The Benson Latin American Collection is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Jorge Tetl Argueta Pérez Papers. This collection captures the personal history of Argueta’s work as an award-winning children’s book author, poet, activist, organizer, cultural worker, teacher, and publisher. It includes manuscripts, books, journals, original artwork, correspondence, photographs, posters, and newspapers.
Jorge Argueta in Washington, DC, ca. 2000. Photographer unknown.
Jorge Argueta was born in El Salvador and is of Pipil-Nahua descent. In the early 1980s, he immigrated to San Francisco during the Salvadoran Civil War. This experience influenced his early poetry, before he began writing children’s books. He is currently the Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, California, and is active in both San Mateo County and the Mission District community of San Francisco.
Poems and artwork by Jorge Argueta, created shortly after arriving in the U.S., 1980s
Known as a performer and event organizer, Argueta works to promote multicultural children’s literature through events such as reading series, poetry festivals, and street fairs. He has held positions in notable San Francisco organizations, such as the de Young Museum of San Francisco, where he was a Poet-in-Residence for the Poets in the Galleries Program. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Acción Latina and a curator of the Mixed Poetry Series. He is an editor at Luna’s Press Books and is co-owner of Luna’s Press Bookstore in San Francisco.
Poster advertising performances Xochitl and the Flowers, an opera whose libretto is based on a book by Jorge Argueta
His impact does not stop in California, however. He established a children’s library, La Biblioteca de los Sueños, in 2016. A lifelong dream of his, the library now stands in Santo Domingo de Guzmán, his hometown. He also started The International Children’s Poetry Festival in Manyula, El Salvador, which has occurred every November since 2010. Argueta’s dedication to children’s literacy and literature has had a tremendous impact on both of his communities.
Children’s book by Jorge Argueta, illustrated by Luis Garay, published in 2007
Argueta’s work is recognized nationally and internationally. He has received the Américas Book Award, NAPPA Golden Award, Lee Bennett Hopkins Award, and Salinas de Alba Award, and his books are featured in the likes of the USBBY Outstanding International Books List, Kirkus Reviews Best Children’s Books, and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices. He continues his commitment to spreading multicultural children’s literature through classroom visits, earning the gratitude of young readers across the country and much thank-you correspondence from his visits. Although he is a prominent figure in bilingual children’s books, he also aims to reach older audiences through poetry and a memoir published in 2017.
Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT Libraries Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of, and future creative contributions to, the growing fields of digital scholarship.
How does a dance move? Where might a dancer go? Such questions most likely evoke images of choreography, references to physical steps performed or patterns made across the floor. But dance scholars Kate Elswit and Harmony Bench are tracking movement from a different perspective, following the touring and travel routes of groundbreaking choreographer Katherine Dunham and her dance company from 1930-1960. Their project, Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, documents not only Dunham’s own itineraries, but also accounts for “the over 300 dancers, drummers, and singers who appeared with her; and the shifting configurations of the nearly 300 repertory entities they performed.”
The Katherine Dunham Dance Company was the first African American modern dance company, touring extensively both internationally and across the United States, often disrupting the imposed structures of racial segregation. Dunham was also an anthropologist, author, and social activist, challenging the limited roles and opportunities available to Black women artists.
Dunham’s Data features three core datasets paired with both interactive and static visualizations and contextualized through accompanying essays and related media. Taken together, the materials “provide new means to understand the relationships between thousands of locations, and hundreds of performers and pieces across decades of Dunham’s performing career, and ultimately elaborate how movement moves across bodies and geographies.”
The Everyday Itinerary Dataset spans the years 1947-1960, logging Dunham’s daily whereabouts during a period of consistent international touring, including accommodations, modes of transport, and venues visited. Users can access and mobilize this dataset through an Interactive Timeline of Travel, tracing the global and durational scope of Dunham’s artistic reach. There is also a Well-being Timeline Collage, which I am particularly drawn to, that sequences clippings from personal correspondence, evidencing the emotional labor that undergirded Dunham’s career.
