Consul General of India Donates “India Corner” Collection to Wesleyan

Wesleyan's Olin Library is now home to a collection of 33 titles donated by the Consulate General of India, New York. On May 1, Consul Sandeep Chakravorty visited campus and participated in a formal dedication of the "India Corner." Housed in the Smith Reading Room, these volumes, representing India’s rich history and culture, and covering the country’s linguistic and geographical diversity, join the library's other robust holdings in Indian history, culture, and politics as well as Wesleyan’s rich heritage in Indian music, dance, and theater. Among the donations are Introduction to the Constitution of India by Durga Das Basu; Sufi Lyrics by…

(By Christine Foster) Imagine being chosen to oversee a vast treasure trove, including more than a million items ranging from art and music to government documents and—oh, yes, books. Such is the job set before Andrew White, who was chosen in April to be the University’s next Caleb T. Winchester Librarian. Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Joyce Jacobsen wrote in a campus-wide email announcing White’s appointment that the search committee was drawn to his experience working collaboratively with different groups of people. The previous librarian, Dan Cherubin, died suddenly last September, after having made an outsized impact…

For 30 years, musicians such as Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Alice Gerrard, Tom Paley, and Hedy West performed at a small café in upstate New York. The business's owner, Phil Ciganer, recorded the multiple musical acts on reel-to-reel tape and cassettes, and in 2004, he donated thousands of hours of material to Wesleyan's World Music Archives in hopes of the University making them available for education and research. For more than a decade, WMA was able to release small segments of the collection, but now, thanks to a $48,573 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), more than…

On April 11, Wesleyan's Olin Memorial Library will host "All Your Reading Habits Belong to Us: Digital Privacy and our Government: Catching Up with the Connecticut Four" in honor of National Library Week. The event, presented by the Friends of the Wesleyan Library, will take place 7-8:30 p.m. in the Smith Reading Room, with a reception to follow. In 2005, the FBI, under the auspices of the USA PATRIOT Act, tried to access patron information from Connecticut libraries and issued a gag order on the librarians about the demand. The librarians, all executive members of the Connecticut non-profit cooperative Library Connection, and…

Nancy Ottmann Albert’s (MALS '94) evocative photographs of vanishing New England structures and landscapes will be featured in “Documents in Black and White,” a new exhibition opening in Olin Library on Oct. 5, 2016. The show is being presented in conjunction with the formal announcement of Albert’s gift of her papers to the library’s Special Collections & Archives (SC&A). Albert will speak about her work at 7 p.m. Oct. 28 in the library’s Develin Room. Selected by the artist, the works span the 30 years she spent documenting New England’s built environment. Inspired by Walker Evans and the 1930s Farm Security…

Wesleyan recently received a $100,000 grant through the Humanities Open Book Program for digitizing select titles in the areas of dance and theater that were previously published by Wesleyan University Press but are no longer in print. The Open Book Program is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities, and is part of the agency-wide initiative called The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square. The purpose of the Open Book grant is to make out-of-print titles previously published by academic presses widely available in an open access (free) e-book format. (more…)

Twelve oral history interviews of Wesleyan community members, including faculty emeriti and administrators, are available at Olin Library. Transcripts and recordings have been deposited in Special Collections and Archives, and Leith Johnson, university archivist, has worked to make the transcripts available on WesScholar. (A link to the collection of memoirs will also be available from the Wasch Center website.) The set includes an extensive interview with Bill Firshein, the Daniel Ayres Professor of Biology, Emeritus, who passed away in December 2015. In this interview, Firshein related a whole complex of matters having to do with his Wesleyan career—his work as a scientist, his…

Olin Library's Special Collections & Archives hosted an exhibit, “A World in the Palm of your Hand: The Art of Miniature Books,” April 14. Examining miniature books, which are typically no larger than three inches, the program gave visitors the opportunity to view these treasures in both an exhibit and an open house. The exhibit was curated by the Miniature Book Society (MBS), an international organization devoted to the appreciation of miniature books. These books are rarely encountered outside the personal collections of libraries or individuals. The event culminated with an address, titled “A Collection in a Shoebox,” by Jim…

Dan Cherubin has been selected as the Caleb T. Winchester University Librarian at Wesleyan, starting on July 1, 2016. Cherubin has more than 20 years of experience in library and information services, most recently as the Chief Librarian and Associate Dean at Hunter College in New York. At Hunter, Cherubin was responsible for overseeing four libraries and had major roles in facility and space planning, implementation of technology, and the development of a strategic plan for the policies and practices of the library. At Wesleyan he will work with the library staff to develop a strategic plan to integrate the…

Staff from Information Technology Services (ITS), Olin Library and the Science Library hosted a poster session and demonstration on Nov. 17 and Nov. 19. ITS staff taught students, faculty and staff about EduRoam (accessing free wireless worldwide at participating institutions using a Wesleyan login); Lynda.com (online training for hundreds of software titles); WFS upgrade (Wesleyan Financial System); WesStation’s green ban on junk mail; cyber security and passwords; and the Master Calendar. Library staff provided information on Browzine (a way to get alerts and scan through the latest issues of journals on a tablet or laptop using a Wesleyan login); "Not Just Text" (the wide variety of images, streaming videos, sound recordings, CDs,…

Read more about Berger here and past Constitution Day speakers here.

This summer, crews around campus are hard at work on several major maintenance and capital projects designed to support Wesleyan’s ultimate goal of creating a more interconnected and sustainable campus.

Consul General of India Donates “India Corner” Collection to Wesleyan

Staff Spotlight: Andrew White Takes on Library’s Top Job

Grant Supports 240 Hours of Folk Song Digitization for the World Music Archives

Olin Library Presents Panel on Digital Privacy and Government, April 11

Photographs by Albert MALS ’94 Exhibited in Olin Library

Humanities Open Book Program Supports Out of Print Book Digitizing

Wesleyan Oral History Project Available on WesScholar

Rare Miniature Books Exhibited at Olin Library

Cherubin Named New University Librarian

ITS, Library Offer Wesleyan Community Demonstrations, Lessons

Berger ’90 Lectures on “Birthright Citizenship” during Constitution Day

Wesleyan Works on Utilities Infrastructure Improvements, Landscaping Projects this Summer