Checkout the Hatfield Library’s “Library of Things”

At this point in the semester, many students are trying to figure out how to complete all their coursework that is due before the Fall/Thanksgiving break, and then survive the sprint into finals. This often requires long hours of study or other academic work, and can engender quite a bit of stress. We all relieve stress in our own ways, but one great way is to indulge in a hobby or other activity that relaxes us. The Hatfield Library hopes to contribute to stress reduction and relaxation through the magic of our new “Library of Things.”

Partially funded with a University CAFES grant, the Library of Things (LOT) has items to lend that are targeted toward hobbies, crafts, home improvement, outdoor recreation, etc.  Examples of items in the LOT include; a sewing machine, coloring supplies, a digital video projector, a Circuit Air Explore 2, a tent, a hammock, a massage gun, and a Nintendo Switch. To find out about additional items in the LOT as well as the borrowing rules, please check out our Library of Things online guide. If something interests you, stop by and borrow it. And you never know–the items in our LOT collection might just help you relax or discover a brand, new hobby!

While we’re on the topic of stress reduction and relaxation, don’t forget our collection of puzzles and games.  And of course, our Popular Reading collection is full of recent genre fiction such as mystery/crime, science fiction, thriller/suspense, historical, young adult, fantasy, as well as biographies, self-help, and a whole lot more. 

If you’re feeling stressed out or just need a break from studying, come visit the library and explore our new Library of Things.  And best wishes for a successful conclusion of the semester from the staff of the Hatfield Library.


New Personal Librarians Program

What are Personal Librarians?

We are launching our new Personal Librarian program this fall. Think of a Personal Librarian as a go-to person in the library. First-year and transfer students are paired up with a librarian to serve as an individual contact person in the library from day one. New students will have a name, face, and specific contact to help with any questions about the library, research, or collections.

Studies have shown (1)(2) that students do better when they have personal connections throughout their university community. The Personal Librarians will help our new students build their communities at WU, making their first experience more positive and less intimidating. It also gives librarians an additional opportunity to let students know what kinds of resources are available at the library. We provides services that students might not know to ask about, such as help with citations and even looking for resources outside of the libraries.

Personal Librarians will contact students three times during the first semester via email, and at least once during the spring semester. We hope to meet with each of our designated students individually (we might even have a special treat for them!)

For more information or how to find your Personal Librarian, visit: https://libguides.willamette.edu/personal-librarians


A “New” Chant for Christmastide

By Doreen Simonsen
Humanities and Fine Arts Librarian

Image Comparing 15th Century Chant Manuscripts

Somewhere in Europe in the 15th century, a choir sang an Alleluia followed by an Offertory on the Feast of the Holy Innocents on December 28th. A page from a book that contained parts of these songs was discovered last summer in the Vault of the Mark O. Hatfield Library. We do not know who donated this manuscript page to the library, but through the help of faculty members in the Music and Classical Studies Departments at Willamette University and elsewhere, we have been able to reveal its secrets and show how it relates to the holiday season.

Image of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

Psalter
France, Paris, between 1495 and 1498
MS M.934 fol. 141r
Morgan Library and Museum

This large sheet of vellum (parchment prepared from animal skin) is 20 ⅞ inches high by 15 ⅔ inches wide and has neumatic (plainsong) notation on a four-line staff with texts in Latin. Chants are written in neumes, which are notes sung on a single syllable.

There is a large Illuminated initial in the lower left-hand corner of second page. (To see how this page and illumination was created, please watch this excellent video, Making Manuscripts, from the Getty Museum.) The reason for the large size of this page was that it was meant to be read by several members of a choir at one time. The expense of creating manuscript books meant that it would be more economical to create one large book for several people to use rather than several smaller books for each person in the choir to hold.

Here is an illustration from a Psalter (A book of Psalms) showing a group of clerics singing from a large book with musical notation, similar in size and format to our manuscript.

Image of manuscript fragmentIdentifying the Texts:
Professors Robert Chenault and Ortwin Knorr of Willamette University’s Department of Classical Studies identified the texts found on these two pages.

This first page (or recto page) contains the following words and word fragments:
…tis eius; laudate eum in firmamen-

And the second page (or verso page) contains the rest of the phrase:
to virtutis eius.

These phrases combine to form the end of this Bible Verse:
Alleluia. Laudate Dominum in sanctis eius; laudate eum in firmamento virtutis eius.

