“People could go on the very last guided tour of the catacombs of the Luxembourgish National Library (BNL)…Walls dating back to the 17th century tell us their stories”  Enjoy these intriguing stories at https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1328148.html

Dr. Stephanie Frampton at MIT “examines the particulars of Roman books — which often existed as scrolls back then — and their evolution over time. But a central focus of the work is how those technologies influenced how the Romans “thought about thought,” as she says.”  Full story available in MIT News.…

“Six-hundred rare books, manuscripts and prints which were lost or stolen from a German library during the Second World War have been returned after they were consigned to Sotheby’s…” Get the full story from Antiques Trade Gazette.

 

By Natalie Romano

One of the goals of LHRT is to celebrate the rich history of all kinds of libraries and to observe library history milestones. As public libraries continue to serve as bastions of information and civic engagement, the LHRT is proud to share with our readers the ways in which libraries serve their communities. This month, we’re shining the light on Mount Prospect Public Library (IL) as they commemorate their 75th anniversary of library service to Mount Prospect and the greater Chicago community.

The Mount Prospect Public Library has a long and respected history of service to its community and a fascinating connection to the history of Chicago and surrounding areas. Thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Mt. Prospect Women’s Club, the Mount Prospect Public Library officially opened on January 6, 1930, in a one-room schoolhouse and was staffed by volunteers until more resources made it possible for the library to open in a new location in 1935. Eventually, with even greater support from its community, the library was voted to become a tax-supported public library in 1943. Throughout several phases of development and change, inspiring its users to “explore the opportunities” remains its central mission to the Mt. Prospect community. To learn more about how their library staff celebrated this exciting milestone, I reached out to Anne Shaughnessy, Reference Librarian at MPPL, who was kind enough to share how the library recognized this important occasion.

Anne reports that planning the library’s anniversary celebration was a truly collaborative effort, with every department participating in some aspect of planning programs to honor the special occasion. She states: “Every department in the library was involved. The celebration lasted all year long with different kinds of events being offered including an art show, Ready Player One Extravaganza, and a final open house event.” MPPL’s goal in designing the anniversary celebrations was to highlight four key areas: arts and culture, technology, service, and community. To this end, staff planned a wide variety of public programs for youth and adults, including a library card design contest, a trivia night, and a concert featuring popular music from the 1940s. MPPL also designed a special edition tee-shirt to mark the occasion, which also served as the main logo for the 75th anniversary celebrations.

A timeline of MPPL history is featured on its website, mppl.org/about-us/history, and to commemorate its 75th anniversary, library staff produced a special video to highlight MPPL’s history and accomplishments. The video was created by Cathy Cushing, producer and host of Library Life, which airs on the Village of Mount Prospect’s public TV channel and the Library’s website. The video featured research expertise of librarians and archivists at MPPL. Each episode, hosted by Cathy Cushing, focuses on how the Library makes a positive difference in the lives of MPPL citizens through programming, outreach, and civic engagement. Many of the episodes can be watched via the library’s website, mppl.org.

Here at the Decker Branch Library of Denver Public Library, where I currently work, we celebrated our 100 year anniversary in 2013. I remember how much effort went into planning the celebrations, and so I was curious about how MPPL staff coordinated such a relevant and impactful celebration for their community. Anne shares that the planning committee started their preparations a year in advance, and recommends that libraries wanting to do something similar allow plenty of time to hold planning meetings and get input from the community. Equally important, she shares that involving all staff in the planning process ensures “that everyone can feel they have a voice in deciding what will be done.”

The Mt. Prospect Public Library’s 75th anniversary celebration is an exemplary model for how public libraries can observe their special milestones and celebrate their staff and community. Very special congratulations to MPPL staff for their outstanding service, and thank you to Anne Shaughnessy and MPPL staff for graciously sharing their story with LHRT!

 

Animating a library’s history…Having a college mascot give tours of library history exhibits…Social media blitzing to teach patrons facts about their library’s past…

Remarkable.  These are just a few of the creative ways libraries are commemorating their histories.

To kick off your National Library Week festivities, check out these recent invited submissions to our Celebrations column in LHRT News & Notes :

Deschutes Public Library History Project

Erin Weaver discusses how she created an animation about her library’s history using Powtoon.

