Vol. 5 No. 1
Seymour Library’s Unnamed Newsletter
9 March 2006
In this issue…
- Library book orders due March 28
- Spring break library hours
- Knox and the Center for Research Libraries
- Two notable gifts
- One notable prize
New book orders due March 28
Tuesday, March 28 will be the final day this year for receiving orders for books to be purchased for Seymour Library through each department’s book allocation. Please mail or send all orders to Tanna Cullen by 4:30 on March 28. After that date, all unencumbered amounts will return to the general book fund to be spent and will not be available for departmental purchases.
Spring break library hours
Hours that Seymour Library will be open today through the start of spring term are
- Thursday, March 9th and Friday, March 10th: 8 a.m. – 1 a.m.
- Saturday, March 11th: 8 a.m. – 11 p.m.
- Sunday, March 12th: 12 noon – 3 p.m.
- Monday, March 13th - Friday March 17th: 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Saturday, March 18th and Sunday, March 19th: closed
- Monday, March 20th and Tuesday, March 21st: 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
- Wednesday, March 22nd: 8:00 a.m. – 1 a.m.
Hours for the SMC library through the start of spring term are posted there.
The Center for Research Libraries
Knox is one of five ACM campuses that became associate members of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) at the University of Chicago last year. This is sort of a big deal, in an understated library kind of way. CRL is a consortium of North American university and research libraries that acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives, and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. All on the Knox campus now have free and unlimited use of the CRL collections through interlibrary loan. (CRL does have a small reading room; visits to CRL should be planned and negotiated well in advance.) See the CRL web site at www.crl.edu for more information on the nature of their collections, or contact Sharon Clayton, Laurie Sauer, or Anne Giffey.
Two notable gifts
Seymour Library receives many thoughtful gifts of books and other items for our collections every year, but two that we’ve received so far this year are especially notable:
- More than 150 books on contemporary international affairs that we received last fall from the family of the late Joseph J. Sisco have recently been catalogued and shelved. Mr. Sisco (Knox ‘41) was a former Under Secretary of State; he completed a distinguished career in international diplomacy by chairing the American Academy of Diplomacy from 1999 to 2004. You can find the Sisco books by a keyword search for ‘Joseph Sisco’ in the library’s catalog.
- Late in February we received from Paul Ganster at San Diego State University more than two dozen volumes on environmental and economic development issues along the US-Mexico border. Mr. Ganster is associate director for international programs at San Diego State University and the father of Rebecca Ganster (Knox ’08). He edits the Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy’s monographic series for the San Diego State University Press. Only a few of Mr. Ganster’s donations to the library have been catalogued yet; you can find them with a keyword search for ‘Paul Ganster’ in the library’s catalog.
We thank Carol and Jane Sisco and Paul Ganster for these gifts of recent publications on topics of much interest among Knox students and faculty.
The Bookfellow Prize
It’s not too soon to submit papers for the 2006 Bookfellow Prize. Seymour Library awards this cash prize every year to the Knox student who has completed a project showing the most sophisticated and productive application of primary and secondary sources to a research topic. It is open to all students in all disciplines. The prize has often been awarded in the past for honors projects, independent studies, and seminar papers, though it is not limited to them; many of these would be projects well under way by this time of the year, so as they near completion, please remind students of the availability of this prize. Papers can be submitted to Tanna Cullen in Seymour Library.
Why do we have a Bookfellow Prize? If you really want to know, read on…
Long ago there were giants among us. They were called Bookfellows. They were Knox students and faculty and graduates and friends. What brought them together was their love of books. They loved not only to read books and to gather to talk about them, but also to write them, to print them, to bind them, to collect them. We’re not making this up.
From their humble local beginnings, they spread to all corners of the globe as they pursued their careers and pursued their books. But they always turned their thoughts back to Galesburg and to Knox. They made many generous gifts to the college and to its library.
The last of these noble Bookfellows had their tickets punched many years ago for that great and well-lit reading room in the sky. But their passions live on in the prize that they endowed to encourage all future generations of Knox students to discover, value, and apply the printed word.
“…may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong…”
– E.E.Cummings, Collected Poems [1926], #312
