Blake was a champion for the education, documentation, and preservation of Texas’ architectural heritage. He was also a pioneer in recognizing the importance of archiving architectural records. The Alexander Architectural Archive grew out of his personal collection and stewardship. The resources he collected continue to play an important role in the restoration of many of Texas’ most important buildings and continue to support the education and scholarship of American architectural history.
To learn more about Blake’s life and legacy, please see:
A note by way of a practical example to all those hungry young campaign staffers working on research (opposition or otherwise) for their respective candidates: libraries are a great resource.
Just ask alumna Laura Seay (PhD, ’09), whose investigation into now-presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s 1971 dissertation (“Belgian Education Policy in the Congo”) from his European history study at Tulane is getting some renewed appraisal.
Seay located the document among the microfiche collections at PCL.
The lesson could well be that while the Congressional record and the Internet may be fine resources, a little legwork in the stacks can result in treasure.
Comic writer Ottaviani’s extended commentary on his subject – nuclear physicist and virtuoso renaissance man Richard Feynman – that kept the crowd alternately laughing and thinking throughout the evening is now up and available for viewing on the university’s Know website, so check it out.
UPDATE: Ottaviani’s “Feynman” talk is now up on the university’s YouTube channel. Start sharing!
Crushing despair and anxiety has once again produced the perfect conditions for spontaneous creativity at PCL as the Fall semester comes to a close.
Frank Meaker has been at work again this year cataloging the random acts of artistic expression on the whiteboards throughout our flagship branch at the university as students nest for extended hours amongst the stacks in preparation for end-of-semester finals and projects.
Note the increase this year in motivational statements and encouragement from authors/artists to their fellow students. Sometimes shared suffering brings out the best in people, though we prefer to think that this is just in line with the character of the Longhorn community.
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.
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.
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 Sherlockand Granada Television’s Sherlock Holmesseries.
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.
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.
Hamilton grand prize winner, "Scripting Jesus" by L. Michael White
The Hamilton Book Author Awards wrapped its incredible fifteenth annual awards ceremony last Wednesday, and Dr. L. Michael White became the first two-time winner of the $10,000 grand prize.
Normally, the subject of books alone is enough for us to spill a few words on the virtual page, but in the case of this year’s presentation, we also had a connection to the proceedings in the form of assistant engineering librarian Larayne Dallas, who happened to serve on the selection committee.
Experimental musician and composer Ellen Fullman brings her Long String Instrument to the Architecture & Planning Library in historic Battle Hall on Thursday (10/20) at 8:30pm to premiere “Tracings,” her newest work and one that used the building as its inspiration.
Fullman began developing the Long String – which has a sound that conjures an ambient/orchestral hybrid – in the 1980’s in her Brooklyn studio, and in the thirty years hence has taken it to locations across the country, including for a performance at the Seaholm Power Plant in March of last year.
Joining Fullman are NMC musicians Brent Fariss (contrabass), Nick Hennies (percussion), Andrew Stoltz (overtone guitar designed by Arnold Dreyblatt) and Travis Weller (playing his custom string instrument “The Owl“).
The performance is free and open to the public. More info here, or RSVP on Facebook.
