LSA News

No.73, May, 2006

If you have anything you want in the next newsletter, send it to lsaweb@lists.uoregon.edu .

Index Bookbinding Proves Spellbinding by Harriett Smith No Cookies Left on These Computers LSA Spring Sale Benefits Food for Lane County Thailand or Bust: Heather Ward Takes Off! by Laine Stambaugh Banking Old Oregon by Hilary Hart Bring Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day 2006 From the Fact File Events of Interest People in the Library

Systems guru and prizewinning gourmet cookie chef Travis Ritter wins Systems Department's cookie contest. Photo by Duncan Barth

Bookbinding Proves Spellbinding

text by Harriett Smith, photos by Jaye Barlous

I walked into Andrew Huot's "Introduction to Bookbinding" class feeling tense and intimidated, sure that after two hours of bloodshed and clumsiness I would have failed to produce anything worthy of the name of "book". I emerged from Studio A reluctantly more than two hours later, elatedly holding my four "books" close, all skin intact. I was hooked!

Andrew Huot

Andrew Huot has been working temporarily in the Beach Lab, but he has years of experience creating and repairing books, and teaches through DIVA. His experience as a teacher showed, as he calmed our fears and made the arcane seem easy. He first introduced himself and told us the names of all the tools we'd be using in the class and what they were used for. We stood close around the demonstration table, while he showed us that paper has a grain, told us why that is important, and demonstrated how to tell which way the grain goes. Then he showed us slowly and clearly how to construct our first project, a small pamphlet made of a single sheet of paper folded four times, sewn into a paper cover. A thick, tense silence enveloped the group as we watched him intently. He told us exactly what materials to take to our tables with us: paper, bone folder, awl, fettling knife, etc., and we gathered them up and returned to begin our creations. The silence gave way to a soft hum of voices. Some of the group had some experience either with book construction or repair, while others, like me, were complete novices. Andrew walked about observing us and helping us when we couldn't remember which step came next. Soon we had all completed a small book! OK, a tiny pamphlet—but we were thrilled with the result.

Students gather their materials

Our next project was a do-si-do book, a book where there is one cover but two sets of pages, each set opening on a different side of the cover. Again we watched intently as Andrew demonstrated, then returned to our tables with materials in hand. Soon we had all completed this odd little book, and were ready to be instructed in the art of making a "2-on-1" or "butterfly stitch" book, where a part of the cover is folded up in the middle and the two sets of sheets sewn through it.

By this time even we novices were gaining confidence, but we were a little intimidated by the last project, an accordion book. This was definitely the most complex of the four projects. Andrew showed us how to fold two lengths of paper to make one long accordion-folded sheet, gluing the sheets together. Then we covered some scrap mat board with paper covers, slipped the ends of the accordion sheet into each, and, voilà! Beautiful.

A few weeks later, I ran into Dennis Hyatt, who you may remember was head of the Law Library for many years. Dennis was in Andrew's class that evening, and he was so inspired that he signed up for a number of his DIVA classes. Looks like a new career is in the offing: he had that fanatical book-arts-devotee fire in his eyes.

The "Introduction to Bookbinding Workshop" was sponsored by the Library Staff Association Program Committee.

For more photos from the workshop click here

No Cookies Left on These Computers

photos by Duncan Barth

Sara Brownmiller, Katy Lenn and Joanne Halgren judge the entries

On April 3 the Systems Department celebrated the start of spring term by hosting an open house and cookie judging contest. It was a festive affair complete with lots of sugar accompanied by foggy bubbling punch. So much sugar was consumed that an ice hockey game even broke out. Those Systems folks sure know how to throw a party!

