News from the Mudd

Oh My Gosh! The Ship Isn’t Moving!

Soon it will be Memorial Day, then the 4th of July, and then the giant holiday void that is August, and then … International Talk Like a Pirate Day! At the Mudd we can’t wait for September 19th to roll around. Now, you too can practice your pirate platitudes, pronouns and participles.

Mango Languages, a language-learning company, is offering a Pirate Course FREE now through June 30. As they so accurately put it: “Pirate is bold, brazen and chock full of eccentric insults.”

Some of your “Conversational Goals” may be:

  • Call someone names
  • Express surprise
  • Give sailing commands
  • Greet a friend and a superior
  • Pay a compliment

As an added bonus you get cultural notes, cool graphics and genuine pirates pronouncing the words.

Sara Quandt ’73 at Lawrence

Sara Quandt

Sara Quandt, a professor in the department of epidemiology and prevention at Wake Forest University’s School of Medicine, examines the health inequities and social justice challenges faced by rural and minority populations in Lawrence University’s final convocation of the 2010-11 academic year.

A 1973 Lawrence graduate, Quandt presents “It Takes a Community: Collaborating to Reduce Health Disparities in the U.S.” Tuesday, May 17 at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. She also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. Both events are free and open to the public.

Read the press release: “Medical Anthropologist Sara Quandt ’73 Examines U.S. Health Disparities in Honors Convocation”

Library and Web resources:

500th post! Social Media Now and Then

In honor of our 500th blog post, we thought we’d take this opportunity to share some of the fun stuff we’ve been doing with social media here at the Mudd Library.  Want to be the first to know about what’s happening at the Mudd?  Follow us on Facebook to learn about our events, view photos, and read comments from other library users.  We love to use this space to interact with our patrons and learn about what they want to see in the library.  Most recently, we were able to make many patrons happy by fulfilling a Facebook request for a subscription to The Onion.  If it’s Twitter you follow, we’re there too!  We think the short posts make it a great place to share interesting library acquisitions, pertinent local and library-related news, event announcements, and of course, our newest blog posts.

Students studying in the library, 2009. Image from the Mudd Library's Flickr account.

More interested in seeing what’s happening at the Mudd rather than reading about it?  Our photostream on Flickr is where we post the bulk of our library event photos.  Here, you can see pictures from our annual Welcome Week Open House, Cindy Appreciation Day, Canine Therapy, and more!  You can also find images of some of the library’s advertisements, such as our National Library Week posters and ways we use QR codes.

Next time you come to the library, make sure to check in with Foursquare.  Check in three times and claim a mini Mudd Library notebook and pen!  Keep checking in, as more specials are in the works.

For your convenience, we’ve compiled our social media activities in an easy-to-follow webpage.

Students reading in the Ormsby reading room.
Students reading in the Ormsby reading room, ca. 1920. Image from the LU Archives Digital Collection.

Even before Facebook and Twitter, cell phones and computers, even 100 years ago, Lawrentians took photographs to capture and share information about the campus and community. So what did that look like? Well, the short answer is: it looked a lot different. You can visit our new digital collection of glass slides from the Archives to check it out!

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is just a few short days away! Did you know that the library has many horror films including the entire Friday the 13th series? Check them out in the Media Center under call numbers PN1997.F7533. We’ll also be discussing some of the history, superstitions and phobias that surround this dreaded day Friday at 4:30 pm on the first floor of the library in our weekly Things Worth Knowing series. Come join us…if you’re not scared, that is.

Reading Period Book Suggestions

The Murderer’s Daughters

"The Murder's Daughters"

This debut novel by Randy Susan Meyers is a powerful story about sisters whose alcoholic father murders their mother in front of them and then tries, unsuccessfully, to kill both younger daughter Merry and himself.  What follows is a 30 year journey of older sister Lulu and Merry from an orphanage to adulthood.   Ultimately “a crisis that eerily mirrors the past forces Lulu and Merry to confront what happened years ago.”

