Supporting Digital Scholarship! The Digital Collections at Brown! Brown History Goes Live! The Bopp Seminar Room Opens

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY OF BROWN UNIVERSITYVOLUME 22 NUMBER 1 • SPRING/SUMMER 2009

AmongFriends

From the University Librarian’s OfficeJeffrey Schreck ’73Chair

Linda Aro ’81, MA ’83Vice-Chair

Harriette HemmasiJoukowsky Family University Librarian

Honorary DirectorsMaurice Glicksman ScD ’97, P ’78

Martha S. Joukowsky ’58, P ’87Chair Emerita

Fraser Lang ’67, P ’04Chair Emeritus

John F. Mastroianni, Jr. ’71

Barbara Mosbacher ’45

Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. ’45, LLD ’70 Hon.,P ’77, P ’88, P ’MAT ’86Chair Emeritus

President Ruth Simmons

DirectorsProf. Thomas Banchoff, P ’91

Phoebe Simpson Bean ’94

Alice H. R. H. Beckwith ’69

John Berylson ’75

Sophie Blistein ’41

Thomas Bryson ’72

Seth Dorsky ’03

Jean Edwards ’45, P ’76

Mary Ann Ehrlich P ’85

Jacqueline Friedman ’08

Prof. Abbott (Tom) Gleason ADE ’74 Hon.

Herbert Iselin ’42, P ’79, P ’81

S.T. (Sunand Tryambak) Joshi ’80, MA ’82

Jon Land ’79

Brent Lang ’04

Christy Law-Blanchard

Bernicestine McLeod ’68, P ’99, P ’03

Ryan Roth ’05

Daniel Siegel ’57

Fredi Solod ’50, P ’78

Dennis Stark

Andrew Wendel ’85

Allison Whiting AM ’90

Robert Wigod ’54, P ’84, P ’88

Hon. Frank Williams

Richard Williamson ’65, P ’03

Prof. Emeritus Don Wilmeth

Constance Worthington ’68

Member Ex-OfficioEdward WidmerDirector and Librarian,John Carter Brown Library

StaffJane CabralFriends of the Library and Events Coordinator

Redefining Librariesand Learning

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2 Among Friends Spring/Summer 2009

cademic libraries are in astate of transition –– a transition that reflects

changes in higher education andsociety at large. The primary catalystfor these changes is technology.Advances in technology have alteredthe face and ultimately the fundamentals of teaching, learning,and research. How scholarship isgenerated, communicated, collected,preserved, disseminated, interpreted,manipulated and re-used are criticalconcerns for both the academy andthe library. Technology has blurredthe lines of responsibility andenabled the emergence of a global,information-based society that relieson a strong knowledge economy and a ubiquitous and sustainable infrastructure. Rather than diminishing or threatening the existence of libraries, technology hasthus positioned us as key partners inaddressing the issues facing highereducation.

The Brown University Libraryseeks to strategically align its scholarly resources and services withthe Plan for Academic Enrichmentand redesign its facilities into vibrant,inviting learning spaces to meet theneeds of students and faculty. As the University’s trusted curator,organizer, disseminator, preserverand mediator of carefully selectedscholarly resources, the Library will

remain responsive to the changingneeds of the campus’s teaching,learning, and research environment.

With the recent incorporationof Brown’s Scholarly TechnologyGroup and the Women Writer’sProject into the Library, our abilityto support and explore new forms ofscholarship has grown exponentially.Integral to the University’s academicmission, the Library has both theopportunity and responsibility topromote new scholarship and newliteracies without discarding the mostfundamental –– reading and writing.Literacy in the 21st century must bemulti-modal –– reflective of thecomplex fluidity between analog and digital knowledge resources,traditional and non-traditional academic discourse, linear learningand interactive media, the data-driven human mind and our limitlessimaginations. By embracing thesenew literacies and becoming a placefor production and processing aswell as a place for distribution andconsumption of knowledge, theLibrary enables members of theBrown community to learn in thelanguage and dialect of their ownchoice and expand their ability toquestion, produce and reproduceknowledge in new and deeper ways,ultimately transforming the everydayacademic experiences and future ofour students and faculty.

A

Harriette HemmasiJoukowsky Family University Librarian

Cover: Select images from the digital collections at Brown University.

