Thanks to the creativity of MTSU art students, patrons of the James E. Walker Library now can see the forest for the trees.
To commemorate Earth Day, students of Associate Professor Erin Anfinson’s Drawing II class fashioned a display with paper collected from a single library recycling bin. Their work festoons the windows of the reference area on the first floor.
With the words “Free Printing Has Costs” added to the display, Anfinson’s students hope to drive home the point that library funding spent on printing paper uses up money that could be spent on new technology and other resources.
Visitors to Walker Library used more than 8.3 million sheets of paper last year—the equivalent of nearly 1,000 trees.
The students who participated in the project are Ray Armstrong, Evelyn Burns-Garatoni, Sandi Caves, Sarah Denton, DeMarcus Jackson, Adrienne Johnson, Natsumi Kajisa, Jessica Kanizar, Kellie Melton, Kristine Sharp, Katie Stephens, Jaqulyn Swanson and Nicole Wolowicz.
The display will remain in place through April 27. For more information, contact Kristen Keene at 615-898-5376 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
– Gina K. Logue ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Before the Internet, before television or radio, the U.S. government’s way to assure transparency about its work in the public’s name was to send copies of its documents to specially designated libraries.
The James E. Walker Library is commemorating 100 years of service to the community as one of those libraries. A special display is available for viewing now through April 30.
Since 1813, the Federal Depository Library Program has compiled all types of government information in numerous formats to ensure that the American people have access to everything from rules and regulations to census demographics.
While regional libraries in the program must collect everything the government publishes, Walker Library’s selective status enables it to be choosy about the items it keeps on hand.
“We try to make it fit the needs of the community, the University and the curriculum,” says Beverly Geckle, serials and government documents librarian.
The Walker Library’s federal depository collection includes the Congressional Record, which is the official compendium of House and Senate floor speeches.
It also features more vibrant offerings such as guides to National Park Service trails and a full-color bilingual flow-chart biography of Smokey the Bear—in English on one side of each page and in Spanish on the other side.
From the mundane to the compelling, the documents and other items represent 100 years of communication between a government and its people.Other items chronicle our nation’s history, including a Central Intelligence Agency publication, Penetrating the Iron Curtain: Resolving the Missile Gap with Technology, and the transcript of a conversation between Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin, which can be found in the “Foreign Relations of the United States” series.
“Anyone in the community can use government document materials,” says Geckle. “That’s an important mission of the depository program.”
For more information about the exhibit or the library, contact Kristen Keene at 615-898-5376 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
– Gina K. Logue ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
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The James E. Walker Library has reached an historic milestone with the acquisition of its one-millionth volume, the first book published in Tennessee, in MTSU’s 100th year.
Laws of the State of Tennessee was printed in Knoxville in 1803 by George Roulstone, a native Bostonian who moved his printing press to Tennessee at the urging of William Blount. Blount was governor of the territory south of the Ohio River before Tennessee’s admission to the Union in 1796.
Roulstone initially set up the first printing press in Rogersville, in what would become Tennessee, and began printing the Knoxville Gazette newspaper as well as legal and theological works in 1791.
Laws of the State of Tennessee was printed on “low-quality handmade paper,” according to Dr. Alan Boehm, director of special collections for the library, and was bound with what appears to be pigskin stretched over pressed sheets of paper to form the cover.
Since the title page is not set off from the table of contents and there is little space separating topics on the pages, Boehm concludes that Roulstone “couldn’t afford to waste paper, apparently.”
The Early Tennessee Imprints collection in the Walker Library’s Special Collections includes some 200 books and other print materials produced in Tennessee between 1791 and 1866, the first year after the Civil War.
“Every book is a cultural artifact, and its physical and material properties tell you something about literacy and reading and writing and authorship in that book’s time,” says Boehm.
For more information, contact Kristen Keene at 615-898-5376 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
– Gina K. Logue ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
Bonnie J. Allen, dean of libraries and professor of library science at the University of Montana in Missoula, Mont., will become the new dean of MTSU’s James E. Walker Library around March 1, 2012.
Allen, who has led UM’s libraries since 2006, also is interim director for academic information technology. She will succeed Don Craig, who retired from MTSU after 38 years of service.
“My immediate goal is to get to know MTSU well, to get to know the culture of the institution, which also seems like a family to me,” says Allen, who says she also wants to develop the Walker Library’s learning commons and space for graduate students.
She hails the Walker Library as a “stellar building poised to do the next great thing with technology.”
During the interview process, Allen says, she was “impressed by how positive everyone was about the future and the level of engagement they had in their work. People asked very good questions.”
Allen’s professional accomplishments include membership in the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities’ Accreditation Team for Library Standards and in the Online Computer Library Center Global Council and as a commissioner of the Montana State Library.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in art history and her master’s degree in library and information science from Indiana University. Allen also earned an MBA from Portland State University.
