1st Annual Edible Book Festival

1st Annual Edible Book Festival

John Jaffe, CIO, and I became interested in the Edible Book Fest through conversations with a good friend, Nancy Magnuson, who is Director of the Goucher College Library.  We had heard about the event on occasion over the years and, when Nancy did it at Goucher last year and invited us through the Facebook event page, we mentioned it to a couple of students and faculty who said they thought it would be a great event.  There are lots of great cooks, bakers, and foodies on campus among the students (who even have a cooking club) and among faculty and staff so this seemed like a wonderful and fun spring event.
Here is a link to the International Edible Book Festival that explains the history of the event.
http://www.books2eat.com/

We had a wonderful number of entries for the first year with a total of 22 entries.  Of those, three unfortunately withdrew at the last minute and we had one no-show so a total of 18 entries were judged.  There was also a demonstration entry from the library based on the book,  Accidental Billionaires that inspired the film The Social Network (Facebook) that was just for our fun.

Some of the books depicted were:
A Clockwork Orange
Great Expectations
Where the Sidewalk Ends
All’s Well That Ends Well
Green Eggs and Ham
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
The Help
Salome by Oscar Wilde
The Prince and the Pauper
If That Breathes Fire, We’re Toast
Grapes of Wrath
Memories of my Melancholy Whores
Bleak House
A Tale of Two Cities
Good Eats The Early Years
Wicked
The Lord of the Rings

Our fabulous judges were: Dean Jonathan Green, Professors John Gregory Brown, Carrie Brown and Eric Casey and Allison Wiley, Class of 2011.

There were four basic awards:

Most Punderful
Good Looking Cooking
Best Student Entry
Fan Favorite (People’s Choice)

The judges determined the winners of the first three and all the people who came to the event voted by placing colored dots on the sheet for their favorite entry.  In addition to the awards above, the judges awarded prizes for A Head of the Rest to Caitlin Cashin, ’07 for her interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome and to Robyn Sanderson for her entry on The Very Hungry Caterpillar.   All winners  received prizes.

Some of the others who entered included Sheila Alexander, Celeste Delgado-Librero, Stephanie Abell, Cathy Gutierrez, Ashley Carroll, and Jean Hazelwood.

We look forward to having lots of fun with next years Edible Book Fest.

The Winners:
1) Sheila Alexander “People’s Choice/ Fan Favorite” for If That Breathes Fire, We’re Toast
2) Caitlin Cashin “A Head of the Rest” for Salome
3) Deb Sigman “Good Looking Cooking” for Where the Sidewalk Ends
4) Julie Kane “Most Pun-derful” for A Tale of Two Cities
5) Robyn Sanderson “Most Creepy” for The Very Hungry Caterpillar
6) Angela Concetta-Meikie “Best Student Entry” for The Prince and the Pauper

Here is a link to a great photo album by the MMC’s Meridith de Avila Khan.

http://sbc.edu/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=4694

 

 

1st Annual Edible Book Festival

Edible Book Fest 2011
Time:  Monday, April 4 ·3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Location:  Mary Helen Cochran Library, Powell Reading Room

Let your mind run and have edible fun!
Either come by the Library and fill out a form or submit an entry online at: http://bit.ly/fpaiod

There are only two rules, your entry;
1. must be edible
2. must be based on a book

Team as well as individual entries are most welcome.

This event is open to the entire SBC Community.

For more information email: ediblebooks@sbc.edu

Friends of the Library Taste Apples and Cider

Friends of Library – Apple Cider Program

On a bright beautiful October day, the Friends of Library hosted Tom Burford and Charlotte Shelton at the annual fall meeting.  Members of Friends of Library, students, faculty and folks from the community gathered in the east end of the Kitty Corbett Powell ’38 Reading Room for the program.  A fine table of apples and ciders were arranged for everyone to see.