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

"The Dance of the Dissident Daughter"

Sue Monk Kidd (The Mermaid’s Chair, The Secret Life of Bees), describes her spiritual  journey from her strict Southern Baptist upbringing to her “nontraditional feminist spiritual experience.” At the heart of the book is a critique of patriarchal Christianity, but the book is written for all audiences interested in spiritual awakening. (And yes, Gents, there is a lot you can learn from this book despite its feminist bent). What Kidd ultimately tackles is her “fear of dissension, confrontation, backlash, a fear of not pleasing, not living up to sanctioned models of femininity.”

Both books are available at the Appleton Public Library.

Jorge Luis Borges: Poet, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Librarian

April is National Poetry Month and this week is National Library Week, so who better to feature than Jorge Luis Borges? Borges was born in Argentina and contributed much to Latin American literature. In 1955 he was appointed the director of  La Biblioteca Nacional (The National Public Library) in Buenos Aires. He imagined “that Paradise will be a kind of library,” and we couldn’t agree more! The Seeley G. Mudd Library has many Borges-related resources including video, audio and many, many books in both Spanish and English.  If you’re interested in Borges’ works head up to the 3rd floor and look under call numbers PQ7797.B63. If you’re interested in other materials on his life and/or works please ask one of our Reference Librarians who would love to help you find more information on this fellow librarian. In the meantime here’s one of his poems. Enjoy!

That One

Jorge Luis Borges

Oh days devoted to the useless burden
of putting out of mind the biography
of a minor poet of the Southem Hemisphere,
to whom the fates or perhaps the stars have given
a body which will leave behind no child,
and blindness, which is semi-darkness and jail,
and old age, which is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weaving hendecasyllables,
and an old love of encyclopedias
and fine handmade maps and smooth ivory,
and an incurable nostalgia for the Latin,
and bits of memories of Edinburgh and Geneva
and the loss of memory of names and dates,
and the cult of the East, which the varied peoples
of the teeming East do not themselves share,
and evening trembling with hope or expectation,
and the disease of entymology,
and the iron of Anglo-Saxon syllables,
and the moon, that always catches us by surprise,
and that worse of all bad habits, Buenos Aires,
and the subtle flavor of water, the taste of grapes,
and chocolate, oh Mexican delicacy,
and a few coins and an old hourglass,
and that an evening, like so many others,
be given over to these lines of verse.

(http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/jorge_luis_borges/poems/2927)

Things Worth Knowing

A few weeks ago, we began a new tradition in the library: Things Worth Knowing. Our patrons may not know this, but the denizens of the Mudd Library have a vast knowledge on a wide variety of topics.  What kinds of topics?  Check out our Facebook page, or take notice of the fliers around campus to find out.  We begin advertising Tuesday or Wednesday for the topic that will be shared on that Friday.

Amanda Lee reads "Shirt" by Robert Pinsky

Our first program happened to take place on the one hundredth anniversary of the Triangle shritwaist factory fire.  Music Librarian Antoinette Powell discussed the workers’ rights movements of the time, Acquisitions Assistant Amanda Lee shared a poem on the tragedy of the  Triangle fire, and Gretchen Revie introduced a short film about the fire.  Our second program was on April 1st, so the topic chosen was the history of April Fool’s Day.  Gretchen Revie discussed the history, and Archivist Erin Dix shared some April Fool’s issues of The Lawrentian.

Tomorrow, April 8th, we will geek out as Interlibrary Loan & Circulation Assistant Angela Vanden Elzen discusses the history and impact of Dungeons & Dragons, and Gretchen Revie delves into the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

All Things Worth Knowing events take place from 4:30-5:00 p.m. on the first floor of the Mudd Library. Of course, cookies are always available.

Let us know if you have any suggestions of topics you’d like to hear us talk about!

Take a look at all previous Things Worth Knowing events on our Facebook events page.