Allen, a native of Bloomington, Ind., will be moving to the Murfreesboro area with her daughter, Quinn Walsdorf, who will receive her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Montana in January 2012.
For more information, contact Kristen Keene at 615-898-5376 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . The Walker Library also has an extensive website at library.mtsu.edu.
– Gina K. Logue ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The James E. Walker Library at MTSU is one of only 20 libraries in the nation selected to host “John Adams: Unbound,” a traveling exhibit that is free, open to the public and on display on the library’s first floor through Friday, Sept. 30.
Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, “John Adams: Unbound” reveals the personal library of the United States’ second president. This remarkable collection of 3,500 books, willed by Adams to the people of Massachusetts, was deposited in the Boston Public Library in 1894.
Photographic reproductions of the annotated volumes reveal the intellectual and political ideas that shaped the thinking of one of America’s founding fathers and a signatory of the Constitution.
Adams’ lifelong love of books is evident in the exhibit, which chronicles his determination to grapple with a variety of viewpoints in each phase of his life—as a boy, a university student, a Boston lawyer, a revolutionary, a diplomat, a president and as a witness to the birth of a new nation.
For more information, contact Kristen Keene at 615-898-5376 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
– Gina K. Logue, Gina.Logue@ mtsu.edu
Have you ever felt lost when people you know talk about social networking, specifically Facebook or Twitter, or when organizations request you follow them on one of these two sites? Or, do you just want to know more or how to protect your privacy and stay safe when using these two popular networking sites?
Linebaugh Public Library is offering a computer class on social networking. The class, Introduction to Social Networking, will cover both Facebook and Twitter. It is scheduled for 6:00pm, Wednesday, November 17th, and is free, no pre-registration required.
Online social networks facilitate connections between people based on shared interests, values, membership in particular groups (i.e., friends, professional colleagues), etc. They make it easier for people to find and communicate with individuals who are in their networks using the Web as the interface.
Social networking is also an effective way to keep in touch with people you know and to track down old classmates, work colleagues and old friends who you might otherwise have lost touch with. Not only is social networking popular amongst teenagers, but it is also a popular amongst all spheres of society and people of all ages.
Come join us on Wednesday, November 17th!
For more information, contact Pete Wood, Instructional Technology Supervisor
at (615) 893-4131, ext 133.
Linebaugh Public Library System card holders now have free access to more than 15,000 public domain ebooks, thanks to R.E.A.D.S., the Regional eBook & Audiobook Download System.
“LPLS is excited that the state library and OverDrive have made access to these classic books available to our patrons,” said Director Rita Shacklett. “These are books that were originally scanned by Project Gutenberg.”
These public domain ebooks are accessible from a special link located on the R.E.A.D.S. homepage. Downloading them does not count against a user’s 15-item checkout limit, Shacklett said, which means users have unlimited access to these works.
In the coming months, LPLS will expand access even further as it will begin purchasing additional downloadable audiobooks and ebooks for access via R.E.A.D.S. These titles will be available exclusively to LPLS library patrons.
R.E.A.D.S. contains more than 7500 downloadable audiobooks and more than 7000 ebooks, as well as accessible ebooks for the visually impaired. R.E.A.D.S. titles are compatible with several major devices, including the iPad, iPhone, iPod, Zune, Zen X-Fi, Nook, and the Sony Reader. The ebooks are not compatible with the Kindle, because Amazon does not currently support the digital rights management-protected file-types used by R.E.A.D.S. A full list of compatible devises is available at the R.E.A.D.S. website.
R.E.A.D.S. is administered by the Tennessee State Library and Archives, with funding support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and is powered by OverDrive, Inc. This online library offers best-selling fiction, popular nonfiction, foreign language study materials, classic fiction, books for children and teens, and more.
Linebaugh Public Library System has two branches in Murfreesboro, branches in Eagleville and Smyrna, and a Bookmobile. The Library is the cornerstone of our community, enriching lives through free resources for learning, fun, and opportunity. For more information, call 615-893-4131 or visit www.linebaugh.org.
United Way’s Project PASS will partner with Read To Succeed’s Adult Literacy Program and Linebaugh Library System to offer support in developing job skills. Trained volunteers will be available at the Patterson Park Community Center Myrtle Lord Glanton Public Library every Wednesday, June through September, from 10:00 am until noon. Adults wanting help with job skills may come by during this time with no appointment required.
Sessions will include lessons in searching for employment in the newspaper and on the internet, resume writing, interviewing skills, business etiquette, and follow-up after an interview. Read To Succeed volunteers will be providing services free of charge.
This service is the result of a need in the community to have adult education in the area of career development. Shelly Stanley, the Adult Literacy Coordinator of Read To Succeed, said, “The community expressed a desire for job skills training and we are doing all we can to meet that need.” Classes will be created for regular attendees by United Way’s Project PASS.
