Thursday, December 17, 2015

UPK Announces New Book Series on Poetry and Prose

By Whitney Hale

The University Press of Kentucky (UPK) and Centre College have announced the inaugural writers to appear in a new book series — the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series. The first two authors to have their books selected for inclusion are fiction writer Rion Amilcar Scott and poet Brianna Noll. Their books will be published in the next academic year. These works were selected from more than 120 submissions and represent some of the most innovative and powerful work in new American writing.

The University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series seeks to publish creative works that exhibit a profound attention to language, strong imagination, formal inventiveness, and awareness of one’s literary roots.

Scott’s short story collection will be published in the fall of 2016. His work centers on the fictional town of Cross River, Maryland, an African-American community that was founded in 1807 by rebellious slaves after a successful insurrection. Grappling with the experiences of adolescence, brotherhood, mistaken identity, child raising, abuse, but particularly hope, each story showcases Scott’s unique ability to flesh out intricately imagined characters and to narrate from a variety of perspectives, often revolving around children who display more wisdom, compassion, and tact than their adult counterparts.

A member of the English faculty at Bowie State University, Scott was awarded a Kimbilio Fellowship. He has published work in The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, among others and is the author of "Wolf Tickets." Series editor Lisa Williams calls it "a wildly impressive and ambitious collection of stories, which affirms that it can be the smallest human choices — of tenderness, kindness and cruelty — that make our people, and our world, what it is."

Noll’s collection of poetry, due out in the spring of 2017, explores the intersection of the scientific and the fantastical. Her subjects range from woolly mammoths and star-nosed moles to Japanese origami and Greek myth. In poems that are taut and lyrical, short-lined, enjambed and always enticing on a sentence level, Noll sometimes speaks in the voice of other creatures as she explores what it might mean to be an "other."

Noll is a founder and current poetry editor of the literary magazine The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Quarterly, American Poetry Journal, Kenyon Review Online and The Georgia Review. "Never simply descriptive," Williams describes Noll’s poems as "alchemic, composed of sharp observation and philosophic questioning, weaving together human perception, received knowledge, intellectual and emotional exploration, and profound watchfulness."

Two books will be published each academic year as part of the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series. Submissions of poetry and fiction are accepted for the series between April 15 and June 1. Submissions postmarked no later than June 1 should be mailed to University Press of Kentucky, Attn: New Poetry and Fiction, 663 S. Limestone Street, Lexington, KY 40508.

The series is edited by Lisa Williams, Paul L. Cantrell Associate Professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Centre College. Williams is the author of three collections of poetry, "Gazelle in the House," "Woman Reading to the Sea" and "The Hammered Dulcimer," and a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Barnard Women Poets Prize, the May Swenson Poetry Award, and an Al Smith Individual Artist Grant from the Kentucky Arts Council. The series advisor board includes Camille Dungy, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Silas House, Davis McCombs and Roger Reeves.

University Press of Kentucky is the scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, representing a consortium that now includes all of the state universities, five private colleges and two historical societies. The editorial program of the press focuses on the humanities and the social sciences. Offices for the administrative, editorial, production and marketing departments of the press are found at UK, which provides financial support toward the operating expenses of the publishing operation.

Reprinted with permission from UKNow

SCRC student project updates Wikipedia



UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center student worker Sarah Coblentz recently updated more than 50 Wikipedia pages to include links to related UK Libraries finding aids and digitized collections. Updated pages include:

·         Frontier Nursing Service
·         Adams Express Company
·         John Jacob Niles
·         Ellen Churchill Semple
·         Elizabeth Madox Roberts
·         Clay Lancaster
·         Kentucky Wildcats football

This project was inspired by the National Archives’ Wikipedian-in-Residence program.

Archivist of the United States David Ferriero has encouraged archives and special collections collaboration with Wikipedia. As Ferriero stated during the Closing Plenary of Wikimania 2012, “At the Archives, the concepts of openness and access are embedded in our mission. And the work we do every day is rooted in the belief that citizens have the right to see, examine, and learn from the records that guarantee citizen’s rights, document government actions, and tell the story of the nation.”

The Special Collections Research Center will continue updating Wikipedia pages as more finding aids, digitized collections, and other resources become available online.