Tom Burford, an Amherst County native, is an orchard and nursery consultant, specializing in the restoration, re-creation, and design of historic sites and private estates, as well as commercial and backyard orchards. He lectures and conducts seminars and workshops nationwide. He consults in Virginia with historic properties including Monticello, Mount Vernon and Colonial Williamsburg; he has designed orchards locally in Lynchburg at the City Cemetery and Point of Honor. One work in progress is an orchard for the White House as part of the Obamas’ victory garden. He is the author of Apples: A Catalog of International Varieties, co-author of Fruit Grafters Handbook with Ed Fackler, and contributor of fruits content to The Northeastern Garden Book, published by Sunset Books. In 1997, he discontinued the nursery operation of his company, Burford Brothers in Monroe, Virginia, to devote full time to consulting. Tom Burford was also at one time a furniture maker and many pieces in the Florence Elston Inn at Sweet Briar College are his creations.

Charlotte Shelton founded Vintage Virginia Apples, LLC, in North Garden, Virginia, with her family in 2000. In her “spare time,” she is an investment professional with a national brokerage firm. Tom Burford was a consultant to their enterprise. She said the company is hoping to tap into Central Virginia’s growing agri-tourism market and with dozens of wineries in the region, it seems only natural that thirsty tourists and Charlottesville food lovers would want to check out the complex flavors of high-end cider. “The average wine drinker will find our cider appealing and interesting,” she told the Friends.

“We have about 250 varieties of apples, and that’s not a very sensible way to grow an orchard,” Shelton said. But there is one thing that a huge variety of apples are good for: a nice cider, she said. Her orchard markets the cider through Albemarle CiderWorks, which sells hard cider, and sweet cider in season. The Shelton family also runs a nursery, selling the hard-to-find apple trees.

The friends were treated to four ciders from CiderWorks and a variety of apples were tasted. The ciders were: Jupiter’s Legacy named after a slave and Thomas Jefferson’s most trusted servant for years. It is a fruity blend of classic American cider apples — Harrison, Yates, Hyslop and Virginia Crab. The second, Old Virginia Winesap, is spicy, floral, and fruity, slightly tart with a lingering finish.  The third, Royal Pippin is a fruity cider crafted entirely from Albemarle Pippins. It is a dry cider that has a champagne-like quality. And the last, Ragged Mountain, is a cider blend of classic apple varieties — Albemarle Pippin, Winesap, Black Twig, Grimes Golden and Stayman — historically grown on and around the Ragged Mountains where Shelton’s orchard is located. This is a semi-dry cider crafted to please a wide range of palates. The apples tasted by the Friends were Arkansas Black, Russet, Winesap and Albemarle Pippin.

Tom and Charlotte talked at length about the reduction in the number of apples available to consumers today. Although Central Virginia has a rich history as an apple-growing area, it’s sometimes hard to find apples in more than a handful of varieties, even at the farmers’ market. At one time, there were more than 14,000 varieties of apples growing in the United States, and hundreds of varieties growing in orchards in this area. Tom Burford remembers 31 orchards of varying size in the Elon and Amherst areas close the Sweet Briar. Now there are less than five. But this is changing with the local foods movement. “I never thought, 10 years ago, that we would have come this far,” says Tom enthusiastically. “It’s an exciting time for me.”

One of Burford’s favorite apples for the first fresh pie of the year is the Carolina Red June, which ripens in late June in central Virginia. Although Burford declares he loves all apples, perhaps his all-time pick is the russeted Ashmead’s Kernel, which originated in England around 1700. “It has a lot of sugar and a lot of acid,” he says, “and when picked and allowed to mellow, its taste will knock your socks off. I really recommend that sissies don’t eat it.”

Fortunately, Burford is not alone in his quest to preserve the apple’s dignity, for this is a fruit with an ancient pedigree, having come to symbolize almost everything in life from stolen pleasures to homey comforts–and plenty in between. It’s possible that apples were the very first beloved fruit. But the first of the sweet apples resembling today’s picks appeared several thousand years ago in Kazakhstan. The ancient Greeks domesticated at least a dozen different kinds of apples. Among these, the tiny Lady apples are still grown and enjoyed today for their delicate sweetness and as decorations in holiday boxwood wreaths.