The judges had a tough job ahead tasting all the delectable entries. Some of the entries included Strawberry Mango Margarita Tarts and Brandied Raspberry Peach Tarts baked by Will Harmon. Marion Obar showed off her artistic talents by creating adorable “Peas de Resistance” cookies. The winning cookie was Chocolate Espresso Cookies by Travis Ritter. For the recipe, click here. The prize, donated by Sara Brownmiller, was a buy-one-night-get-one-free coupon to be used at one of the selected Inns listed in the Stash Tea Guide to Bed & Breakfast Inns. Travis plans to use this prize to treat his parents to a stay at the Campbell House upon their next visit to Eugene. Thanks to all the participants for making this a fun event.

"Peas de Resistance" by Marion Obar	Bubble bubble toil and trouble....

For more photos from the event click here

LSA Spring Sale Benefits Food for Lane County

story and photos by Laura Damiani

Library staffers had charities on their minds this spring. Ten percent of all sales from this year's LSA Spring Sale, amounting to $114.50, was donated to Food for Lane County. Food for Lane County provides emergency food assistance to one in five people living in Lane County. They distribute 6.5 million pounds of food a year and provide food for more than 89,000 emergency food boxes. The Library's contribution provided 684 pounds of food! That's almost 23 food boxes.

Also in the spirit of giving, Paul Harvey supplied a scrumptious variety of flavored cheesecakes and donated part of the sales to Food for Lane County and to Special Olympics.

LSA News food columnist Rose Thomas baked another of her delectable dessert creations to donate for the cake raffle. It was accompanied by a selection of teas and coffee. Jeanette Lochbaum was the lucky winner. Rose had this to say about the dessert:

Rose Thomas' Sock-It-To-Me Cake

My version of Sock-It-To-Me Cake, which is technically a cake mix cake recipe, starts with a store-bought yellow cake mix and adds eggs, oil, sour cream and vanilla, with an interior swirl of brown sugar, cinnamon and toasted pecans and is topped off with a glaze mixture of powdered sugar and milk to take it right over the top! Baked up in a Bundt pan, it is both a retro classic and a soul food favorite at family reunions and barbecues. In my family, we like to have it once or twice a year—especially for Christmas morning brunch. No one seems to know why it is called a "Sock-It-To-Me Cake"—other than it started turning up during the "Laugh In" era.

Spring was definitely in the air at the Sale, with the always-popular plants for sale as well as brightly-colored bouquets grown and arranged by Marilyn Mohr. Shoppers perused the colorful art and craft work of talented co-workers and hunted for bargains on the rummage tables.

“Thanks to all the people who helped out. We had people that hadn’t joined in before. It was great to have them,” said Pam DeLaittre. Thanks to the hard work of Pam and all the volunteers and contributors for another successful and fun LSA Sale.

For more photos from the Sale click here

THE WORLD AROUND US:

Thailand or Bust: Heather Ward Takes Off!

By Laine Stambaugh

Heather Ward, Humanities Librarian/History, is leaving the University of Oregon Libraries after almost nine years. We are sad to see her leave, but it looks like she'll be having new adventures with husband, Chuck, in Thailand! Since this will indeed be a new cultural experience for her, we thought it appropriate to have a member of the Library Diversity Committee probe her thoughts as she prepares for her departure.

Q: I understand your husband recently accepted a position with the U.S. government in Thailand. Since you will be accompanying him, what are your expectations about the Thai people and customs that you will be encountering?

A: Yes, Chuck will be working for the US Agency for International Development in the embassy in Bangkok. I've been reading all I can about Thailand—its history, culture, people—and about Bangkok in particular, which is a world unto itself. I've also begun listening to Thai language CDs that I borrowed from EPL. I've been picking the brains of people who have visited or lived in Thailand (including some of our co-workers), as well as one couple who just moved there a couple of months ago.

From what I've read and heard so far, the people are warm and welcoming. Thailand is called "the Land of Smiles" because people do smile often. However a smile can also signal embarrassment or an apology. I hope the fact that we're going armed with a little more cultural awareness than what we started with will help us try to understand behaviors in their own context rather than interpreting them in terms of our culture.

Q: Is there anything in particular that you are apprehensive about moving overseas or in that country in particular?

