right’; project outcome. "Sally succeeds," says College Librarian and Vice President for Information Services Mich Jedrey. "Wellesley’s library facilities are recognized as models of modernized, enabling spaces, visited from all over the world." |
When she finished high school in a small mill town in upstate New York, Sally chose the liberal arts and Wellesley over home economics at her state university. "It took me two years to hit my stride," Sally admits, but, characteristically, she loved the challenge. During her junior and senior years, she confidently enjoyed a scholar’s life, majoring in political science, finding English and art history exciting and satisfying, and performing as a member of the Shakespeare Society. Although she spent many hours in the library, however, "I had no thought of becoming a librarian."
Marriage, children, and gourmet cooking followed graduation. But as her second daughter entered middle school, Sally needed to refocus her life. Wellesley’s placement counselors helped her discover a potential for library work, and she entered the Simmons College program in 1969, taking a single course each semester over four years. Electing to manage Clapp Library’s research department over corporate librarianship, Sally returned to her alma mater in 1973. During the next 20 years, she compiled an outstanding record in reference services, library instruction, and management.
"In 1993," Sally remembers, "I began adding ‘special projects’ to my agenda. The first I took on was developing a College copyright policy." Her talent for consensus building and negotiation, coupled with a clear prose style, resulted in a model copyright policy for other academic institutions. Sally has also been a prime mover in devising the College policy for "acceptable use of computing resources," another challenge given rapidly changing technology and high community expectations.
Recently widowed, Sally looks forward to retiring this June and spending more time with family. One of her daughters, a self-employed carpenter, lives nearby; the other, an oncologist, in Seattle. Sally also plans to spend more time in her house on Martha’s Vineyard to read, to attend concerts and ballet performances, to cook, and to keep fit. "While others might have viewed the final decade of their work lives as a time to ‘wind down,"’ Mich Jedrey-observes . with, admiration, "Sally demonstrated the value of a liberal arts education by embracing change and continuing to grow." A very modest person, Sally has an adventurous spirit and an enthusiasm that shine in an expressive smile and cheerful greeting. But her unassuming demeanor belies a profound institutional knowledge that Clapp Library will sorely miss.
SRO Greets Sherr on Bates
Many believe it should replace "The Star Spangled Banner" as our country’s national anthem. Yet before America the Beautiful: The Stirring Story Behind Our Nation’s Favorite Song, few were aware of how its inspiring lyric came to be written by one of Wellesley’s earliest alumnae, Katharine Lee Bates, in the summer of 1893. A capacity crowd gathered in the Clapp Library Lecture Room on September 12 to hear author and ABC news correspondent Lynn Sherr ‘63 kick off last fall’s Friends of the Library speakers series by discussing her new book.
Lynn Sherr and President Diana Chapman Walsh after fall FOL program.
Bates, then 33 and on Wellesley’s English faculty, traveled west to teach summer school at Colorado College. Combing through diary entries and train schedules in the College Archives, Sherr has reconstructed Bates’s journey from Niagara Falls to the Chicago World’s Fair and thence south and west. On July 4, as her train crossed Kansas, Bates viewed amber fields of wheat waving in a hot sun. After arriving in Colorado, she and her fellow visiting professors hiked to the top of Pike’s Peak.
"For Katharine Lee Bates, this panoramic view across a vast continent was a revelation," Sherr said. "All the images and impressions she had been collecting on her journey coalesced in the infinite horizon before her." That night, Bates wrote in her diary, "Most beautiful scenery I ever beheld," then jotted down the first lines of the poem that would become "America the Beautiful." Published two years later in the Congregationalist, "the new verse, with its simple beauty and raw emotion, immediately struck a chord," Sherr went on. Initially, the words were set to some 75 different tunes before organist Samuel Augustus Ward’s arrangement, written on a starched shirt cuff during his boat ride home from Coney Island, became the melody of choice. "I’ve come to think of it as more of a collaboration," Sherr observed. "Her words, Ward’s music, our energy --- it’s the ultimate synergy, something greater than any one of us could achieve.
Aside from a $5 payment on publication, Bates saw no further income from "America the Beautiful." "It belongs to all Americans whose feelings it expresses," Bates once said. "I was its scribe, rather than its author. Its singers are its true creators."