From Europe, apples made their way to the New World with early settlers–not to be grown for their good eating qualities, but to be grown from seeds for their juice, which farmers used to make into hard cider each fall. But early Americans soon learned that apples made good eating, not only raw out of hand but turned into pies, puddings, sauces, dumplings and cakes. In colonial America, apples were also dried for later use.
Asked what his favorite apple was, Burford said my favorite apple is the last apple I ate.” He also talked about the Rawls apple grown by an Amherst County family that became the apple that was crossed with the red delicious to become the Fuji.

Jennifer Will ’13 one of the many students at the event said she thought that Tom Burford, the resident apple expert, and Charlotte Shelton, the businesswoman, made a great team.  Both of them were knowledgeable in their fields (Tom talked extensively about the apples themselves and apple production, while Charlotte focused on the history of cider and her company) and had a mutual respect for each other.

“It was great to see a family-owned company whose success was based on the quality of the product alone. Tom has a passion for growing quality apples, while Charlotte has a passion for making great cider” said Ms. Will.

She added, “The talk itself was informative, and I learned a lot about the process of making cider as well as the history of cider in the United States. Charlotte and Tom were knowledgeable without being condescending, which I appreciated. And of course, the apples and cider that we tasted were excellent!”

Me, My Snark, and Memoir

For those who say Twitter is for the self-involved and the narcissistic only, here is a tiny little PSA: some of us use it as a networking tool. I found my latest writing endeavor there – and it was the only place it was posted. So, nyah.

Thanks to tips from Lisa Johnston, I’ve been writing books reviews for Library Journal for the past couple of years, in contemporary fiction and mystery. It’s been fun but also something I take pretty seriously. I read carefully and weigh my recommendations; Library Journal has traditionally been a collection development tool for libraries. My personal opinion matters, but I have to consider the fact that certain books will have appeal to broader audiences for public libraries, blahblahblah. Enter Twitter.

I follow one of the main book review editors for LJ because she is an absolute riot, and she got my attention by following me (in the Twitter sense, not in some bizarre godawful real life stalking) after some library-related post. She tweeted this summer that they were looking for someone to write a column reviewing memoirs. I jumped and applied. One of my conference buddies had laughed at me once for picking up a crazy-looking title at ALA (oddly enough, reviewed just last week by my co-columnist). When she asked why I enjoyed memoirs, I replied that true stories of people’s messed-up lives always made me feel better about my own. It was a flippant remark, but for the most part, it’s turned out to be true. For every memoir that’s blown me away, for every survivor story I’ve admired, a teeny piece of me has thought “WHEW. I’m SO glad that never happened in my life.”

In any case, long story short, I’m now reviewing memoirs, 5-7 a month, and writing a column for a publication of LJ’s called BookSmack! My first column came out in their September 16th issue http://bit.ly/9MaXXQ and you can get straight to it here: http://bit.ly/dsTeyl  Just, you know, if you’re interested. (There are also RSS and email subscription features available on the site… Ok, I’ll stop plugging now.)

I have a co-columnist- the publication comes out twice a month and we alternate the column. I’ve found that it’s a tremendous undertaking, but really, quite rewarding. I’m settling into the format and I find that since my editors loved the take I gave them with my “What I’m Telling My Friends” brutal-honesty addition, I have a freedom in reporting my reviews that I don’t have in my regular reviewing style. It changes the way I read. I’m trying to be just as careful when I approach a book, but I don’t want to be irresponsible when budgets are tighter than ever.  It seems that self-publishing is flourishing while loads of crap still get through reputable publishing houses. The mind reels.

Oh, and just in case something untoward should happen to me… yeah. I’d look first at that Wookiee author. He’s not going to be very happy with me, and I don’t think I’ve done a very good job at hiding my whereabouts, or the fact that my toothless lazy hound dog is NOT an exceptional guard dog. Just saying. Thanks.

