Cool@Hoole

Have you booked your session this spring?

Posted on February 2, 2015 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen, Pedagogy Series | Tagged | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

We’re one month into the spring semester, but requests are still coming in for sessions in the Division of Special Collections.

The information below is no longer accurate, so links to reference documents and other web content have been removed.

If you’d like to bring your class to special collections, contact Kate Matheny (kgmatheny@ua.edu). Similar information about the purpose of archives instruction can be found on the instructors page of the Hoole Library research guide.

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If you’d like to bring your class to special collections, please contact Amy Chen at ahchen [at] ua.edu.

Before you email, make sure to do the following:

1. Look over the following checklist to assess your instructional needs in greater detail. Or, view the slideshow Amy made on this topic on Slideshare.

2. Write down a few options for dates and times that will work for your class to visit. We host up to 50 sessions a semester, so more options allow us to fit our schedule to yours. We prefer at least a few weeks notice in order to prepare for your visit. Ideally, we’d hear from you prior to the start of the semester.

3. Fill out the Instruction-PullList-Template so Amy knows what you might like to have your students view. She’s willing to help guide you to collections that might fit your needs best, but it’s better if you look at and note the available options first. Click through Amy’s presentation introducing special collections and explaining how to find items at UA if you haven’t tried to find materials on your own before. (Hint: you can post this powerpoint to your class website/Blackboard to help prepare your students too!)

4. Suggest a few dates and times for a consultation with Amy to discuss your class. A consultation helps to ensure your visit goes according to plan and meets best practices in pedagogy. We will review your checklist and pull list at this time.

Need help? Feel free to ask Amy any questions you have regarding using primary sources in your email or during your consultation.

You may also want to check out the following resources:

  • TeachArchives.org: This site is the best for teaching with special collections sources within an undergraduate curricula. It contains articles on primary source pedagogy and example assignments, many of which could be easily adapted to fit the resources available here at UA.
  • Library of Congress: The Library of Congress has many resources to help teachers integrate primary sources into their classwork. For example, read “Using Primary Sources” or browse through their available Teacher’s Guides. You could practice by applying their guide to Sheet Music to ask questions about the cover featured on this blog post!
  • Digital Public Library of America: DPLA does not have specific teaching resources, but it’s a great aggregation of digitized collections throughout the United States and their website offers apps to help visualize the contents of their collections.
  • Prentice Hall: While aimed at high schoolers, this site steps you through the way primary sources can also be taught to undergraduate students. Key themes highlighted here are to select just a few items to discuss in depth and to match your items to the objectives of your class topic.
  • Interacting with History: This book was published by the American Library Association and can be helpful to imagine how working with original materials can enliven the classroom and enrich your pedagogy. Find it under the call number: Gorgas E175.8.I57 2014.

Tracing your Ancestry

Posted on January 26, 2015 by | Posted in: Geneology, Mary Bess Paluzzi | 1 Comment

By: Mary Bess Paluzzi, Associate Dean of Special Collections

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Letter from Anna M O’Brien to Brother John (1929) about recent interest in ancestry

There is a resurgence of interest in family history because of Public Broadcasting Service’s “Finding Your Roots” and The Learning Channel’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” — not to mention the frequency of ads from Ancestry.com and our current exhibition, Artifacts from Ancestry, which documents the family stories of Dr. Lauren Cardon’s English 103 students using materials found in our special collections. After the holidays, you may be interested in learning more about your own family genealogy. Our Associate Dean of Special Collections, Mary Bess Paluzzi, offers these simple steps to help you begin building your family history.

