Library Newsletter Fall 2020

NEWSLETTER FALL 2020 Message from the Dean of the Library and Learning Technologies Susan M. Ryan Fall of 2020 is like no other fall in Stetson history and, like many other places on campus, the duPont- Ball Library looks a bit different this year. We have less seating and have fewer people in the building at a time. But the Stetson community will have full access to the library’s collections and services both in person and virtually. We are a library – so of course we have hundreds of thousands of books and magazines. But we are much more than that. We have librarians available to help students with assignments and research, and they have created a large number of online research guides that can be accessed 24/7. Students can work with our Archivist to research into Stetson’s past – perhaps following a passion for history from our library’s archives all the way to a summer research experience in Portugal. Student Jessica Algieri did just that and we now consider her one of the world’s foremost experts on University benefactor John B. Stetson’s accomplished wife, Elizabeth. Or, students can turn their ideas for a new product into a 3D printed prototype in our award-winning Innovation Lab. They can work with our Innovation Lab technicians – as did student Bryson Pritchard, who designed a novel type of medical syringe and has at least five first place wins in entrepreneurship pitch competitions - winning large cash prizes to help him develop his product. While this fall will look different, opportunities remain. GOOD THINGS COME FROM ADVERSITY Debbi Dinkins, Library Associate Dean COVID-19 has changed everyone’s life over the last few months. Those of us working in the library have been affected in so many ways and we continue to plan for and react to COVID-19 now that we are open to our students and faculty. I want to share some of the good things that are happening as the duPont-Ball Library and Stetson University are coming to terms with the pandemic. First, the University has embraced the online environment. Faculty and staff now meet online routinely. We have become familiar with Zoom, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, and many other online meeting protocols. This has led to much more productive meetings and I hope we keep meeting online when the pandemic is over. Second, the library was poised and ready for online students because we have been building an online library of journals, books, video, and audio for more than 10 years. We were able to quickly direct students and faculty to online resources as the University moved to remote learning. By the numbers, the library’s resources are split, with half of our resources in print and half online. Additionally, many of our publisher partners offered free online access to their resources for our library users. I was heartened and so appreciative of these free resources that served to supplement what the library could offer. Third, the library staff and faculty have learned so much about each other and, I believe, have grown closer in our professional relationships during the pandemic. During the state lockdown in the spring when we were all working from home, Dean Sue Ryan held a weekly meeting of the whole staff to check in with every person and to learn about challenges or opportunities being experienced. We continue to meet weekly online, even though we are now working in the library building. Finally, on a personal note, I have grown closer to distant family members during the lockdown. When facing such a stressful situation, reaching out to loved ones and friends has made a big difference in weathering this pandemic. I hope you will take a moment to think about some of the blessings that you have discovered during the pandemic. As we say in the duPont-Ball Library, we are all in this together. I hope that all of our friends and Associates are healthy and well. FACULTY MEMBERS HONORED The library has a tradition of honoring faculty members at our annual August reception who have been recently tenured and/or promoted. We ask each faculty member to choose a book that has been particularly meaningful to them in their personal or professional lives and we add that book to our collection with a commemorative bookplate. This year, of course, we could not hold a large social gathering. But we honored our faculty with a “virtual” reception, posting their achievements and book choices online. Jesus Alfonzo, promoted to Professor of Music: “A few months after my graduation at The Juilliard School (1984), I went to Isle of Man, UK, to participate in The XII International Viola Congress and The Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. I had the opportunity to meet and hear the greatest and famous violists of that moment and of our time. Also, I did gather violists who had the privilege to meet Sir William Primrose, the most important representative in the world of the viola. Dr. David Dalton, a prominent American researcher, writer, and violist, was one of the Congress lecturers and focused his conference on his book titled Walk on the North Side: Memoirs of a Violist, a work based on Primrose’s biography. He let us know about his experiences talking and interviewing William Primrose and mentioned how wonderful it was to listen to him, especially the narrations concerning his personal and artistic experiences. I was fascinated with the anecdotes and details of that extraordinary musician, and I immediately bought Dr. Dalton’s book. The fascination afterward was even more significant. As soon as Dr. Dalton published his new book, Playing the Viola: Conversations with William Primrose (1988), I bought it and read it with the previous fascination and interest. During the reading, I felt a personal identification in many of the topics that Primrose described, especially in his professional life as a performer and educator. Since then, I did the commitment to promote in my colleagues and my students, the vital role of William Primrose in the rescue of the 18th and 19th-century viola repertoire, and to encourage composers of the 20th century to write more works for this wonderful instrument.” Rachel Core, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Sociology: “Shanghai is one of my homes. I adore the city, but I hated it the first time I visited. In December 1995, as I tried to get off a bus at its terminus, people rushing onto the bus so they could get seats for the journey in the opposite direction knocked me down. That event was emblematic of what I believed was an impersonal megapolis. I learned to love Shanghai 16 months later when I returned on another study abroad seminar and became interested in social inequality and social change. I wondered what sorts of experiences contributed to the behaviors I witnessed, such as rushing onto public transportation. Lu Hanchao’s Beyond the Neon “The pandemic pushed us to create online information literacy