A: The countryside sounds beautiful and Bangkok is a chaotic swirl from what I've heard. I've never lived in a city with a million people in it, let alone 10 million, so I expect that to be a shock. It is highly polluted and has incredibly bad traffic. I just hope that knowing this beforehand will allow us to mentally prepare a little. Although I imagine nothing can equal just being there.

(story continued)

Banking Old Oregon

by Hilary Hart

Scholars' Bank's latest large-scale project is adding the Old Oregon/Oregon Quarterly. Oregon Quarterly, the magazine of the University of Oregon, was once Old Oregon, a publication of the UO's Alumni Association. "Old Oregon" is how folks used to refer to the UO.

Our earliest issue is from 1919, and so far we plan on including issues though 1960. After that date, copyright is trickier. Check out the Old Oregon/Oregon Quarterly at its Scholar's Bank site.

Who's doing the work? Rebecca Fisher lent a great deal of help early on (and with Dissociation, a psychology journal edited by a UO professor), scanning and running the PDF's of Old Oregon through the OCR software. Cathy Flynn-Purvis has consistently provided metadata for the project. Maureen Scott, one of our student employees, is also lending a hand with the project, cutting and photocopying.

How is the work done? With a combination of old and new technology:

New:
Document-feed scanner
Dspace
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software

Old:
board shear
photocopier
me

After working on SB projects, I can boast that I am able to make a photocopier do pretty much anything I want. I mean, it's never going to produce a chocolate cake, but I can get an 8 ½ x 11 photocopy from just about any format. Why do I need this skill? Because 8 ½ x 11 paper is all the document-feed scanner will take. I am now passing my expertise on to Maureen.

By the way, the use of OCR for this project allows the full texts (not just metadata) of Old Oregon to be keyword searched by SB's own search engine and also by Google.

Highlights/Lowlights:
I have really enjoyed this project. I can't sit and read all the articles, but I often get the gist of things as I go along. There are many instances of "the more things change the more they stay the same," especially when it comes to budget crises and the persistent and unhealthy obsession with sports. Stories in Old Oregon also demonstrate the UO's longstanding interest in forming relationships with Asia and the Pacific Islands. You will also find stories behind names dear to our libraries, like Gertrude Bass Warner, and to our university community at large, like Prince Lucien Campbell.

We are currently adding issues from the Depression years, and it's stunning to see the effects of the economic crisis on the publication. Old Oregon goes from being a 30- to 40-page publication with many beautiful photographs to a slim 14 pages with few photographs. And actually there was an unprecedented 10-month hiatus in publication between May 1932 and March 1933. You can read about how the UO's budget was cut in half in 1932.

I have to say that I also enjoy the advertisements. Companies like General Electric and the Bell System (remember them?) commissioned some beautiful engravings for their ads, which can usually be found on the back side of the front cover. By the late 1920s the back cover of Old Oregon regularly features cigarette ads, both lush and ludicrous.

Why are the pictures so muddy? Legibility vs. Fidelity:
You will notice that the image quality in SB is not of the quality that you'll find in our other digital collections. As an Institutional Repository (IR), the goals for Scholars' Bank are different from those for other collections. With SB our emphasis is on the complete and legible representation of the textual content. This is different from our collections hosted by CONTENTdm, where we are aiming for fidelity in representing a manuscript, photograph or other object.

The change from Old Oregon to Oregon Quarterly:
Oregon Quarterly is no longer a publication of the Alumni Association but of Creative Publishing, which is a part of University Advancement. As you can see when looking at Old Oregon and Oregon Quarterly side-by-side, the character of the publication changed dramatically. Circulation, for instance, is not entirely free now. While alums—even through the Great Depression—received their Old Oregon free of charge, you must now pay $30 in an annual donation to get a full year's subscription (all 4 issues rather than just 2) of Oregon Quarterly. Bill Murray discovered this when he contacted Creative Publishing about his subscription and received a letter explaining, "...budget cuts and increased costs have forced us to limit distribution of the magazine."