Oxford Bibliographies Online Library Lab

www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com

This past May, Sweet Briar College, along with Yale, UNC-CH, Bates College, and the University of Colorado were invited to participate in a library lab conducted by Oxford University Press.
Oxford Bibliographies Online is revolutionary in that is makes no attempt to be comprehensive. Imagine –you are asked to write a paper on the Plague in the 14th century, you don’t know much about it and want to start reading basic sources. OBO will provide you with a list of sources that have been chosen by experts in the field. No, they’re not just publications by Oxford University Press, but resources from the Internet, books, and journal articles from all over the world. OBO’s team of scholars does the work for you!
There is a lab group comprised of 10 students and 10 faculty members, and all 5 of us librarians. We have been assigned to use and promote OBO in classes, fill out surveys, and meet with representatives from Oxford University Press who will visit campus 3 times this year.  Our charge is to give suggestions and criticism to OUP.
Sweet Briar College has been given a unique opportunity. Not only do we have access to this valuable resource for the academic year, we are helping shape it for researchers all over the world.
Modules available now are: Atlantic History, Classics, Criminology, Islamic Studies, Social Work, Philosophy, and the Renaissance/ Reformation.
This fall, modules on Medieval Studies and Hinduism will be available.

So here it is,
http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com
Use it, and tell me what you think.
If you would like more information or a quick lesson, contact me: lnjohnston@sbc.edu.
This blog entry from The New Yorker explains the significance of this new database to researchers better than I ever could.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/05/the-very-human-appeal-of-oxford-bibliographies-online.html

Text Away!

As the class of 2014 came through the library in first-year orientation (aka Camp Sweet Briar, I learned from my secret source ☺), they heard the standard get-to-know-us routine that their predecessors have heard….and one standout that they hadn’t – that we want them to text us. Text-A-Librarian was something we implemented last fall and that we’ve been promoting here and there, but never before to an entire class, captive – though maybe a little bit glassy-eyed.

Holy COW has the response been nice! In the first week since orientation, the texting use for our service has skyrocketed, statistically doubling our highest month ever. We’re getting some great questions and I personally am having a ball. I am NOT a reference librarian (ask anyone who knows me, except Lobo, please. He’ll just tell you I hurt people. Especially him. But we all know about how easily he injures).  But with Text A Librarian, I am a little ninja practicing reference behind the screens. I’m sitting on my couch, watching Bones, and I get a text. BOOM! I’m off like a shot, like I think I’m handling a case for the FBI (though why I would be working for the FBI in my pjs is anyone’s guess), and there is no satisfaction like sending off my answer. When my wireless server went down at home, no one wants to know the rage that burst forth. I had no access to anything. I wasn’t going to be able to answer ANYTHING if it came through. Crisis averted, folks, but it was a close one.

What I mean is…. keep it coming. We love it. I love it.

Text your questions to 66746 and start your question with Daisy to get our ninja librarian skills going for you. *Disclaimer: some days we may be more like Kung Fu pandas than ninjas. Response depends on amount of caffeine imbibed.

Keeping Up With the 21st Century: We Tweet

The Library’s web page has added a Twitter feed. We encourage all of you to follow us:

@sbclibrary

We will be posting announcements of new databases, events, helpful links, and ideas. Please send us your ideas and suggestions.

Look for our page on Facebook:

Sweet Briar College Cochran Library

We hope you will “like” it. We will be posting announcements and comments here, too.

VIVA ILL Forum Meets at SBC

12th Annual VIVA Interlibrary Loan Community Forum

Sweet Briar hosted the 12th Annual VIVA Interlibrary Loan Community Forum, July 16, 2010 at the Elston Conference Center,

The objective of the Forum is to discuss VIVA Interlibrary Loan issues and learn about trends and new developments nationally as well as internationally. Sweet Briar College’s President, Dr. Jo Ellen Parker, welcomed the participants with thoughtful insight to how technology has changed the way libraries look at resources. How access is now more important than assets and how librarians should think about sharing not only their resources but also their skills.

