News from @umnlib

Ryan Mattke, Head of the Borchert Map Library, accepted the Governor's Award on October 4 for the Minnesota Historical Aerial Photographs Online website, which includes thousands of digital copies of historical aerial photographs, mostly from between the 1920s and the 1990s, covering all 87 counties in Minnesota.

Bridget McKenna participated in the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Freshman Research & Creative Scholars Program. Through this program, McKenna learned the present-day value of libraries, while she was matched with the curators of the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine.

A Research Sprints session brings teams of researchers and librarians together to work intensely and collaboratively over a period of several days. The program has found a perfect home in the Wilson Research Collaboration Studio, which opened its doors for the first time last year.

Although we didn’t have a fancy car or float, over 20 staff, family, and friends from the University Libraries had a great time being part of the University of Minnesota 2018 Homecoming Parade. And neither the temperature — 40 degrees at the beginning of the parade — nor the drizzle dampened anyone’s enthusiasm.

On the afternoon of October 12, 1918 in northeastern Minnesota, several forest fires killed over 450 people and decimated 2,000 square miles of forests, homesteads, and townships. The University of Minnesota Forest Experiment Station, known today as the Cloquet Forestry Center, survived the fire. The Center’s archival collection contains photographs that document the aftermath of the fires in the region.

The process of discovery occurs constantly in the Wallin Center, a new space within the Elmer L. Andersen Library. The center builds upon the Andersen Library’s legacy to be a window onto the world through its collections — available and accessible to all.

We needed to find the perfect name for our new female skeleton - AND WE DID!!! We asked you to select her name by voting on your favorite option. Over 2,455 votes came in and the winner is...

This episode features a woman who achieved many notable firsts, a political leader who used her voice to better her community, implement and sustain diplomacy, and develop her own potentiality: Eugenie Anderson, the first woman to be named a United States Ambassador. A profile of Eugenie’s personal and professional life was featured on KUOM on “Minnesota Honor Roll,” a program of The Minnesota School of the Air - a series of educational radio programs designed for school-age children to listen to in the classroom.

University of Minnesota Libraries celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of Wilson Library on October 1, 2018.

A preview of Calling to Question: 150 of Liberal Education at the University of Minnesota (opening March 4, 2019) is currently on display in the Katherine E. Nash Gallery. This preview is composed of two display cases within On Purpose: Portrait of the Liberal Arts. The preview compliments the style of the portrait exhibit by showcasing retrospective portraits of the College of Liberal Arts alongside the personal accounts of the people involved in these historical snapshots.

September 13 was a busy day for the Libraries. It was one more day in a week filled with tours of library spaces. As a partner with the College of Liberal Arts' First-Year Experience program, the Libraries hosted nearly a thousand students over 50 tours that week alone — helping CLA students complete their course, CLA 1001. "We want to get students into our spaces so they see what's available to them," said Kate Peterson, Undergraduate Services Librarian for the Libraries. "But we also take the opportunity to let these first-year students know about our online resources and other library tools and services that can help them meet their academic goals."

Plans for a library on the West Bank campus had been discussed and debated for years, but financial and other support for a new library finally came together in June 1965. O. Meredith Wilson Library opened to the campus community on September 23, 1968.

Join us at an open house in Wilson Library Monday, October 1, 2 to 4 p.m., to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of Wilson Library. We’ll have games, snacks, button making, and a fun look back in time to the year it all started: 1968. A brief program will begin at 2:45 p.m.

As part of Hispanic Heritage Month — which runs from September 15 through October 15 each year — we are highlighting the University of Minnesota's Department of Chicano Studies. The department was born in 1971, following a 1970 demonstration by Hispanic students, who demanded its creation so that courses on history and culture from a Chicano world view would be taught. 

The West Bank we know today on the Twin Cities campus looked quite different five decades ago. Why, in the 1960s, did the University expand (or to use the preferred term at the time – stretch) to the West Bank of the Mississippi River? To answer that question, the story begins in the 1940s.