Though we often focus our thoughts and attention on the changing nature of libraries, it’s good to occasionally be reminded that our “storied” past is also part of the present.
Nearly ten years in the making, a new library recently opened outside of Rotterdam that is a monument to the book.
A pyramidal structure of wood, glass, stone and steel contains what may be the world’s largest bookcase, “Book Mountain” – a structure of staircases, pathways and terraces surrounded by some 50,000 books that spirals upward to a reading room and café at its peak.
And despite its remarkable design by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, the building is more function than form, as it is set amongst a community of government housing complexes where the population has a 10% illiteracy rate.
See more photos here, and a report by the BBC, here.
Illustration on the properties of numbers from the Sumario Compendioso (1556), the first math text published in the Americas.
The Primeros Libros project is thrilled to announce the incorporation of two new partner institutions: the Biblioteca General Histórica at Spain’s prestigious University of Salamanca, and Mexico’s Biblioteca Francisco de Burgoa at the Beinto Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca. These two new additions bring the total number of Primeros Libros partner institutions to 17.
The Primeros Libros project, of which the University of Texas Libraries and Benson Latin American Collection are founding members, seeks to digitize the first books published in the Americas, focusing initially on works published in Mexico in the 16th century. Each participating member library is entitled to a full set of the digitized exemplars of all partners as part of the project’s innovative preservation and access strategy. The project inventory currently includes 248 exemplars.
The University of Salamanca will bring 11 exemplars to the project, including five titles not previously covered by the project. One of these is the Sumario Compendioso de las Cuentas de Plata y Oro que en los reinos del Perú son necesarias a los mercaderes y a todo género de tratantes. Published in Mexico City in 1556. The Sumario Compendioso is the first non-religous text produced in the Americas and the first scientific text published outside of Europe. It was written primarily for merchants and miners involved in the silver and gold trade out of Mexico and Peru as a practical guide to help them manage their transactions, a sort of early precursor to the calculator. The Sumario contains tables that made it easier for merchants to get numerical values without having to do extensive calculations by hand, but there are also sections on algebra and quadratic equations.
The addition of the University of Salamanca’s digitized version of the Sumario Compendioso to the Primeros Libros project is also important in terms of the repatriation of cultural patrimony to Mexico, one of the key goals of the project, since there are only three known surviving copies of the book in the world, none of which is in Mexico (the Salamanca copy, one at the British Library, and one at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles). All seven Primeros Libros partner institutions in Mexico will now be able to feature this digital copy of the Sumario Compendioso as part of their local collections.
The Biblioteca Burgoa brings nine additional exemplars to the project. One of these, the Institución, modo de rezar y milagros e indulgencias del Rosario de la Virgen María, represents the only copy of this work in the project to date.
On September 19 and 20, the Biblioteca Burgoa will be hosting the annual Primeros Libros Partner Meeting in Oaxaca. The program for the Oaxaca meeting includes presentations by Benson-LLILAS Digital Curation Coordinator Kent Norsworthy and University of Texas at Austin School of Music professor Dr. Lorenzo Candelaria.
I see pictures of people, rising up
pictures of people, falling down
I see pictures of people
they’re standing on their heads, they’re ready
they’re looking out, look out!
they’re watching out, watch out!
“This is the Picture” from Peter Gabriel’s So
The Libraries efforts in the field of human rights continue to flourish.
The Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) has announced a new partnership with human rights video advocacy organization WITNESS to preserve and provide access to raw video footage of human rights abuses and video productions collected from the organization’s partners.
WITNESS was co-founded in 1992 by musician and activist Peter Gabriel with Human Rights First and the Reebok Human Rights Foundation to provide support to grassroots advocacy through the use of video as an integrated tool in human rights campaigns.
As seen by the recent successes and widespread use of video by citizen journalists in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, the growth of civic media to fight injustice will continue apace.
You can see the full press release on the new collaboration here.
And here’s video of the Ted Talk where Gabriel explains the concept of WITNESS:
A 2006 web capture from the Colombian Ministry of Defense.
When libraries began to experiment with ways to migrate and adapt their traditional structures and skills to a technologic age, they came up with some novel approaches to information collection and preservation that are in a process of constant evolution. One such experiment begun in 2005 is still active and paying dividends today.
The Latin American Government Documents Archive (LAGDA) has been collecting, preserving and providing access to ministerial and presidential documents from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. In a process of crawling – the automatic downloading of webpages based on given criteria – the project has captured documents and information that could (and likely would) be lost over time due to neglect, changes in technology, changes in leadership or, in some cases, a willful desire to expunge the historical record.
