Colgate University Libraries News and Events

Postcards at Colgate, recently added to our digital collections, showcases the campus and the surrounding area as they were in the early part of the 20th century. These black and white photographic postcards were mainly unsent ... collected as souvenirs of a place and time. A few ended up in a scrapbook were the collector made comments to the subject matter. Like this one, where the writer describes the gym (prior to Huntington) with a sentiment that might sound familiar ... "Our dinky little gym. It has long since grown too small for the use of the college men and we are promised a new and bigger one. This is located right at the foot of the hill, beside the lake" (the old gym stood where JC Colgate is now).

A few were sent - like this one, which reminds the recipient, "Hope you are well and being good boy. Daddy".
We hope you enjoy seeing how the campus has changed over the course of the years (almost a full century).
 
 

The Special Collections department invites you to check out our Summer 2010 exhibit of early postcards of Colgate (on Level 2 at Case).
It's interesting to note that these are printed color images of Colgate, a technology that was not common to American postcard publishers until around 1930. All of the cards in this exhibit date from prior to or just after the First World War -- that is, prior to 1919. How is this possible? As it happened, German printers were far ahead of the rest of the printing world in their ability to print colored cards. The original images for each card were obviously made in Hamilton, then shipped to Germany to be transferred to linen cards.
The postcards depict a Colgate both familiar and foreign. Whitnall field has stood the test of time, but what happened to the old Gymnasium that used to stand next to it, where J.C.C. is now? Are those bushy things next to Taylor Lake the same towering willows we walk past today?
We hope you'll stop by and enjoy the exhibit, explore the images and find out what strikes you as the biggest change, and what has remained the same on our beautiful campus.

Due to budget cuts, the Getty is ceasing to support the BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art). As of March 31, all access to the online version of BHA will cease. They are working to find partners or buyers for the product but have not had any luck with that so far. This event, happening as it does to a resource that we always considered to be stable, is really indicative of just how volatile the traditional publishing market is right now. It's disheartening for the BHA to cease to be as it has such a long history and represents content that we currently have no other way to access (no other group is indexing some of it and/or it is not available online/full-text). 
 
Here is the link to their announcement:
 
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/bha/
 
So, to reiterate, after March 31 the BHA is no more. We're keeping an eye on the situation to see if there's a last minute reprieve but we should all assume and plan to no longer have this important resource available.
 

 The new exhibit on Level 2 of Case-Geyer includes books, photographs, letters, and illustrations from the Victorian age. There are some Aubrey Beardsley illustrations, and Oscar Wilde letters, a 1st edition copy of On the Origin of the Species with a photogravure of Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron, and many fine examples of the book arts.  
There are two new movies coming out this Spring about this time period, Creation (about Darwin and the theory of evolution) and The Young Victoria. If you're interested in them, you might check out the exhibit to immerse yourself a little further in Victoriana.

 This fall you'll be seeing some changes to the library website not so much in how it functions but in how it looks. That's because we've got a new logo and we need to make some room for it. You may have already noticed the new logo when you search Encore and on some of the posters around the library. Next up, we'll be adding it our blog and then finally the library homepage. We're shooting to have the new look in place by the time you return from Fall break but no promises. We really like the new logo and we hope you do too.
 

It's that time of year again, when some of us put away the academic tomes and start thinking ... beach reading. If you're lucky enough to be heading to a beach this summer, or just want something light to take your mind off of your scholarly pursuits for a little while, you might try one of these recent award winners:

 
The cruelest month by Louise Penny won the 2008 Agatha Award for Best Mystery Novel. Winners of this award are modern works that best exemplify the "cozy", a traditional style of the genre often used by Agatha Christie. Cozies tend to take place in a confined space with characters who know eachother and never contain graphic violence or sex.
 
The Mystery Writers of America awarded three Edgar Awards this April. Blue heaven by C.J. Box won Best Novel for 2009. Paper towns by John Green won in the Best Young Adult Novel category and China Lake by Meg Gardiner won for Best Paperback Original. All three titles are available through ConnectNY or WorldCat and we should be getting Blue heaven in soon.
 
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is given to a work of literary science fiction published originally in Britain. This year's award goes to The song of time by Ian R. MacLeod. As with the Edgar Award winners, this title is available through Inter-Library Loan.
 
The Irish Literary Academy awarded Sebastian Barry the 2009 award for Listeners' Choice and Novel of the Year, for his novel, Secret Scripture, available at Case-Geyer.
 
The 2009 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism went to Jane Meyer for her recent book, The dark side : the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals. We've got this book on the shelves, so if you prefer a little gritty reality in your off-time, you might pick that one up at Case-Geyer.
 
Not inspired by any of these titles? Here's the Editor's Choice list from a recent New York Times Book Review.
 
Happy reading.

This week, April 12-18, is National Library Week and that means it's time to celebrate in true library style (with a good book, cup of coffee, and comfy chair).
To start off, a little trivia:
Did you know that J. Edgar Hoover, Mao Zedong and Casanova all worked in libraries at some point in their lives? It's true. Also, Laura Bush was a librarian before she was at the White House and Batgirl was a librarian when she wasn't fighting crime.
If you liked all that, then you might want to try this scavenger hunt posted by the Oxford University Press.
And, of course, libraries (and librarians) have played a starring role in some classic movies, you know, like Ghostbusters (or, in this case, Be kind, rewind).
Lastly, a couple of library inspired haikus to inspire you or maybe, make you laugh. Here's my meager attempt at it:
 

on a sunny day
in the libary there is
an empty chair

 
that's right. the library misses you when you're not here.
 
 
 

Good morning,
 
Per your feedback, we've added a link to the student email to our homepage. We've called it "Colgate Gmail" and it links to the url, students.colgate.edu.
 
So if you're on the library site and looking for access to your student email account, you can now find a link up near the links to the portal, blackboard etc.
Questions or comments  welcome!

Europeana, presented by the EDL Foundation, is a new digital library of over 2 million objects - image, text, sound, and video - from many of Europe's libraries, research institutions, archives, and museums, including, but not limited to, the Rijksmuseum, the British Library, and the Louvre.
Europeana is full of prime resources on some of our (my) favorite Europeans and many obscure ones as well.
For instance, a search for Shakespeare turned up 1,356 items and Picasso over 17,000, and a search for John Smith, 899.
It's in beta testing right now but is still accessible. If you're curious or bored or needing inspiration on a project, I'd suggest checking it out.

The New York Public Library has partnered with Grace Bonney of design sponge to create a series of 5 short videos showcasing New York City artists and how they are inspired by materials from the library. It's true, some people find the library inspiring.
This series might be interesting to you because it's essentially mini interviews with 5 working artists discussing their work and how they find their inspiration.
While we here at Colgate might not have breadth of unique or rare materials that the New York Public Library does, we do have some interesting Special Collections ourselves. For instance, did you know that we own a collection of posters from WWI and II? or how about this, a complete set of the Edward S. Curtis Indian photographs?
So next time you are looking for a little inspiration, why not try the library?