Bring Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day 2006

photos by Stacy DeHart

Andrew Huot teaches participants how to make a book in the Beach Conservation Lab	Mike Majdic with kids in Studio E TV studio

Ward Biaggne with a future camera operator	Ward with a future video producer in the TV production control room

From the Fact File

by Terry McQuilkin

Human beings have long been fascinated by birdsong, and it isn't surprising that classical composers have often attempted to imitate their songs in the music they write. Nor is surprising that when they have turned to extra-musical sources for inspiration—folklore and poetry for example—that birds should figure prominently, as bird legends are as old as story-telling.

Test out your ornithological ear, and see if you can identify the birds, composers and musical works described in the ten clues below.

1. When the composer published this work (subtitled "Romance for Violin and Orchestra") he included on the music's flyleaf twelve lines from a poem by the English poet George Meredith, six of which we quote:
   
   For singing till his heaven fills,
   ‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
   And ever winging up and up,
   Our valley is his golden cup
   And he the wine which overflows
   to lift us with him as he goes.
   
   The music remains one of the British composer's most popular works. It was used as the soundtrack for the Australian film, "The Year My Voice Broke." Give us the name of the musical work and its composer.

2. An opera by Gioacchino Rossini tells the story of a young maidservant who is sentenced to death, having been accused and convicted of stealing a silver spoon. Right before the sentence is to be carried out, it is discovered that real culprit was a larcenous bird. Tell us the name of the opera and you'll tell us the kind of bird we have in mind.

3. Taken from a poem by Pushkin, this Russian opera's title refers to an astrologer's magical bird, in whose advice a blundering king places his trust. After consulting the bird, the king decides without provocation to make war on a neighboring country. The parallel between this story and the events of the time—Czar Nicholas II had ordered a pre-emptive strike which led to the to the debacle of the Russo-Japanese war—was too close for imperial comfort and the opera was banned. Tell us the name of this opera (usually referred to by its French name) and the name of its composer, one of the five Russian nationalist composers known as the "Mighty Handful."

4. The musical influence of the composer described in our previous clue can be heard in the early music by another Russian, one of the giants of 20th-century music. For the first of his full-length ballets written for the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev, he turned to Russian folklore for the story in which a prince encounters a bird whose plumage is of flaming brilliance. The prince, having been distracted by some beautiful maidens, is captured by an evil ogre with a propensity for turning men into stones. He remembers in the nick of time that he was given a magic feather by the brightly plumed bird, which proves effective at summoning the bird, who in turn lulls the ogre and his monsters to sleep. Tell who the composer is, and the name of this 1910 ballet.

5. In 1927 an Italian composer adapted a set of Baroque keyboard pieces into a suite called Gli Uccelli ("The Birds") in which we hear imitations of the dove, the hen, the nightingale and the cuckoo. But this native of Bologna is best known for three symphonic poems celebrating his adopted city of Rome. In a section of one of these orchestral works, we hear a nightingale's song, not from a violin or flute, but from a recording played on a gramophone; the use of this technology in the concert hall in 1924 provoked a strong and rather negative response from audiences who first heard the work. Tell us the name of the symphonic poem and its composer.

6. An aquatic species that appears in the folktales of many cultures, this bird has inspired (among others) a tone poem by Jean Sibelius, a ballet by Peter Tchaikovsky and the most celebrated movement of a suite (subtitled a "Grand Zoological Fantasy") by Camille Saint-Saens. Tell us the name of this graceful bird, and for extra credit, identify the three compositions penned by the composers mentioned in this clue.

7. In 1896, this Czech composer, having recently returned to his native land after a three-year teaching stint in America (and having written has famous "New World" Symphony), began work on a series of symphonic poems based on Karl Jaromir Erben's poetry. One of these works relates in music the story of a grieving widow who is consoled by a peasant who persuades her to marry him. But near the grave of her first husband, she hears the mournful cooing of a bird, and is reminded of her evil deed: she had poisoned her first husband. Overcome with guilt, she drowns herself. Tell us the name of this orchestral work and the composer who wrote it.

