Fall 2001 Library Newsletter

For nearly a decade the University has dreamed of a new library. With the demolition of Brooks Union and the Biltmore Apartments, the first tangible steps toward realizing that dream are evident. This may be the most visible sign of progress, but we have planned intensively for two years. Much of that planning involved conversations with students and faculty as well as with colleagues around the country. When Raynor opens in the fall of 2003, the University will have a library facility comparable to the quality of its faculty and the aspirations of its students.

Because we believe in Louis Sullivan's dictum that "form follows function," we designed the library from the inside out, incorporating cherished librarian values of service to users and access to information along with the latest information technology. Beyond that, we will provide a home for the Tommy G. Thompson Center, the chief component of which is the Institute for Teaching and Learning. The lower level of the new library will include space for academic conferences, group study, and media services. The combined Raynor/Memorial Library will also house the Ott Writing Center, the Marquette University Press, and the journal, Renascence.

While much planning necessarily focused on architectural elements that allow us to best serve the academic community, we also focused on a strategic vision designed to move us from where we are to where we want to be in terms of service. Indeed, we do not need to wait for the new library to open before we can enhance services. For instance, in the coming year we plan to enable students and faculty to initiate online holds and recalls as well as renew interlibrary loan items. We will also investigate virtual reference services and evaluate software to enable us to deliver interlibrary loan articles directly to the borrower's desktop.

We hope that our investment in planning will mean that today's new students will return in the fall of 2003 to a beautiful library that not only meets their needs, but also those of future students. You can keep abreast of our efforts by visiting our new Raynor Web site and sharing your ideas and suggestions with us. Two years may seem an eternity to students, but in reality the future will be here before we know it.

Dr. Nicholas Burckel, Dean of Libraries

Groundbreaking Ceremony
Monday, October 1, 3:30 p.m.

A new Raynor Library Web site> was established during summer 2001, gethering together descriptions of the space and services, latest floor plans, background on the Thompson Center, FAQs, and a Webcam that provides a new view of the construction every 20 seconds.

The Libraries increasingly serve as a portal to off-campus resources via the MORE Web site. MORE now offers 600+ Web pages with convenient connections to 100 full-text databases, almost 8,000 e-journals, and over 2,500 e-books--all available to MU researchers in off-campus locations. In the last academic year users retrieved almost 300,000 articles from ProQuest alone. Staff mounted 2,300+ documents for online class reserves use. On average, MORE receives 25% of total campus Web hits, with over 2 million pages viewed last year. Analysis of figures for the high-traffic month of April 2001 shows about 80% of the usage comes from off-campus locations, representing 6,600 hosts from 62 countries. There were 8,957,531 total library hits between July 2000 and June 2001. While remote use is heaviest between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., a surprising 10.1% occurs between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.. In addition to the virtual traffic, the libraries checked out 172,206 items last year!

• With the online New Titles service, initiated last November, MARQCAT users can now retrieve a list of items added to the collection during the past month. In addition to 32 disciplines, the new title service provides a complete list of several special collections including videos, Browsing, e-books in netLibrary and the new Ciszek Collection. Click on "New Titles" from MARQCAT's main menu.
• 933 laptop checkouts (Memorial) during April--our busiest month ever! Starting in 2001, the Science Library also has laptops, with over 150 checkouts during the 2nd semester.

In April the Libraries opened the Walter Ciszek, S.J., Catholic Spirituality Collection. Spearheaded by a generous gift of the Marquette student Knights of Columbus, the new browsing collection of books and videos covers a wide variety of subjects including Catholic devotional literature, meditations, prayer books, catechisms, lives of the saints, apologetics, conversion stories, and works on vocation. Review a complete list of holdings in MARQCAT under New Titles, then Ciszek Collection.

• Matt Blessing presented "Digitizing University Photographic Collections for Outreach to Alumni and Other Non-Traditional Users" at the Wisconsin Association of Academic Libraries conference in April 2001; and was selected as a mentor for the Menominee Tribal Library by the Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board's Assessment/Mentoring Project.
• Nick Burckel was elected vice-chair/chair elect of Wisconsin Library Services (WiLS); was appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Council on Library and Information Resources and to the Executive Committee (2001-03) of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
• Bruce Cole published the article "Rockin' After All These Years" in the Shepherd Express.
• Bill Gagliani published short stories in various anthologies, including The Midnighters Club, Extremes 3: Terror on the High Seas, and The Asylum 2.
• Susan Hopwood and Nick Burckel were appointed Reviews co-editors for the journal Portal: Libraries and the Academy.
• Martha Jermé published the article "Web Sites for Monitoring the Rules of Rehabilitation" in the journal Health Policy Resource.
• Molly Larkin served as coordinator for the Libraries' book drive to benefit Literacy Services of Wisconsin.
• Jim Lowrey presented "Wireless Computers" at Wisconsin Library Services' WiLSWorld summer conference.
• Julie O'Keeffe presented "From 'My Library' to 'My Librarian': a Reinvestigation of Personalized Research Clinics," at the Association of College and Research Libraries Conference, March 2001.
• Phil Runkel presented "Catholic Social Action Records in the Marquette University Archives" at the Catholic Library Association convention, April 2001.
• Susan B. Stawicki-Vrobel published "The Elderly" in The Encyclopedia of the Great Depression and the New Deal.
• Mark Thiel was appointed to the board of the International Council on Archives Steering Committee for Church Archives Section and attended the annual meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Rose Trupiano was named 2001 Newsletter Editor by the Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians.
• John D. Zemler's story "The Passion Play of Peleliu" won 4th Place in the HorrorFind.com Weird War fiction contest.