Design Library displays student work from architecture and drawing classes

A student looks at work from Jury Week.
The Design Library hosted exhibits of student work during Jury Week. In the photo to the left a student examines a model created by a senior architecture student. The architecture student designed a school that could be constructed quickly in an area ravaged by a natural disaster. On the wall in the background are drawings by students in the first year drawing class.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

SCRC workshop helps African American church staff develop archival skills


Workshop participants included, from left to right, Eva Brown
(Mt. Gilead Baptist Church), Yvonne Giles, and Phaon Patton
(First African Baptist Church), with Stacie Williams from SCRC.
Not pictured is Delphine Ridgeway (Main Street Baptist Church).
Special Collections Research Center archivists and librarians hosted four participants for an archival workshop for clerks and secretaries of African American churches in Lexington. 

The workshop idea began with historian Yvonne Giles of the First African Foundation. Giles contacted Ruth Bryan, SCRC director of Technical Services and University Archivist. Bryan organized the workshop in conjunction with Giles and Special Collections staff including: Jaime Marie Burton, director of Research Services and Education; Nancy DeMarcus, University Records manager; Sarah Dorpinghaus, digital archivist; Reinette Jones, Oral History Librarian and African American Studies Academic Liaison; Matthew Strandmark, education archivist; and Stacie Williams, Learning Lab manager. 

Topics included the basics of inventorying and storing physical records; digitization methods and standards; preservation and description of born-digital and digitized files; providing research access to and on-line sharing of records; and the historical value of African American church records.  The workshop concluded with a tour of working areas in Special Collections. 

"We were thrilled to meet and work with our records colleagues," said Bryan. "We plan to continue building this relationship."

Cecilia Virtue is UK ARL CEP fellow

Left to right: Rick Brewer, director of the Medical Center
Library,  Cecilia Virtue, and Tag Heister
Cecilia Virtue, a graduate student in Information Science, is an Association of Research Libraries Career Enhancement Program (ARL CEP) fellow. She is interning in the Medical Center Library with Tag Heister, a Clinical Reference Librarian. 

Unlike previous CEP interns whose internships were concentrated in a 6 to 8 week block, Cecilia will spread her internship over the entire spring semester as she is also a full-time employee in the College of Agriculture.


Congratulations, Cecilia.

Architecture students present sustainable design ideas at William T. Young Library


Architecture students present their ideas at William T. Young Library.
The Hub at William T. Young Library hosted students' presentations of sustainable architectural design in early December. The UK College of Design’s School of Architecture held a jury of student work from a Graduate Architecture Studio at the Hub on Friday, December 4. The fourteen students in the studio presented innovative, sustainable designs for a new College of Design facility.  UK Student Sustainability Council, a group focused on advancing the theory and practice of sustainability at UK, sponsored the studio.

A model by an architecture student.

Katherine Smith joins UK Libraries


Katherine Smith will join UK Libraries January 10 as a library specialist for evening/weekend reference support. Katherine received a B.A. degree in German from Berea College. She previously worked at the EKU Libraries while taking library science classes at UK. Welcome, Katherine.

Frank Stanger to retire

Frank Stanger
Frank Stanger, research assistant in the Special Collections Research Center, will retire from UK on January 1, 2016. The Lexington Herald-Leader profiled Frank and his work at UK Libraries in a 2011 story, still available online.  Frank began his work at the UK Libraries SCRC in 1977.

LOEX annual conference comes to Lexington


Lexington will serve as host to the LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) Annual Conference in 2017. UK librarians Debbie Sharp, Beth Kraemer, and Beth Fuchs, along with a colleague from Eastern Kentucky University, wrote the proposal to host the conference. Lexington was selected from among three other potential conference locations. 

Seven librarians from academic institutions throughout Kentucky will be on the conference planning committee, including Beth Kraemer and committee co-chair Beth Fuchs. Founded in 1971, LOEX is the premier information literacy organization in the United States. The annual conference attracts about 350 librarians each Spring.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Books from UPK and UK Libraries faculty featured in Courier-Journal gift guide

The Louisville Courier-Journal featured five books connected to the University Press of Kentucky and UK Libraries on their holiday gift giving list for 2015.

The article, available to read online, lists the following UPK books:

Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture, edited by Andrew Kelly, published by UPK.




The Manhattan Cocktail: A Modern Guide to the Whiskey Classic, by Albert W.A. Schmid, published by UPK.



A fifth book on the newspaper’s list is Row by Row: Talking With Kentucky Gardeners, by Katherine Black, a former archivist at UK Libraries. Photos in the book are by Deirdre Scaggs, associate dean of the UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center. The book is published by Ohio University Press.