Ozarks to the Argonne Forest

Come see the stuff of the history at the Ross Pendergraft Library this Thursday, September 28th, at 7:00 P.M. as we welcome Lee Fields for a presentation entitled “Ozarks to the Argonne Forest”.  The event will be held in room 300B.  Fields, a retired master sergeant in the U.S. Army, will discuss and display his large collection of World War I memorabilia passed down from his father.  His presentation will also include a larger discussion of the hometown heroes who fought World War I in the Arkansas Division.

Soldier's uniform

Exhibit of various ww1 artifacts

The talk is part of the ongoing World War I Centennial series at the Library, which will continue throughout the month of October and November.  The Ross Pendergraft Library recently hosted a series of information panels on the Great War as part a traveling exhibit funded by a grant through the Library of America.  Though this exhibit has moved on, another one focused on the role Arkansas played in the war will take its place on the first floor of the library from Sept. 28th – Oct. 4th.

A panel exhibit on The Great War : Arkansas in World War I

The new information panels, provided by the Arkansas State Archives, will illustrate how the war impacted the people and the economy of our own backyard.  The exhibit will consist of 12 panels that showcase the state archives’ holdings, including original documents, photographs, posters, maps, and other historical objects that illustrate the lives of Arkansans over 100 years ago.  This exhibit is funded in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council, the Department of Arkansas Heritage and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Book cover for To Can the KaiserInterested in reading up on the role Arkansas played during World War I?  Check out To Can the Kaiser: Arkansas and the Great War.  Written by Mike Polston and Guy Lancaster, this book covers the changes wrought by the global conflict in the natural state.  It includes information about the 70,000 Arkansans serving as soldiers, as well as their training at Camp Pike and Eberts Field.  It also explores the role of civilians and women, wartime propaganda, and the economic boon to the state provided by the demand for raw materials like cotton, mineral, and timber resources.  The book is available for check-out by any student, faculty, or staff.

 

Join us Thursday for a glimpse into history through the helmets, uniforms, bayonets, and the other things they carried as Arkansans marched off to the Great War.  The presentation is free and open to the public.  For more information, contact Luke Heffley at lheffley@atu.edu or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Dardanelle and the Bottoms

book jacket image featuring two crows on a lifeless tree branch

Learn about local history with a special presentation at the Ross Pendergraft Library on Monday, September 11th, as we welcome Dr. Diane Gleason to discuss her latest book, Dardanelle and the Bottoms: Environment, Agriculture, and Economy in an Arkansas River Community, 1819-1970.  Join us at 7:00 PM in Room 300B of the Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center for this opportunity to explore the fascinating history of our own backyard.

Dr. Gleason is a recently retired associate professor of history from Arkansas Tech, who ended a forty-year teaching career last May in order to devote time to historical research and writing.  While at Tech, she created and taught the Southern Women’s History course, reintroduced and reinvigorated several defunct courses such as American Labor History and American Economic History, and taught a broad spectrum of other history classes.

She has written several entries in the Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Arkansas Biography, and Writing Women’s History: A Tribute to Anne Firor Scott.  She co-authored Warren G. Harding, Harbinger of Normalcy with Dr. H. Micheal Tarver.

Dardanelle and the Bottoms describes the interdependence between the rural farming community known as the Dardanelle Bottoms and the nearby town of Dardanelle.  The book explores the history of that relationship beginning in the early 1800’s through the 1940’s and the economic upheaval brought about by changes in farming, particularly in the cotton industry.  Dr. Gleason examines the complex rural/town dichotomy revealing and analyzing key components of each area, including aspects of race, education, the cotton economy and its demise, the devastation of floods and droughts, leisure, crime, and the impact of the Great Depression.

This event is free and open to the public.  Following the presentation, there will be a question and answer period and a book signing, with copies of the book available for purchase.  For more information, contact Luke Heffley at (479) 964-0546 or lheffley@atu.edu.

World War I and Arkansas

Mark your calendars this week for a special presentation as part of the World War I centennial exhibit.  On Thursday, Sept. 7th, Dr. Buck Foster from the Arkansas Department of Heritage will give a presentation entitled, “World War I and Arkansas.”  Join us at 7:00 P.M.  in the Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center, room 300 south, for this special program in Arkansas and world history.  The entire community is invited.