 

 

Image of manuscript fragmentPsalm 150, Verse 1 (King James Version) Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.

At the bottom of the second (verso) page, they identified the words: Anima no- which Dr. Richard Robbins (University of Minnesota-Duluth) identified as belonging to this verse:

Anima nostra sicut passer erepta est de laqueo venantium; laqueus contritus est, et nos liberati
sumus.

Psalm 123, Verse 7 (King James Version) Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.

The two texts are separated by a red abbreviation of the word Offertory.

Identifying the Music
Professor Hector Aguëro of the Music Department at Willamette University shared images of our manuscript with his colleague Professor Richard Robbins, Director of Choral Activities at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and a scholar of choral music, especially Italian sacred music of the early Baroque.

Dr. Robbins identified our manuscript as possibly being part of a Gradual, which is a book containing chants used in the Catholic Mass throughout the year. Robbins identified the first text and melody as the end of an alleluia verse, specifically Laudate Deum (mode IV). The second melody is an offertory on the text Anima Nostra (mode II).

Both of these chants can be found in the Liber Usualis, a book of commonly used Gregorian chants in the Catholic tradition.

Image of Alleluia Chant

The notation on the library’s manuscript starts at the red line in the Alleluia above, and it ends at the red line in the Offertory Anima No|stra below.

Image of Anima Nostra Chant

You can hear a performance and follow the texts of both chants here:

Alleluia, Laudate Deum
Offertory: Anima Nostra

The text of our missal differs from that of the Liber Usualis because of its early date. It was likely written in the 15th century, and, as Dr. Robbin explains, that means it was written before the Council of Trent (1545–63) codified the Catholic Mass and the order of the chants. There was a great deal of variety in Missals before the Council of Trent, so one cannot be sure when these melodies were used during the liturgical year. However, according to Dr. Robbins, these tunes match the tunes that appear in the Holy Innocents / Epiphanytide sections in post-Trent missals.

Ornate illuminated letter D shows Jesus riding Donkey colt

Dr. Robbins also pointed out that the illuminated letter A is ornate, which would have also been more appropriate for a Christmas use. The fancy illuminated letter A is probably also the reason we only have just one sheet from this gradual. These pages could contain ornate decorations and for this reason, they were frequently removed from graduals and treated as single artworks. Here you can see similar gradual pages from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And this page shows the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, all within the large initial D.

Teaching with a 15th Century Manuscript
The best thing about discovering this “new” manuscript in the vault was being able to share it with the students and faculty of Willamette University. In September 2019, as part of his Music History I course, Professor Aguëro had his Music History students transcribe the music written on the library’s Chant manuscript. Here you can see them displaying their work. It was such a delight to have students work with a manuscript from the library’s Rare Books Collection.

Image of Professor Professor Aguëro and his Music History I class

From left to right: Ethan Frank, Matt Elcombe, Professor Aguëro, Sam Strawbridge, Kate Grobey, and Sophie Gourlay

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Professors Robert Chenault and Ortwin Knorr of the Department of Classical Studies and Professor Hector Aguëro of the Department of Music at Willamette University, and especially to Professor Richard Robbins, Director of Choral Activities at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Their combined scholarship helped us explicate the text and illuminate the value and beauty of this seasonal manuscript.

 

Bibliography

Abbey of Solesmes. The Liber Usualis 1961. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/TheLiberUsualis1961. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

Anima Nostra Sicut Passer Erepta Est. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UrXb2QUSsI. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

“Bartolomeo Di Domenico Di Guido | Manuscript Leaf with Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in an Initial D, from a Gradual | Italian | The Met.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/469046. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

Chant Manuscript, ca. 15th Century. https://libmedia.willamette.edu/commons/item/id/163. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

Council of Trent. Sacrosancti et œcumenici Concillii Tridentini Pavlo III, Ivlio III, et Pio IV, PP. MM. celebrati canones et decreta. Apud Cornab Egmond et Socios, 1644.

“Council of Trent | Definition, Summary, Significance, Results, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannicahttps://www.britannica.com/event/Council-of-Trent. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

Gregorian Chant Notation. http://www.lphrc.org/Chant. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

Laudate Deum – Gregorian Chant, Catholic Hymns. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaVnBFhiwqU. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

Making Manuscripts. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuNfdHNTv9o&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019.

Psalter, MS M.934 Fol. 141r – Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts – The Morgan
Library & Museum. http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/120/77003. Accessed 27 Nov. 2019

Robbins, Richard. “Re: Newly discovered 15th c. Chant manuscript.” Received by Hector Aguero, 22 Aug. 2019.