Interactive Timeline of Katherine Dunham’s Travel 1947-60, from Dunham’s Data
The Personnel Check-In Dataset encompasses the “comings and goings” of company members over time. The visualizations derived from this dataset, for example, the Interactive Chord Diagram, illustrate “who shared space and time together,” offering “a sense of the transmission of embodied knowledge across hundreds of performers.”
Interactive Chord Diagram of Katherine Dunham’s Dancers, Drummers, and Singers, 1947-60, from Dunham’s Data
I find the visualizations related to the Repertory Dataset to be especially compelling. The Interactive Inspiration Map depicts locations that Dunham identified as sites of inspiration for choreographic works, enlivened by quotations from her program notes; and The Interactive Network of Dunham Company Repertory highlights connections across pieces and performances. These visualizations prompt me to consider the citational and iterative dynamics of choreography and creative process.
Interactive Network of Dunham Company Repertory, from Dunham’s Data
Elswit and Bench, along with a team of postdoctoral research assistants, manually curated the datasets from previously undigitized primary source materials held in seven different archives. User Guides explain the organization and decision-making processes behind each dataset, making clear that all data is inherently interpretive. Code and tutorials are available in Github repositories for a few of the visualizations, which were largely created by Antonio Jimenez Mavillard using Python and Javascript libraries and a range of other tools. Instructional resources and a preliminary Teaching Toolkit offer helpful ideas for engagement and entry points into what, for some audiences, might feel like dense material to dive into.
Overall, the project gives us a multi-faceted lens to explore how attention to moving bodies can expand and enrich historical inquiry.
Want to know more about Katherine Dunham? Check out these UT Libraries resources:
Today we meet Erika Coronado, who joined the Libraries in Februrary 2022 and spends her days landing content for our users and finding ways to stretch our budgets while doing so.
What made you decide to work in a library?
Erika Coronado: As someone who is an avid reader, I enjoy being surrounded by books. I love that working in libraries gives me access to thousands of books and many other valuable resources. I feel I work in paradise.
What’s your title, and what do you do for UTL?
EC: I am an Electronic Resources Coordinator and form part of the Content Management team. I am responsible for reviewing and negotiating the licenses of our e-resources, setting up library trials, collecting and maintaining usage statistics of e-resources, and assisting with some of the troubleshooting. I also help maintain the integrity of data within Alma.
What motivates you to wake up and go to work?
EC: I take great satisfaction in helping others and knowing that I can make a positive impact.
What are you most proud of in your job?
EC: The proudest moment for me is each time I realize I can save our library funds – either by negotiating quotes and getting a much lower cost, catching orders that can be canceled, or preventing purchases from happening either because we already own or have access to the resource.
What has been your best experience at the Libraries?
EC: The many good relationships I have developed during the time I have work for the Libraries. I work with such amazing and talented colleagues who are always willing to lend a hand. I am also grateful to work with a team that values and fosters learning, new ideas, and promotes growth.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
EC: I spend a great deal of my time assembling jigsaw puzzles. I love all kinds, but especially the ones that challenge me!
Dogs or cats?
EC: I don’t have any pets, but I prefer dogs. I sometimes pet sit two dogs – a cute chubby Chihuahua (who is missing an eye) and a very friendly, energetic mutt.
Favorite book, movie or album?
EC: This is hard to answer, as I don’t have favorites. My favorite book genres are psychological thrillers, mystery, and crime novels. I love Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. I also love books that keep me up at night. I am currently reading books by the author Alex North. I find his novels spooky and engrossing – his books are hard to put down.
Cook at home, or go out for dinner? What and/or where?
EC: I have bad eating habits as I tend to eat out most of the time. I usually prefer to explore food trucks over to restaurants, and since I like all kinds of cuisine, there are lots to choose from. One of my favorite places is Beirut Restaurant, a food truck that serves delicious Lebanese dishes.
One of many t-shirts produced during the summer protests. The text reads “Not right, not left — straight forward!”
