Contents: (Volume 13, number 2 -- Fall 1997)
- Knapp Media Center Opens by Sally Linden, Research Librarian
- Successful Alumnae Authors Speak Nov. 13
- Ode to the College Archives by Nancy Lurie Salzman '54
- Summer Symposium Proves Huge Success by Jean Kendall CE '88
- New Friends' Postcards
- Friends Underwrite Large-Format Printer
- Calendar
by Sally Linden, Research Librarian
Over the summer, the Knapp Media and
Technology Center, envisioned in Clapp Library's 1995 Master
Plan Study, came to life through a gift from Betsy Wood
Knapp '64 and her husband Cleon "Bud" Knapp. Covering
about 17,000 square feet, the Center fills a space that used
to house the Reserve Room, Newspaper Room, and Language Lab.
Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott, the firm that
built the library itself, designed and completed the new
project.
Opening through a vestibule into the new
Center, the Knapp entrance is accessible to individuals who
cannot use stairs. Soft greens and leafy patterns on
upholstered chairs and sofas echo trees seen through a
window wall. Wood is a foil for high-tech equipment,
and black accents in carpeting and desk chairs add
vibrancy. Heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning
are new. A self-service scanner connected to the library's
online catalog allows users to check out their own
materials. "Electronic reserves" let students print
their own copies of assigned readings.
Forty-three large workstations now
inhabit an area that once held numerous four-person tables
and a sprinkling of small carrels. Students can choose among
twenty-five collaborative, L-shaped carrels for two or three
people and eighteen individual carrels, some of which are
rectangular, some L-shaped. Workstations contain
flatbed scanners, VCRs and monitors for both US and foreign
videocassettes, and laserdisc players. Pentium II Gateway
computers or Macs operate a variety of current software,
including Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, Pagemaker,
Persuasion, Premiere, Director, Authorware, and Flash.
Students can borrow tape player/recorders in any of the
carrels for listening and vocal practice. So that a
class can take a language test or work on an assignment
together, one of the carrels contains a console enabling
instructors to control audio and video reception at all
stations. The space that was formerly the Reserve Room is no
longer a quiet study hall but a place humming with
purposeful activity. Still, there are many comfortable
places throughout Clapp where one can find the silence
traditional in a library.
Students and faculty working in large
groups can use one of the Center's four Project Rooms.
These spaces contain large-screen monitors for videos as
well as conference tables and computers. The jewel in the
Knapp Center's crown is a video production studio large
enough for filming interviews and "talking heads," or
vignettes staged by two or three students.
Under co-directors Dianne McCorry and
Jarlath Waldron, the Knapp Media and Technology Center
opened September 2nd, the first day of classes, and students
have been "voting with their feet" ever since. Robin
Beth Broshi '98 feels that the Center is a powerful magnet
for students eager to learn about advanced technology.
"We can use Knapp to integrate technology with traditional
assignments, creating unique multimedia presentations."
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What is the Knapp Center's role? To give students direct access to the interface between language and culture. It allows us to use the resources of audio, video, the Web, and the written word to help our students make sense of cultures that are not their own and, in the process, to become more responsive and responsible citizens of a shrinking world. Barry Lydgate, Professor of French |
What if you had been born in 1795, and
although older and smarter than your brothers, were
forbidden by law from inheriting your parents' fortune? What
if you had been born in 1965, and although the wife of a
minister, made murder and mayhem your business? Like
their heroines, writers of mystery and romance test their
mettle against different limits. The Regency romance, for
example, must take place from 1811-1820, the Regency of
England's George IV. Accuracy of language, dress, and
historical detail is paramount. Less concerned with
time and place, mysteries demand a plot poised delicately
between confusion and certainty and a sleuth who is smart,
curious, and situated to get the lowdown.
Within dissimilar settings, Katherine
Hall Page '69 and Cynthia Johnson '72
imagine intelligent heroines who chafe against
constraint. Page is the creator of Faith Fairchild,
the New England-based caterer/detective of nine adult
mysteries, the first of which, The Body in the
Belfrey, received an Agatha Award for best first mystery
novel. At work on her ninth Regency, Johnson is the
author of The Willful Widow, one of three finalists
in the national Reader's Choice Awards for 1994. On
Thursday, November 13, at 7:30 p.m. in the Clapp Library
Lecture Room, both women will discuss their approaches to
writing and how their careers evolved in "A Night of Mystery
and Romance: Two English Majors Talk about Roads not
Taken and Paths Pursued."
