Category Archives: libitsblog

Students are “Southbound for Christmas” ca. 1930, captured on film

College Archives, libitsblog, libspotlight, middpoints, Special Collections

This recently rediscovered clip from the 1930s in the College’s 16mm film archives shows the once-bustling Middlebury train station with students eagerly boarding a southbound train home for the holiday break. The footage also captures views of notable town architecture including the conical spire that once capped the Battell Block before it’s removal after a 1950 hurricane and  the residence of George Harvey years before it became the Fire and Ice restaurant in 1974.

As fall semester comes to a close, be sure to affix a Middlebury pennant onto your luggage, don your fur coat, and board the southbound train home for holidays!

Sources

Langrock, Joann. Middebury Stores and Busineses. Middlebury: Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, 2002.

A “first-rate beer” voucher, 2,000 years overdue

beer, cuneiform, libitsblog, libspotlight, middpoints, New acquisitions, Special Collections

In special collections, visitors often ask us, “What’s your most expensive item?” Or sometimes: “What’s the oldest thing you have?”

In late November, we acquired our newest, oldest thing: a baked clay tablet that originated in ancient Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), from roughly 2,000 BCE. This small tablet (measuring just about 1 inch x 1 inch and pictured here) is incised with cuneiform script, considered to be one of the earliest forms of writing.


With the help of Middlebury alum Seth Richardson, Class of 1990, a historian of the ancient Near East at the University of Chicago, we’re learning more about our new acquisition. Likely in British and American hands since the early 20th century, our tablet is essentially a beer coupon. That’s right. Based only on preliminary examination, Dr. Richardson translated the first line: “3 liters of first-rate beer.”

And as it turns out, the Western tradition of beer brewing began in Mesopotamia between 3500 – 3100 BCE. How do we know? Largely from cuneiform tablets like ours, which contain detailed records around beer production, the delivery of raw materials (barley, yeast, bread, flour), and the trading of beer products. Like apple cider production in colonial New England, ancient Mesopotamians lacked clean water, but had an abundance of grains and the know-how needed to ferment them. And they had the earliest known written alphabet to boot.

Funds for the purchase of this item were gifted by Jeri Bapasola, French School, 1978.

References

“Beer in the Ancient World.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Accessed December 3, 2015.

Damerow, Peter. “Sumerian Beer: The Origins of Brewing Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia.” Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, no. 2 (2012).

Special Collections & Archives Celebrates Founder’s Day

College Archives, events, libitsblog, middpoints, Special Collections

To mark Founder’s Day, the original Middlebury College Charter signed by the Governor of Vermont on November 1st, 1800 will be on view in Special Collections on Nov. 2nd. Stop by and see it along with other documents from the College Archives that date from the time of our founding.

Can’t make out the cursive? Read the transcript here.

 

This document represents both the incipit of our College’s narrative as well as the laborious road to the college charter itself. After two failed petitions to the Vermont General Assembly in 1789 and 1799, Middlebury faced opposition from the institution that received the first university charter, the University of Vermont. Though UVM had been chartered in 1791, the institution’s doors had yet to open at the time Middlebury petitioned to open the College. In fact, they had yet to elect a president or establish a college edifice. Fearful of losing their state funding and lands, UVM sought to prevent a new college from forming. However, due to the state’s population increase (Vermont’s population grew from 84,000 to 154,000 between 1791 and 1800) and UVM’s slow start, there was a clear need for a place to educate Vermonters at home. Middlebury, with its newly constructed Academy Building (a $4,150 project funded by public subscriptions) founded by Gamaliel Painter, proved the perfect place to serve the College and Vermonters at large. Thus, the town’s college was founded with the signing of the charter, just 39 years after the town itself was chartered.

 

Source: Stameshkin, David M. 1985. The Town’s College: Middlebury College, 1800-1915. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College Press.

Library & Information Technology Services » Post for MiddNotes 2015-10-23 12:15:34

Helpdesk Alerts, ITS, libitsblog, library, LIS Staff Interest, lisblog, Middlebury Community Interest, middpoints, Post for MiddNotes, Post for MiddPoints

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October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Join your colleagues from both the Middlebury and Monterey campuses for a presentation and discussion on critical cybersecurity issues including phishing and cracking.