Jeffrey Schreck ’73Chair

t came as a recent surprise to methat Facebook has an increasinglygrown-up side to it. In addition

to Facebook’s role as a social networking tool for teens and youngadults, it has a growing role as a networking site for nonprofits andtheir supporters. Although there aremany social networking sites,Facebook appears to have gone thefurthest to reach mainstream organizations and attract an increasingly grown-up audience.Even the Friends of the Library havetheir own Facebook group.

Why should the Brown Libraryuse a social networking site such as

View from the Chair

Spring/Summer 2009 Among Friends 3

I Facebook? Among the reasons arethat it is the best way to reach ayounger audience that is more likelyto use such websites. Facebook alsoallows nonprofits such as librariesand museums to present digitizedinformation (recent additions tocollections or information about aparticular exhibit, for example), andto interact with “friends” relativelyeasily and inexpensively.

Facebook has just introducednew public profile pages that willallow nonprofits to “share all typesof content with an unlimited numberof users” and allow all Facebookusers to comment on posted material

as they do on personal profile pages.These changes will make it easier fornonprofits to have timely, responsivetwo-way exchanges with the peoplethey are trying to reach withouttechnical support or an undue commitment of time.

first became involved withBrown’s Center for DigitalInitiatives in 2007, as a senior

editor at the Brown Daily Herald.I worked with CDI director PatrickYott on a project to digitize andmake searchable the Herald’s entirearchive, from 1891 forward. Theproject continues successfully to thisday, and I find myself poised at anexciting moment for libraries andscholarship as I look forward to myown future working in libraries. Formy undergraduate thesis on AbrahamLincoln, I worked extensively in thearchives of the John Hay Library.Resources like an online archive of

I Lincoln’s writings and evenGoogleBooks, which has digitizedextensive material from the nineteenth century and earlier,enabled certain aspects of my researchthat would have been otherwiseimpossible. It is hard to keep trackof the variety of growing trends indigital scholarship, which makes thenavigation and oversight offered byour own Scholarly TechnologyGroup and the CDI so vital. Digitalscholarship opens up a new universeof possibilities for libraries — onethat I cannot wait to be a part of.I am especially glad to have gottenmy start at the Brown Library.

A Message from the Guest Editor

Anne Wootton ’08.5Guest Editor

Spring Events

Samuel Bak in Israel, 2008

Exhi

bits

Cal

enda

r Environmental History of HispaniolaJohn Hay Library, Lobby Gallery March 12 – April 30

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the land area of theCaribbean island of Hispaniola. Although both of these formercolonies of France and Spain have faced socioeconomic hardships and political instability in their post-colonial period,they show a sharp contrast in the current state of their naturalresources. This exhibition traces the environmental history ofHispaniola from pre-Columbian times to the present andexplores the evolution of its natural resources by highlightingspecial collection materials from the John Hay and John CarterBrown Libraries, and museum objects from the HaffenrefferMuseum of Anthropology.

Commemorating Aimé CésaireJohn Hay Library, Foyer and Reading Room Cases April 3 – April 30

Aimé Césaire was the foremost black French intellectual-statesman-writer of the 20th and 21st centuries. Co-founderof the négritude school of literature in the 1930s,parliamentarian to the National Assembly in Paris for nearlyfive decades, and author of 16 books, plays and poetry collections, Césaire’s recent demise is understandably mournedby francophones throughout the Caribbean, Europe, andAfrica. But Aimé Césaire also inspired generations of Americanstudents, educators, and humanists who have read and pondered his inimitable poems and prose, whether in translation or the original. The exhibit is designed to offer thevisitor a sense of the literary wealth and political possibilitiesthat this extraordinary man created out of the culturally richbut economically impoverished Martinique into which he wasborn 95 years ago, and which he left, for the last time, onApril 17, 2008.

As lead-up to the Memorial Symposium hosted by the WatsonInstitute on April 17, a Commemorating Aimé Césaire exhibitwill showcase the Brown Library’s collection of Césaire’s oeuvresand works on the French Caribbean, along with other objetsd’art and memorabilia (on loan from faculty) that are reminiscent of Césaire and his native island. A display in theJohn Hay Library foyer will be dedicated to President RuthSimmons, who explored The Poetic Language of Aimé Césairein her Ph. D. dissertation, completed at Harvard University in 1973.