"I think this song is the story of America," Sherr concluded. "A nation on its way to greatness, facing the staggering realities of war and economic uncertainty with enormous optimism. How wonderful," she concluded, "that it all began at Wellesley."
Mona Lisa Smiles on Wellesley
by Diane Speare Triant ’68
They stream across the chapel lawn --- laughing Wellesley students eager to attend the college year’s opening convocation. And they dress in high Wellesley style, sporting sweater sets, saddle shoes, and beanies.
Beanies? Saddle shoes? Passersby in October 2002 surely did double takes when they witnessed this scene. But it was just that-a scene. Revolution Studios was filming Mona Lisa Smile, a Julia Roberts movie set in 1950s Wellesley College.
Roberts plays a free-spirited art historian from California who travels east to teach at traditional Wellesley. As a result of the College Archives’ meticulous research, she inhabits a Wellesley where arriving students tote boxy suitcases, balloon-tired bicycles sport handlebar baskets, and Chevy BelAirs pepper the roadways. "We fielded questions from the screenwriter, production manager, set decorators, costume designers, props man, and graphic designer," reports Archivist Wilma Slaight. "To give them a sense of the era, we showed them student handbooks, course catalogs, the student newspaper, scrapbooks, and class notes from the early 1950s. They read letters written home by a member of the Class of 1953. And they looked at photographs. Hundreds of photographs!"
 Wellesley student extras leave Tower (renamed "Claflin") for Christmas break in January filming of "Mona Lisa Smile." |
|
Nine hundred undergraduates vied to be among two hundred extras costumed in picture-perfect retro attire, right down to girdles and waist-cinchers. "The outfits were funky," says Erin Richardson ‘03, a four-day cast member. "Monday we did hoop-rolling costumes --- graduation robes worn with a belt, hiked up in funny places ... and a mortarboard tied down with a scarf. Next we wore long fall skirts and cashmere sweaters."
And what of Hollywood’s tendency to tinker with historical accuracy? "The production crew made it clear from the beginning that this was not a documentary on Wellesley College," confirms Slaight. "We knew there would be parts of the movie that would deviate from fact to tell a better story." "But even though some details changed," says Assistant Archivist Jean Berry-herself an extra-"the sense of the College came through."
This A-list movie’s release during the Thanksgiving holiday showcased Wellesley’s timeless setting. A greater benefit to revisiting the bygone era, however, may be in recognizing its failings. Notably lacking in Smile footage is one of Wellesley’s most valuable assets now: its multicultural community. By opening a window on the Wellesley that was, Archives has enabled us to appreciate more the Wellesley we know today.
Snake-Charmed Kaufman Reads
by June Milton Stobaugh ‘66
 |
Margaret Kaufman ‘63 has come full circle --- from studying poetry as a Wellesley English major to reading poetry from her own latest volume, Snake at the Wrist, on October 24 at a program/book-signing co-sponsored by Friends of the Library and the English Department. The title and cover of the book derive from a small statue the poet encountered as an undergraduate on a field trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with her Classical and Greek Antiquities class. Kaufman says that she fell in love with the 3,500 year-old Minoan goddess with its potent "snake at the wrist." Throughout Kaufman’s life, mythical and Biblical personae have inspired her, giving birth in this volume to dramatic voices for Persephone, Sarah, and Lot’s wife. "How did you learn so many Greek myths?" asked someone in the large audience of students, faculty, and alumnae. Kaufman described her small grammar school in which different grades were taught simultaneously; while the teacher worked with fourth graders, for example, third graders could after finishing their work. Kaufman always chose Bulfinch’s The Greek Myths, to this day one of her favorite books. |
While quilts interest Kaufman as a vehicle through which women tell their stories, "Old Quilts" speaks to a related Kaufman theme --- the function of memory:
but you save old letters, lay out the silver every day, spread old quilts to light: beauty not only in the making of a thing but in its use, not in its preservation but its wearing down.
Strongly complementing her poetry’s power was Kaufman’s voice: soft and gentle when she read "October," a poem about her mother (not included in Snake), measured and full in other poems, but always perfectly cadenced and modulated.