With the support of UT Libraries, and the generosity of donors in a recent Hornraiser campaign, I went to Israel on an acquisition trip on behalf of the UT Libraries in June. I have written in the past about the advantages of field work by a subject liaison in an academic library when it comes to curating and developing our collections. Being on the ground, one has an opportunity to acquire unique items that cannot be purchased remotely online. While networking with vendors and individuals in book fairs and book stores, there is a much bigger chance to come across alternative and non-mainstream materials. Moreover, making acquaintances face-to-face is a great way to spread the word about UT and UT Libraries and to make additional contacts.
My experience during this last trip made me realize yet again why acquisition trips are so beneficial to my work. One of the most significant advantages is the unparalleled opportunity to witness historical events in real-time. This allows for collecting ‘limited editions’ of grey literature that is created for or emerges as a result of current events. Throughout 2023 there has been a lot of civil unrest in the streets throughout Israel in reaction to the newly elected administration’s actions. There have been weekly rallies and marches against, and sometimes in favor of, the government and its officials. During my stay in Tel Aviv, I attended a few of those rallies, not only as a spectator, but also as an avid collector of anything that might be a valuable addition to the library’s Israeli collection. I was able to gather all sorts of ephemeral items distributed only during the protests: fanzines, comic strips, stickers, banners, pamphlets, and even t-shirts. I was reminded of the social justice protests of summer 2011, during which I also managed to put my hand on some materials available only then and there. By acquiring these unique items, adding them to and preserving them in our collections, we are able to capture the local zeitgeist while it is being shaped in real time, and thus, make it accessible for future generations of researchers.
Series of fanzines published in limited edition during 2023 protests in IsraelHanding out stickers at a rally.
Beyond ephemera, I had additional serendipitous, one-of-a-kind opportunities for collection development during my trip. While browsing the tables at one of the rallies, I met activists from the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) which led to a visit to their office a few days later, where I managed to acquire some of their publications which are not distributed to the mainstream market. These publications would complement other emerging pockets of distinctive collections at UT Libraries about communism and socialism such as the Socialist Pamphlets collection, Ernesto Cardenal Papers, Sajjad Zaheer Digital Archive, and fanzines recently acquired by UTL European Studies subject liaison Ian Goodale at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair.
One night I went to watch a movie at the Herzliya Cinematheque, a 30 minutes ride from Tel Aviv. As it turned out, that venue had a small section where they were offering free of charge publications and DVDs. By mere chance, I was lucky to put my hand on a rare publication about adaptations of Israeli literature to cinema — a perfect and rare addition to our Israeli cinema & film collection. Likewise, while browsing an antique and book market one morning in Tel Aviv, I came across internationally unique programs from Israeli film festivals. Chatting with the vendor, he made the effort to introduce me to other vendors around him, all of whom sell publications related to Israeli cinema. These personal, on-the-ground and face-to-face encounters are instrumental to expanding the network of our vendors, leading to future, distinctive acquisitions.
“Getting adapted in Cinema/to film” – rare publication about copyrights for adaptations of Hebrew literature to film. The title is a pun mixing ‘adaptation’ and ‘to get lost’ – two terms that sound identically in Hebrew.
Two upcoming exhibitions at the Benson Latin American Collection will focus on Chile in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the violent coup that overthrew the government of democratically elected president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.
In addition, a LLILAS Benson special event, “Chile 50 Years after the Military Coup: Testimonies and Remembrances,” taking place Tuesday, September 12, features a panel of Chileans, some of whom lived through the 1973 coup, moderated by Professor of History Joshua Frens-String. The event and the exhibitions are free and open to the public.
A second public event, organized by LLILAS Benson and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, is titled “Before and After Chile 1973: Recovering a More Just Future.” It will take place in the Benson’s 2nd floor conference room on Thursday, October 19, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Battle for Chile: Cold War, Coup, and the Court of Public Opinion
From September 11, 2023, through April 30, 2024, the Hartness Reading Room Gallery at the Benson Latin American Collection will host an exhibition that focuses on Chilean politics and activism in the late 1960s through the mid-1980s.
Centered on Chilean and non-Chilean individuals and entities trying to influence public and international opinion, Battle for Chile shows the country as one center of an international clash between capitalism and socialism. It focuses in particular on the high-stakes fight for international opinion as the post-coup regime continued to commit unspeakable atrocities under the guise of fighting global communism.