The Origin of the Theory: Tracing Darwin’sEvolutionary ThoughtJohn Hay Library, Lobby GalleryMay 4 – June 30

In honor of the Darwin bicentennial, this exhibit at the John Hay Library will use the Library’s extensive holdings inthe History of Science to place Darwin and his colleagueswithin the broader context of Victorian scientific endeavor.The exhibition will include books, prints and original correspondence, and will be featured during CommencementWeekend.

For library hours and updated information on library exhibitsvisit:

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/libweb/hours.phphttp://dl.lib.brown.edu/libweb/exhibits

An Evening with Samuel BakBrown University Hillel, 80 Brown Street (corner ofAngell and Brown Streets), ProvidenceMonday, May 11, 2009, 7 p.m.

Artist and Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak will be thespeaker at the annual Mel and Cindy Yoken CulturalSeries lecture. Mr. Bak’s talk will focus on the story ofhis life including his time in Paris and what it hasbrought to his existence, and the successive phases of hisdevelopment as an artist. He will show digital imagesand speak about the nature and themes of his art.

Darwin, God and Design —America’s Continuing Problemswith EvolutionProf. Kenneth Miller, Professor of Biology, BrownUniversitySalomon Hall 101Saturday, May 23, 2009, 1 p.m.

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication ofDarwin’s The Origin of the Species and the bicentennialof his birth. Prof. Miller has been speaking at many celebrations of this event and will speak at Brown aspart of the University’s Commencement Forums. Histalk will be in conjunction with an exhibit about Darwinat the John Hay Library which will be on display fromMay 4 to June 30.

4 Among Friends Spring/Summer 2009

TThe John Hay Library boasts a new technologicallysophisticated seminar classroom thanks to the generosityof alumni and brothers Walter S. and Peter D. Bopp,members of the classes of 1973 and 1978, respectively. Thegift, made in honor of their father Walter L. S. Bopp ’35,was inspired by the latter’s fond memories of the JohnHay when he was a student.

As the younger Walter Bopp recently stated, “TheHay was the main library when our father attendedBrown so it is a particularly fitting site. Being an alumnusof Brown has been a great source of pride to our fatherand the rest of our family. Our father celebrated his 93rdbirthday at the dedication of the room with PresidentSimmons leading a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” It is ourhope the Bopp Seminar Room will open up this wonderful space and its special collections to a broadercross-section of the Brown community and help meetthe goals of the Plan for Academic Enrichment.” Peteradds that the classroom is intended as “a state of the artseminar room for the study of the multitude of historicaldocuments and treasures housed in the Hay. Dad wasquite moved to see the finished room when we visited inNovember — the same week that he turned 95.”

Located adjacent to the Anne S. K. Brown MilitaryCollection gallery on the third floor of the John Hay, theBopp Seminar Room has been handsomely renovated to

accommodate a portion of the Military Collection and toprovide additional exhibition space beyond its primaryfunction as an electronic classroom. What was previouslylittle more than a storage space has been transformedinto a state-of-the-art facility and one of the mostattractive public spaces on campus. In use for classesand meetings since January, the Bopp Seminar Roomhas received rave reviews from faculty, students and stafffor its electronic capabilities, spatial flexibility, elegantatmosphere and even acoustics.

What sets the Bopp Seminar Room apart fromother teaching spaces in the John Hay? The answer liesin the room’s electronic capabilities that allow staff,faculty and students to interact with the Hay’s rare andunique materials in ways heretofore not possible. Anoverhead document camera can project an image from aphysical item — for example, a map or a book page —onto a screen. The resulting image can be manipulatedelectronically with a zoom feature that greatly magnifiesdetailed portions of the image. In this way, minute subtleties of printing, illustration techniques and manuscript variations can be viewed in ways not observable to the naked eye. A split-screen capabilitythat enables a projected image, as described above, to becompared with a digitized image, either from Brown’sown collections or from a digitized collection across the

country and made available via theInternet. “Smart-screen” technology— in effect, an electronic blackboard— allows users to interact with digitalimages through a touch-screen stylus,highlighting or “writing” notes overthe screened image in digital “ink,”and projecting the edited imageonto the large screen.

Thanks to the Bopp family’sgenerosity, students and researchersnow have access to John Hay materials that combines physicalobjects with 21st century technologyin ways that were inconceivable only a few years ago.