  • On October 29th at 12:30 Eastern time, Information Security will host a Cybersecurity Roadshow.
  • You can join the discussion in Lib105A on the Middlebury Campus or on PolyCom 710205
  • Central Monterey meeting location TBD.

Please join us for this discussion. It is open to students, faculty, staff and the community. Computer security is the responsibility of us all.

For more information call Information Security at 802-349-5805

The Library Celebrates President Patton’s Inauguration

College Archives, events, Exhibits, libitsblog, middpoints, Special Collections

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After populating various campus buildings for the last few weeks, banners portraying these eight leading women from Middlebury’s history now stand in the Davis Library atrium in honor of President Laurie Patton’s inauguration, taking place this Sunday, October 11th. Additional information about each of these women can be found at go/specialblog or in person at the library.
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May Belle Chellis

Mary Annette Anderson 

Charlotte May Johnson

Rhoda Mabel White

Eleanor Sybil Ross

Catherine Emma Robbins 

Viola Chittenden White 

Gertrude Cornish Milliken

Will you be the next Midd woman to make history? Picture yourself among these women by posting a selfie with the display (tag @middleburyspecialcollections) on instagram, or emailing specialcollections@middlebury.edu.

Catherine Emma Robbins, A Long Trail-blazer

College Archives, events, Exhibits, libitsblog, middpoints, Nobly Served: Leading Women of Middlebury College, Special Collections

In honor of the inauguration of Laurie L. Patton as the seventeenth president on Sunday, October 11, 2015, Special Collections & Archives will feature remarkable women from the College’s history in eight temporary exhibits spread across campus, now through October 5th. Catherine Emma Robbins can be found in the Virtue Field House and in Atwater Dining Hall.

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The Three Musketeers on the Long Trail at Hazens Notch (left to right Catherine Robbins, Hilda Kurth, and Kathleen Norris)

Four years after graduating from Middlebury College in 1923, Cornwall, Vermont, native Catherine Emma Robbins became the first woman to hike the Long Trail in its entirety—without a male guide. She, along with her two companions—Hilda Kurth, who fled to the mountains to avoid a man who wanted to marry her, and Kathleen Norris, who, despite her father’s death, resolved to make the trip on her own—made headlines across the country as “The Three Musketeers.” Robbins’ motto for the trip, “The Musketeers must get there!,” embodies the camaraderie and drive that inspired her both as a hiker on the Long Trail and as a three-sport athlete and Theta Chi Epsilon sorority member at Middlebury.

After the hike, she continued teaching in Vermont high schools. She died at age 97 but not before her two granddaughters, Cara Clifford Nelson and Amity Clifford [Robichaud] reprised the hike in 1997, seventy years after Robbins blazed the trail, raising funds for the Green Mountain Club’s Long Trail Protection Campaign.

 

Catherine Robbins yearbook
Catherine Robbins’ Yearbook Photo 1923
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The 1924 Long Trail Guidebook used by Robbins on her hike with her notes, provided by granddaughter Cara Nelson 
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Catherine Robbins Clifford with granddaughters Amity Robichaud and Cara Nelson, (and a Middlebury poster in the background). Photo provided by Cara Nelson
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Final page in Catherine Robbins’ Long Trail scrapbook; provided by Cara Nelson

Davis Library Fall atrium exhibit: Old Friends and New: Writers in Nature, 1847-2000

College Archives, events, Exhibits, libitsblog, middpoints, Rare Books & Manuscripts, Special Collections

Two new exhibits have cropped up in the library this week – “Old Friends and New: Writers in Nature, 1847-2000” in the atrium and “Reading Nature” in the lower level Harman Reading Room. Both feature books that explore literary and scientific human interaction with the environment to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College.

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The main floor exhibit “Old Friends and New” contains books and archives produced by authors deeply rooted in the natural world.

From Henry David Thoreau to John Freidin, this collection showcases the importance of nature as it exists outdoors as well as within the minds and pages of these authors.