Presented by Friends of the Wellesley
College Library, the evening includes refreshments at 7:00
p.m. and is open to the public.
Both Johnson and Page were transformed by
Wellesley. Patricia Meyer Spacks, the advisor who
encouraged Johnson to read eighteenth-century literature,
"made me feel that you can learn about the world by looking
at literature critically and by enjoying it."
Also a student of Professor Spacks, Page "learned at
Wellesley that writing is rewriting. I do enormous
amounts of rewriting."
Born in northern New Jersey, Katherine
Hall Page went on after Wellesley to receive an Ed. M in
secondary education from Tufts University and an Ed. D from
the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A teacher of
English and history, she has been a self-employed writer
since 1984. A native of Rockford, Illinois, Cynthia Johnson
majored in eighteenth-century French and English at
Wellesley. She then earned masters degrees in library
science from Simmons College and in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century literature from Northwestern
University. She is Head of Adult Services at Cary
Memorial Library, the public library in Lexington,
Massachusetts.
by Nancy Lurie Salzman '54
Nearing its twenty-fifth anniversary, the
Wellesley College Archives holds collections as diverse as
Trustees' reports, contracts, newspapers, student theses,
and prized alumnae scrapbooks. As an architectural
historian, my mission there last winter was to research
campus buildings to train my fellow Davis Museum and
Cultural Center. Docents for the exhibit Inspiring
Reform: Boston's Arts and Crafts Movement.
Founding Archivist Wilma Slaight and her associate Jean
Berry provided me with Lisa Mausolf's superb 1980 honors
thesis on Tower Court, correspondence with building
materials suppliers, detailed plans, and prices of
furnishings. Along with references to eminent iron
artisan Frank L. Koralewsky and Johan Kirchmayer, the most
gifted woodcarver of his day, this documentation proved that
almost all of Tower Court's original furniture, carvings,
plasterwork, and paneling are still in situ.
Other furnishings, of course, have
disappeared. In the Wellesley College News of
October 28, 1915, a long Halloween spoof in epic form
describes two ghosts touring the new Tower Court Great Hall
"inspired by tasseled chandeliers." The invoice lists
those tassels as "red silk, 14" long, cost $5.50 each,"
their existence now a memory.
Other documentation provided glimpses
into a long-forgotten conflict. Soon after the 1914
fire destroying College Hall and making way for Tower Court,
Ellen S.C. James gave $250,000 to replace "the College heart
and centre." Although the Trustees planned to locate a
new building in the decorative Beaux Arts style on low
ground in front of the present Science Center, the Art
Department Faculty preferred the same high ground College
Hall had occupied and Ralph Adam Cram, architect of
Princeton and West Point. Distressed by the
controversy, Mrs. James withdrew from debate and died two
months later. The Art Department Faculty prevailed.
Armed with the material I most required,
I reluctantly left the Archives. We Museum Docents
could now relate an accurate and colorful story to hundreds
who joined our Sunday walking tour and thousands who came
from all over the United States to the exhibit Inspiring
Reform.
by Jean Kendall CE '88
"Absolutely tops!" reflects the opinion
of the majority of 138 participants (including approximately
30 non-alumnae) who filled out evaluations after attending
Summer Symposium '97, "The Art and History of the Book,"
June 1-6. The program, organized by Codirectors Ruth
Rogers, Special Collections Librarian, and Katherine Park,
History Department, was, according to an attendee in the
rare books and manuscripts field, "excellent in its
presentation of technological and intellectually demanding
material." Ruth and Katherine assembled a group of Wellesley
professors and visiting scholars who were "articulate,
informed, witty, and thought-provoking."
Beginning with Professor Lilian
Armstrong's impressive lecture on the construction
principles of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts,
participants examined the "diversity of the book" through
the centuries. The Symposium concluded with a rousing
lecture and demonstration by Assistant Professor Takis
Metaxas on the new technology of electronic books,
hypertext, and multimedia. This journey through the
evolution of the book "opened up a whole new appreciation of
the library and its workings" for many, while for those more
knowledgeable on the subject the "selection of emphases,
small technical details, and the level of the presentations
- full of fundamentals but rich and not condescending -
constituted "an impressive program."