Associate Professor of English Tim Bewes andhis spring 2009 seminar ENGL 1760-I, “TerribleBeauty: Literature and the Terrorist Imagery,”meet in the Bopp Seminar Room.

Spring/Summer 2009 Among Friends 5

Technology meets elegance…

Bopp Seminar Roomopens to rave reviews at John Hay Library

digital media. We are all very excited about the possibilitiesthat this new union will provide,” said Patrick Yott,director of the Library’s Center for Digital Initiatives(soon to be renamed Center for Digital Scholarship).

One responsibility of members of Brown’s Centerfor Digital Scholarship is to research the digital humanitiesand the many different methodological approaches todigital scholarship, while supplementing that work

through numerousinnovative projectswith Universityfaculty and students. “How doyou bridge thatgap between thereal and the digital? How doesmethodology alterthe way that weinteract withtexts?” asks JuliaFlanders, associatedirector for

textbase development in the STG. Flanders is also thedirector of the Women Writers Project, an onlineanthology of text by women currently in its twentiethyear of existence and one of the earliest and most successful attempts at reaching a broader audiencethrough digital media (www.wwp.brown.edu).

“We start with the information structures — we haveboth the luxury and the imperative of engaging with theobject at that level,” says Elli Mylonas, director of theSTG. “We are taking a step back and thinking about theinformation — not only what we want to do with it, butwhat it is.” Thus for Mylonas and Flanders, the process oforganizing information is in many ways a primary sourceitself, requiring documentation and methodologicalawareness. “You want to show a conclusion, but also thequeries and methods you used to get the info,” Mylonassays. Adds Flanders: “Self-consciousness arises from theidea that you’re not just recording information butinfusing it with scholarly expertise. It’s treating theprocess as primary source data.”

The University Steering Committee on Slavery andJustice, appointed in 2003 by President Ruth Simmonswith the task of investigating and reporting on Brown’shistorical relationship to slavery and the transatlanticslave trade, used digital resources as an integral aspect of

Below: Thumbnailsfrom the Fox Point

Oral History Projectsite on flickr.com.

At right: The homepage for the Women

Writers Project,which celebrates its

20th anniversary thisyear and has been

incorporated as partof the emerging

Center for DigitalScholarship at Brown.

WWhen Annie Valk began teaching American Civilization1903G: Oral History and Community Memory, she didnot anticipate that her students’ research would engagemany Providence residents in a collaborative project thathas reached far beyond her semester-long course.

As part of the course, students recorded oral historiesfrom Fox Point, a Providence neighborhood that bordersBrown’s campus, in addition to collecting associatedpaperwork, photos and scrapbooks, and collaboratingwith the University’s Scholarly Technology Group todevelop an interactive online resource, “Mapping FoxPoint,” that used GoogleMaps to illustrate the localitiesdescribed in the oral histories — what Valk calls “memory mapping.” Perhaps the greatest success of Valk’sstudents’ work is a public, online collection of Fox Pointphotographs (www.flickr.com/groups/foxpointoralhistoryproject) created with the public photo-sharing siteflickr.com, where Fox Point residents are very active tothis day in posting photographs and comments thatidentify the photos’ subjects and locations.

Valk, associate director for programs at the JohnNicholas Brown Center for the Public Humanities andCultural Heritage, has hopes that the related Fox Point

documents will eventually allbe photographed and madepublicly available and documented online — inother words, compiled into adigital collection of Fox Pointhistory. Valk’s Fox Point oralhistory course is one exampleof how the Library helps faculty and students use theInternet to change archivalprocesses and the accessibilityof primary source material.

Today, Brown’s campusis overflowing with a variety

of digital initiatives, many of which are spearheaded by theLibrary’s emerging Center for Digital Scholarship, whichhas recently incorporated members of the ScholarlyTechnology Group (STG) and the Women Writers Project(WWP). Opportunities for collaboration and uniquerelationships among these groups and the campus willonly grow in the coming months. “This merger will allowthe Library to develop a cohesive and far-reaching program that supports scholars engaged in using, creatingand disseminating scholarly materials in a wide range of

Digital Scholarship at Brown:

The New Public Faces of Primary Sources

6 Among Friends Spring/Summer 2009

its commitment to publicize its findings. As part of itswork, the committee identified materials in the John Hay,John Carter Brown and Rhode Island Historical Societylibraries, and worked with staff at the CDI to create apublic, online catalogue of documents relating to Brown’sties to slavery (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/slavery andjustice).The result was a “teaching resource” from which publicprogramming was organized, said James Campbell, formerprofessor of history and chair of the committee. Researchin locations beyond Brown’s campus resulted in a travelingexhibit of the Brown brothers-funded voyage of the slaveship Sally with accompanying website (www.stg.brown.edu/projects/sally).