  • Begin by collecting facts in your home from Bibles, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, certificates, etc.
  • The National Archives is an excellent site for family history research suggestions and resources.
  • Starting with yourself, collect names, dates and places for birth, marriage and death for each individual in your family (parents, children, siblings, etc.).
  • Genealogy Search is a link to free family tree forms. The use of family tree forms not only helps organize the facts, but it is a quick view of missing facts that need further research.
  • Genealogy Software Review rates the top ten genealogical computer software packages available to help organize your information.
  • The first source to check outside your home is your oldest relative or the family member who collects newspaper clippings (births, wedding, military service and obits), the stories, family Bible, photographs, letters, etc., and knows where family members are buried.
  • Documents must be located to prove each fact that you collect. Alabama birth and death records were collected since 1908 and are available at county public health offices. Marriages are recorded in the county probate office where the license was issued.
  • A federal census was taken every 10 years since 1790. From 1850-1940, the information was arranged by state, by county and, finally, by individual household, including names of each person living in a house, their age and the state/country of their birth. Additional information was collected in later censuses.
  • Transcriptions of many public records (marriages, deeds, wills, etc.) are available in the state archives, public and university libraries and online.
  • The commercial site Ancestry.com is but one of many paid subscription services that offer online access to public records. Many libraries offer free access to Ancestry.
  • Selective U.S. military records are available online through Ancestry.com and Fold3.com.

As Paluzzi notes, your search will last a lifetime, and, through it, you will extend your family relationships far beyond your wildest imagination. The search will provide hours of intense concentration, pleasant companionship and haunting frustrations. You will work intensely for weeks, months, years and put it aside to be picked up again in the future. Many hours of exciting studies await you.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) 2013-2014

Posted on January 21, 2015 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Research | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Did you know the Acumen is the home for all dissertations and theses produced at the University of Alabama since 2009?

Here’s a survey of some of the interesting questions UA students asked with their research in 2013 and 2014, representing 18 different degree programs!

Media

Education

  • Are there similarities in the teaching styles of African Americans at church and in a regular classroom setting? (Dissertation, Curriculum and Instruction)
  • What kind of authority does the NCAA have over student athletes? (Dissertation, Educational Leadership, Policy, and Technology Studies)
  • Are teachers getting enough training in LGBT issues? (Disseration, Education)

Arts

  • What role has the heroic tenor voice part played in popular opera theater? (Dissertation, Music)
  • How has Shakespeare been appropriated by modern romance novels? (Dissertation, English)
  • In what ways did landscape painter John Everett Millais influence the Pre-Raphaelite movement? (Thesis, Art History)

Culture

  • Does positive attention from fathers influence risky teen behavior? (Thesis, Human Development and Family Studies)
  • How has racial stratification arisen in the U.S. Latino community? (Dissertation, Political Science)
  • Can reading familiar texts help students learn a foreign language more easily? (Dissertation, in Spanish, Modern Languages)

Science and Medicine

  • How is tourist activity affecting the mangrove forests of Belize’s Ambergris Caye? (Thesis, Geography)
  • Is chromium really the essential element? (Dissertation, Chemistry)
  • Does gender make any difference in child health in Tanzania? (Thesis, Anthropology)

Engineering and Technology

  • How do you make liquid rockets work better? (Thesis, Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics)
  • What will future power grids look like? (Dissertation, Electrical and Computer Engineering)
  • How can a construction company better estimate the cost of materials? (Thesis, Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering)

Want to find more student projects like this? Go to Acumen and, before you type in your search query, use the dropdown menu on the search bar to select Research.

Remembering MLK

Posted on January 19, 2015 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen | Tagged , | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

Last year, on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Cool@Hoole profiled a signed first edition of Dr. King’s book, Strength to Love (1963). As Strength to Love is from the Williams Collection in the Gorgas Library, this year we thought we’d profile a few of the material types related to the civil rights leader that can be found in Hoole in Mary Harmon Bryant Hall. This way, we can celebrate the achievements and memory of Dr. King while also highlighting the diversity of materials we have on King and the importance of visiting both branches of the Division of Special Collections when you conduct your research.