Additionally, the first floor of the library has been dedicated to a traveling exhibition featuring panels that illustrate the historic events of 100 years ago.  The program is funded by a grant through the Library of America in support of educational programming about World War I.  Arkansas Tech University received the only such grant for the entire state of Arkansas.  The panels will be available here until Sept. 25th.

Display panels for the World War One exhibit

Display panels for the WW1 exhibit

In addition to the panels, a local collector, Lee Fields, has loaned his collection of World War I memorabilia for our display cases, including weapons, books, bayonets, and even the iconic dough-boy helmet worn by U.S. soldiers during the war.

Display case featuring a WW1 uniform and hat.Display case featuring WWI artifacts

Stay tuned for future events throughout the month of September, October, and November to celebrate the Centennial of World War 1.  You can read the full schedule here or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.  For more information about the World War I speakers and events, contact Luke Heffley at (479) 964-0546 or lheffley@atu.edu

Read or Be Read

The Ross Pendergraft Library is now accepting volunteers to be a book for the 2016 Human Library on November 1st & 2nd.  Volunteers will be a living, breathing ‘book’, telling their personal stories about facing prejudice, discrimination, disability, and other hardships beyond their control to interested readers in a one-on-one setting.  The Human Library is an international movement that allows readers to ‘check-out’ a human book for a 30 minute conversation.  The readers listen to the personal stories and have time to ask questions.

The program is designed to promote understanding and compassion within a diverse community and to help break down barriers to communication.  As a book, you will have an opportunity to tell someone about the ways in which you have been stereotyped or misunderstood based on your race, sexual orientation, religion, profession, country of origin, gender, veteran status, or more.  Some of the books we have signed up so far include Environmental Activist, Homeschool Mom, and Drug Addict.

The goal is to have meaningful conversations about difficult subjects in a safe, one-on-one setting.  If you are interested in signing up to be a book, use our volunteer form: http://libguides.atu.edu/humanlibrary/bookform

For more questions about the program, contact Sherry Tinerella at stinerella@atu.edu or call 479-964-0571.    More information, including program details and instructions for coordinating classroom visits, will be available as the event date draws near.

‘Freedom Riders’ Screening

Please join us Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center as we present the documentary film Freedom Riders, an event that is free and open to the public. This film is part of the series Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle, in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The event will take place in room 300B.

In addition to the screening, Arkansas Tech alum Barbara Lackey, a 1960 graduate of Horace Mann High School in Little Rock, will share her experiences on life in the natural state during the civil rights movement and on her experience as a student at ATU.

For more information, please contact us at askalibrarian@atu.edu or call us at 479-964-0569. You may also contact Luke Heffley at 479- 964-0546.

History of Headstones

Join us  this Tuesday night, April 5th,  at 7:00 P.M. in room 300B of the Ross Pendergraft Library & Technology Center for a special presentation on the history of cemetery headstones.  Guest speaker, Holly Hope from the Department of Arkansas Heritage, will share her extensive knowledge of cemeteries and headstone symbolism found on graves from around the state.  Learn all about graveyard symbols like lambs, broken branches, clasping hands, and weeping angels this Tuesday night at the library.  This event, presented by the Ross Pendergraft Library and The Department of Arkansas Heritage, is free and open to the public.

Mt. Holly Cemetery, from Arkansas Historic Preservation Program website

Find It Today

The Library is hosting a small celebration of our new discovery tool today from 11:00-2:00, with special instruction sessions occurring each half hour in RPL 300 North.  Join us for cookies, punch, and a little introduction to our new search tool, Find It, now featured on our homepage: http://library.atu.edu/

find it

Use Find It to search scholarly articles, books, ebooks, and DVDs in one place.  Narrow search results with left-hand filters by type, location, full-text, and more.  This interface replaces our library catalog, and indexes all of our Proquest database content, most of our Ebsco content, Web of Science, Jstor, and more.  Our native database interfaces are still available on our A-Z Databases page, but to get quick results in one search, give Find It a try.  We believe this will be a much simpler tool for beginners to find academic resources, but it will also be a more convenient tool for the research pros to quickly find and filter the results they need.

star wars

The Find It tool also includes access to your library account, so you can check on what materials you have currently checked-out, items on hold, or if you have any messages from the Library.  Sign-in with your Tech Username and Password to save searches or add items to an ‘eshelf’ for later browsing and viewing.  If you are off-campus, you will need to sign-in to view search results from Ebsco or Web of Science, since these databases require authentication, even for searching.  If you are on-campus, however, you will automatically see these results.