As the digital age moves forward, online collectionsrange from the creation of new, online-only collections

like the Slavery and Justice materials, or interactive userexperiences like “Mapping FoxPoint,” to the digitization — thatis, making publicly availableonline — of preexisting collec-tions. Examples of this latter typeof digital collection include theCDI’s The Great KantoEarthquake of 1923: Materialsfrom the Dana and Vera ReynoldsCollection, which offers a digitalrecreation of an album of photosand newspaper clippings donated

to the Brown Library in 2005 by the Reynolds’ grand-daughter (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/kanto). The site pro-vides a unique glimpse into the culture of Americanstraveling to Asia in the early twentieth century and alsocoincides with the research of Brown Associate Professorof History Kerry Smith, who has written a book on thesubject of the earthquake. Through the efforts of SeniorLecturer in American Civilization Paul Buhle and theCDI, the public can now access a digital version ofRadical America, a periodical published from 1967 to

Spring/Summer 2009 Among Friends 7

Digital materialsrelated to the work

of the UniversitySteering Committee

on Slavery andJustice.

Some other notable digital collections at Brown:

The Theatre that was Romehttp://dl.lib.brown.edu/rome

This digital collection makes available a selection of 16th to18th century Italian books and prints from the extraordinarycollection of Vincent J. Buonnano ’66, as well as festivalprints and architectural treatises from the collection of theJohn Hay Library.

Center of Digital Epigraphy at Brown University(CoDE)www.brown.edu/Research/CoDE

The CoDE is dedicated to research that relates to the digitalencoding of inscriptions. Co-directed by classics and history

professor John Bodeland Michael Satlow,associate professor ofJudaic studies andreligious studies, itswork currentlyincludes two projects:the U.S. EpigraphyProject, which aimsto gather and digitizeancient Greek andLatin inscriptions

preserved in the U.S., and Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine,which digitizes and translates inscriptions from the sixthcentury BCE to the seventh century CE.

The MonArch Project at the Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vigneshttp://polo.services.brown.edu:8080/exist/monarch/index.html

Started in 1982, this project — co-directed by Sheila Bonde,Dean of the Graduate School and professor of archeology— takes monasticism rather than the monastery itself asthe object of its study, through an ongoing archaeologicalinvestigation at a monastery in northern France.

Perry Visits Japan: A Visual Historyhttp://dl.lib.brown.edu/japan/index.html

This project serves as an extensive supplement to a Japanesescroll held in the collections of the John Hay Library, whichillustrates Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1854 landing inJapan. In conjunction with the American Civilizationcourse, “From Perry to Pokemon: Japan in the U.S.; the U.S.in Japan,” taught by associate professor Susan Smulyan, thePerry Visits Japan project has grown out of the work ofBrown students, faculty and library staff.

For more on the many digital collections and projects atBrown, visit www.stg.brown.edu/projects andhttp://dl.lib.brown.edu.Continues on page 8

The home page forThe Great Kanto

Earthquake of 1923:Materials from the

Dana and VeraReynolds Collection.

Spotlight on Friends of the Library

Sophie Blistein ’41Of all the Friends of the Library, perhaps Sophie Blisteinrequires the least by way of introduction as she has beena mainstay of both the Library and the University forover half a century. A wise and witty counselor, a gadflyin the interests of increasing Friends memberships, acatalyst for donors and a donor herself, Sophie epito-mizes the best qualities of the Friends and of the Browncommunity.

To celebrate Sophie’s 90th birthday, the Friendshosted a party on January 24 in the Reading Room ofthe John Hay Library, a gathering that drew some 100 ofher friends and family. As was true at her birthday partya decade ago, Sophie would only allow the festivities toproceed on the condition that the Elmer and SophiaSchaffer Blistein Book Fund be the beneficiary. As aresult, the fund currently stands at $115,798.23 withover $10,000 being added as a tribute to Sophie on theoccasion of her birthday.