This photograph, which can be found online on Acumen as well as in the physical collections of Hoole, depicts a march held in Woods Quad in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Hoole holds a wide variety of children’s and juvenile literature. June Behrens’s Martin Luther King, Jr: The Story of a Dream (Wade Hall PS3552.E415 M3 1979) and Kathie Billingslea Smith’s Martin Luther King, Jr. (Alabama E185.97.K5 S575 1987) begin to show how King’s life and work was described in writing for children in the decades following his assassination.

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Hoole also contains a sizable amount of musical scores. One notable item related to King is from “Realizing the Dream,” the Tenth Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Concert held on January 17, 1999. A pamphlet from the concert is included alongside a copy of “The Black Warrior,” a score by Gunther Schuller (Alabama M2000.S387 B5 1989x).

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Come tag our photos!

Posted on January 13, 2015 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Acumen, Delivery Methodology | Tagged | 1 Comment

We’re proud to announce that Acumen now has integrated tagging functionality. But what the heck does that mean?

Let’s say you’re looking at an item in Acumen and you think: How in the world would someone interested in X find this item if the information with it doesn’t mention X? 

Rather than lament the incompleteness of the item description, you can instead input your own descriptive words and phrases in the tagging pane. They will be added to the record for that item — which means you can now search on those words or phrases and get that item as a result. You’ll be helping fellow researchers identify things more easily!

Tagging is generally an addition to existing data. Sometimes the person originally describing the item didn’t know exactly what or who they were looking at, or they just don’t know what you know. Where there just isn’t very much data or maybe any, tagging descriptions are even more important.

Let’s look at some examples:

What’s happening here? The information with the photo just says, View of workers constructing a building at a Woodward Iron Company site.

construction photo

If you know something about construction, you might be able to give a more specific description.

Who are these folks? Right now, all we know is that former UA President Joab Thomas is on the left.

dance photo

If you were at UA during the early 1980s — especially if you were at the Sesquicentennial Ball — you might be able to identify the others.

If you’re looking for images of the Statue of Liberty, you wouldn’t find this item because we don’t create descriptions for sheet music cover art. But you would if someone tagged it “statue of liberty.”

sheet music cover, Liberty

Ditto this illustration of the Eiffel Tower:

sheet music cover, You'll Find Old Dixieland in France

How does tagging work?

  1. Click the tag icon, found to the right of the main viewer window
  2. Type your descriptive tags into the entry box, separating tags with commas
    • Example: spring fling, streamers, dance floor
  3. Click on the blue ‘Add Tags’ button

When you’re done, the screen will look like this, with your newly added tag at the top of the pane, in blue:

example of use of tagging pane in Acumen

That tag in blue is clickable, leading you to a results page with any other items that might’ve been tagged the same way.

Tags show up in the results page in the right-hand column, as in this example.

acumen-tagging-results

If you want to search on a particular user tag, you can also simply type tag:[keyword] into the search box.

So next time you look at an item in Acumen and think, There’s something missing, add it as a user tag!

Likenesses Within the Reach of All

Posted on January 12, 2015 by | Posted in: A.S. Williams III Collection, Carte De Visite, Chris Sawula | Leave a comment

By: Chistopher Sawula, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

In early December, the A.S. Williams III Americana Collection launched Likenesses Within the Reach of All, a digital project centered on the cartes-de-visite within the archive’s extensive holdings. The project, initiated by former CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow Christa Vogelius and completed by her successor, Christopher Sawula, features over 3,330 photographs from the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Using maps, databases, and visualizations, Likenesses provides access to a unique and important part of southern photographic history.

Cartes-de-visite, or visiting cards, were invented in Europe in the mid-1850s and consisted of a small print mounted on card stock about the size of a baseball card. Less expensive than earlier forms of photography, photographers could easily produce multiple copies of a carte-de-visite, deliver them quickly to their customers, and in the process expand the capabilities of their businesses. Once printed, cartes-de-visite could be given out to friends and family as a momentos during visits, holidays, or social events. As photographers grew more adept at the techniques necessary to produce visiting cards and the cost of materials dropped, the format spread widely throughout the South and could be purchased by virtually all classes of people. The Williams Collection’s set of cartes-de-visite cover virtually the entire span of the format’s popularity and feature examples from the 1850s to 1900.