In addition to lectures in the Collins
Cinema, the Symposium included a choice of late afternoon
sessions. Library Assistants Marilyn Hatch and Sue
Leong, with student staff, conducted a workshop in the Book
Arts Lab. Demonstrations of bookbinding by Betsey Eldridge
were "a high point and special treat, adding greatly to
one's understanding and balancing the lecture format."
Participants could round out the late afternoon with Tai
Chi, yoga, and water aerobics conducted by Connie Bauman and
her Sports Center staff.
While comments on the program itself from
those attending were numerous and positive, remarks from
alumnae on their allegiance to the College were particularly
moving. One alumna wrote, "I rediscovered with delight the
company of bright, engaged Wellesley women." A loyal
alumna who has attended every Symposium concluded:
"Symposium has inspired me to contribute as much as I can in
time and resources to Wellesley. Reunion helps to
continue this feeling, but Symposium started it."
The
Friends of the Library will offer a new stationery series
this winter: eight black and white postcard reproductions of
College photographs from 1880 to 1910. 
Drawn
from the Library's Archives, the images include wonderful
scenes of the old College Hall, the original Library
interior, and students engaged in academic and recreational
activities (crew, theatre, hoop-rolling). The postcards will
be sold in sets of sixteen (two each of eight images),
priced at $10.00, and available at the Library after
December 1. For orders by mail, make checks payable to
the Wellesley College Library and send to: Librarian's
Office, Clapp Library, Wellesley College, 106 Central
Street, Wellesley, MA 02181-8275. Please add $2.00 for
postage and handling. Last year's holiday cards
featuring winter scenes, as well as the popular floral
notecards, are also still available at the Library and the
Wellesley College Club.
(Pictured: 1887 Class Crew, Wellesley College. Photo by Pach Bros.)
On
October 10th, Friends of the Wellesley College Library
presented a large-format printer to the Clapp Library for
student and staff use. Costing just under $10,000 and
located in the Knapp Media and Technology Center, the
Hewlett Packard DesignJet 2500 CP Plus color inkjet plotter
contains 20 megabytes of memory expandable to 68 megabytes,
and a 2 gigabyte buffer disk for additional storage. Output
is a 36-inch-wide print that can be of any length. The
machine prints 600 dots per square inch in black and white,
300 in color, and comes equipped with Postscript Level II
typesetting, Ethernet/LocalTalk network connections, and
software for personal computers and Macintoshes.
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"Incarnations of the Artist's Book," prepared by Special Collections Assistant and Book Arts instructor Marilyn Hatch. All items are from Special Collections and the Art Library. Clapp Library, 4th floor, cases outside Special Collections. |
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The fall Authors on Stage program, sponsored by Wellesley College Alumnae of Boston. The following authors will discuss their work: Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha; Bishop Paul Moore, Presences: A Bishop's Life in the City; and Jane Yolen, Child of Faerie, Child of Earth. The College Club. Coffee, 9:45 a.m.; program, 10:30 a.m. |
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Katherine Hall Page '69 and Cynthia Johnson '72
will speak at "A Night |
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Steering Committee meeting, Friends of the College Library. Sanger Room, 3-4:30 p.m. |
Friends of the Library
1997-1998
Diana Chapman Walsh '66
Mary E. Jackson '24
Ruth R. Rogers
June Stobaugh `66
Elizabeth K. Cabot '60
Wanda Lankenner MacDonald `72
Claire M. Broder '61
Ann Hayden Hamilton '67
Janice G. Hunt '52
Charlotte Isaacs `68
Micheline Jedrey
Cynthia Johnson '72
Jean Kendall CE '88
Mary Ann Lash '52
Lia Gelin Poorvu `56
Kathryn Preyer
Elinor Bunn Thompson '37
Kathleen Thompson CE '80
Sigrid R. Watson '47
- Comments to: efebo@wellesley.edu
- Wellesley College Library
- Date created: March 24, 1998
- Last modified: March 24, 1998
- Expires: Permanent