Sophie’s involvement with the Brown Libraryextends back to her days as a Pembroker and her 1946

Sophie Blistein ’41 ather 90th birthdayparty in the John

Hay Library, picturedwith son David

Blistein and his wifeWendy O’Connell.

8 Among Friends Spring/Summer 2009

1999 which is very difficultto find in libraries (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/radicalamerica).And collaboration betweenthe Library and the BrownDaily Herald has resulted ina project to digitize and maketext searchable the entirearchive of Brown’s dailypaper since 1891 (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/dbdh).

Projects like these reflect a major shift occurring inthe way research is done and scholarship is disseminatedaround the world. Not only has the Internet enableduniversal access to materials that could previously onlybe viewed in libraries and museums, but it has alsochanged the way in which researchers and the public alikecan interact with, or present, these materials.

“There’s really a wonderful moment in historicalscholarship — it’s fascinating to see how [digital capability] changes what historians are interested in doing,

Continued from page 7

The very first issueof the Brown Daily

Herald as displayedin the Brown Daily

Herald DigitalArchive.

marriage to Elmer Blistein ’42. Sophie and Elmer neverleft Brown, as he joined the faculty of the Department ofEnglish upon receiving his Ph.D. in 1953. Elmer was ateacher and mentor to Brown students for the next 39years and throughout that time the Blistein household,augmented by sons Adam and David, was a vibrant centerof Brown’s social and intellectual life. The Library wascentral to Elmer’s work and both he and Sophie servedon myriad committees, task forces and informal groupsthat helped guide the Library as it strove to meet theever-changing demands of faculty and students. At theUniversity level, Sophie served for seven years on theCorporation Library Committee, as President of Womenat Brown and as Alumnae Trustee of the University from1971 to 1976.

For their many contributions, Sophie and Elmerwere awarded the Library’s highest honor in 1990, theWilliam Williams Award, which “honors those individualswho have provided extraordinary support” to the BrownUniversity Library.

In addition to the Blistein Book Fund, much ofSophie’s involvement with the Library has centered uponthe Friends, both in her capacities as Board member andas long-time chair of the Membership Committee, whichunder her leadership achieved a total of over 1,000members nationwide. The Board continues to benefitfrom her good counsel and cheerful presence. We arethankful for her dedication and tireless efforts on behalfof the Library, and consider ourselves very lucky to becounted among her many friends.

can do,” said Steven Lubar, professor of AmericanCivilization and director of the John Nicholas BrownCenter, who is developing Brown’s new program in public humanities. Lubar noted that digital scholarshipis currently in a “strange stage... because it’s partly public,partly private, and libraries have to figure out what theyadd to that. There’s a public face and an archival face,and the question is how to make those work together...projects merge more into exhibitions than collections,and libraries start to look more like museums and lesslike archives,” he said.

Many of Brown’s existing digital projects, includingthose mentioned above, have tackled the balancebetween the public and private spheres in interesting andinnovative ways. But the task remains to institutionalizethese digital practices in an academic climate that hashistorically relied solely on peer-reviewed, printed mediasuch as journals and reviews. Members of the Center forDigital Scholarship work with approximately 40 facultyand staff who are currently engaged in digital humanitiesat Brown and address these sorts of questions every dayas part of their work.

IIn addition to collections that support the research andteaching needs of Brown’s faculty and students, the JohnHay Library holds significant material that documentsBrown’s history. Through the efforts of the Center forDigital Initiatives, the University Archives, the BrownDaily Herald and several faculty members, many of thesecollections are now available for use through the Library’swebsite. While each collection is a valuable research toolon its own, the true benefits of digitization lie in makingthese collections accessible and the ability to easily searchacross multiple collections.

A researcher interested in the history of Bruno, theBrown mascot, will find photos of the live bear travelingby airplane en route to a 1937 sports game from theonline Images of Brown collection, coverage in TheBrown Daily Herald Digital Archive of inter-campusmascot kidnappings — such as the 1941 abduction ofButch Bruno VII by Rhode Island State, known today asthe University of Rhode Island, as well as a student essayfrom the online Chronicles of Brunonia that provides ahumorous look at Brown’s history of live mascots.