Likenesses Within the Reach of All allows researchers and the general public to explore the cartes-de-visite through a number of ways. The site’s central map shows the locations of the collection’s photographers, studios, and galleries across the United States. By clicking on these locations, researchers are given information about the photographs taken at these locations and can access the images directly through The University of Alabama’s digital archive explore, Acumen. Users can also zoom into specific cities like New Orleans, Baltimore, and Louisville to see where competing studios and galleries were located and how they fit into the commercial urban landscape. Finally, the central map can be filtered by specific photographers to show how individuals often needed to operate in several different cities and towns during their course of their career.

The project also includes several examples of data visualization that showcase some of the major trends present within the collection. Researchers can see the collection broken down by state, the most common photographers and studios, and the chronological rise and fall of cartes-de-visite as a format. These visualizations and accompanying essays explain both the advantages of cartes-de-visite as a body of research as well as their limitations. These maps and charts, as well as the site’s central map, grew out of the collection’s metadata, which can also be accessed directly on the site. By placing these photographs and accompanying data in the hands of researchers, Likenesses Within the Reach of All hopes to generate interest in the A.S. Williams III Americana Collection and showcase the digitization efforts underway in Special Collections and other divisions at The University of Alabama.

Support Tide For Tusks

Posted on January 6, 2015 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen, Blog News, UA Athletics, UA History, University Archives | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

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From tidefortusks.org

The University of Alabama recently created the organization Tide for Tusks to “raise awareness of the threat of extinction for the African Elephant due to ivory poachers.”

You can support their campaign by donating, following the activity of Tide for Tusks through either their Facebook group or their Twitter feed @tidefortusks, and by tweeting or Instagramming messages using the hashtag #savetheelephants.

To add our voice to this initiative, we’d like to use our blog space this week to share a few articles on the African elephant as well as show some photographs from the University Archives demonstrating how important the elephant is to our community.

As the largest university in the United States with the elephant as a mascot, we all must contribute to ensure the continued life of this majestic species.

Read more about the threat to elephant populations:

2014 Cool@Hoole Year in Review

Posted on December 29, 2014 by | Posted in: A.S. Williams III Collection, Allyson Holliday, Amy Hildreth Chen, Annemarie Lisko, April Burnett, Christa Vogelius, Donnelly Walton, Emily Tarvin, Isabela Morales, Kevin Ray, Laci Thompson, Lauren Cardon, Martha Bace, Mary Haney, Samm Banks, Stacy Morgan | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

2014 was the first calendar year I edited Cool@Hoole! Take a moment to revisit my favorite post from each month this year if you haven’t been following us for very long or if you’d like to refresh your memory of some of our greatest hits. Don’t forget to follow our Facebook and Twitter feeds to see our hashtag posts Monday through Friday of every week — including over winter break when students and Hooligans alike are at home on holiday. Take care and we’ll see you back on January 5 for our first post of the New Year.

Editor’s Picks for 2014

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Joyce Lamont

January: “Bobby Allison of the Alabama Gang: Through Triumph and Tragedy,” by Allyson Holliday

February: “Interview with Stephen Rowe, author of From a Love of History,” by Christa Vogelius [three part series]

March: “Remembering Joyce Lamont,” by the Division of Special Collections [three part series]

April: “New Possibilities for Special Collections in Digital Scholarship,” by Emma Wilson and Christa Vogelius

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The Anxiety Alphabet, Book Arts Collection N7433.4.M364 A82 1998b

May: “Hoole Book Arts goes on the road,” by Amy Chen

June: “CSS Alabama,” by Kevin Ray [three part series]

July: “Interview with Mary Haney, Special Collections graduate assistant,” by Mary Haney

August: “Glimpses of the Great War: Abroad and at Home,” by Martha Bace [three part series]

September: “Interview with Isabela Morales,” by Isabela Morales [three part series]

