Dear MHAD Members: I hope that you all have had an exciting and rewarding year. Plans for the Toronto SLA conference are in the preliminary planner and it looks like a slate that offers something for everyone. MHAD is offering two key sessions; one on choosing a system for your institution and another on the public art programme of Toronto which is the envy of many other cities. We will also hold the annual book/author luncheon but at the moment we cannot confirm the author as we are still in negotiations. As well, we are bringing back Monday MHADness which provides anyone interested in the field of Museums, Arts, and Humanities a chance to informally talk to others in those fields. The Archives and Preservation Caucus, which was officially started last year, will meet again in Toronto. A wonderful tour of unique museums has been planned for Thursday, June 9th. It includes the Bata Shoe Museum, the Textiles Museum, and the Hockey Hall of Fame. A box lunch is included and we have arranged to have participants back at their hotels by 3:00 pm so they have time to get to the airport or have a chance to do some last minute shopping and exploring. I hope you all of you can attend the conference this year. If you have never been to Toronto I think you will be delighted by what the city has to offer. I hope that I will see you in June. Sylvia Frank Leading Students on a Travel/Study Tour of Educational and Cultural Institutions in El Salvador By Martha E. McPhail "Internationalize the campus!" is one of the goals of San Diego State University. For our multicultural campus 20 miles from the Mexican border, this means bringing students or scholars to our campus, or sending faculty and students out around the world. We librarians for foreign languages or area studies must maintain our abilities to speak and read in our language and stay current with publishing trends. The best way to maintain our skills is by traveling to the countries where our language skills are sharpened, where we interact with colleagues or the public, and where we may select materials appropriate for our collections. Finding opportunities to travel for these reasons is not easy. One may attend international conferences such as IFLA, as I do as an SLA delegate, or one may serve as a Fulbright Scholar as I have in El Salvador and Honduras. As a faculty member at SDSU, I applied through our Office of International Programs for funding to lead a small group of students to El Salvador during March 2004 for an "alternative" spring break experience. My network of colleagues in educational and cultural institutions would be pleased to welcome the San Diego students, to open doors to their libraries, museums, art galleries, churches, and universities. My proposal was Narratives of War and Recovery: Learning from Salvadorans after a Civil Conflict: An Alternative Spring Break Experience for SDSU Students. I noted the purpose of this travel/study opportunity: to meet and learn from Salvadorans who have made remarkable progress in moving beyond their twelve-year civil war. Salvadorans are considered a role model for other nations attempting to overcome divisions caused by conflict. Their stories deserve to be widely told and emulated. Although one can read about El Salvador and events there, students would learn more as Salvadoran people tell their stories through lectures and group discussions. SDSU students would learn about war’s effects and aftermath directly from participants. I was granted the funding and gathered 6 students and the pastor of the Wesley Foundation to travel with me. I went several days ahead to conclude preparations. Our group was detained in Customs overnight due to official nervousness about upcoming presidential elections, quite an unexpected development. But this turned into a vivid learning experience, no doubt about that! Learning Beyond Expectations We went to several libraries, museums, and universities. The students met a past Peace Corps librarian/SLA member who has remained to serve at the American School library. They met a museum director who was a co-founder of the alternative radio outlet during the war. They talked to nuns who were present when Monsignor Oscar Romero was assassinated. They met artists and intellectuals who were driven into exile. A native Maya priest shared some ceremonial rites. A coffee plantation owner discussed current economic challenges. An anthropologist accompanied us to several Maya archeological sites. Students played with and read to school children in a poor barrio. We participated one day with the local Habitat for Humanity, feeling the appreciation of a family who had lost its home in the 2001 earthquakes. All the students agreed that they had learned many things during their week in El Salvador. They had experienced partisan politics first-hand, they met artists, teachers, librarians, and intellectuals, as well as peasants, small farmers, and businesspeople. They saw the range of income distribution, from great wealth to dire poverty. They also saw the beauty and potential of this small country: its mountains, beaches, volcanoes, lakes, modern cities, rural communities, and hardworking people. Back on campus, department Chairs and our Provost thanked me for leading this unforgettable student learning experience. The entire project, from proposal to return, solidified my status as a faculty librarian pursuing a campus goal. One student has already planned to return to work with Habitat. I intend to return to El Salvador in fall 2005 to teach cataloging at the Universidad Panamericana if my sabbatical is approved. Opportunities exist for similar study tours, offered by universities or museums or churches, etc. I encourage DMAH members to lead