Plus ça change, plus c’est la caneck, caneck….

The Last Lonestar Showdown

On Thursday of last week, college football fans around Texas and many from around the nation gathered around the flat screen to watch the final episode in the third longest running rivalry in college football.  After this season, the two teams are unlikely to encounter each other again in the regular season as the Aggies head toward the Southeastern Conference and the Longhorns lock up annually with their heartland foes.

But even as the sports scene in Texas changes fundamentally, so much remains the same.   The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University remain the two flagship institutions of our state, and when it comes to teaching, learning and research, the two schools remain ever so closely aligned.

And our libraries are united in their determination to advance the core educational missions of the two universities.  The University of Texas System and the Texas A&M University System have united to fund and operate a common storage facility on property owned by Texas A&M.  There all the universities in both systems will be able to preserve their print copies in a shared resources in common facility that will ensure the preservation of the “long tail” of scholarly research while freeing up valuable central library space on every campus.  Full sets of journals now accessed electronically—such as JSTOR—will have their archive print instantiation in Bryan, Texas.

At the same time, the two flagships continue to work together to harness the power of digital technologies in support of research.  Combining their own powerful (but separate distinct) holdings of first century books from Mexico with other examples from Mexican partners, Spain, Brown University, Tulane, Harvard and elsewhere, the Los Primeros Libros project will eventually  enable scholars around the globe to access and study all of the 200+ surviving examples of printing in the Western Hemisphere.

So, as both schools rewrite the lyrics to their fight songs, where each disparages the other in the early stanzas, the librarians will resume the collaboration that makes their combined collections one of the state’s most important assets.

Hook ‘em /  Gig ‘em

 

Border Music Giveaway

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The Benson Latin American Collection and Texas Performing Arts (TPA) are giving away tickets for a night of cross-border rock and roll.

On November 30, TPA hosts Border Music with David Hidalgo and Marc Ribot for the “U.S. premiere of this rocking post-roots, pan-Latin, rave-up/descarga.”

Hidalgo, of course, is the vocal leader of the iconic latino-crossover band and Grammy-winners Los Lobos, while Ribot has been the archetype journeyman, earning his rep with such modern legends as Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and avant-garde composer John Zorn.

For a chance to win tickets, all you need to do is answer a Benson trivia question.

Contest closes at 5pm on Tuesday, November 23.

You know my methods, Watson.

The final Science Study Break of this fall season is elementary.

In the first tag-team take on science in pop culture, Dr. Jim Bryant (Biology) and Dr. Sam Gosling (Psychology) investigate the immortalized detective’s use of statistics, observations of personality and deductive prowess in the BBC’s Sherlock and Granada Television’s Sherlock Holmes series.

And just in case you’re a bit peckish for more than just some brain food, there will be an ample supply of pizza from Austin’s Pizza.

SSB starts tonight at 6pm in the Auditorium of the Student Activity Center. Free and open to all comers.

Additional info here.

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Who Are You?

 

Pennebaker on pronouns

The Libraries wraps its successful first semester run of the lunchtime Research + Pizza talk series with noted author, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology James Pennebaker speaking about how the words we use can expose hidden meanings about our feelings, intentions and personality traits.

Pennebaker’s latest book The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us hones in on the words that he calls “keys to the soul,” and what the most routine of descriptors of self reveal about our state of mind.

The talk takes place at noon on Wednesday, November 2 in the Perry-Castañeda Library, room 2.500.

Free Pizza (while it lasts) generously provided by program supporter Austin’s Pizza.