And anyone looking for information on UniversityHall will find the original accounting of constructioncosts as well as a letter from Rhode Island’s governorannouncing the need to use University Hall as a hospitalduring the Revolutionary War from the Brown Archivaland Manuscript Collections Online, photographs andpostcards from Images of Brown depicting the buildingacross the 20th century, including its renovation in 1940,in addition to descriptions and histories from theHistoric Clocks Database of four clocks found within itswalls. These sorts of connections between digitalresources will only grow as we bring more historicalresources to the web.

Some of the collections currently in development are:

Brown Archival and Manuscript Collections Online(BAMCO) (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/bamco)

This project, which provides access to primary sourcematerial through finding aids that represent manuscriptand archival holdings at Brown University, is a jointproject between the University Archives and the Centerfor Digital Initiatives.

Brown Daily Herald Digital Archive (http://dl.lib. brown.edu/dbdh)

The Brown Daily Herald digitization project is making accessible and searchable online the Herald’sentire archive, from 1891 forward, as funds are

contributed. Through this effort historians,scholars and novelists will be able to read about thethoughts and lives of Brunonians over the course of twoWorld Wars, the Civil Rights movement, man’s first walkon the Moon and September 11, 2001.

Brown Portrait Database (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/ portraits)

For almost two centuries Brown has acquired portraits of men and women whose lives have hadmeaning for the University in one way or another. Theselikenesses date from every period in Brown’s history fromits founding years to the present, and taken as a wholereflect the University’s concerns and priorities at any giventime in history. This project provides digitized copies ofthe portraits as well as historical information on boththe subject and artist.

Images of Brown (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/images_ of_brown)

The Library will release this new online collectionin late spring of 2009. At its initial release, the collectionwill include nearly 4,000 digitized photographs that spanalmost 150 years of Brown history, covering architectureand campus views, student theatre, presidents, facultyand nineteenth century student life.

Chronicles of Brunonia (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/cob) andHistoric Clocks (http://dl.lib.brown.edu/clocks)

These two projects, an archive of student creativenon-fiction and one student’s independent study inAmerican Civilization, respectively, provide context forand interpretation of previously untold stories fromBrown’s history.

Above: Bruno, thelive mascot, disem-barks from a plane

ride. Right: Postcardsof University Hallover the decades.

Below: Home pagesfrom several of the

historical Brown col-lections featured on

this page.

The Digital Collections:

250 Years of BrownHistory Meet the Web

Spring/Summer 2009 Among Friends 9

Other than their iconic importance, how are suchbooks used by Brown faculty and students? Take thesetwo examples:

Giambattista Vico, Cinque Libri (1730). PhilosopherGiambattista Vico (1668-1744) has been heralded as thecreator of historical science for his proposition that“there shines the eternal and never failing light of a truthbeyond all question: that the world of civil society hascertainly been made by men, and that its principles aretherefore to be found within the modifications of ourown human mind.” How fitting, then, that the CinqueLibri will allow scholars to understand the contruction ofVico’s own thinking. This copy of the second edition ofhis Principi d’una Scienza Nuova is one of 63 extensivelyannotated by the author with his corrections and notes.As Professor Massimo Riva of Brown’s Department ofItalian Studies notes, Vico’s corrections differed fromcopy to copy and the Center for Vico Studies in Napleswill be especially interested in Brown’s Siegel copy. Rivaadded, “I can imagine devoting an entire seminar tocomparing our copy to the existing critical edition of the1730 Scienza Nuova which also includes variants fromother copies.”

Another treasure among Siegel’s gifts is a copy ofthe first printing of the Journal of the Proceedings fromthe First Continental Congress, from the convention atPhiladelphia in September 1774. Though copies ofthese printed proceedings are held at other rare bookcollections across the nation, this particular copy hasspecial significance — it was presented by Boston radicalSamuel Adams, then serving as a delegate to Congress,to friend and fellow patriot Rev. John Lathrop, theCongregational pastor of Boston’s Second Church.Adams’ inscription reads, “The Rev. Mr. Lathrop (at theRequest of Messrs. Bradford, the Printers) from hisFriend and humble Servant, Sam Adams.” Few recordsexist that pertain to connections between Adams andother Boston activists. Lathrop was certainly importantin these circles, interpreting key events for the publicthrough his sermons, such as his “Innocent Blood Cryingto God from the Streets of Boston” (1770) delivered afterthe Boston Massacre. The inscription is therefore animportant one, allowing scholars to further documentthe network of formal and informal ties — in this case,among Adams, the Bradfords and Lathrop — that createdand sustained America’s Revolution against Britain,leading to the birth to the United States.