or participate in one. Meeting with librarian colleagues and others involved with the arts, humanities, or education is an enlightening, unforgettable event. Martha McPhail is a Catalog Librarian/Bibliographer at San Diego State University Library, San Diego, CA 92182. She is Past-Chair of DMAH. She may be reached by email at mmcphail@mail.sdsu.edu. Museums Arts and Humanities Division Hosts Pulitzer Author at SLA Nashville Convention By Sandra Kitt (This article original published in the New York Chapter Bulletin, July 2004.) A gratifyingly large number of attendees to the 2004 Annual SLA Conference in Nashville turned out on June 7th to hear Pulitzer Prize winning author, Richard Rhodes, talk about and read from his soon-to-be released book, Audubon: The Making of an American. I arrived a few minutes late expecting that the audience would just be settling down to lunch when in fact, Mr. Rhodes had already begun his presentation. I picked up the narration in time to learn that John James Audubon was born in the French colony of Santo Domingo, today known as Haiti, and that he was the illegitimate son of a French sea Captain and his French Chambermaid. Audubon was eventually adopted by his father and stepmother, and raised in Nantes, France (on the Loire River). While scandal and an auspicious beginning make for great drama to a person’s life story, it is Audubon’s journey to America at the age of eighteen to start a life for himself that the story of one of American’s greatest naturalist really gets going. Rhodes confessed that he is not the first writer to tackle Audubon’s life, but he appears to be the first to understand what motivated Audubon both as a man and an artist. Highly sensitive about his origins, Audubon spent his life trying to conceal the facts and overcome the handicap his birth gave him socially and financially. He was very handsome and vain, very sociable, and also very talented. And he was a man who longed to be truly free...perhaps from society’s conventions and the limited possibilities he was born into, with no chance of being his father’s heir. Demonstrating an early interest in rendering, he spent a great deal of time in the woods, studying and drawing wildlife. We know Audubon primarily for his incredibly detailed studies of birds (birds are free to fly away...), but he was also interested in the more scientific aspects of the species such as anatomy, migration patterns, even going so far as to describe how each bird tasted once he’d finished using them as models and converted them into food for his family. Like many artists, then and now, Audubon was a terrible businessman. Throughout his life he would struggle to provide for his wife, Lucy, and two sons (a daughter died at age three). Audubon even returned for a five year period to Europe in an attempt to package and sell his ornithological studies in a portfolio that would famously become known as “Birds of America”. In this Audubon did succeed, building a reputation and gaining a following of loyal collectors. Missing his family, however, he decided to leave once again for America. When he returned to his wife and sons he found a lot changed in the bountiful land that provided the grist for his work. Audubon had this to say about the expansion of America: “‘I feel with regret there are no records nor satisfactory accounts of the state of the country when we first settled it’”. He needn’t have worried, since his prodigious output of watercolors and drawings, his journals and letters, have survived to give all of us an idea. Mr. Rhodes proved an effective storyteller, vividly bringing to life Audubon’s experiences. He closed by making a confession to the audience about researching his project which was, in its own way, a compliment: “I didn’t make this story up. I found it in your libraries.” Sandra Kitt is the former Collections Specialist in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, American Museum of Natural History. Currently a full-time novelist, she was also NYChapter President from 1999-2000. 2005 William B. Neff Scholarship “The role of the special librarian as a keeper of a society’s culture” The William B. Neff Conference Attendance Award may be awarded to a student member of the Museums, Arts and Humanities Division. The award consists of a stipend of up to $1,000 toward the expense of conference attendance. Any student member of the Division who is currently enrolled in a graduate library/information science program is eligible. This award is specifically for conference attendance and the winner is required to attend the 2005 Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada. The Division also reserves the right to not present the stipend if a sufficient number of entries is not received by the deadline. Requirements:
Deadline for receipt of essays and letters is April 1, 2005. Send all materials to: Ann Shea, Librarian Call for Applications for DMAH Travel Grant The Division of Museums, Arts and Humanities issues a Call for Applications for the Travel Grant to attend the SLA annual conference in Toronto. This will be our fourth year offering this opportunity to a practicing librarian in the arts or humanities. Past awardees have come from Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Trinidad and Tobago. Each has given us a brief presentation about their libraries, home countries, and special projects. Those of us with the opportunity to meet these librarians at past SLA conferences have greatly benefited from the interchange. Criteria and information are found on our DMAH page on SLA's website:
http://www.sla.org/division/dmah/Travel%20Grant.htm (* denotes student member) The DMAH Bulletin is
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