October: “Kevin Ray promoted to Institutional Analyst” and “April Burnett becomes a Certified Archivist,” by Donnelly Walton

November: “Pedagogy Series 3: American Folklore,” by Stacy Morgan and students Emily Tarvin, Samm Banks, and Laci Thompson [four part series]

December: “Pedagogy Series 4: English 103’s Artifacts from Ancestry,” by Lauren Cardon, Amy Chen, and student Annemarie Lisko [five part series]

Time hop with Christmas music

Posted on December 22, 2014 by | Posted in: Allyson Holliday, Audio Visual Collections, Wade Hall Collection | Tagged | Leave a comment

By: Allyson Holliday, Complex Copy-Cataloger

The W.S. Hoole Library has many different musical formats in its sound recordings collections. Considering that most freshman students at the University of Alabama were born around 1996 and don’t remember life before compact discs – how about a hop down memory lane through Christmas music featured on LPs, eight tracks, cassettes, and CDs? Plus– check out those hair styles!

recorder

Our LP player and Nat King Cole

Tucked away in the back corner of the reading room, Hoole has an audio-visual room including record, eight track, cassette, and CD players for the use of listening to our materials.

The record player is streaming the smooth sounds of Alabama’s own, Nat King Cole. He introduced “The Christmas Song” (Merry Christmas to You) in 1946 and it quickly emerged as one of America’s favorite Christmas songs of all time. This LP album cover is from 1963.

As technology advanced,  LP records were replaced with eight track tapes. Our funky yellow eight track tape player was donated by Wade Hall. Here we have a couple of treasures from 1964 – Merry Christmas by Brenda Lee, which features the immensely successful “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and Elvis Sings Songs of Christmas with the ever popular “Blue Christmas.”

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Elvis, Elvis Sings Songs of Christmas and Brenda Lee, Merry Christmas, both from Wade Hall’s Eight Track Collection (PM.001)

Then it was out with the eight track tapes and in with the cassette tapes through the 1980s and early 1990s. But, by the mid-1990s, CDs began to end the reign of cassette tapes. Many old recordings were digitally re-mastered and released with the crystal clear sound of compact disc technology. For the traditionalists, we’ve got What a Wonderful Christmas by Louis Armstrong & Friends or Silver Bells of Christmas with Bing Crosby & Rosemary Clooney.

louie and bing

Louis Armstrong and Friends, What a wonderful Christmas, Wade Hall Sound Recording Collection, CDWH 16 and Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, Christmas Classics, Wade Hall Sound Recording Collection, CDWH 30

We even have the boy band craze of the late 1990s-early 2000s covered with N Sync’s Home for Christmas:

So, whatever your musical tastes or preferred format may be, Hoole Library has quite a selection to choose from. And wow – check out that those hairstyles through the years!

Happy Holidays from Hoole Library!

New hashtag initiative on Facebook and Twitter

Posted on December 15, 2014 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen, Ashley Bond, UA Athletics | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

If you follow Cool@Hoole’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, you may have noticed a new flurry of activity. Ashley Bond, a graduate student from the School of Library and Information Studies currently working in outreach within the Division of Special Collections, designed a hashtag (#) initiative to help spread awareness about our collections to a wider audience both within and outside the University of Alabama.

Side note: Not sure what a hashtag is or what it does? Learn more by watching this video by Boot Camp Digital. 

Each day during the workweek, an item from the Division of Special Collections will be paired with a common hashtag. For example, a photograph of a historic football game program might be paired with #footballfriday to raise awareness about the presence of the University Archives within Hoole Library.

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Check out @coolathoole on Twitter

Hashtags like this are a fun way to remember UA’s history. After all, winning football championships are just another one of our traditions here at the Capstone!

Please feel free to suggest hashtags you’d like us to use in the the future by replying here or talking to us over on Facebook or Twitter. If you haven’t yet, make sure to subscribe to our Twitter and Facebook feeds to catch all the fun.