Battle for Chile exhibition poster
Reports and telegrams from the George Lister Papers show U.S. government concern over Salvador Allende’s candidacies and eventual election as well as an account of the coup in process. Sepa, an anti-Allende publication, declares his presidency illegitimate and seems to call for a military overthrow. Material distributed by the Pinochet regime and aimed at international audiences promotes reports of economic progress. Chilean and non-Chilean activists in the post-coup era work to share news of human rights violations. Anti-Pinochet and pro-Allende activists accuse the United States and other governments and corporations of creating the conditions leading to the coup or even supporting it. Transnational socialist organizations, often based in Cuba, capitalize on atrocities to build support for their cause through captivating posters and publications.
Battle for Chile is an opportunity to see some of the Benson’s extensive collection of political ephemera and rare magazines as well as selections from archival collections.
— D Ryan Lynch, Head of Special Collections & Senior Archivist, Benson Latin American Collection
Walls That Speak: Street Art and Activism in Chile
On October 18, 2019, demonstrations erupted in the streets of Chile’s capital Santiago in reaction to an increase in subway fares, along with concerns about the cost of living and social inequality. Massive protests spread across the nation, some peaceful and some devolving into vandalism. Protesters demanded the resignation of President Sebastián Piñera. This social uprising is now recognized as the most significant in the country since the end of its dictatorship almost three decades ago.
Chilean street artists emerged as participants and instigators, utilizing city walls as a canvas to express demands of the movement as well as document intergenerational trauma connected to Augusto Pinochet’s 1973–1990 dictatorship. Their artwork soon became visible on social media and served as a supportive backdrop for the Chilean demonstrators. Among those artists was Maurice Huenún, aka Pikoenelojo Stencil, who, like his peers, provided a visual narration of the protestors’ grievances and hopes for the future. His stencils explore themes of social justice, human rights, environmental concerns, political corruption, inequality, gender, anti-establishment sentiments, and reflections on local or global events.
Walls That Speak exhibition poster featuring art by Pikoenelojo Stencil
Walls That Speak: Street Art and Activism in Chile,a fall 2023 exhibition at the Benson Latin American Collection, highlights a recent acquisition of Pikoenelojo Stencil’s work, showcasing 12 original stencil artworks crafted by this prominent Chilean street artist. The works address topics such as criticism of Piñera’s policies, privatization, international corporations, the Pinochet dictatorship, systemic police repression, criticism of Christian dogma, among other topics. The collection provides a powerful visual narrative of the violent events that occurred in October 2019 while shedding light on the enduring legacy of Chile’s painful dictatorial past.
— Veronica Valarino, Curator of Exhibitions, Benson Latin American Collection
If you go . . .
The exhibitions at the Benson Latin American Collection are free and open to the public during library hours, which are Monday–Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Benson is located at 2300 Red River Street.
I hope this message finds you well and recharged after a restful summer break. As the new academic calendar begins, I am thrilled to extend a warm and enthusiastic welcome to each and every member of our community. The University of Texas Libraries is buzzing with excitement as we embark on another year with the promise of learning, exploration and growth.
Over the summer, we witnessed accelerated technological developments in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI continues to revolutionize the way we approach research, teaching, and problem-solving. As we step into this new academic year, I encourage you to approach this powerful new tool critically, and remember that the Libraries’ experts can augment your work with guidance on information literacy and research. Use customized LibGuides on a range of subjects, go straight to the source with digital resources and reach out for a consultation to get one-on-one help.
We’re excited to introduce a groundbreaking resource that is now available: Pressbooks. This open publishing platform empowers anyone to create, publish, and share interactive content, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange like never before. The world of open educational resources is growing as an exceptional alternative to traditional publishing, and this new tool makes entry into the practice even easier.
And our commitment to providing you with exceptional resources and opportunities extends even further. The Libraries has secured access to New York Times academic passes, granting users unlimited access to a wealth of insightful content. Stay informed about global affairs, trends, and breakthroughs in various fields by activating an academic pass today.
