News from the Mudd

Wellness Resources at the Mudd

Did last week’s spring-like days motivate you to get outside and get active?  Even though the ground is once again covered with snow, the Mudd Library can help you maintain your exercise and healthy living motivations.  We have a growing collection of exercise videos available to check out.  Some of our newest titles include, Yoga for Beginners, Step-by-Step Strength Training, and Perfect Hips: Belly Dance Workout.  The Mudd Library staff can tell you that Wii Sports Resort can be a great workout, as well as a lot of fun to play.  If you don’t have your own Nintendo Wii console, the library has one available for loan.

If you’re interested in researching wellness, our reference librarians have put together a Wellness Resources library guide.  This guide includes information about wellness related electronic databases and websites, as well as tips for finding wellness related books in our catalog.

Of course, the library is not the only place on campus for those interested in wellness.  WelLU, Lawrence University’s committee on wellness, has been actively encouraging wellness on campus.  Take a look at their web page, or visit the newly remodeled Buchanan Kiewit Wellness Center.   The student organization, LU Wellness Committee, focuses on wellness related issues of particular interest to students, such as sexual health/body image and stress management.

Jazz at The Trout


The Trout Museum of Art, 111 W. College Avenue, is hosting Jazz at the Trout, Thursday, February 17 at 7:30 p.m., featuring LU’s own Matt Turner, cello and Bill Carrothers, piano. The Mudd has many CDs of these artists, including all of the Bill Carrothers recordings mentioned in this Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 8th and 9th editions, and 4 CDs featuring them in collaboration:

Tickets:
FREE for members; $10 non-members; $5 students

920-733-4089 or info@troutmuseum.org

Google Art Project

If you thought that Google was so busy digitizing every book they can get their hands on that they couldn’t be working on any other major projects you will be surprised to hear that they have been working with some major museums to bring you Google Art Project.

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.

Convo: Mary Jane Jacob on “The Collective Creative Process”

MJ Jacob
Mary Jane Jacob
Independent curator and executive director of exhibitions, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
“The Collective Creative Process”
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
11:10am

Curator, author, educator, Mary Jane Jacob is known for her work on the national and international art scene. Exploring art outside the museum context, she has spent the past 20 years as an independent curator organizing groundbreaking programs that have tested the boundaries of public space and relationship of contemporary art to audience. Among her most influential programs was “Culture in Action,” a two-year-long project in Chicago that partnered artists with community members to explore the changing nature of public art, its relationship to social issues and an expanded role of audience from spectator to participant.

During the 1980s, as chief curator of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Jacob staged some of the first U.S. retrospectives and one-person shows of American and European artists, as well as organized some of the key surveys of art of the period.

Resources by and about Mary Jane Jacob

Video Games at the Mudd

Some of you may have noticed that we enjoy hosting gaming events here at the Mudd Library.   While we know video games can be a lot of fun, we also know that they provide a wide range of research topics.   For all your video game research (and non-research) needs, the Mudd Library has recently added a Nintendo Wii and a growing collection of video games to our collection.  The Nintendo Wii and games are available for loan for Lawrence University students, faculty, and staff.   Of course, we also have some excellent books on the topic.

Feng Mengbo Long March: Restart (Installation shot) Photo: Matthew Septimus

The following are a few neat examples of video games integrated into art, culture studies, and even science:

Long March: Restart: MoMA exhibit by Feng Mengbo.  This exhibit depicts “the massive military retreat of The Chinese Communist Party’s Red Army, under the command of Mao Zedong and others, that began in 1934” through the media of a video game (see MoMA PS1 Blog).  The viewer interacts with the exhibit by playing the game, displayed on a 80’x20’ screen, with a wireless controller.

Computerspiel Museum:  Not just an exhibit, but a whole museum dedicated to “digital interactive entertainment culture”.  Their newest permanent exhibition, Computer Games: Evolution of a Medium contains more than 300 interactive exhibits depicting the “cultural history of computer and video games.”

Foldit:  Like puzzle games? Then why not “fold puzzles for science”?  This game was designed by the Departments of Computer Science & Engineering and Biochemistry at the University of Washington, with the purpose of  attempting “to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans’ puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins” (see The Science Behind Foldit).  The game designers can use the knowledge unlocked by players to research cures for diseases such as HIV / AIDS, Cancer, and Alzheimer’s.

It’s BubbleWrap Day!

Bubblewrap!

We get a lot of mail here at the Mudd and so we see a lot of packaging material. Our favorite, of course, is bubblewrap so we were delighted to discover that today, Monday, January 31 is BubbleWrap Appreciation Day!

There’s nothing like popping a pristine sheet of bubblewrap to relieve the stress of, say, a Freshman Studies midterm. So: have at it!

Now — back to work….

Fox Cities Reads


Fox Cities Reads has announced the books for this year’s community read. They are Into the Beautiful North and The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea. The Fox Cities Reads is a program sponsored by local libraries to start a conversation within the community about a common book. This year there are two books to choose from so that you can read fiction or non-fiction. To find out more go to

A new look for the Archives!

We’ve shifted around the furniture in the Archives to maximize the size and enhance the aesthetics of the research space. The new look includes a mini reading room area with two large and well-lit research tables. Another exciting addition to the Archives storage space is a large flat file cabinet. Blueprints, posters, panoramic photographs, and other oversized ephemera now have a preservation-friendly home! A big thanks to Facilities Services and ITS staff for their help with this move.

Stop by the Archives (level B of the library, between floors 2 and 3) anytime Monday through Friday, 1-5pm to see the changes!