Library News
Late Night Studying during exams
This year you will once again have lots of options when it comes to late night studying during exams.
Thode Library will be open 24/7 from April 8th to April27th. The Reactor Café will be open April 11th-26th from 10am to 10pm. Don't forget there is an ATM to Thode so you will have easy access to cash for use at the café and the vending machines.
The lower level of Thode is the Quietest Study Area in the building. In addition there is a small Silent Study room on the lower level.
Mills Library moves to extended hours next week – the main library will be open 8am to 10:45pm, 7 days per week.
The Mills Learning Commons (2nd floor) is open 24/7, effective immediately, until April 27th. Make sure you give the new vending machines by the washrooms on the 2nd floor a try! Cold drinks (pop, water, juice, energy drinks), hot drinks (including latte's and cappuccino's), snacks (some healthy ones too) and the 1st Red Bull vending machine in Canada!
The entire 6th floor of Mills is designated as a Silent Study Area and we will do our best to patrol this area. Feel free to send an email to quiet@mcmaster.ca or use theonline form if students in the area are not respecting the Silent Study guidelines (no talking, no socializing, no cell phones, no music). A large area on the 4th floor is designated as a Quiet Study Area. During exams, all seating areas on the upper floors (3rd – 5th) are considered Quiet Study Areas and will be signed as such.
Innis will also move to extended hours next week – Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 2:45am / Friday 8:30am to 10:45pm /Saturday 10:30am to 5:45 pm / Sunday 1pm to 7:45pm.
You will find more information on the various study spaces available in our libraries here.
All libraries have bookable Group Study Rooms. Please remember that these are to be used by groups of 2 or more, and cannot be booked for more than 2 consecutive hours by one group. The library reserves the right to remove bookings which do not follow these guidelines. Food and beverage vending machines in all libraries will be stocked daily during exams.
Good luck on your exams!
Breathing new life into a medieval gem
‘Without conservation, the history in these books could be lost, we need to preserve them for future generations,’ says McMaster Preservation Technician Audrie Schell who restored the 545 year-old Book of Hours.
Five centuries ago, the Book of Hours, now held by the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, was a cherished possession, an integral part of daily life in the Middle Ages.
As the years passed however, this once treasured book succumbed to a slow decay, its spine disintegrating, the fine artwork that adorned its pages flaking away little by little, another piece of history nearly lost forever.
It took more than eight months, but thanks to modern restoration techniques and skilful artistry, this medieval gem now looks as it did when its original owner first held it 545 years ago.
- McMaster Preservation Technician, Audrie Schell spent eight months restoring the Book of Hours.
“A book of hours is a piece of art,” says Audrie Schell, Preservation Technician in the Division who restored this unique text in McMaster’s Preservation Lab. “Books of hours were commissioned works, so this is a one-of-a-kind item, an historical artefact that belonged to a specific person over 500 years ago, it’s very special.”
Books of hours, commonly used throughout the Middle Ages, were devotional texts containing cycles of psalms, prayers, hymns, readings and images of medieval Christianity that served as a daily guide to help the faithful lead pious lives and find salvation.
Over the centuries, McMaster’s book of hours had become badly damaged. Its pages, made of animal skin, or ‘vellum,’ had been exposed to moisture, forming waves and wrinkles, which caused the pigment to crack and the artwork to begin to flake away.
Schell began the painstaking restoration process by using a specialized humidity chamber and suction table that enabled her to gently stretch and flatten each vellum page individually. Then, using a fine brush, she applied a consolidant to re-adhere the flaking pigments, and hand-bound the pages, placing them in a leather cover.
The result is a stunning, one-of-a-kind work of art that now looks as vibrant as it did in the 15 century.
“We all need to have roots whether we’re conscious of it or not, and we need to know our history,” says Schell. “Without conservation, the history in these books could be lost, we need to preserve them for future generations.”
To view the Book of Hours, please contact archives@mcmaster.ca to make an appointment.