I’m thrilled to inform you about the upcoming Texas Open Science Summit, a remarkable event that will bring together innovators, researchers, and thought leaders to discuss the latest advancements in open science. This summit promises to ignite important conversations and collaborations that will shape the future of research and academia. Mark your calendars for this enriching experience: the Texas Open Science Summit.
If you’ve already visited the Perry-Castañeda Library this semester, you know that the Scholars Lab construction is in its final stretch. This state-of-the-art facility is designed to be a hub of digital scholarship, offering cutting-edge tools and resources to elevate your research and academic pursuits. The Scholars Lab is poised to open its doors any day now, and we can’t wait for you to explore its possibilities. Keep an eye out for details and plan to join us for an opening celebration slated to take place on October 5.
The new academic calendar provides new opportunities, and I encourage you to seize every one of them to learn, grow, and contribute to the vibrant UT community. The resources and initiatives at the University of Texas Libraries are here to support your aspirations and help you achieve your goals.
Here’s to a remarkable year ahead, filled with discovery, collaboration, and transformative experiences. Welcome back to the University of Texas Libraries!
On Monday, August 14, the U.S. Mint released a quarter commemorating Mexican American journalist and activist Jovita Idar (b. Laredo, 1885–d. San Antonio, 1946) as part of its American Women Quarters program. In conjunction with this release, the Benson Latin American Collection recently published three issues of two newspapers that are associated with Idar. Together, these publications represent some of the earliest examples of Mexican American journalism.
The newly published items include two extremely rare issues of Evolución, a newspaper founded by Idar in 1916 and published until 1920. These issues document international and regional events such as the Mexican Revolution and World War I, as well as local topics such as containment of the flu outbreak in Nuevo Laredo and regional union organizing. There is also a single issue of El Progreso, a Laredo-based newspaper operated by the Idar family.
The Benson has received several requests for material related to Idar during the COVID shutdown and in recent months. In 2020, a cell phone snapshot of the October 26, 1918, issue of Evolución appeared in an episode about Jovita Idar on the PBS show Unladylike. Aware of the significance of these newspapers, Benson Special Collections staff sent them for conservation treatment and digitization as soon as possible.
El Progreso is at the heart of a story about Jovita Idar standing up to the Texas Rangers, who wanted to shut down her family’s paper. According to an oral history with descendant Aquilino Idar and his wife Guadalupe, when the Texas Rangers showed up at the El Progreso print shop, Jovita stood at the door and refused entry. The Rangers left but returned early the next morning and used hammers to destroy the press (oral history held by UT San Antonio Special Collections).
The two issues of Evolución recently received conservation treatment as part of the UT Austin Campus Conservation Initiative (CCI). The program, backed by Provost Sharon Wood, allows paper conservator Rachel Mochon to treat items from the Benson and other campus entities, including the Harry Ransom Center, the Briscoe Center for American History, and the Blanton Museum of Art.
This issue of the Spanish-language newspaper “Evolución” was restored by the UT Austin Campus Conservation Initiative. The large vertical crease down the middle shows where the once-torn item has been restored. Benson Latin American Collection.
Other Benson items that have received treatment include a sixteenth-century land claim produced by an Indigenous community in Mexico, one of the first dictionaries of an Indigenous language published in the Americas, and a scrapbook from a Brazilian mining operation.
Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT Libraries Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of, and future creative contributions to, the growing fields of digital scholarship.
Segregation By Design is a compelling personal project by Adam Paul Susaneck, an architect based in New York City. Through spatial analysis, demographic data, historical photos, and extensive research, Susaneck effectively illustrates “how the American city was methodically hollowed out based on race.” It offers an insightful perspective on an important issue that has shaped the country’s history and continues to impact its present. The project’s goal is threefold: to create a print “Atlas of Urban Renewal,” to create digital materials for local groups opposing ongoing freeway expansion, and to raise awareness through social media.
Screenshot of the Chicago, Illinois page on Segregation By Design.