The project is an extension of a decades-long effort by the Benson Latin American Collection to collect government print reports from Latin American countries, some of which date to the late 19th Century, and complements the work of the Libraries Human Rights Documentation Initiative.
Kent Norsworthy is a data curator and communications specialist splitting time between the Benson and the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies who has been one of the primary drivers of the LAGDA project. He recently provided an interview on his work to “The Signal,” the Library of Congress’s blog on digital preservation, which you can read here.
If you happen to be entering PCL early in the morning and you’re met at the doors by bleary-eyed, disheveled students exiting the building, it’s probably a good bet that it’s again finalstime at UT.
It also means that a combination of long hours poring over texts and notes from a full semester, a deficit of sleep and natural anxiety has created fertile loam for budding artistic expression in the form of doodles, badinage and a few outright masterpieces on the collection of whiteboards that are scattered across the library’s six floors.
Frank Meaker has continued to catalog these transitory works in his daily meanderings about PCL, and now that the end of the semester is nigh, we offer a selection of the spring’s finest examples via the Libraries Flickr page for your viewing enjoyment.
We’re big fans of tech/culture blog bOING bOING here at the Libraries, so we were extra happy to discover that author and blog editor Cory Doctorow has picked up on some of the important work we do.
For its tenth annual salute to Latino culture occurring this evening, “¡A Viva Voz!” aims to wake audiences up with a couple of artist provocateurs.
Nao Bustamante and Ricardo Domínguez create works that draw upon new media and information technology to inform and provoke dialogue on Latino cultural and political issues.
The performance artists will present their work at the Benson Latin American Collection in Sid Richardson Hall, from 7-9 p.m., tonight, Thursday, April 12. The event is free and open to the public.
Ricardo Domínguez is a co-founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater, a group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. His recent projects include the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border and “Drones at Home,” an exhibition on drones, drone economies and art. Domínguez is also an associate professor in the Visual Arts Department at Univeristy of California-San Diego.
The University of Texas Libraries remembers an important scientist, insatiable library user and the source of the above quote — Gerhard Werner.
Gerhard’s first retirement was in 1989 when he left an extensive academic career as a medical doctor, dean, professor and researcher. Gerhard then began his second phase where is spent the next 5 years as Chief of Staff at Veterans Hospital in Pittsburg. His third retirement phase was as Research Scientists with Motorola here in Austin. This is where we all first met Gerhard and as if this wasn’t enough, soon he was also an adjunct professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Until his recent death at 90 he studied complex adaptive systems, nonlinear dynamics and the conceptual foundation of neuroscience.
Gerhard’s wide ranging interests meant that he could regularly be seen in almost all of the libraries on campus at one time or another. His most likely venues were Life Science, Engineering, Physics Math Astronomy and PCL.
Gerhard was known and loved as a heavy libraries user. At the time of his death he had over 21 books checked out and 9 items on hold. What’s even more amazing is that he had requested over the last few years he requested that we purchase over 70 titles. We never denied him. Best of all he came to check them all out. What a feat. He was an intellectually and physically active man—he’d walk to any library on campus, carrying a stack of books and he’d always stop to chat.
His wonderful smile is evidenced in all his photos but particularly in the one taken at his 90th birthday.
Here are a few specific memories of Gerhard:
From Nancy Elder—Life Science Librarian
“Probably my favorite memory is of Gerhard popping in with a stack of books, saying he had to stock up for the weekend. I used to tease him about how much he could carry. I think Christmas was his least favorite time, because it would be “too many days” with no library to go to. He would really stock up before the holidays! The most remarkable thing was all of us thought he was “our” library user. Wherever I went on campus, there he would be: at PCL, at PMA, at Engineering and, seemingly, every day at Life Science. Not a week went by that he didn’t have a request for one of our New Books. The lack of a new book shelf at PCL was one of his longtime frustrations.
When it came to requesting books, Gerhard was unfailingly polite and appreciative. Never demanding, always asking with a please, for my birthday, for Christmas or “just one more request”. Once the book came in, he was always here first thing to check it out, sometimes commenting on the quality at return. His interests were so wide-ranging and his appetite so unquenchable, I could never pigeonhole what he would be interested in. As he said himself “I am insatiable when it comes to books.”
I’ve grown accustomed to Gerhard at my door, just waving or stopping by for a comment, several times a week; always cheerful, just happy to find yet another book to read. We will miss him at the door, at the desk to check out books, sharing tales of his conference travel, always on the track of a new author, new book or new idea.
