News from the Archives

In keeping with Denison’s campus theme of consumption and sustainability, there is a new exhibition on the main floor of the library, “Sustaining Art:  Artists’ Books and the Environment.”  Artists’ books begin as hand-crafted prototypes, with each one’s structure communicating part of its message; then the books are published, usually in limited editions.  The artists’ books below showcase our often troubled relationship with nature.

Rae Trujillo asks, Where Are All the Fish? The accordion structure book shows some fish species now extinct due to man-made hazards.  The volume has hand-painted paper sewn over panels, with plastic additions.

A deck of playing cards display America’s Most Wanted:  Black Gold, Texas Tea.  To question our dependence on oil, Karen Hanmer features a gas-guzzling SUV on each card.  See the exhibit to find out who the Joker is!

Excerpts from Chief Seattle’s Peace Treaty Statement draws on Native Americans’ historic concern for the land.  Dave Wood creates a lovely accordion book with wood covers and fills it with quotes from the Chief’s 1854 speech, such as “Every part of this earth is precious to my people….”

Lois Morrison’s fanciful Snakes Are Not Nice uses shark skin over laser-cut boards, which are held together with grommets.  The artist directs our attention to the natural world around us.

Cage of Wild Branches depicts a conversation between nature and the built environment.  This open slide-out book is by Joyce Cutler-Shaw.  Melanie Mowinski also explores the balance between nature and civilization in her flag book, East Fork:  Into Denali. A real treasure, Denali National Park covers more than 6 million acres in Alaska.

These and other intriguing artists’ books from Special Collections are available for use by individuals and classes.

Where Are All the Fish?

Snakes Are Not Nice

Cage of Wild Branches

 

Electronic Journal Center and Databases Available

The Electronic Journal Center and all OhioLINK databases should now be functioning properly. Please report any problems you find.

Thank you.

Electronic Journal Center Temporarily Unavailable

Due to last night’s hardware failure, The EJC will have intermittent access problems today.

Electronic Journal Center is down

As of 4:25pm Thursday, the EJC is down due to a hardware problem.

Mad Men @ Denison Libraries

The cold winds of November blowing through the leafless trees of the Denison campus signify the coming of winter.  Dropping temperatures also signal the fast-approaching due dates of those research papers that seemed so far way during the sunny days of August.  We feel your pain.  That is why, in addition to checking out the 25 + books needed for your paper on the civil rights movement in America, you may want to pick up season 1 and season 2 of Mad Men from the circulation desk.

“Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell.”

If you are going to stay up all night writing your research paper, you should at least take some Mad Men breaks.

Lunchtime @ The Library: Denison Hilltoppers

Denison Hilltoppers to perform in the Library Atrium

Come and see the Denison Hilltoppers in the Library Thursday, November 5 at 12:30 p.m. The Hilltoppers have been a group at Denison for 30 years. The Hilltoppers were founded by and continue to be run by students. To learn more about the history of the group, please visit their Alumni Club website at http://www.hilltoppers.net/. For more information about their current music and members, please visit http://www.denisonhilltoppers.com/. We look forward to seeing you in the library audience.

News from the Archives

When Asian Studies became an area of study among the GLCA colleges in the sixties, Denison faculty decided to focus on Burma.  Art department chair Dr. Jim Grimes contacted 1910 alumna, Helen Hunt, to begin forming a Burmese art collection at Denison.  Hunt had served for decades as a teacher and missionary in Burma.  She got in touch with others in service there, and soon donations of Burmese art arrived on campus.

Donations were supplemented by purchases made by Grimes and by the first Burmese Art Curator, Jane Terry Bailey.  Bailey taught from the growing collection and helped to establish Denison as a center to study the arts and crafts of Burma.

David Tin Hla graduated from Denison in 1926, and his wife later gave items to the Burmese art collection in his memory.  At age ten, Hla had traveled to Granville with the Lattas, a missionary couple who also were art donors.  Hla attended local schools, and Denison’s preparatory school, Doane Academy.  At Denison he was a varsity athlete, who later returned to Burma to win the Burma Open Golf Championship.  During World War II, he served as a captain in the British Army’s 12th Burma Rifles.  After the war, Hla helped to rebuild the YMCA movement and became Secretary General of Burma’s YMCA.

Hla was one of the dozens of Denisonians who served in Burma, now Myanmar.  Most often, the missionaries lived among the smaller ethnic groups such as the Karens, Shans, Chins, and Kachins.  The majority of Burmese were Buddhists, though, who produced art in the Buddhist tradition.  That art, plus works from Burmese ethnic groups, are now exhibited in the Denison Museum.  Don’t miss this amazing show!

Helen Hunt and Jim Grimes view a Burmese textile

Jane Terry Bailey teaching

David Tin Hla at Denison

Hla with basketball team

Shan girl, Burma

Baptist school, Burma

Open Access Week: October 19th – 23rd

Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.

Open Access is the principle that all research should be freely accessible online, immediately after publication, and it’s gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers throw their weight behind it.

The Open Access philosophy was firmly articulated in 2002, when the Budapest Open Access Initiative was introduced. It quickly took root in the scientific and medical communities because it offered an alternative route to research literature that was frequently closed off behind costly subscription barriers.

Now Open Access is on a roll. Recent Funder Mandates — including that of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (the world’s largest research funder), which now requires that all their funded research be placed in an openly accessible database, and Harvard University — have further strengthened the prospects for Open Access to all research.

Read more at www.openaccessweek.org

You can watch an animated overview of the issues that the open access movement is addressing below:

Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.

Lunchtime @ The Library: Tehillah

Thursday,  October 15th @ 12:30 p.m.

Tehillah, which means “to sing a hymn of spontaneous praise to God,” comprises a group of students whose goal is to foster the exposure of the Denison community to a positive and inspirational message through showcasing various arrangements of gospel music and to spread the gospel through praise and worship. Tehillah is comprised of a small group of like minded students, united in the same purpose, who will collectively select the diverse array of music to be performed. Tehillah is comprised of approximately 10 students chosen through advertised auditions.

OhioLINK back online

All OhioLINK resources should be back up and functioning. If you have problems accessing any resources, please let us know at reference@denison.edu. Thank you for your patience while this problem was being addressed.