Newspaper Resources at Willamette

Some common questions that librarians receive at the reference desk revolve around newspapers.  Does the library have this newspaper?  How far back does your subscription go?  How do you use the microfilm machine to read old newspapers?

Before the Internet, most libraries subscribed to newspapers that were mailed to their campuses through the U.S. Postal Service.  Depending on where the newspapers were printed, it could take several days to receive the most recent edition.  And if you were lucky, the paper arrived undamaged!

Newspapers take up a lot of precious shelf space, especially when they are published daily.  To alleviate the space required for old newspapers, they were “photographed” onto microfilm or microform.  Even though the first uses of microfilm occurred as early as 1859, this technology wasn’t embraced by libraries until the 1960 and 1970s.*  However, this technology is cumbersome to use and not a big favorite among library users.  The Hatfield Library no longer receives newspapers on microfilm, but we still have a large collection of older microfilm titles.

Nowadays we access most of our newspapers digitally through the Internet, where they are much more accessible and not confined by physical space limitations.  Of course, digital newspapers require Internet access, electrical power, and often charge expensive access rates.  Technology has allowed us to scan old texts for recognizable words; we can search these words digitally and often bring up that exact instance used within a newspaper.  It certainly beats sifting through stacks of print newspapers or scrolling through rolls of microfilm!

The library continues to receive a number of important regional newspapers in print as well as a selection of national newspapers. Many of these titles are also available digitally; library users are able to access an incredibly wide range of newspapers online through our list of newspaper databases.  If you have a specific newspaper in mind, try looking it up in the Newsbank A-Z list of over 6,500 news sources.  Frequent questions we receive for specific newspapers include the Oregonian, Statesman Journal, Register Guard, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.

If you’re looking for general news, a great place to start is Access World News. This resource pulls from over 5,900 U.S. news sources and international news sources from 172 countries!  It contains content from newspapers, wire services, and broadcast news transcripts.  You can also search for news sources by location.

We have the full C-SPAN collection which include every C-SPAN program aired since 1987 to present! This is an excellent resource for gathering information about U.S. politics.

International Newsstream is a collection of the most recent news content outside of the U.S. and Canada.  For only Canadian news, try our Canadian Newsstream.

For regional and local news, we have the Oregon Newspaper Source (a collection of 31 Oregon news sources), and Regional Business News.  We also have the Historic Oregon Newspaper database, which contains over 900,000 pages of Oregon Newspapers between 1846 to 2017.

America’s Historical Newspapers is ideal for really old content. It provides the full text to over 700 historical U.S. newspapers between 1690-1876.  And the Historical New York Times provides full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue ((1851).

Current Willamette faculty, staff, and students have off-campus access to these digital resources, and the general public are welcome to access these resources in the library.  If you don’t see what you need on our list of newspaper sources or have questions, please ask one of our knowledgeable library staff.  They would be happy to help!

* Source: microfilmworld.com/briefhistoryofmicrofilm.aspx

Written by John Repplinger


Wittenberg to Willamette

From Wittenberg to Willamette:  Unlocking the Secrets of a Rare Book from the Hatfield Library’s Vault.

By Doreen Simonsen
Humanities, Fine Arts, and Rare Book Librarian

Cover of the 1599 Vulgate

Researching a Rare Book is often like a treasure hunt.  The Mark O. Hatfield Library has hundreds of rare books ranging from medieval manuscripts to 20th century first editions, and my study of one of these works, a Latin Bible entitled Biblia Sacra, proves that you really cannot judge a book by its cover.

It all started with Martin Luther.  His actions in Wittenberg inspired the leaders of the Counter Reformation to revise their version of the Bible.  With the endorsement of Pope Clement the Sixth (1592 to 1605) and the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563), the Clementine Vulgate Bible was printed widely throughout Europe.  Our library catalog record for this book notes that our copy was published in Antwerp, Belgium at the Plantin Moretus Printing House in 1599.  According to records from that printing house, Jan Moretus shipped 500 unbound copies of this book, Biblia Sacra, to Germany to be sold at the famous Frankfurt Book Fair in the Fall of 1599.  The books in that shipment were missing a quire, (a section) of the book, and our copy has missing pages, which were replaced with handwritten copies of the missing texts.  But who wrote those handwritten pages?  And who bound this book?