Megan Newman, Interlibrary Loan Manager, VMI, gave a presentation on, Meeting the Needs of All of Our Patrons: Anticipation, Facilitation, & Accommodation, and how we should be aware of the different challenges that face students and patrons. Also, that librarian should be aware that each user may have a different difficulty in using the library’s resources whether it is a hearing, seeing or other problems. Dr. Sarah Jones, Director of Disabilities Services, Miller Academic Center, VMI, helped Ms. Newman with preparing the presentation but was unable to attend the meeting.

Jessica Bowdoin, Head of Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery at George Mason University, and Lara Bushallow, Systems Librarian, Digital Programs and Systems at George Mason University, spoke on Partnering for Success: ILL & IT.  With changing technologies, sometimes it is difficult for Librarians to implement the correct software or upgrade the hardware needed for running document delivery programs. Having a good relationship with your IT person on campus is a big plus.  Maybe Lara Bushallow, can be a resource for all the VIVA libraries? She is definitely a wonderful resource at GMU.

We broke for lunch and had a wonderful buffet served in the Boxwood Room by Sweet Briar College’s catering department. After lunch, we broke into four different sessions in the lower level of the Elston Conference Center.  One group received an Overview of the ILLIAD 8 (interlibrary loan) software via teleconference with Stephanie Spires at Atlas Systems, in Virginia Beach. Elizabeth Teaff from Washington & Lee University, demonstrated how to install the Odyssey Standalone (electronic delivery) Workstation in one of the sessions. Bud Bennett from Radford University presented VIVA ILL for Newbies (we offer this program every year for folks new to ILL) and the final breakout session was instructed by Ms. Dru Zuretti, Manager of Copyright Education, at the Copyright Clearance Center. Copyright is a very important issue in the interlibrary loan world. All session were well attended and there was quite a bit of sharing among the participants.

After the individual sessions, Kathy Perry, VIVA Director gave an update on resources added and cancelled for the 2010-11 year. Ralph Alberico, Director of JMU Libraries and Chairman of the VIVA Resource Sharing Committee, gave a presentation on the VIVA ILL Survey. The survey was taken this year by both the ILL Librarians and the Directors of the libraries to see where we are as a group and what we project will be changing in the near future. The results of this survey are on the VIVA-ILL website and had some interesting points to be considered.

Finally, Jim Verdini, Averrtt University and past chairman of the ILL -Subcommittee, welcomed Elizabeth Teaff, Washington and Lee University as the new chair. Ms. Teaff spoke briefly on the coming year and what she hopes to accomplish and asked for the participants to pass on any concerns, ideas and programs for the ILL-Subcommittee to explore.

There is a good chance that Sweet Briar College will host this Forum again next year.

American Library Association: Stonewall Book Awards

ALA Annual Conference 2010: The Stonewall Book Awards
Last week at the American Library Association Annual Conference in sweltering Washington, DC, I began my duties as chairperson of the ALA Stonewall Book Award Committee.
A bit of the history of this award—in 1971, the Gay Book Award was established to honor the work of highest quality in the then relatively small gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender publishing world. Thus the oldest national book award for this genre of literature was established by a grassroots group of gay activist librarians, most notably, Barbara Gittings and Israel Fishman in whose honor the literature and non-fiction awards were named.  The committee just announced its first award for children’s and young adult literature. The award is not yet named, but we hope that will happen in January, when the 2011 awards are announced.
Our committee of 14 includes librarians from all over the country with a wide variety of specializations that range from academic to school to corporate. Over the course of a year we examine an average of 200 books published in English between September 30, 2009 and September 30, 2010. Note I wrote examined, not read! I will read about 110, depending on their length. It’s often easy to determine whether or not a title will make the top 15 in the 3 categories. Getting my colleagues on the Stonewall Book Awards Committee to agree on what makes a book worth our time is another story.
The year culminates in a large event, The Stonewall Book Awards Brunch. This year all three winning authors were there to speak about their writing.  The first Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award went to Nick Burd for his novel, Vast Fields of Ordinary, published by Penguin. The Barbara Gittings Literature Award was presented to David Francis for his novel Stray Dog Winter, published by MacAdam/Cage. The Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award was won by Nathaniel Nathaniel Frank for his work “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America”, published by St. Martin’s Press.
Some of the honor book authors were also present to accept their certificates and say a few words to the crowd. They were in the Children’s and Young Adult category: Marcus Ewert, accompanied by his parents, who wrote “10,000 Dresses”, published by Seven Stories Press, and Linas Alsenas, who wrote “Gay America: Struggle for Equality”, published by Amulet Books.
The author of the honor book “God Says No”, James James Hannaham, was also recognized. His book was published by McSweeney’s Publishing.
The Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award went to Nathaniel Frank for his work “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America”, published by St. Martin’s Press.
Honor author Stewart Weisberg will also be recognized for his book “Barney Frank: The Story of America’s Only Left-Handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman, published by the University of Massachusetts Press.
For the 2011 awards we are currently looking at over 100 titles, but this is the first round.
The purpose of these awards is not simply to honor the best books of the year, but to provide readers and libraries with a short list of GLBT books they might purchase for their collections. I give 80% of the review copies I receive to the Sweet Briar College Library, thus building the collection in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender non-fiction, fiction, drama, poetry as well as children’s and young adult literature.
Please don’t offer me anything else to read for a while!
Here is the list of all of the winners past and present.
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/glbtrt/stonewall/honored/index.cfm