Reconstructing Realities

Spotlight on Gifts-in-kind

10 Among Friends Spring/Summer 2009

For more information about giving to the Library,email Gillian Kiley at library_gifts@brown.edu or call 401-863-1518.

owards the end of 2008, Dan Siegel ’57 once againmade a magnificent contribution to the John HayLibrary. The gift totaled 130 titles in all — among

the most important books ever printed in their respectivesubjects. Although wide-ranging in scope, the fields mostheavily represented are American and European literatureand the history of science and mathematics. An arbitrarysample of the authors and titles represented by first editions of their major works provides insight into theimportance of the gift as a whole; Descartes’ Discours dela Methode, Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, Newton’s OpticalLectures, Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus, Euclid’sElementa and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel.These books join Dan’s gifts of earlier years, includingthe manuscript of George Orwell’s 1984 and his gift ofjust a year ago, the first edition of The Great Gatsby,inscribed by F. Scott Fitzgerald to T. S. Eliot.

T

The title page of the Journal of the Proceedings of the First ContinentalCongress, including the inscription of delegate Samuel Adams to hisfriend, the Rev. John Lathrop. The Journal is among 130 titles generouslydonated by Dan Siegel ’57.

New

s and

Not

es

Spring/Summer 2009 Among Friends 11

n February 2, 2009, David Banush joined Brownas Associate University Librarian for AccessServices, with administrative responsibility for

the acquisition, licensing, cataloging, preservation andcirculation of library materials. Banush comes to Brownfrom Cornell University, where he held a variety ofpositions, most recently serving as Head of CatalogingServices for 17 of the 18 Ithaca campus libraries. AtCornell, Banush was instrumental in developing andimplementing a number of practices which sharplyreduced cataloging costs, brought materials more quicklyto users, and expanded the roles his staff played in meeting a broader goal of increased intellectual andphysical access to the library’s resources. That experiencemade him an attractive prospect to Brown as the Libraryseeks to make optimal use of its own staff in meetingboth the challenges and tremendous opportunities thatlie ahead.

As part of the Library’s senior team, Banush will helpshape policies, inform strategic planning and recognizeopportunities for service innovations that will enhancethe Library’s role both at Brown and beyond. His workwill directly complement the Library’s goals to expandcollections and access to scholarly resources, promoteinformation technology and digital initiatives, forgepartnerships across campus, transform Library facilities

Banush Joins Library Administration

O and position the Library at the center of teaching, learningand research. “I am delighted to be here at Brown and amlooking forward to working with my new colleagues toimprove access to the Library’s rich intellectual resources,”Banush said. “This is a fascinating time for libraries generally, and I am excited to be working with outstandingpeople on an intellectually vibrant campus.”

Banush has been active in a number of professionalorganizations, most notably the Program for CooperativeCataloging, an international cooperative effort aimed atexpanding access to library collections by providing useful, timely and cost-effective cataloging that meetsmutually-accepted standards of libraries around theworld. In 2008, Banush was elected chair of the group’sPolicy Committee, its governing body, and has alsoserved as chair of its Standing Committee on Training.His other professional service includes chairing or servingon committees of the Society of American Archivistsand the Association for Library Collections and TechnicalServices, as well as publishing articles on catalogingpractices in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly,Library Resources and Technical Services and LibraryCollections, Acquisitions and Technical Services.

A native of Michigan, Banush holds degrees fromthe University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), New YorkUniversity and Wayne State University.

David Banush hasjoined Brown as theAssociate UniversityLibrarian for Access

Services.

AmongFriendsThe newsletter of the Friends of the Library of Brown University is published by theFriends of the LibraryBox A, Brown UniversityProvidence, RI 02912Telephone:401-863-2163E-mail:FOL@Brown.eduEditors:Jane CabralAnne Wootton ’08.5Designer:Douglas Devaux

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