Missing Pages from 1599 Vulgate

In the Renaissance and Reformation, books were sold unbound, and the buyers of those texts would have them bound by professional bookbinders.  Thanks to Luther’s nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg in 1517, that city became a center of book publishing and bookbinding.  By 1555 Wittenberg had a guild of 50 bookbinders, who engraved metal plates and rolls to decorate the leather book covers they made. The cover on our bible is embellished with images, borders, Latin quotes, the initials CKW and the date 1562.  CKW turned out to be Caspar Kraft of Wittemberg, a prominent bookbinder in that city in northern Germany.  The images on his 1562 plates are of Justicia and Lucretia, images “that Lutherans used to justify their resistance to imperial [and papal] authority.”1

Around these images are decorative borders made by bookbinding rolls, which were made by Hans Herolt of Würzburg, in southern Germany.  Who hired Herolt to bind this book?  Julius Echter von Mespelbruun, the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg from 1573 – 1617, is the most likely candidate.  A Latin inscription in the books states that “Magister Wolfgang Christoph Röner received (this book) due to the generosity of the most reverend and most holy Prince-Bishop of Würzburg.”  Another inscription is by Andreas Weissens…, a theology student, who might be the person who wrote in the missing pages in this bible.

Theology Student Inscription

The most prominent inscription, however, is that of Dr. Charles H. Hall who gave this book to Willamette University in 1875.  Born in Kentucky, Hall studied Classics at Indiana Ashbury College in 1852, taught Latin, Greek, and Natural Sciences at Willamette University in the late 1850s, and became the son-in-law of Alvan Waller in 1859.

How this Latin Catholic Bible with Lutheran images on the bindings traveled from Germany to America is a mystery that may never be solved, but revealing its secrets shows that rare books can be more than old texts with pretty pictures.  They are artifacts worthy of study in their own right that can illuminate historical controversies and engage curious student researchers here at Willamette University.  A rare book can truly be much more than its cover.

 

“Closeup of the CKW 1562 book
plate stamp made by Caspar
Kraft of Wittenburg, Germany”
“Emblem of the Plantin Moretus
Printing House, Antwerp, Belgium”
“Closeup of the book border rolls
made by Hans Herolt of
Würzburg, Germany”
“Inscriptions, Including Charles Hall’s
Donation to Willamette, 1876″

 

1 Zapalac, Kristin Eldyss Sorensen. In His Image and Likeness : Political Iconography and Religious Change in Regensburg, 1500-1600. Cornell University Press, 1990. Page 128.

 


Featuring Scopus

Scopus is one of those research gems that many people skip over because they don’t know what it is and how it can be helpful.  If you’re dealing with the life, social, physical, or health sciences, this should be one of the first resources to check.

The sheer size Scopus is impressive; it covers over 22,000 journals, 150,000 books, and conference materials for a combined 69 million records.  It features smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize the world’s research.

There are five types of quality measures for each title: the h-index, CiteScore, SJR (SCImago Journal Rank), SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper), and the relatively new PlumX Metrics (which measures usage, captures, mentions, social media, and citations).  Below are two examples of how search results can be automatically analyzed and viewed in Scopus.

Scopus is easy to navigate, and the ability to search both forward and backward from a particular citation is very helpful.  Searching forward refers to the ability to follow who has cited an article.  Searching backward refers to the ability to view the references in a source’s bibliography.

Because there is such a broad range of research fields covered in Scopus, the nature of this database is multidisciplinary and allows researcher to easily search outside of his/her discipline.  Many of the references of specific records are hyperlinked, in addition to any citing literature that is also hyperlinked.

To access Scopus, visit https://library.willamette.edu/ref/dbs/atoz.php?q=s.

 

Note: Scopus logo is from the Central European University Library web site.


Tree of Giving 2017

This year’s Tree of Giving Book Drive will benefit Four Corners Elementary.

We are seeking donations of new or slightly used children’s books to be donated to library of Four Corners Elementary School. We also encourage clothing donations such as hats, gloves and scarves for students at Four Corners.

Some ideas for book donate (both Spanish & English) are Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Pokemon, Amulet, Dork Diaries, Weird But True, and books about Legos to name a few.  Additional details about this program are available at:

https://libguides.willamette.edu/tree-of-giving.

The last day to donate is Friday, December 15. Items can be dropped off at The Willamette Store, Hatfield Library, Law Library, Bistro, Sparks Athletic Center, and Pi Beta Phi.