As fans of J.R.R Tolkien anxiously await the December 2001 film release of The Lord of the Rings, Department of Special Collections and Archives staff have noted a considerable increase in the number of visitors viewing the permanent Lord of the Rings exhibit. Memorial Library preserves the literary manuscripts for all J.R.R. Tolkien's major works, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, along with an extensive collection of secondary sources. Visit the Tolkien Collection's new online inventory and see how it all began!

In partnership with the Librarians' Assembly, the Department of Special Collections has scheduled a public lecture by world-renowned Tolkien scholar Dr. Thomas Shippey, author of the new J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. While at Oxford and Leeds, Shippey taught using the same syllabus as Tolkien. Currently he holds the Walter J. Ong Chairof Humanities at St. Louis University.

Please join us for Professor Shippey's lecture on November 29th
at the Alumni Memorial Union.

Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays, co-edited by archivist Phil Runkel, was published this summer by the Marquette University Press. Essays by 41 academic scholars and Catholic Workers (originally presented at Marquette's Dorothy Day Centenary Conference in October 1997) address Catholic Worker pacifism, Dorothy Day's social and political thought and her spirituality, the "Green Revolution" of Peter Maurin, and the relationship of the Catholic Worker movement to the Catholic Church.

Humanities Reference Librarian John Jentz was awarded a 2nd year of Mellon endowment funding for his joint project with Dr. James South of the MU Philosophy Department. Their goal--to create and pilot an information literacy component in PHIL 001, the introductory logic course.

Mark Thiel, archivist in the Department of Special Collections, responded to an interesting international appeal. A Moscow State University doctoral student needed various Lakota (Sioux) documents contained in one of the Department's Catholic Indian mission collections. Because of the nature of the originals, Thiel decided to scan and transmit them by e-mail. The student received his doctorate this year, praising his access to Marquette's holdings.

Researchers interested in recent Wisconsin political history will soon have access to a treasure trove in the Marquette Libraries. Over the summer Special Collections acquired the personal and political papers of Tommy G. Thompson, Wisconsin's governor from 1986 to 2001.Spanning four decades of political campaigns, the Thompson Collection includes records, speeches, photographs, personal correspondence, and memorabilia. Plans are underway for digitization of selected portions of the collection, which is expected to be an integral part of the Tommy G. Thompson Center within Raynor Library. The collection includes extensive documentation of Thompson's role in the school choice movement, as well as with other trends and issues in educational policy.

Sometime early in the fall semester, a student assistant working in the Department of Special Collections will digitally scan the 10,000th image from the University Archives. Although the department began scanning selected images on request several years ago, it was not until early 2000 that staff began mounting photographic collections on the MORE Web site. To date a relatively small percentage of the images from the University Archives are available online, including photographs that document faculty, student life, and prominent campus visitors. Based on reference requests, the most popular images are those depicting MU's athletic history. In the coming years the Department of Special Collections expects to scan and publish images from many of its manuscript collections. To view the images visit Archives' Web site, then click on the link to Digitized Photographic Collections.

• Winners of the 2001 Dittman Research Paper Competition were recognized at a special celebration during National Library Week in April. Receiving cash prizes were undergraduate Cheran Dollard for her economics paper "Currency Contemplation," and Christopher Miller, graduate history student, for his paper "City-Suburb Relationships in Milwaukee."
• Matt Blessing has been appointed Head of Special Collections and University Archives. Matt joined the Libraries as University Archivist in July 1999 and was named Acting Department Head in August 2000. Matt earned his M.A. in History from the University of Montana and his M.L.I.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
• In April, poetry lovers congregated in five cozy settings for distinctly different library-sponsored readings to celebrate National Poetry Month. Faculty and visitors joined library staff and students to explore the many faces of poetry - some classic, some original, and all thought-provoking! Thus is a new tradition born...
• The Western Civilization Blues Band rocks the Varsity Theater one last time. An unofficial collaboration between the History Department and Memorial Library, band members include Dr. Phillip Naylor on guitars, Bruce Cole on drums, Stephanie Mackenzie on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Dennis Higgins on guitar and vocals. When not gigging, Dr. Naylor teaches history, while Bruce Cole and Dennis Higgins bring their expertise to Memorial Library as Cataloger and Media Supervisor.
• The Libraries sponsored two colloquia in the past year. Professor Janet Boles presented "Yet Another Year of the Woman Voter and Candidate" in October, and Professor Phillip Naylor presented "From the Quai Voltaire to the Casbah: Researching France and Algeria" in March. Their lively presentations were well attended by the Marquette community and added to the long list of popular events arranged by the Colloquium Committee.

MORE, Libraries' Web site

Raynor Library

Raynor Webcam

MARQCAT New Titles Lists

Special Collections & University Archives

Library Hours

Marquette University Press

Editorial Coordinator: Susan Hopwood

Editors: William D. Gagliani and Leslie A. Quade

Contributors: Matt Blessing, Nicholas Burckel, Susan Hopwood, Jay Kirk, James Lowrey, Phil Runkel

Photography: Steven Blackwood, Patrick Doyle, William D. Gagliani