No. 57
News |
European Scholars Among 2010 Fellowship RecipientsDuring 2010, the AGS Library will be able, due to the generosity of Dr. Robert and Suzanne McColl and the family of the late John S. Best, to support a total of five research fellows. These fellows, investigating a wide variety of topics, come from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Colorado and Washington, D.C. Two of them, John Cloud and Michael Heffernan, are also former fellows, returning under different programs, and both also are former speakers in the AGS Library’s Holzheimer Maps and America lecture series. McColl Research Program: John Cloud, NOAA Central Library, Silver Spring, MD: An exploration of the “larger cartography” of the U.S. Coast Survey. Kieran James Rankin, Ussher Library, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland: “Richard Hartshorne: Architect of Boundary Studies in Political Geography.” Steven Seegel, Department of History, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO: “Icons of Power: The Modern History of Cartography in East-Central European Borderlands.”
Michael Heffernan, School of Geography, University of Nottingham, UK: “Geography and the 20th Century: The Geographical Societies and the Global Imagination, 1885-1914.” Tim Youngs, Professor of English and Travel Studies, Nottingham Trent University, UK: Research project to consult the William O. Field archive, specifically Field’s travel diaries and notes. The call for these programs is made during the late spring, with information available on the Libraries’ web site: http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/AGSL/fellowships.cfm. Applications are due in early November with awards announced before the end of the year. These fellowships are intended for scholars who reside beyond commuting distance from UWM. Michael Heffernan, a 2010 Best Fellow in the AGS Library. photo by Kay Guildner
Volunteers Lend Expertise to AGS LibraryThe American Geographical Society Library is currently enjoying the wisdom and hard work of two special volunteers, Norman Stewart and Ted von Briesen.
Having developed during his career a specialty in the history of geographical thought, Stewart knew whom the key players of AAG were and the context in which they worked, and was thus the perfect archivist for the materials. His first major undertaking was to organize the unorganized—the two-thirds of the archive that had been hastily assembled from the files of various offices. This was completed in time for the AAG Centennial in 2004. Stewart volunteers three mornings a week. Current projects include processing the papers of past AAG presidents and other prominent geographers. “Norm’s contribution is incalculable,” Baruth says. “No one can match his knowledge, and his efforts to understand and organize have been well beyond the call of duty—he is, simply, irreplaceable.” During his career, Ted von Briesen worked with thousands of maps, managing large-scale planning and environmental studies for proposed public transportation and community development projects. When he retired, he realized that he would miss all those maps (but not the timesheets and expense reports). Volunteering in the AGS Library offered him an opportunity to continue with his cartographic interests and learn new skills at the same time. Since beginning his work with the Library in 2007, von Briesen has painstakingly pieced together the twelve ill-fitting sheets of a facsimile of the 1507 Waldseemüller world map (see photo) and completed the project of scanning the 107 sheets of the one to one million map of Hispanic America, produced by the AGS between 1920 and 1945. He is now organizing, indexing and scanning the pioneering hydrographic chart series of Navy Lieut. Matthew Fontaine Maury, produced in the 1850s. Maury, himself, was an early member of the AGS, and his charts were among the very first additions to the AGS map collection. Von Briesen feels lucky to have landed such challenging volunteer work and believes that contributing to the digital database “has helped put the AGS Library in the forefront of leading world map collections by making these really valuable resources available to almost anyone, anywhere, at anytime.” The Library staff feel lucky too. “We are fortunate indeed,” Baruth says, “to benefit from Ted’s valuable service as well as his cheerful comradeship.” 
Ted von Briesen. photos by Kay Guildner.
Libraries’ Man Ray Image in New York Exhibit
The image originally appeared in the Little Review magazine in 1922. This was the first publication of a rayograph (a kind of photogram developed by the artist). In the work, Man Ray uses abstracted objects to depict his friend and fellow Dadaist Marcel Duchamp. The title, “Rose Sel à Vie” (Rose the Salt of Life), is a pun on Duchamp’s pseudonym, Rrose Sélavy. The exhibition runs through March 14, 2010. The piece was included in the editorial files of the Little Review, which were acquired by the Libraries in 1966. Founded by Margaret Anderson, the literary and art magazine was known for its publication of works by such modernist authors as James Joyce, Guillaume Apollinaire, Djuna Barnes, Andre Breton, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams. The Little Review Collection is located in the UWM Libraries Archives.
Libraries To Co-Host Wisconsin Oral History Day EventsThe 2010 Wisconsin Oral History Day will be held in Milwaukee on March 28 and 29, with the UWM Libraries hosting the second day’s events. J. Todd Moye, Associate Professor of History & Public History at the University of North Texas, will provide a keynote address. The day’s events will also include a mini-workshop on “Oral History for the One-Person Shop,” and presentations of works in progress, including details about an ongoing Milwaukee civil rights digital history project at the UWM Libraries. The Jewish Museum Milwaukee will host the first day’s events, which will include a panel discussion on Jewish oral history in Wisconsin, with commentary by UW-Madison Humanities Scholar Jonathan Pollack. For more information, call (414) 229-5402.
New Electonic ResourcesThe Libraries now offer access to Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online, containing more than 9,000 pages of material, with entries by more than 700 expert contributors from all over the world. It includes 1,209 essays and images from 10 sources and hundreds of audio examples. Also now available is The Business Journal, offering local business news from full-text issues of The Business Journal Serving Greater Milwaukee as well as the annual Book of Lists, which includes rankings and facts for area businesses, industries, professions, governmental units and nonprofit organizations. Coverage also includes local business publications from 40 major metropolitan areas. Both databases can be found on the UWM Libraries' website through the Find Resources webpage.
Libraries To Host Conference ReceptionThe UWM Libraries will host a reception for state librarians during the Annual Conference of the Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians on April 22. The Libraries will offer tours of the new Daniel M. Soref Learning Commons in tandem with the reception. The annual conference is an opportunity for academic librarians to learn and share information, including the latest innovations in such areas as reference, instruction, and archival practices. Robert Greenstreet, Dean of UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, will also be giving a luncheon program on the "Redevelopment of the Urban Environment." Conference information may be found at: http://www.wla.lib.wi.us/waal/conferences/2010/
Recent DonationsThank you to the following donors who gave significant monetary gifts to the Libraries from January 1 to December 31, 2009:
Gregory Adamczyk
Birchrock Foundation Thank you to the following donors who gave gifts-in-kind—books, maps, videos, and other library material—from July 1, 2008 to December 31, 2009:
Ronald Abler
First Unitarian Society
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John S. Best Research Fellowship:
Stewart, an emeritus professor in UWM’s Geography Dept., was recruited in 2000 by AGS Library Curator Chris Baruth to organize and index the archives of North America’s foremost organization for geographers, the Association of American Geographers, founded in 1904. The archives were acquired by the Library in 1996 and consisted mostly of a century’s worth of office files thrown into letter boxes. 
A “rayograph” by the avant-garde American artist Man Ray (1890-1976) owned by the UWM Libraries is part of the exhibition “Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention” at the Jewish Museum in New York.Steven Burnham, Editor, sburnham@uwm.edu
Krystyna Matusiak, Newsletter designer
Created: April 8, 2011
Page Contact: sburnham@uwm.edu