If you have any questions, please contact John Repplinger (jrepplin@willamette.edu) or Michael Smith (msmith@willamette.edu). Below is the poster used on our social media sites.

Thank you for your support!

 


Eunice Parsons Papers

Eunice Parsons was born in 1916 in Loma, Colorado but spent most of her young life in Chicago. When she was a young girl, she attended children’s classes at the University of Chicago where she learned an appreciation for art, as well as the skills that would allow her to pursue a career in the field later in life. After graduating high school, Parsons attended a few art classes from the University of Chicago. Soon after, Parsons married and moved to Portland along with her new husband. She spent the next two decades as a working mother. In the 1940s she began taking classes at the Portland Museum Art School. Shortly after, in 1957, she took a trip to New York to acquaint and immerse herself in the culture of art. Parsons took a sketchbook where she made exhaustive notes and depicted many landscapes. This notebook showcases her earliest inclinations in playing with color, line, and shading, all developing into a unique and distinctive style. After returning from New York, Parsons continued her career as an artist and eventually began teaching at the Portland Museum Art School. While teaching, she became notorious as a blunt but brilliant instructor and would lead numerous student trips to Europe and the birthplaces of western art. In 2006 Parsons, along with others, was instrumental in opening the 12×16 Gallery in Portland. In 2017 she continues to be an influential and prolific artist at the age of 100.

The Eunice Parsons papers encompass not only Eunice Parsons’ long and influential career as a Portland artist, but also the inner workings of the Portland art community from the early 1950s through to the present day. It contains Parsons’ manuscripts from her endeavors as an author, fliers from a variety of Portland artists, photographs and slides from her teaching career, samples of her art and sketchbooks, professional papers, and a great wealth of correspondence in the form of Christmas cards from many of the most famous Portland artists.

For additional information about this collection, visit:
http://libmedia.willamette.edu/cview/archives.html#!doc:page:eads/5012

Also, view the online exhibit of a few selected sketch books: exhibit by the same intern who processed her collection:
http://libmedia.willamette.edu/archives/omeka/exhibits/show/matriarchofmodernism/introduction

Note: The Eunice Parsons papers were processed and the exhibition created by McKelvey Mandigo-Stoba, Willamette University ’17. A special thank you to Sybil Westenhouse for investing in experiential learning through the Sybil Westenhouse Archives Excellence Fund.


Betty LaDuke Conversation

You’re invited! Join us for a panel discussion exploring the roles art and activism play in raising awareness, creating social change, and advocating for justice.

Talk Title:  Social Justice Through Art, Advocacy, and Activism: A Conversation with Artist Betty LaDuke and Guests

Topics discussed will include human rights, sustainability, and immigration within a local, national and international context, with a focus on current events such as Standing Rock and DACA. Internationally recognized artist and activist Betty LaDuke will present an artist’s talk followed by a panel discussion. Joining LaDuke for the discussion is Native hip hop artist Scott Kalama (Warm Springs) aka Blue Flamez, and Willamette University student and President of Willamette’s Native and Indigenous Student Union Alexus Uentillie (Diné) ’19.  Also offered in conjunction with the panel discussion are the exhibits on display in Goudy Commons, the Mark O. Hatfield Library, Rogers Music Hall, and third floor of the University Center (Putnam).

Date/Time: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 4:30-6:00 p.m.

Location: Ford Hall – Theatre

Audience: Free and open to the public. General Seating.

Sponsors:  Willamette University Green Grant Fund, the Mark O. Hatfield Library, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, and University Archives and Special Collections.

Questions: Contact Mary McRobinson (mmcrobin@willamette.edu, 503-370-6764) and Jonathan Bucci (jbucci@willamette.edu, 503-370-6861).

 


WU Alumni Publications

The Willamette University Alumni Publication collection comes from the University Archives & Records collection area, which contains publications, images, administrative records, research materials, and scrapbooks dating from Willamette’s beginnings.

It includes the Willamette University Bulletin (1919); The Willamette Alumni Magazine (1922-1923); The Willamette Alumni Bulletin (June, 1925); The Willamette University Alumnus (1926-1970); The Willamette Scene (April 1967 – Spring 2014); The Willamette Magazine (Fall 2014 – Summer 2016)

Also available are materials relating to Freshman Glee, one of Willamette’s longest running – and most beloved – traditions. This collection can be browsed or searched.

http://libmedia.willamette.edu/commons/collec/102