Brown University Library News

The University Library’s annual sale of books, records, and other materials is open to the entire campus. New students should look in their welcome packets for a coupon for a free item. Weather permitting, the sale will be on the steps of the Rockefeller Library, otherwise it will be in the Rock Periodical Reading Room. Friday, September 11, 10 am -3 pm

Brunonians whose travels take them to southern Vermont in the next two years will have the chance to view artifacts from the John Hay Library’s McLellan Lincoln Collection at Hildene, the Lincoln Family Home in Manchester, VT. The artifacts will be part of an exhibit opening on Saturday, September 5, 2009 entitled “The American Ideal: Abraham Lincoln and the Second Inaugural.” The Second Inaugural is considered one of Lincoln’s greatest speeches, and the exhibit aims to demonstrate how Lincoln helped bring life and meaning to the promise of the American ideal of equality, justice, and opportunity for all.
The exhibit is the first effort in a partnership formed by the Brown University Library and Hildene to promote the legacy of Abraham Lincoln by collaborating on public programming for their respective Lincoln holdings.
This fall, Hildene and Brown are partnering to bring a Lincoln Essay Competition, with prizes of $1,000, $750, and $500 and up to ten honorable mention awards of $200 each, to Providence-area eighth graders. The contest will launch in mid-September.

Five Brown University Library exhibits, including a virtual exhibit of hurricane damage to Gulf Coast libraries, will commemorate the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina through photographs, poetry, music, historical documents, and video footage. Part of the University-wide “Katrina, Katrina” project’s extensive slate of programming, all Library exhibits are free, public, and open through the end of September.
The Orwig Music Library hosts a Katrina Music and Musicians Exhibit as well as a single-channel projection installation by Robbie Byron entitled “No Tap Shoes Allowed,” which reworks collaged footage from the Katrina aftermath so that the footage itself appears to have been damaged, aiming to “interrogate the relationship of cultural and political justification to the rise and fall of a community, lifestyle and state.” On display in the lobby of the Rockefeller Library are the Katrina Authors Exhibit and a series of photographs by Ian Sims ‘10.5 called “6 Months After.” The images, Sims says, document New Orleans’ efforts to rebuild its structures and its spirit in the face of indifference, profiteering, racism, and classism. Next door in the John Hay Library Lobby, Katrina-inspired poetry and historic New Orleans sheet music from the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays will be on display. Visitors to the Brown libraries can view images of the state of Gulf Coast libraries post-hurricane by visiting an online exhibit at http://dl.lib.brown.edu/gateway/lrg.php?id=615
A guide to the Library’s Katrina exhibits can be found here: http://dl.lib.brown.edu/gateway/lrg.php?id=615&task=home
A complete schedule of “Katrina, Katrina” events taking place across campus can be found at: http://dl.lib.brown.edu/gateway/lrg.php?id=615&task=home