The website offers a preview of what the print atlas will look like. 180 municipalities that received federal funding from the 1956 Federal Highway Act have been analyzed, and so far, there are 14 cities profiled. Each city has multiple sections, such as “Freeways & Urban Renewal,” “Redlining,” and “Transit.” Focus is given to specific highways, neighborhoods, environmental impacts, or buildings.
For example, the “Chicago: Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90)” section includes an animated swipe map juxtaposing aerial photos from 1938 and 1984 illustrating the “path of destruction” and displacement when the I-90 highway was built in the 1960s. It explains that over 81,000 people, many of whom were BIPOC or recent immigrants, were displaced.
Video still from Chicago: Dan Ryan Expressway by Segregation By Design.
Likewise, the “Chicago: Bronzeville” section profiles a neighborhood decimated by “urban renewal.” Before and after photos of buildings are combined with Susaneck’s transposed line drawings of buildings over present-day photos, masterfully visualizing and mapping redlining of the area.
Redlining is a discriminatory practice that systematically denies services such as mortgages, insurance loans, and other financial services to specific area residents based on race or ethnicity.
Redlining map of Chicago with selected comments from the redlinign notes from Segregation By Design.
Yet another section, “Chicago: Pekin Theater,” focuses on the first black-owned theater in the United States, which was appropriated by the city through eminent domain, a process that left large swaths of the neighborhood cleared for “urban renewal.” The lot has been vacant since 1940.
Established in 1905, the Pekin Theater was the first Black-owned musical theater in the country from Segregation By Design.
The project’s second goal is to create digital materials for local groups opposing ongoing freeway expansion. Susaneck states, “As state governments continue to mindlessly widen freeways, community groups in cities across the country have formed in opposition. This project aims to support these groups by creating easily digestible graphics to spread awareness.” One such project is Stop TxDOT I-45 in Houston, Texas. Their mission is “to challenge the status quo of transportation policy and to fight for all people in Houston to be able to participate in the decisions that affect health, safety, and mobility in their communities.” Similarly, the “Houston: Flooding” section of Segregation By Design discusses the environmental impact of highways and urban sprawl and how nonwhite residents are disproportionately affected by natural disasters.
Houston, Texas, proposed I-45 expansion from Segregation By Design.
Susaneck is accomplishing his third project objective of raising awareness through social media. In fact, Segregation By Design first caught my eye with an Instagram post that highlighted a striking map of Atlanta followed by bird’s-eye images of highway construction clearance from 1956 to 1990. The caption is lengthy for Instagram but is engaging. Susaneck describes the images in it: “The first image shows the freeway right of way overlaid on the 1936 HOLC redlining map and a 1960 aerial photo. The subsequent images show the destruction wrought by freeway construction.” Susaneck then explains who was affected by the highway construction, gives the names of neighborhoods decimated, and expounds on the history of redlining. Instagram lends itself to the graphic nature of his work, the dynamic swipe maps (often used to illustrate before and after destructive events), then-and-now comparisons, and augmented photos highlighting the significance of buildings as well as homes and communities that have been demolished.
A 1960 aerial photo with a 1936 redlining map and freeway right of way overlayed, Segregation By Design.
For readers not on Instagram who still want updates, you can sign up to receive new entries via email, including high-resolution images and maps. Supporters can contribute to this largely self-funded project through the subscription-based platform Patreon.
Segregation By Design uses engaging infographics and directness to help explain the complicated policies contributing to systemic racism in our country. It’s invaluable in making these issues more manageable and understandable. I look forward to adding the Atlas of Urban Renewal print version to the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) Map Collection.
Due to generous donor support to a Hornraiser campaign for foreign acquisitions trips, I was recently able to travel to Canada to attend the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair and purchase books for the UT Libraries’ collections. In addition to meeting with vendors and participating in the international community of librarians, zine makers, booksellers, and publishers at the book fair, I collected materials that continue to grow the UT Libraries’ collection of Francophone zines and literature, further developing our collection of rare and distinct materials related to global leftist movements past and present.
