Welcome everyone to the official University of Regina Library blog, yoURArcher! yoURArcher is brought to you by a team of librarians and staff at the Archer Library. We will be sharing weekly posts showcasing new resources, services, reading recommendations from the UofR community, some laughs, and a variety of other interesting topics!
Our blog will also post to the Archer Library Facebook page so you can catch us there as well!
We hope to catch you on our blog!
-yoURArcher Blog Team
This September, the President’s Art Collection welcomed two Student Research Assistants to join Curator Alex King. Stephanie Ross and Sarah Timewell have been tasked with contributing research and extended texts about selected artwork in the President’s Collection. The results of their findings will be published on a campus art tour website that will be launched to coincide with Congress 2018, providing curious visitors, students and staff with a greater understanding of the University’s art holdings. By way of introduction to themselves and the work they’ve been undertaking, Stephanie and Sarah were asked to write a short blog post about their experiences.
Stephanie Ross
I am a fourth year student working towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and a minor in Cultures of Display. What an unbelievable experience I am having working with the collection, I am learning so much! It is an honor to be working so closely with such influential art works. Right now I am working on researching the Regina Five and focussing on the Regina Five Wall in the Riddell Center. This wall is truly a marvellous and lasting legacy of the past faculty of this University. These men were instrumental in breaking the artistic isolation of Regina in the 1950’s. Through their determination to broaden the horizons and artistic standards they organized the Emma Lake Workshops; where prestigious artists came to a retreat in Saskatchewan to build, bond and share in artistic practice. Their work also gained national attention with the May Show, an exhibition that started here, at the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery. The exhibition then went to the National Gallery of Canada and was entitled, Five Painters from Regina, and toured Canada.
Sarah Timewell
I am of Métis and Hungarian ancestry and originally from Vancouver, BC. I am currently in my final term of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Indigenous Art) program at the First Nations University of Canada. Although I enjoy working in many mediums, my focus is on Indigenous fine arts, including mainly beadwork and drawing. It is my goal to continue on to obtain a Master of Fine Arts and work as a professor teaching Indigenous fine arts to the next generation.
Through my work with the President’s Art Collection, I have researched many of the Indigenous artists in the collection including Henry Hunt, Kenojuak Ashevak, and Roy Thomas, to name a few. One of my favourite commissions by the university includes three hooked rugs made by artists Bernice Runns, Marjorie Yuzicappi, and Martha Tawyaka of the Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation. In the late 1960, a number of women came together to form the Sioux Handcraft Co-operative. Adapting historical designs usually painted on ceremonial robes, the women converted the age-old tradition into a rug-making venture that operated until 1972. To reference their roots, the rugs are referred to as tah-hah-sheena which is the original name of the decorated animal hides.
Untitled Rug by Martha Tawyaka, 1971, wool and linen backing, measurements ~15ft x ~5ft
Welcome to September, and to a new school year!
Here’s your weekly links to interesting stories from the world of libraries and archives, books and publishing, and information science.
Got a hot tip? Please send it to Kate.Cushon@uregina.ca (tipsters will be credited!).
MIT will be hosting a summit on the Grand Challenges in information science and scholarly communication in spring 2018!
Public libraries in the US are offering federally-funded summer meals to children: “For kids to be well-read, they need to be well-fed.”
You may love your job at the library, but would you want to live here? Two bookshop employees are creating a library in Colorado where writers, researchers, and readers can stay amid a beautiful natural landscape.
A guide to using a public library card to stream movies for free has been put out by the New York Times.
The “book women” delivered library books – and literacy – on horseback to isolated communities in Kentucky during the 1930s and 1940s.
Your weekly links to interesting stories from the world of libraries and archives, books and publishing, and information science.
Got a hot tip? Please send it to Kate.Cushon@uregina.ca (tipsters will be credited!).
Banned books being used to construct a full-sized Parthenon at an historic book-burning site. (Hat-tip to Corina van den Berg!)
“Death and Taxonomies” explores the darker aspects of libraries, museums, and the organization of information.
Libraries sometimes get accused of restricting patron access to materials, but it’s hard to imagine any system more obviously restrictive than chained libraries.
Just for fun: 22 Librarians on “the most Italian guy they ever had to find a book for.”
On Academic libraries, and how we have something to sell.
Your weekly links to interesting stories from the world of libraries and archives, books and publishing, and information science.
Got a hot tip? Please send it to Kate.Cushon@uregina.ca (tipsters will be credited!).
Some advice for researchers on arranging grant reimbursement materials from an archivist.
On arrogance, and how higher education can promote intellectual humility.
In the U.S., millennials are using libraries more than any other generation.
Canadian graphic novelist Linda Barry addressed the Will Eisner Graphic Novel Grant Reception at ALA Annual, saying that librarians saved her life when she was a child.
Your weekly links to interesting stories from the world of libraries and archives, books and publishing, and information science.
Got a hot tip? Please send it to Kate.Cushon@uregina.ca (tipsters will be credited!).
Having a “real look” at security in libraries in this day and age – probably most relevant for public libraries, but certainly applicable to academic libraries as well – discussing everything from guns to mental health issues.
A related issue: The opioid epidemic in North America is becoming so urgent that public librarians are learning how to treat overdoses. (Hat-tip to Jennifer Hall!)
“If we seem doomed despite the evidence, why continue to support us?” A roundtable discussion of the challenges facing university presses.
The Venn diagram of bookselling and library work has some interesting areas of overlap, including the necessary agony of returning books, which has much in common with weeding a collection, as well as areas of difference.
81-3 Photo 10 Students 1915-16
(L to R) Ruth Willsey (Wilkinson), Chelsea Rowe, Mary Robertson
University of Regina Archives and Special Collections
Your weekly links to interesting stories from the world of libraries and archives, books and publishing, and information science.
Got a hot tip? Please send it to Kate.Cushon@uregina.ca (tipsters will be credited!).
One grad’s guide for graduate students on getting the most out of your academic library – a good reminder that even advanced and driven students may not be aware of basic library services.
The worlds of publishing and post-secondary education collide in a lawsuit: an unnamed student sues for defamation over a book that “that depicts the recent and growing number of campus rape and sexual assault allegations as the result of nationwide hysteria that infantilizes women.”
Although the U of R has had a new University Librarian for 10 months, leadership transition in academic libraries is a process that takes time and is helped with communication and plans for leadership transition.
On higher education and the “false god of attention.”
An essay on the author’s visceral horror of “getting it wrong in print.”
87-54 Photo 155 Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery 1980
Autumn Song (1970) by Douglas Bentham.
“The work was displayed as part of the exhibition organized by the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, Douglas Bentham: Getting to Now, 1 August – 31 October 1980. The catalogue for the exhibition lists the sculpture as from the Saskatchewan Arts Board collection.”
Timothy Long — Head Curator, MacKenzie Art Gallery
University of Regina Archives and Special Collections
University of Regina Photography Department
Your weekly links to interesting stories from the world of libraries and archives, books and publishing, and information science.
Got a hot tip? Please send it to Kate.Cushon@uregina.ca (tipsters will be credited!).
The case against Little Free Libraries, written by librarians, backed by data.
How sympathetic are you to publishers’ desire to control “bargaining power and market share”? Amazon, like libraries, can be seen as a significant threat by publishers.
The latest CanLit blowup centers around “Winning the Appropriation Prize” and the fallout from this article. What can we learn from this?
A presentation on “Driving Change with Students, Staff, and Space” focuses on a workflows assessment to analyze staff duties, a “kindness audit” to examine barriers to library services, an enhanced patron count to determine how to best utilize library space, and a survey to report how students use the library.