24/7 and Reunion Authors

Ode to the China Room

The library has survived another two weeks of around the clock use and some misuse of the facilities by students writing, researching and studying for exams.  Students had been staking out tables in carrels weeks in advance and once the library went on the open 24 hours, seven days a week schedule, all things seemed immovable; books, computers, pillows and baskets of snacks. Someone or their books occupied every nook in the library.

Shirley Reid made coffee each day for the students and Dean Cheryl Steele sent over bags of chocolate treats. One evening, long-time library residents, Alysha Norbury and Helen Bradshaw, both 2010s, hosted a 20 minute “Silent Dance Party.” The Dean also sent a good humor truck with fresh ice cream!  The seniors have to complete their exams early and once finished, they signed up to help cover the long hours we were open. We had so many in the class of 2010. Emma Parker, Sarina Catalon, Jasmine Toliver, Courtney Cunningham, Mary Rachel Taylor, Zehra Asghar, Alle Taylor, Sara Maroney, Kate Rose, Philicia Reid, Andy Jones and Aili McGill, you will all be sorely missed when we open in August for the beginning of a new academic year. You will be very hard to replace!

As the week progresses, fewer and fewer students would be in the library until eventually all were gone. Piles of books were still left on tables and in the carrels. The library staff has been busily sorting and shelving these books in advance of Sweet Briar College Reunion weekend.

The Irene Vongehr Vincent’40 Chinese Collections is housed in a separate room of the library.  It has over 3,000 circulating books as well as many rare items kept in the rare book collection. Students camp out in this room during exams and here is a nice poem left by one of the students:

Ode to the
China Room

We come here for finals to get our work done
We slaved and we scribbled ‘til up come the sun
Sometimes we slacked – yes it is true
But how can you not watch cute cats on YouTube?
Armed with laptops for our portfolios,
Fueled by caffeine and wondrous Oreos,
We worked ‘til the morn,’ with grins on our faces,
Because here in the China room, of all places,
We discovered a board that let us get through the night,
By writing bad poems, describing our plight.
V.J.B.

The library puts on display books by alumnae whose classes are participating in this year’s Reunion. Many of the returning alums will stay in their old dorm rooms with a former roommate, which fortunately has been upgraded with air conditioning in most cases. Many will stop by the Library with friends and family in tow, to see Mrs. Reid and Mrs. Jordan and especially the Browsing Room. They often their families, “Here is where we slept.” No wonder we had to have all of the furniture refurbished! We know all attendees will have a fabulous time this weekend.
The family of Sweet Briar College women includes many published authors. The books by members of classes from the 0’s and 5’s years are on display in the Kitty Corbet Powell’38 Reading Room at the Cochran Library.