The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair is North America’s largest anarchist book fair, and has been held since 2009. Attracting visitors from all over the continent, the fair included over 80 vendor tables where attendees could browse and purchase materials and discuss non-commercial publishing and distribution directly with content producers. Vendors ranged from established presses like AK Press and PM Press to individual creators selling their zines and other materials. The book fair also featured a diverse range of speakers and workshops, including offerings such as an introduction to anarchist thought, a talk on Mastodon and federated social media, and a panel discussion about the book Black Metal Rainbows recently published by PM Press.
A small selection of books and zines purchased at the bookfair.
The book fair offered many opportunities to acquire materials we would not otherwise have access to, and to speak directly with publishers, writers, and artists and to learn about the processes and motivations behind why certain books or zines were written and made. A couple of my favorite acquisitions for the UTL library include a global history of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical union founded in 1905 that is still active today, and a zine-bibliography highlighting resources on the transfeminism movement. The trip also gave me a valuable opportunity to build our holdings of Francophone materials from North America, expanding our corpus beyond materials published in Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, thereby making our holdings even broader globally than they already were.
Additional books and zines acquired at the book fair.
Beyond all this, the trip allowed me the opportunity to represent UT Austin internationally to a diverse group of vendors, artists, and colleagues, and I’m grateful that I was able to serve the Libraries in such a capacity. I look forward to continuing to build our distinctive holdings and further expand UT’s collections to include diverse ideas and voices.
Librarian Ian Goodale standing at the entrance to the bookfair.
Libraries’ staff regularly excel beyond their day-to-tay accomplishments, and are recognized as high-level experts in their fields through awards, grants, appointments to professional organizations, and publications of professional import. Here we recognize a sample of recent achievements.
This year, two University of Texas Libraries librarians received Texas Digital Library (TDL) awards in recognition of outstanding contributions to digital libraries. Digital Scholarship LibrarianAllyssa Guzman received the Individual Impact Award for her work on the Diversity Resident Program and Scholars Lab. And Head of Scholarly Communications Colleen Lyon received the TDL Service Award for work contributed to the TDL consortium.
Adrian Johnson, head of user services at the Benson Latin American Collection, has been working closely with a local non-profit Cine las Americas since 2015, and serves on the organization’s Advisory Board.
Metadata Analyst Devon Murphy was awarded the DLF Cross Pollinator Award to attend ASIS&T (Association for Information Science and Technology) in London, UK this year, where they presented on the “Metadata Best Practices for Trans and Gender Diverse Resources,” on which she is a co-editor/author. Murphy also has an article in “Ethics of Linked Data,” a collection brings together contributions that explore ethics in linked data initiatives. They have been invited to be a metadata instructor for the Summer Educational Institute, a project between ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America) and VRA (Visual Resources Association).
Alice Batt (University Writing Center) and Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning ServicesMichele Ostrow contributed a chapter to the publication “THE TALES WE TELL: Applying Peripheral Vision to Build a Successful Learning Commons Partnership.” Writing Centers and Learning Commons: Staying Centered While Sharing Common Ground, edited by STEVEN J. CORBETT et al., University Press of Colorado, 2023, pp. 145–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.399537.16. Accessed 14 June 2023.
Michele Ostrow continued service in positions on multiple Association of College & Research Libraries’ groups: Publications Editor, the ACRL Instruction Section (July 2022-2024); Member of the ACRL Instruction Section Communications Committee (July 2022-2024); and Member of the ACRL University Libraries Section Nominating Committee (June 2022-July 2023).
Mary Rader, Head of the Fine Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team co-organized the fall 2022 SAI seminar series, “Hidden South Asian Archives” which included 6 external speakers and highlighted the Sajjad Zaheer Digital Archive. She also received the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award for 2023-2025, and was awarded a 2023 President’s Outstanding Staff Award.
This July, Performing Arts Librarian Molly Roy was the featured presenter at EFF-Austin’s monthly meet-up and speaker series. In this public talk, entitled “A Moving Seen: Explorations in Surveillance Art,” Roy shared some of her research into how dance and choreography might help us understand contemporary surveillance culture. Several members of the UT community were in attendance, including faculty, staff, graduate students, and alumni. EFF-Austin is an independent nonprofit civil liberties organization concerned with emerging frontiers where technology meets society.