KU Libraries: Kenneth Spencer Research Library Celebrates 50 years

 Leah Hallstrom’s piece offers a trove of wonderful ideas for celebrating a library’s history, in reporting about the golden anniversary of The Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.

Carthage (IL) Public Library Celebrates 125th Anniversary

Amy Gee writes about how the Carthage Public Library staff taught patrons about the library’s history through a series of 125 Facebook posts…

Watch their videos, enjoy their pictures, and read about their creative approaches in the Celebrations column.  The theme of National Library Week is Libraries = Strong Communities. Our three authors have demonstrated how their libraries strengthen their communities both past and present.

Has your library recently had a celebration of its history?  Perhaps an anniversary event, exhibit, or publication?  Please consider submitting a piece to LHRT News and Notes by emailing lhrtnewsandnotes@gmail.com

 

 

 

Hello Library History Folk and a greeting from across the oceans,

My name is Mary Carroll and I am another new volunteer to the Library History Round table blog. Based in Melbourne, Australia I hope to bring you news of library history from the international arena and provide insights into the activities of fellow library history enthusiasts worldwide, including a small band of enthusiasts in Australia. The international network of libraries makes for a fascinating perspective on library history.  I have already posted some news on the new International News section of the blog so you can see the Calls for Papers and other news from around the world. Take a look.

As way of introduction I am a Course Director (Course meaning ‘degree’ rather than a single subject in the Australian context) and senior lecturer in the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Wagga Wagga campus in central New South Wales. Wagga Wagga is half way between Melbourne and Sydney and sits on the lands of the Wiradjuri people, its name is generally thought to be drawn from the Wiradjuri word for crow.  I am however based most of the time in Melbourne some five hours from my campus office and in another state, Victoria and a very different environment than the beautiful agricultural setting of Wagga Wagga.

Melbourne was a gold boom town reaching its peak in the mid Victorian period and this wealth brought with it some beautiful and historic libraries. This history provides a rich resource for the library historian but of course (!) that is not what I have been researching. As luck would have it in recent years, and when I have a spare minute, I have focused on the story of the United State OWI librarians who came to Melbourne during World War II to set up a library in Collins St., Melbourne and the libraries established for convicts in the early penal settlements of Australia. Both areas are of great interest to me as I continue to look into these very special and influential libraries.

In recent years I have participated in many library history events including the Library History Special Interest Group sessions at IFLA in both Singapore and Lyon, Library History Seminar XIII held at Simmons College Boston, theHistory of librarianship conference held at the École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l’Information et des Bibliothèques in France and the Library History Round Table, ALA Annual Conference held in Orlando. I love meeting and talking with fellow library buffs though in recent years work commitments has made this more difficult.  In 2013 myself and fellow educator and historian Dr Sue Reynolds from RMIT University organised a wonderful conference combined with the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES), the Australian Library History Forum and Mechanics Institute Victoria called Buildings, Books and Blackboards . It was attended by over 200 participants from throughout the world and provided a rich and exciting insight in the common story of libraries and education. In 2019 Sue and I hope to revisit some of this by assisting with the 50^th anniversary conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ)  to be held in Melbourne 28-29 November 2019. See details on the International News page along with some other great events coming up. I hope people will find the International News interesting and useful.

Thank you to Dr. Wiegand for letting LHRT News and Notes know about the passing of Dr. Francis Louis Miksa Jr.  Below is an obituary written by his family.  There is also an announcement on UTAustin’s iSchool’s site. More details will follow as they are received.

“With sorrow we announce the passing of our father, Dr Francis L. Miksa, on March 20, 2019, in McComb, Mississippi.

Dr. Francis Louis Miksa Jr., aged 80, of Columbia, MS, passed away on Wednesday March 20, 2019. Fran Miksa was born September 24, 1938 in Aurora, Illinois, to Francis L. Miksa and Frances Theresa Borovich Miksa. His mother was born in Illinois to parents who had immigrated from an area near Poznan, Poland. His father, an electrical worker for the Bell Telephone system and an amateur mathematician, immigrated to the U.S. in 1905 from Krakow, Poland. Together they had ten children, including their second son “Little Francis” as he was called by his seven sisters and two brothers.