View a digital copy of the Book of Hours
Read this and other articles featured in the latest issue of the McMaster Library News.
Shining a light on Hamilton’s aspiring writers
Words and Music, an event hosted by the McMaster University Library, featured readings from emerging writers (from left) Denise Davy, Nichole Fanara, Ken Watson, Margaret Nowaczyk, Pamela Hensley, Janis Crowe and Robert Pasquini.
“It’s so exciting to be here tonight,” says Pamela Hensley before reading an excerpt from her work, Lola Lascaire to an audience of faculty, staff, students and community partners gathered at the University Club.
It was a sentiment echoed by all seven aspiring authors who participated in the event, many of whom were reading their work in public for the first time.
The readings were the centrepiece of a special event jointly hosted by McMaster University Library, The Department of English and Cultural Studies and the Hamilton Public Library aimed at showcasing the work of aspiring McMaster and Hamilton authors who have spent the past four months honing their craft with the guidance of Kim Echlin, the 2015-16 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer-in-Residence.
“We often work with established authors, but this is a wonderful opportunity to support writers who are at the beginning of their careers,” says McMaster University Librarian Vivian Lewis. “Libraries traditionally focus on reading. In this case, we get to focus on the craft of writing. This event is a way for us to both provide a platform for emerging writers, and to connect with the local writing community both on campus and in Hamilton.”
The evening concluded with a reading by Echlin, who shared a passage from her latest novel Under the Visible Life. Echlin was accompanied by Pianist Jason Scozzari, a fourth year student in McMaster’s Honours Music program.
During her residency, Echlin split her time between campus and Hamilton Public Library, working with the apprentice authors in both locations. Echlin also became involved in the Hamilton writing community through initiatives like gritLIT and visited local schools to talk about the creative writing process.
The Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer-in-Residence program is funded in part through a generous donation from the Taylor family and is co-sponsored by McMaster’s Department of English and Cultural Studies and the Hamilton Public Library.
Writings from a Residency
Read excerpts from two of the writers who has been working with Kim Echlin over the past four months:
Lola Lascaire by Pamela Hensley
Pamela Hensley has an engineering degree from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA from University of Michigan. Originally from Ottawa, she worked in the US, Japan, and Germany before moving to back to Canada six years ago. Pamela is the author of several works of short fiction, her latest published in EVENT magazine, and is in the early stages of writing her first novel. She lives in Ancaster with her husband and daughter.
Our Future Forms By Robert Pasquini
Robert Pasquini is a 4th year PhD candidate in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster. His poem entitled “Dissolution” appeared in the online publication Ditch, and his short story “The Curator” was published in Hamilton Arts and Letters. Robert’s scholarly and creative work reflects his unyielding fascination with all things nineteenth century, science fictional, and evolutionary.
What could the Library look like in 10 years?
Students look at floor plans from the McMaster Library Space Plan in the lobby of Mills Library, part of a recent exercise aimed at finding ways to improve existing library spaces and plan for future needs.
What could McMaster University Library look like in 10 years? Visit the lobbies of Mills and Thode Libraries to find out.
Floor plans from the recent Master Library Space Plan exercise will be on display until the end of April. McMaster faculty, staff and students are invited to visit Mills and Thode Libraries to view the plans and provide feedback using the whiteboard placed beside each poster, or by submitting feedback online.
The plan, which University Librarian Vivian Lewis says could be implemented over the next decade, is the result of broad consultations with faculty, staff and students and is aimed at finding ways to improve existing library spaces and plan for future needs.
View images from the Master Library Space Plan:
Words and Music: Readings from a Residency
McMaster University Library, the Department of English and Cultural Studies and the Hamilton Public Library invite you to Words and Music, a special event featuring readings by Kim Echlin, the Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer-in-Residence for 2015-16.