From Susan Ardis—Engineering Librarian
“Gerhard was a wonderful library user. His impish delight in getting a book from the collections or one that we’d ordered specifically for him will always be remembered. What I liked best about Gerhard is that he always recognized library staff on campus–even if we were “out of our uniform location.” We all knew, just from what he borrowed that he had wide ranging interests and epitomized a lifelong learner who values libraries and books.
His smile, jaunty wave and enjoyment of libraries and books will forever remain with me. I saw him on campus two weeks ago getting a book on hold and he smiled and waved. He was one of a kind; he was one of the best.
From Larayne Dallas—Engineering Librarian
Several years ago he called one morning to apologize because he wouldn’t be able to return an overnight book he had checked out 9am. He wanted to explain why “ I had to take my wife to the emergency room.” My response was “Oh Gerhard—don’t worry about it. Return it when you can.” He was in later that morning to return the book and report all was well with his wife and say “you have to be very tough to be old.”
From Molly White —PMA
Molly shares with us two emails from Gerhard that aptly demonstrate why he was so loved by the Libraries.
I received an email from him requesting a book purchase on a Saturday, and replied that I would rush order it on Monday. Here is his reply:
Working on weekends is not good for your health !!!
This is what the Doctor says –
Thank you,
Gerhard
And here is another email:
Dear Molly,
On account of the libraries being closed today (Sunday), I suffer from withdrawal symptoms…
To alleviate my suffering would you please consider the following:
We do have in PMA the 2000 edition of the book by Didier Sornette, Critical Phenomena in Nature.
There is now a new edition available (2003) of which I currently have a copy on loan through ILL.
The new edition is significantly expanded and has also some new chapters.
Would you consider ordering a copy ? (published by Springer) It would be very helpful.
Thank You
Gerhard
Susan Ardis is Head Librarian at the McKinney Engineering Library.
The President’s Task Force on Undergraduate Graduation Rates released its report yesterday, and amongst the recommendations, the Libraries found some happy news in an included student satisfaction survey:
According to the figure, students report the highest satisfaction levels with the university libraries. Indeed, for both of the library measures, about 95% of students report somewhat satisfied or better for these items.
Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) data (click on image to enlarge).
Documents at the Guatemalan National Police Archive (AHPN). Photo courtesy Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, Guatemala.
University of Texas Libraries Director Fred Heath traveled to Guatemala in December 2011 to participate in the launch of a joint project between the Guatemalan National Police Archive (AHPN) and The University of Texas at Austin. Together, AHPN and the Libraries would provide public access via the web to records of human rights violations by government agents that were discovered in a military munitions dump in 2004.
This is Dr. Heath’s travelogue of his trip.
Our flight to Guatemala City, 5,000 feet up in the Central American highlands took two and a half hours. Our destination was the National Police Archives, where on Friday we would celebrate with our colleagues, the recent opening of the AHPN website. I had yet to write my brief remarks.
In the cramped rear coach seat of the Boeing 737, I held my laptop in my lap, with the screen tilted slightly forward to accommodate the encroaching seatback of the traveler in front of me, and edited my three-minute talk. I was working from the draft I delivered the week before, when we first opened the web site of the Guatemalan National Police Archive.
Our next day — Friday, December 9 — would be International Human Rights Day, and AHPN director Gustavo Meoño had shrewdly decided to reciprocate the previous week’s events with a ceremony in Guatemala City celebrating the partnership between AHPN, administratively housed within the Ministry of Culture, and the University of Texas.
At 35,000 feet, I was not sure what to expect. I did know that Christian Kelleher (program coordinator for the Human Rights Documentation Initiative), Karen Engle (director of the Rapaport Center for Human Rights and Justice) and Daniel Brinks (professor and co-director of Rapaport) would all address the audience at AHPN, projected to be some 200 in number, but I knew little about the attendees. I also knew that all three of my colleagues would deliver their remarks in Spanish; so I was determined to keep my Anglo remarks brief. As I wrote, I wanted to answer the question of why democracies elect to archive and preserve even the dark chapters of their histories, rather than deny or erase them. I chose to use the example of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library & Museum, whose holdings allow researchers to address the issues of the transfer of presidential power in the aftermath of the assassination of John Kennedy, to study an epochal period in our own tumultuous civil rights movement, and to inquire into the dark chapter that was the war in Vietnam. My hope was that in my brief remarks I could remind our Guatemalan audience that in a democracy it is necessary to study all parts of our past, in order to learn from our accomplishments, and avoid the recurrences of our missteps. Continue reading The Libraries Afield: Launching the Guatemalan National Police Archives Website→