Fran graduated from East High School in Aurora, Illinois, in 1956 and Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1960, before earning a D. B. from Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1965. While at seminary he studied the history of Christianity, having been very much taken by ancient history as a background to biblical studies. He then begin library studies at the University of Chicago, Graduate Library School where he received his A.M. in 1970, followed by a Ph.D. in 1974. From 1972 to 1984 he served on the faculty of the School of Library and Information Science at Louisiana State University. From 1982 to 1984 he was instrumental in bringing computerization to the school and in 1983 served both as Acting Assistant Dean and as Acting Dean. While at the school, his research was focused first on library history and subsequently on the idea of the “subject” in intellectual access to information. In 1984, Professor Miksa joined the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at The University of Texas at Austin (since 2002 the School of Information).  As coordinator of doctoral studies from 1985-1991 he was instrumental in reviving the School’s Ph.D. program.  From 1986 to 1987 he served as Visiting Distinguished Scholar in the Office of Research at the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in Dublin, Ohio. Professor Miksa earned the Texas Excellence in Teaching Award at UT Austin in 1985, 1989, and 2001.

Professor Miksa’s early research focused on Charles Cutter and his work, resulting in the books Charles Ammi Cutter:  Library Systematizer (1977) and The Subject in the Dictionary Catalog from Cutter to the Present (1983). He later focused on how classification and categorization had been implemented across diverse disciplines, and on the development of classification in the field of library and information science. Other published works from this time include The Development of Classification at the Library of Congress (1984) and Research Patterns and Research Libraries (1987). During the 1990s Professor Miksa’s chief area of research had been intellectual access to information entities (both traditional print-based items and those consisting of digital objects) including the categorization of such entities on the basis of content characteristics.  Starting in 1991 he investigated the fundamental nature of document attributes in document representation. Also in ’91 he attended the Conceptions of Library and Information Science (COLIS) conference at the University of Tampere, Finland in 1991, during which he gave his paper entitled “Library and Information Science: Two Paradigms,” which was his attempt to see if there was something called library and information science that was a unique thing, a unique combination. In 1998 he published perhaps his most cited work The DDC, the Universe of Knowledge, and the Post-Modern Library.

Professor Miksa entered a phased retirement program in 2005 and fully retired from academia in May of 2008, moving to Columbia, Mississippi, with his wife Mary Spohrer Miksa, where he was a member of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. In 2009 Professor Miksa received the prestigious Margaret Mann Citation from the American Library Association.

Fran was preceded in death by his parents, Francis L. Miksa Sr. and Frances Theresa Miksa; brother Daniel Miksa of Aurora, IL and sisters Francis Ann Adams of Racine, WI and Sandra Rylatt of Rockford, IL, and beloved son Francis Louis Miksa III of Winter Springs, FL. He is survived by wife Mary Spohrer Miksa, son Joel (Stacey) Miksa of Winter Springs, FL, and daughters Elizabeth Miksa and Shawne Miksa of Denton Texas; sisters Gloria Jones, Elsie Sadler and Linda (Jim) Wolf of Aurora, IL; Hazel (Jim) Kempton of Lima, OH; and Bonnie Hiltenbrand of  Montgomery, IL. He is also survived by his brother Ronald Miksa (Sherry) of Big Rock, IL; eleven grandchildren (Heather, Allison, Michael, Kelsey, Shannon, Nicholas, Patrick, Ember, Jeremy, Emma and Nathaniel) and two great-grandchildren, Ellie and Clover.”

The family asked that in lieu of flowers people donate to his favorite charity Habitat for Humanity or to the American Library Association.  A memorial service will be held at a later date–information to follow later.

The Columbus Museum (Georgia) has recently released the video of its Library Desegregation Roundtable – February 7, 2019 on YouTube.

Description: “In the summer of 1963, nearly 40 African American teenagers protested the segregation of Columbus’ public libraries through organized “read-ins.” Though they faced scorn and arrest, the young people continued their silent protests for weeks, leading to the libraries’ desegregation. For the first time together, four of the activists – Christine Dawson, Gwendolyn Jackson, Ibrahim Mumin, and Cleophas Tyson – will share their stories. This roundtable was moderated by Dr. Wayne A. Wiegand, author of The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South. Learn more about this vital moment in local Civil Rights history with the people who lived it…”