Echlin’s reading will be accompanied by pianist Jason Scozzari, a fourth year student in McMaster’s Honours Music program. This event will also include readings by some of the aspiring writers from the McMaster and Hamilton communities that Echlin mentored during her residency.
When: March 23, 2016 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Where: Great Hall, Alumni Memorial Hall (University Club)
No, you can’t read that book!
What if you were told you couldn’t read a book because of its so-called offensive language or graphic content? Chances are you’d want to read it even more, if only to find out why you were told not to read it in the first place.
Freedom to Read Week is a nation-wide commemoration of the thousands of books that have been banned, challenged, or censored for any number of reasons, including sexuality, coarse language, racism, or religious objections.
From February 21-27, McMaster University Library is joining public libraries, bookstores and schools across the country to create awareness around the issue of censorship and highlight the importance of intellectual freedom.
Throughout the week, faculty, staff and students are invited to the lobby of Mills Library to explore a display featuring a wide and surprising array of books that have at one time been banned or challenged.
Faculty, staff and students can also participate in Freedom to Read Week via Twitter, using the hashtag #MacFTR16, where everyday throughout the week, Library staff will tweet out the reason a book was banned and invite people to give their own reasons why it should be read.
Although banning books is far from a common practice in Canada, there continue to be those who seek to remove books they deem offensive from libraries and schools.
Challenged and banned books have ranged from literary classics such as James Joyce’s Ulysses to popular children's books such as the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. As recently as 2014, a patron of the Toronto Public Library challenged Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop: The Simplest Seuss for Youngest due to the concern that it “encourages children to use violence against their fathers.”
Watch videos featuring a number of famously banned literary classics, including the following video that asks the question, "What if we never got to meet Atticus Finch?"
Library Survey: Priorities for Undescribed Collections
Through the end of February, McMaster University Library is inviting faculty and graduate students to continue participating in a survey related to “hidden collections,” undescribed materials that currently can’t be found by students or researchers.
Library staff are working to describe these items and invite McMaster faculty and graduate students to provide input on which subject areas contained in these materials would be most useful to open for teaching and research.
On the survey site, participants will be presented with pairs of random and unrelated collections and asked to select one. As the polling progresses, the most selected items float to the top of the results, the least selected toward the bottom.
Users can vote multiple times. The presentation of options will continue in an endless cycle, so users can stop whenever they choose; there’s no pre-set endpoint.
Participate in the survey http://www.allourideas.org/researchcollectionswm
New collection captures figure skating’s storied past
Few stars shine as bright in the history of figure skating as Sonia Henie and Barbara Ann Scott. Now a new collection is providing a unique glimpse at these and other superstars of the figure skating world.
Carl Spadoni, former Director of McMaster’s William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, recently donated his large collection of figure skating books, photos, archive material and skating memorabilia to the Division.
The collection includes over 300 books, 1200 photos, more than 800 postcards, 400 programs, as well as medals, films, letters and autograph books featuring some of skating’s biggest stars.
The collection also provides a unique insight into local skating history and includes programs and other publications created by skating clubs from cities and towns across Canada.
Materials span more than 200 years of skating history and represent a range of figure skating ephemera from an NFB film featuring 1948 Olympic champion Barbara Ann Scott, to costume sketches for fellow Canadian stars, Brian Orser and Elizabeth Manley. Also included are the first books published on skating in Europe and North America, dating as early as 1813.
“This is one of the finest collections of figure skating materials in the world,” says Wade Wyckoff Associate University Librarian, Collections. “We are grateful to receive this unique collection and pleased to add these remarkable materials to our archives.”
Read the Hamilton Spectator article featuring this collection.
Learn about 3D printing
3D printing is easy once one learns a few basics.
The Lewis & Ruth Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship in Mills Library is launching its first 90-minute Introduction to 3D Printing course. Come learn the basic elements of 3D printing hardware and how to create successful print jobs. More details and registration available at Eventbrite. There are only a few spots left, but don't despair if it's full; we will be offering the course again in the near future.
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