January 2011

Set of artist’s bookmarks
Created for Bookmarks VII: Escaping the Library System
The Centre for Fine Print Research, The University of West England: 2010
Gould Library

Over the past six years, the Center for Fine Print Research in Bristol has organized an open call for bookmarks made by artists. Each artist produces a edition of 100 bookmarks and the resulting collection is then distributed through a network of libraries. This year, the Center put a spin on the project: the call for entries went out to librarians, and the resulting bookmarks were distributed outside the library system, at bookshops and galleries in 20 countries, including New Zealand, Poland, Turkey, South Korea, Germany, and Brazil.

When a group of intrepid Carleton Librarians and staff members (Danya Leebaw, Kristin Partlo,Margaret Pezalla, Aisling Quigley, and Heather Tompkins) decided to collaborate on a bookmark for the project, they were inspired by a quote by Neil Gaiman: “[S]ome stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.”1

The Carleton group produced an edition of bookmarks printed on discarded microfiche featuring the “Traveling Penguin,” a cheerful library advocate who reminds readers that some stories “outlast the materials on which they are printed,” (like microfilm.)

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Final report of the National Commission on the Causes of the
Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States
Washington, DC : Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 2011
http://www.fcic.gov/report (accessed February 1, 2011)
Gould Library Government Documents

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan group of private citizens (6 appointed by Democratic Congressional leadership and 4 by Republican leadership), was charged in 2009 with investigating the causes of the financial and economic crisis in the United States. To better understand the role of government policies, financial regulatory agencies and private financial firms in the crisis, the Commission interviewed more than 700 witnesses, reviewed thousands of documents, and held 19 days of hearings in cities across the United States. The Commission concluded that the financial crisis – which led to the collapse of the housing market and record rates of foreclosure, the crash of stock markets, and failure or near–failure of major financial firms – was both foreseeable and preventable.

The complete report of the Commission, including dissenting views, is available in bookstores or can be downloaded from the website of the commission. The electronic version of the report is catalogued in Bridge.

March 2011

Gerd Fischer
Mathematische Modelle : aus den Sammlungen von Universitäten und Museen
[Mathematical Models: from the Collections of Universities and Museums]
Braunschweig : Vieweg-Verlag, 1986
Gould Library

From the late 1800s until the early 1930s, mathematical models like these were a common teaching tool in college and university classrooms. Modeled from plaster (like the ones shown here), wire, or wood, the models gave abstract ideas concrete form, often depicting curved surfaces that would otherwise be difficult to visualize. Although these plaster models have mostly fallen out of use, some examples have been preserved in university collections and are now appreciated for their aesthetic, rather than didactic, qualities.

April 2011

“The Recent Earthquake Wave on the Coast of Japan”
Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore
The National Geographic Magazine
Volume VII No. 9 September 1896
Washington: National Geographic Society, 1896
Gould Library
American writer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore wrote this account of the “earthquake wave” (tsunami) that devastated a 175-mile stretch of the northeastern coast of Japan in 1896.  Many of the details of Scidmore’s account echo contemporary descriptions of the 2011 tsunami. Scidmore describes a wave 50 feet high that carried fishing boats miles inland, killing nearly 30,000 people died, washing away 10,000 homes washed away, and leaving thousands of acres of farm fields swamped and littered with debris.

May 2011

Italian Villas and their Gardens
Edith Wharton
Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish
New York: The Century Co., 1904
Gould Library Special Collections

In her introduction, “Italian Garden-Magic,” Wharton describes the Italian garden as a place that “does not exist for its flowers; its flowers exist for it: they are a late and infrequent adjunct to its beauties, a parenthetical grace counting only as one more touch in the general effect of enchantment.” This volume was commissioned by Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, to accompany the watercolors of Maxfield Parrish. Italian Villas and their Gardens was Wharton’s first published travel book (she later published travel books on France and Morocco), and is characterized by the high quality of its writing and scholarship. Wharton was also known for her many novels: The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), Summer (1917), and The Age of Innocence (1920), among others.

Summer 2011

Joel Meyerowitz
The Arch
Essays by Joel Meyerowitz and Vivian Bower.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1988
"Gould Library

This small volume of photographs celebrates the Gateway Arch, iconic architectural symbol of the city of St. Louis. In these photographs, the Arch reflects the sky, the city, and the people who visit it, sometimes glowing against the summer sky, sometimes disappearing into it. In his essay, Meyerowitz writes about the arch, “It was pure form, the beauty of mathematics, a drawing on the heavens, perfect pitch.”

September 2011

Kenneth Auchincloss (1937- 2003)
New York Revisited
Wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec (1955 -)
New York: Grolier Club, 2002 Illustrated with finely detailed illustrations by Wisconsin engraver and book maker Gaylord Schanilec, New York Revisited was inspired by an earlier Grolier Club publication, New York. Published in 1915, the original volume was decorated with wood-cut illustrations by Rudolph Ruzicka and told the story of the city to the beginning of the 20^th century. Nearly 100 years later, Kenneth Auchincloss recounts the remarkable evolution of the city of New York since 1915, including the events of September 11, 2001. Schanilec’s illustrations, based on photographs taken during his own wanderings around the city, depict sites familiar and not-so-familiar: Times Square, Central Park, an odd little statue of Puck, a subway station, the Twin Towers.

October 2011

Dymax (Bob Albrecht)
My Computer Likes Me When I Speak in BASICMenlo Park, California: Dymax, 1972
Gould Library In the early 1970s, Bob Albrecht and LeRoy Finkel founded Dymax, a small publishing company with the mission of bringing computer power to the people. Albrecht was an enthusiastic proponent of computers for everyone: he offered programming workshops for high school students, transformed the offices of Dymax into spaces for computer hobbyists and hackers to hang out, and published books like this one. Intended to de-mystify and personalize computing, My Computer Likes Me When I Speak in BASIC encourages the user to “Experiment! Gamble! Guess, ... then try it!”

November 2011

Sarah Bryant
Biography
Aurora, NY: Big Jump Press, 2010
Gould Library Special Collections

In this beautifully designed and carefully bound book, artist Sarah Bryant takes the reader on a tour of the periodic table. Bryant locates the presence of elements in the human body, the ocean, the crust of the earth, and a variety of manufactured materials, including gunpowder, antibiotics, and rocket propellant, mapping a complex relationship between our physiological makeup and the world we inhabit.

Gould Library owns the special boxed edition of the artist’s book, which includes a suite of the prints from the book. Print 1. You are what you are made of is on view here.

Sarah Bryant was awarded the 2011 Minnesota Center for Book Arts Prize for Biography. The MCBA Prize is a biennial, international artist’s book competition that recognizes outstanding examples of the contemporary book arts.

December 2011

The Winter Road
Prose Poems by Louis Jenkins
Holy Cow! Press, 2000

“Here [Louis Jenkins] is, on the coldest day of the year, talking about gypsies and heaven and radio, making sense.” Garrison Keillor on “The Winter Road” In this compilation of poems, presumably written amongst warm fires and never-ending cups of hot cocoa, Louis Jenkins, a prominent Minnesotan poet, writes of life, “cod[ing] a little bomb into the DNA of each short poem.” From writing dissensions on modern technology to reminiscing on summer picnics gone by, Jenkins achieves a reflective and meditative tone that parallels the wandering thoughts of one caught in the midst of hibernation.