Archived Articles — Archive for December 2007

The 68 stained glass medallions by G. Owen Bonawit in the windows of Deering Library are among the artistic achievements of the building that will be celebrated in a new book next year. As part of the celebration of Deering’s 75th anniversary in 2008, NUL is publishing Deering Library: An Illustrated History, with text by staff including Janet Olson, Nina Barrett, Russ Clement, and Jeff Garrett and a rich selection of historical and contemporary photographs.
But one intriguing question has emerged from the authors’ attempt to catalog all the Bonawit windows for identification in the book: Who is that man in the small panel to the left in the window above the desk of the Art Collection reading room?

So far, we know that 924 people have viewed University Archives’s web video “The Birth of the Northwestern University Wildcats” since it was posted on YouTube three months ago with a link from the Library’s home page; also that 183 have watched the teaser clip for Leigh Bienen’s interview on homicide; and that 70 viewers watched Archives’s history of “The Rock” www.library.northwestern.edu/news/archives/001753.html during the first week it appeared. “There’s no doubt that there’s an audience for this kind of content,” says Multimedia Services Specialist Dan Zellner, who heads the Library’s Podcast Work Group. “It’s entertaining, in addition to being informative, and it’s coming out in a format students are very comfortable interacting with.”

NUL’s new East Asian Studies Librarian Qunying Li comes to us from Arizona State University, where she was Chinese Studies Librarian, and South Asian Studies Librarian. Li assumed the position of East Asian Studies Librarian in September, 2007; in mid-November, she assumed the role of Liaison to the School of Education & Social Policy.

Returning to NUL (with a new name) from DePaul University, where she was the Project Coordinator for the Image Collection, Metadata Assistant Jessica Thomson previously worked for Russ Clement as the Evening Supervisor for the Art Collection (as Jessica Batty). She’s a survivor of the Art Institute, where she was the assistant curator of the textiles department and did a ton of cataloging objects for the textile collection. She calls herself a Museum- to-Library convert.

Sarah Ellis is a native of Ohio and Michigan who has lived in Chicago for more than two years. In 2003 she graduated from Albion College, a small liberal arts school in Michigan, where she studied Fine Arts and Biology, with an emphasis in printmaking and print-based digital arts. Before joining the Visual Media Collection in the Digital Collections department, she worked with a handful of galleries, artists, and designers in the Chicago area.

Sarah McVicar, the new Visual Resources Digitization Assistant in Digital Collections, has been working for Northwestern University for two years. Formerly, she was the Program Assistant in Physics & Astronomy, and more recently, the Department Assistant in Art History. She graduated from Northern Michigan University in 2004 with a BFA from the Department of Art & Design and a concentration in Electronic Imaging. She has continued to produce art in the form of digital photography and web design, and has recently begun to work in more traditional mediums like fiber and ink.

Kimberly Specht has joined the new Special Libraries division as the new Administrative Assistant. A 2006 Northwestern graduate, Kim holds a degree in violin performance and for the past year has been studying arts management at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany, and working as an administrative assistant at the Carl Duisberg Center, also in Cologne, specializing in international education. At Northwestern, she was Student Marketing Manager for Pick-Staiger Concert Hall--and worked in our own Music Library during the summer of 2006.

She enjoys distance running, extreme baking, Michael Jackson, and foreign films.

Kim can be reached at x7-5675 or k-specht@northwestern.edu.

(Photo by Mary Bradley)

Ish Harris-Wolff in Core Reserve has been nominated for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Intro Journals Project award in fiction, a national literary competition for the discovery and publication of the best new works by students currently enrolled in the writing programs. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress, “A Magpie’s Heart” was chosen from short stories and novel excerpts submitted by graduate students in Northwestern’s Masters in Creative Writing (MCW) Program.

A search committee has been formed to participate in the recruitment of a new conservation librarian. This position will replace the one recently held by Donia Conn. Scott Devine will chair the committee. Other members will be Elayne Bond, Charlotte Cubbage, David Easterbrook, Catherine Grove, and Peter Devlin (non-voting ex officio). They will begin their work in January.

Roxanne Sellberg
AUL TS&RM