8. One of the titans of classical music completed two of his nine symphonies in 1808. In one of them the composer included a descriptive heading for each of its five movements. The second movement is titled "Scene by a Brook", and toward the end of the movement we hear the sounds of various birds: the flute imitates a nightingale, the oboe recalls a quail, and the clarinet plays the familiar two-note song of the cuckoo. Tell us the name of this well known composer and which of his symphonies fits this description.

9. In this orchestral fairy tale, a boy disobeys his grandfather, ventures into the woods, and captures a wolf. The composer wrote this work chiefly to illustrate to children the instruments of the orchestra, as each instrument represents a character or group of characters. Two of the characters are avian: the flute portrays a bird who flies, the oboe a bird who swims. Tell us the name of this well-known symphonic work and its Russian-born composer.

10. Probably no composer in history has given more attention to the songs of birds than this twentieth-century Frenchman, who not only took pains to compose music that closely imitated birds, but sometimes indicated in his musical scores the precise species of bird that he was depicting, and wrote seven volumes of piano pieces called Catalogue d'oiseaux. Tell us the name of this composer who died in 1992.

After you have completed this puzzle, submit your answers to Fact File. Answers must be received by May 25. The winner will be determined by the number of correct answers; in the event of a tie, a single winner will be selected by lot. The winner will receive a gift certificate worth $10.00 toward purchases at the U.O. Bookstore, courtesy of the Library Staff Association. All staff and faculty of the University of Oregon Libraries are invited to participate, although the winner of the most recent Fact File contest is ineligible to win this contest's prize.

Events of Interest

As well as featuring upcoming LSA events, we'd like to get the word out about events staff are involved in that might be of interest to co-workers. If you'd like us to know about something cool coming up, please email Harriett Smith or lsaweb.

LSA EVENTS

MAY 16, 2006: The May Tea will be on May 16 from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Browsing Room. This "spring fling" will feature cake, ice cream, punch, and fruit—and your contributions as well. None of this year's retirees can make it to the May Tea, but we won't miss the chance to party! Bring a favourite dessert topping or afternoon snack to share, and make your own sundae. Questions? Email Raina Smith or phone her at 346-1837. Former faculty and staff in need of transportation to the Tea should also contact Raina.

MAY 17, 2006: Join A&AA Library head Ed Teague for a walking tour of "Campus Landmarks: Focus on Outdoor Sculpture". Participants should meet in front of the Knight Library at noon for this hour-long walk. There is a limit of 20 participants, so if you'd like to come please email Laura Damiani or phone her at 6-2203.

JUNE 20, 2006: Get your act together! The Gonzo Revue 2006 will be here before you know it. Begin your preparations now in order to dazzle us all. Not sure what kind of act to perform? Ask a co-worker or email David McCallum.

May 13, 2006: The HIV Alliance RiverWalk & Run at Alton Baker Park features entertainment before the run, including an appearance by Terry McQuilkin's marimba band, Shamwari.

People in the Library

Kudos:

Welcome:

Goodbye:

On April 7, 2006, Roy Martin resigned from the Center for Educational Technologies, Interactive Media Unit. He worked as a Student Programmer for the CET, and eventually accepted a position as a Technology Lead. Roy has accepted a job with the Empire Group in Portland. We wish you the best, Roy.

Heather Ward, who began her position as a librarian at UO Libraries in 1997, has resigned. Her last day of work was March 28. (See story)

Larry Bagwell resigned from his position on May 5, 2006, as Laborer 1 in Facilities and Purchasing. Larry has accepted another position outside the Library. Good luck Larry, and happy fishing!

Staff photos by Stacy DeHart unless otherwise indicated

Been to an interesting conference?

Send us a brief report for publication in the next newsletter. Thanks!

Last updated May 10, 2006
lsaweb@lists.uoregon.edu