Co-Chair of Friends of the Library Polly Slaver ‘67 introduced Kaufman, noting that Special Collections contains several of her previous works: Aunt Sallie’s Lament, Sarah’s Sacrifice, Praise Basted In, and Deep in the Territory. In lectures on campus as well as to the Washington, D.C. and New York City Wellesley Clubs, Special Collections Librarian Ruth R. Rogers has used Aunt Sallie’s Lament, designed and printed by Claire van Vliet (Janus Press), to illustrate the continuing evolution of the artist’s book.
please send a check payable to:
Debra Carbarnes, Friends of the Library,
Wellesley College Library, 106 Central Street,
Wellesley, MA 02481-8239
or use our new secure online Membership form
 |
|
Go to the Library in Your Underwear!
by BethAnn Zambella, Research and Instruction Librarian & Group Manager
It’s midnight. Except for the soft click of your computer keys, there’s not another sound in the dorm. A preliminary bibliography for your research paper on the role of phytoplankton in regulating the earth’s climate is due today at 10. You’re still two sources short and stumped for new keywords to search with. Awash in coffee and anxiety, you need help. But from whom?
Since September 2002, Wellesley has been providing Library users working outside the Library itself with real time online assistance until late at night on the busiest days of the week and on weekends. Online users interact with campus reference librarians in a "chat" format. Clicking on the "Ask Us" link from Library-related Web pages takes you to a "Chat with Us" option, a split-screen display with a panel for interactive dialog or chat on the right-hand side. Librarians can guide users to relevant Web pages on the main part of the screen, or walk them through the process of solving a research problem using the chat interface, just as if librarian and user were sitting side by side. For particularly complex problems, a librarian may refer the user to a subject specialist or may suggest in-person research assistance.
Along with Smith and Vassar, Wellesley has recently joined a two-year pilot program begun by Wesleyan University and Connecticut College in May 2001 and funded by a Davis Educational Foundation grant. Wesleyan and Connecticut installed server software and hired and trained 1.5 additional reference librarians to extend the program’s hours beyond traditional library hours: a prescient move, since the two schools experienced high levels of usage from late morning through late afternoon, and again between 6 p.m. and midnight. The consortium’s first-year report to the Davis Education Foundation attributes the program’s higher utilization compared to similar programs elsewhere to its extended hours of operation, and agrees with Librarian of Congress James K. Billington "that human intermediaries and interpreters of the flood of data available on the Internet is just as important as traditional face-to-face reference service was before the age of the World Wide Web."
We’re excited about the chance to extend our services even further. Students will be, too: about the chance to do research in the dorm in their underwear at midnight.
Friends
of the Library
Steering Committee 2002-2003
Diana Chapman Walsh '66
Founding Member
Mary E. Jackson '24
Co-Chairpersons
Ruth R. Rogers
Polly G. Slavet '67
Newsletter Editor
Wanda Lankenner MacDonald '72
Steering Committee
Georgia Brady
Barnhill '66
Molly S. Campbell
'60
Carol Cross DS '02
Kerin D. Fenster
'64
Kathryn K. Flynn,
ex officio
Julia Hanna
'88
Judith E. Harper '75
Deborah Holman
'89
Charlotte L.
Isaacs '68
Micheline E.
Jedrey
Janet Si-Ming
Lee '98
Katherine H. Page '69
Elizabeth Pierre
'97
Lia Gelin Poorvu
'56
Deborah T. Rempis
'68
June M. Stobaugh
'66
Diane S. Triant '68
Pamela W Turner
'65
Sigrid R. Watson
'47
Virginia B.
Wickwire DS '81
Dorothea Widmayer '52
Emeritae
Claire M. Broder '61
Janice L. Hunt '52
Elinor Bunn Thompson
'37
This web
version was prepared by MacKenzie Stewart, Digital Library Specialist,
Wellesley College Library.
Some images were reproduced directly from the newsletter, consequently
image reproduction quality will vary greatly.
Click here to return to The Friends of the Library
Library home | Wellesley College | Information Services | Knapp Center | Archives | Site map
- Wellesley College Library
- Date created: April 29, 2003, Last modified: April 30, 2003
- Expires: permanent