Drop by today at 11, 11:30, or every thirty minutes until the last session at 1:30 to learn a little more about the interface (or to simply grab some cookies in the library lobby).   There will also be PRIZES at the demos!  Come for the cookies, punch, and prizes–stay for the knowledge bombs.

 

Atom Age Apocalypse

If living in close proximity to a nuclear power plant has made you paranoid of atomic, mutated arthropods, you won’t want to miss Mike Bogue’s presentation entitled, “Atom Age Apocalypse: Mutants, Monsters, and Mushroom Clouds.”

The presentation will be on November 12th, in Ross Pendergraft Library, Room 300 at 7:00 P.M.

Picture of Them! DVD cover

Mike, an alumnus of Arkansas Tech University, will present a tribute to the 1950’s science fiction movies that inspired the works of such film-making giants as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Mike worked on the Russellville Campus of Arkansas Tech University from 1993 to 2011, and is currently Coordinator of Student Success on the Ozark Campus.  His work has appeared in Scary Monsters Magazine, G-FAN, Castle of Frankenstein, Wonder, Space & Time, The Lookout, and Daikaiju! 3: Giant Monsters vs. the World.  He lead a speaker’s panel at the 2014 national G-Fest (Godzilla) convention in Chicago, IL.  He also recently published a book titled Atomic Drive-In (also available at the Library).

If you want to start preparing for the lecture (or the apocalypse / giant reptile attack), the Ross Pendergraft Library has a selection of 1950’s science fiction movies waiting to grab you:

picture of The Blob's DVD cover

Or, if you want to view in bulk, the Sci-Fi Classics collection features 50 classic, science fiction movies on 12 discs.  Remember, all our DVDs have relocated to the first floor for easier browsing.

For more information about the presentation or our film collection, contact the atomic librarians from outer space at askalibrarian@atu.edu or 479-964-0569.

Human Library

From November 3rd to November 5th, the Ross Pendergraft Library, in cooperation with the Department of Diversity & Inclusion, will host three page-turning presentations to introduce the Arkansas Tech community to our new Human Library program.

  • November 3rd: “Four Blacks at Tech” by Barbara Lackey
  • November 4th: “My Disability Doesn’t Define My Ability” by Bshaer Alharazi
  • November 5th: “Zack, the Deaf Trans” by Zack Stone

All presentations will begin at 10:00 am in RPL 326.

The Human Library program, now an international movement, allows readers to check out a human “book” at designated times for a 30 minute conversation, including 10 additional minutes for questions.  The books are living, breathing people who have overcome challenges of prejudice, social injustice, stereotypes, or disability.  Readers are encouraged to ask the book questions and have meaningful conversations about difficult subjects like race, gender identification, disability, sexual orientation, or religion.   The ultimate goal is to help people learn about the life and experiences of an individual who may have been stereotyped, misunderstood, or avoided, in an effort to promote greater understanding and compassion in our communities.

Drop by our presentations to learn more about our Human Library, or check out a human book today.  They are available for one-on-one conversations or smaller classes (up to 15 students) to allow for a more casual and safe environment.  Call 479-964-0571 or sign up for a time-slot at the Reference Desk to reserve one of our books.  You can also send us an email at askalibrarian@atu.edu to request a time or ask additional questions about the program.

Become more well-read about life—check out a book from our Human Library today.

human library

Thursday Night Frights

Join us at the Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center this Thursday, October 29th, at 7:00 PM for “Haunted Sites at Arkansas Tech University,” a lecture showcasing spooky stories and folklore surrounding historic buildings on campus.  Our guest speaker, Shelle Stormoe, serves as the Education Outreach Coordinator at the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.  She will not only discuss haunted sites here at Tech, but also other ghost stories from campuses around the state.

The lecture will take place in room 300 South.  For more information, call 479-964-0569 or email us at askalibrarian@atu.edu

rpl1a