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John Muir and John Burroughs, 1909
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Artist, naturalist, and writer Rowland Evans Robinson (1833-1900)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title page, Julia Butterfly Hill's The Legacy of Luna, 2000
Title page, Julia Butterfly Hill’s The Legacy of Luna, 2000

Davis Library Fall lower level exhibit: Reading Nature

events, Exhibits, libitsblog, middpoints, New acquisitions, Rare Books & Manuscripts, Special Collections

Two new exhibits have cropped up in the library this week – “Old Friends and New: Writers in Nature, 1847-2000” in the atrium and “Reading Nature” in the lower level Harman Reading Room. Both feature books that explore literary and scientific human interaction with the environment to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College.

brown pear signs less text“Reading Nature” on the lower level of the library features books by scientists, botanists, naturalists, artists, and poets from the beginning of the 18th century to the 20th century. Each captures nature in a new way, redrawing the frames through which we understand the natural world.

 

Pages from Annie M Ward's "Notes on Botany," 1850-1860
Pages from Annie M Ward’s “Notes on Botany,” 1850-1860

 

"Cloud Crystals: A Snowflake Album Collected and Edited by a Lady" by Frances Chickering, 1864
“Cloud Crystals: A Snowflake Album Collected and Edited by a Lady” by Frances Chickering, 1864
Butterfly diagram from "The Aurelian" by Moses Harris, 1840
Butterfly diagram from “The Aurelian” by Moses Harris, 1840; Recent Gift of Julia Emerson, Class of 1965

 

 

 

 

Nobly Served Exhibit: Mary Annette Anderson

College Archives, events, Exhibits, libitsblog, middpoints, Nobly Served: Leading Women of Middlebury College

Mary Annette Anderson was the first woman of color to graduate from Middlebury College and the first woman of color to be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She was born in Shoreham, Vermont to William Anderson, a former slave who traveled north after the Civil War and purchased his own farm, and Philomine Langlois of French Canadian and Indian heritage. Her formal education began in the Shoreham School, continued in the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in Massachusetts, and culminated at Middlebury College, where Anderson graduated as valedictorian of the Class of 1899. As Valedictorian, she delivered a Commencement address
entitled “The Crown of Culture.” Additionally, she was the first woman to address the distinguished guests—the College president, trustees, alumni, and professors—at the “Corporation dinner,” and her graduating class sang a poem she penned at their Class Day celebration.

After graduation, she moved to New Orleans, Louisiana where she taught at Straight University for one year before joining the Howard University faculty in Washington, D.C. She taught English and Rhetoric there until 1907 when she married fellow faculty member, Walter Lucius Smith. Eventually she returned to Vermont with her husband, who completed postgraduate work at the University of Vermont. She died in 1922 at age forty-seven.

As a part of our exhibition, “Nobly Served: Leading Women of Middlebury College,” banners of Mary Anderson can be found in Axinn and Bicentennial Hall now through October 5th.

The Canvas Pilot

ITS, libitsblog, library, LIS Staff Interest, lisblog, Middlebury Community Interest, middpoints, Post for MiddNotes, Post for MiddPoints

Our current Learning Management System (LMS), Moodle, was adopted back in 2011. Four years later we are reflecting on whether Moodle is still the best LMS to serve the growing needs of Middlebury. This fall we are doing a pilot to evaluate Canvas and determine whether we want to continue with Moodle or move to Canvas. You can learn more about Canvas and Middlebury’s evaluation by following this site – http://sites.middlebury.edu/canvas/

Since it has launched over 1,200 colleges, universities and school districts have adopted Canvas, including many of our peer and neighboring institutions, including Amherst,  Williams, Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth. It uses modern technology and service management, has a user-centric design, and the features that are common to an LMS are easier to find and use.

Some of the appealing features that are worth exploring are:

What about Moodle?

Middlebury adopted Moodle as its LMS in 2011 after a year-long evaluation (http://sites.middlebury.edu/segue/2011/06/14/moodle-middlebury/). At that time it was decided that we would use Moodle for a minimum of 5 years. At the end of the 5 years we would ask ourselves: Is Moodle still the right LMS for Middlebury? The 5 years will end in August of 2016.

The Canvas evaluation should not be considered as a sign that Middlebury intends to stop using, supporting, or expanding the platform. This is simply an opportunity to consider other options and review our use of Moodle.