Archived Articles — Archive for May 2007

As the academic year approaches its end, the Library formally thanked the 250 student workers who've done so much to help us operate smoothly in 2007-8, with a big sign at the Lantern entrance and balloons and goodie bags distributed through all the departments.

Now a permanent part-time Administrative Assistant, Cheryl Davis has been a familiar face in the Administrative Office since last November, when she arrived as a temp. She also had a brief stint in Personnel and at 2020 Ridge, where she worked on the University's United Way campaign. In Admin, she'll be the primary support for University Librarian Sarah Pritchard and for Assistant to the University Librarian Lori Arp. Cheryl can be reached at cddavis@northwestern.edu or x1-7640.

(Photo by Mary Bradley)

The 2007 Deering Family Award, created by the Library Board of Governors to “honor the philanthropic spirit that enriches the intellectual life of the University embodied by the Deering family,” was presented last Wednesday night to Jim and Mary-Lou Aagaard. In her remarks at the annual Deering Society Dinner, which appear below, University Librarian Sarah Pritchard noted the extraordinary length and complexity of the Aagaards’ relationship to the Library, dating back in both their cases more than half a century.

In 1869, Northwestern Latin professor and University librarian Daniel Bonbright was visiting Europe when he heard about an extraordinary private book collection that had just become available for sale. Assembled by Johannes Schulze, who had studied with Hegel and befriended Goethe and Schopenhauer, this personal library included books printed by the famous 16th and 17th century printing dynasties, the Manutius and Elsevirs, as well as 13 incunabula' books printed before 1501.

The Alice Berline Kaplan Humanities Institute Library Fellowship has been awarded for the coming academic year to Scott Garton of the Reference Department. Scott’s proposal, “A Life in Time and Space: Examining the Life and Career of Aubrey Beardsley through Geographic Software,” was unanimously endorsed by the members of the selection jury, and University Librarian Sarah Pritchard has accepted the jury’s recommendation.

When Dina Azrikan, Public Service Assistant in the Music Library, first began writing a book about her father, Russian opera singer Arnold Azrikan, she was going to title it Arnold Azrikan: A Forgotten Artist. Although in his lifetime he had been the leading soloist at the famous Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater and the Yekaterinburg (a.k.a. Sverdlosk) Opera Theater, and had been named a Distinguished Artist of the Ukraine and a Stalin Prize laureate, he had also undergone the kind of blacklisting common in the Soviet era that included being erased from the official histories. Dina's objective wasn't to write a political book; she just wanted to re-establish her father's rightful place in Russia's musical history. "I wanted to say that, despite all of that, even under those circumstances, he succeeded, because of what a great talent he was," she says.

The Reference Department launched a new ongoing series of exhibits designed to highlight its resources by mounting a May Day exhibit. Designed by Kathleen Bethel, Jason Kruse, Geoff Morse, and Jeannette Moss, the exhibit featured resources on May Day itself as well as labor, labor history, and May 1st celebrations around the world. A bibliography of 23 reference sources, including a bulletin board displaying electronic resources and a display of reference books, were included.

A new search committee has been formed to manage the recruitment of a new Assistant Head for the MARC department. Catherine Grove, the new department head, chairs the committee. Other members are Daniel von Brighoff, Charlotte Cubbage, Raul Nino, and Elisa Sanchez. The team has met, and the position description has been posted on the Library website. A position vacancy announcement will be sent out soon.

Roxanne Sellberg
AUL for Technical Services