tutorials for first-year students. The tutorials helped us reach students who may not have otherwise received any library instruction.” Librarian Grace Kaletski-Maisel Lights answers some of my questions by investigating the lives of non-elite actors. Lu’s book is social history, but his interviews with 41 workers and the numerous photographs throughout the work make it feel ethnographic. He also captures a number of sociological topics including social hierarchies, in both the wider metropolis, as well as within neighborhoods and professions. Likewise, the book highlights social mobility, including rural to urban migration and attempts to move out of shantytowns. Finally, and most closely related to my own work, Lu examines the process through which ‘healthy’ behaviors are created, normalized, and institutionalized. In particular, Lu awakens us to ‘the men who woke up the city’ as they pulled their ‘honey carts’ through the alleyways between 4:00 and 5:00 AM, collecting accumulated night soil from the chamber pots of each household (189). While excrement might seem like a deviant topic of interest, it is the perfect topic for illustrating social inequality, connections, and change, with respect to a vital service. Joshua Eckroth, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Computer Science: “When I was an undergraduate, my advisor gave me a copy of Herbert Simon’s The Sciences of the Artificial. Simon was a Nobel laureate (Economics) and Turing Award winner, and helped create the field of Artificial Intelligence. This book establishes an essential philosophy of what it means to create things that serve purposes, whether that’s software, machines, or organizations. He goes on to explain the ‘architecture of complexity’ and develop a ‘science of design,’ which I find especially relevant in software engineering. It is profound in its ability to clearly address ‘what are we doing when we make things?’” Asal Johnson, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Public Health: “This book [Root Shock] discusses and analyzes urban renewal projects in the US and the role they played in disrupting different aspects of African American communities throughout the nation. Teaching this book in my seminar course, planning for healthy cities, has had some deep impacts on my own philosophical approach on racial segregation. I was taught during my graduate years at Florida State University that the best approach to racial segregation is ‘integration.’ However, reading the book of Root Shock which is written by a black scholar combined with my local DeLand knowledge taught me that there are culture, history, community identity and social capital embedded in black neighborhoods of America. Although these neighborhoods exist because of institutional racism, urban renewal projects that involved these neighborhoods in the 70s and 80s did not result in creating mixed racial neighborhoods. On the contrary, they inflicted pain and suffering on residents of these neighborhoods as they displaced them.” Danielle Lindner, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Psychology: “[Self- Compassion]. The work faculty and students undertake requires us to be vulnerable – we have to be willing to take intellectual risks, ask hard questions, make mistakes, and receive feedback from others. Practicing self-compassion is ultimately what frees us up to do this work, and it allows us to turn difficult moments into opportunities for growth.” John Lychner, tenured as Associate Professor of Music Education: “Clifford Madsen was my major professor during my doctoral studies at Florida State University. I knew of him and his work before I went to Florida State but as I took his classes and worked with him on my research, I became keenly aware of how much influence his work had on my teachers, my teaching, and the profession as a whole. Teaching/Discipline: A Positive Approach for Educational Development is filled with important lessons, many that I had learned long before I knew of the book because my teachers had been influenced by Clifford Madsen’s wonderful insights and approaches. I have great memories of the many ‘ah ha’ moments that came through reading this book and the class discussions that followed.” Ben Tanner, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Studies:” Two works spoke to me in a deep way this summer. Michelle Obama’s Becoming is timely and I hope her generous wisdom shapes me as I, on my path, continue to ‘become.’ I have been fortunate to enjoy retirement to the wilderness on occasion during this time of social distance. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s God’s World echoed across my memory. The juxtaposition of current circumstances with breathtaking frames left me thinking that, perhaps, the natural world was indeed too beautiful this year.” Jessica West, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor Finance: “This book [Lords of Finance] provides an insightful overview about the causes and consequences of the Great Depression through the histories of the four heads of the Central Banks of United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany. It provides a history of central banking and the change of monetary systems during interwar years. This is a must-read for anyone who is interested in world financial history, political systems and economic systems as the lessons learned from this book are very relevant to today’s issues since history repeats itself.” Petros Xanthopoulos, tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Decision and Information Sciences: “This [Flatterland] is a book that I read when I was in college and it is basically a novel about popularized mathematics. The reason that this book influenced me is because it made me understand the value of storytelling. Mathematics is often seen as a dry and uninteresting subject often given in such a format that most people cannot comprehend or appreciate. In this book the author show a different path that allows even the uninduced reader to grasp concepts that would normally require several years of grad school study. So since then I realized that good story telling is so powerful and that shaped my approach as a teacher.” FACULTY AUTHORS Also celebrated at the library’s August “virtual” reception were those faculty who wrote or edited a book in the past year: Valrie Chambers, Why Isn’t Everyone a Millionaire?: How Our Good Habits Stop Us from Getting Richer; Chris Colwell, The Fourth Tier: Leadership and the Power of Charisma; and Mary Ellen Oslick, who authored two books this year: Immigrant Experiences: Expanding the School- Home-Community Dialogue and Land of Opportunity: Immigrant Experiences in the North American Landscape. Congratulations to all of our faculty honorees! duPont-Ball Library • Stetson University • 421 N. Woodland Blvd., Unit 8418 • DeLand, FL 32723 (386)822-7183 • stetson.edu/librar y • facebook.com/StetsonLibrary