Spring 2009 (PDF, 1.1MB)
When former KU professor Walter Kollmorgen died last year at the age of 101, he left a lasting legacy for the KU Libraries. Kollmorgen’s estate plans included a $250,000 gift for KU Libraries on behalf of Walter and his sister, Johanna Kollmorgen, who died in 1994. Kollmorgen was recruited in 1946 to found the geography department and was promoted to full professor and named chair the following year. The department’s first M.A. degree was awarded in 1949 and the first doctorate in 1959.
“This incredibly generous contribution will have a tremendous impact not only within KU Libraries, but across the campus,” said KU Libraries Dean Lorraine J. Haricombe. “We will work to ensure that this unrestricted gift benefits students, faculty and staff, as well as the people of Kansas and beyond.”
Bill Crowe, who was dean of libraries during the 1990s, remembers when Kollmorgen told him he intended to make a bequest. “I was relatively new at the time as dean. [Kollmorgen] was already retired. Early on he told me he was going to leave some money to the library.
“Kollmorgen said that he used the library a lot and in every case, ‘The library people always went out of their way to be helpful to me and my students, and that’s why I’m doing this,’” Crowe said. “He was very emphatic, it was the ‘library people.’ So I think it’s fair to say that a great many ‘library people’ earned this.
“He was an extraordinary researcher,” Crowe said. “He and his sister Johanna were both early environmentalists, quintessential hard-working Americans who cared about people, water and the land.” The siblings did research and wrote papers together at various stages of their careers. Johanna Kollmorgen also served as chair of the Douglas County Planning Commission for several years in the 1970s, and donated her working papers to the Kansas Collection in the Spencer Research Library.
Walter Kollmorgen began his academic career during the Great Depression, studying agricultural geography, and became a leading authority in the field for many decades. “During those days there were all sorts of problems, and all sorts of planners were trying to plan ways to get out of this dilemma of drought, depression and low prices,” Kollmorgen said of those early days, in a 1970 filmed interview.
Both Walter and Johanna Kollmorgen contracted polio in childhood, which affected their lives, but neither allowed that hardship to limit them. For many years, they stayed close to the land on a small ranch outside of Lawrence, the Lone Bull Ranch, where Walter often took his students to help pitch hay and do other chores. This left a strong impression on many of them.
“Any student invited along on a trip quickly learned that the thrills of keen landscape commentary came with a measure of terror,” recalled James (Pete) Shortridge, who studied under Kollmorgen and is now himself a professor in KU’s geography department. “Walter, you see, could slow down only by using a hand to physically move his leg from the accelerator to the brake.”
Kollmorgen was an independent soul; when the interviewer in the 1970 film asked him about subsidies (“Does the government pay you for not raising crops?”), Kollmorgen was emphatic: “The government doesn’t pay me a thing.”
He also retained an avid interest in conservation issues throughout his life. In his 95th year, Kollmorgen wrote,
As for water, my concern is with our failure to see this resource as finite. Levels of water in all major aquifers continue to decline, but policies for control remain woefully inadequate. Dams also are not seen clearly for what they are. None of these structures will last more than a few decades, yet we plan on the assumption that their water will always be available. Such impoundments often are salty as well. This means a poisoned soil when we irrigate, but people ignore the problem by flushing out old deposits with even saltier new flowage. Why the world’s people do not understand basic limits to growth is a mystery to me. Greed clearly overrides responsibility. Geographers face an educational challenge of epic proportions with all of this.
Kollmorgen was passionate about his work. “Geography to me is a drama,” he said. “There is the environmental complex, with all its subtleties, variations and differences that challenge man. Man comes with his preconceived notions. Now, he wants to apply them. He applies and misapplies and out of this comes experience, adventure, success and failure. This to me is the study of agriculture in all parts of the world…. Agricultural knowledge seems to grow just like plants. It has to be determined and ascertained in terms of experience and that is, I would say, the wisdom that I have learned out of agricultural geography.”
Walter Kollmorgen will be remembered as an esteemed colleague, teacher and mentor, and as a friend to KU Libraries and KU “library people.”
A strong library system means a strong university. Your gift to KU Libraries impacts people and programs throughout the campus. The following funding priorities reflect the Libraries’ critical mission on campus:
Collections
KU Libraries’ print and electronic collections support research and learning in every area of study on campus. Gifts to this area support building and processing collections in the social sciences, humanities and science and technology areas.
Equipment
Increasingly, libraries rely on technology to manage, store and deliver services to patrons. Specific areas in need of support include servers, imaging equipment, scanners and instructional technologies.
Facilities
With seven libraries across two campuses, facilities maintenance and improvements remain an ongoing priority. Your support ensures that facilities including Watson, Anschutz and Spencer Research Libraries will serve generations to come.
Faculty support
Librarians are the critical link between patrons and information. Gifts supporting professional development and training in new skills and expertise mean KU Libraries can continue to deliver top-notch support to campus people and priorities.
To support excellence at KU Libraries, complete the gift form (below left) or visit www.kuendowment.org. Thank you for all you do to help KU and the KU Libraries.
A Wichita man has entrusted more than 160 boxes of materials documenting the history of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals in the Midwest to KU Libraries. Bruce McKinney had been collecting the magazines, pamphlets, organizational newsletters and other items for nearly 35 years before meeting KU Librarian Tami Albin.
Albin interviewed McKinney for a project entitled “Under the Rainbow: Oral Histories of GLBTIQ People in Kansas.”
“I did a five-hour interview with Bruce and his depth of knowledge was phenomenal,” Albin said. “He showed me his collection and he remembered the details behind every single piece.”
Albin said that many of the items in the collection gave insight into the experience of the GLBT community of the Midwest.
“It was hard for him to have 35 years of his life taken away in boxes,” she said. “He was very generous and trusted Spencer (Research Library) to give these items a home where they would be taken care of. This addition could potentially put us on the map for GLBT materials in the Midwest.”
McKinney agreed it was difficult to relinquish the materials but said he thought that Spencer Research Library was the best place for it.
“Much of the material brought back many memories of many people,” McKinney said. “It was like letting a child go; I let it grow until I couldn’t take care of it anymore, and now I have to let someone else take care of it.”
McKinney cited the city of Lawrence’s history with gay rights as a major force behind his decision.
“Lawrence had the first gay organization in the state, and the KU campus has one of the better gay student organizations, McKinney said.” “It really is a little blue dot in a red state.”
Sherry Williams, curator of the Spencer Research Library, said the collection would make a great addition to the library’s Kansas Collection, which covers Kansas history from statehood to the present.
“It strengthens the holdings we already have,” she said. “It is also one of the largest gifts of its kind we’ve ever received. Bruce has really done a lot for researchers by handing this over to our university.”
Spencer staff began cataloging the collection in late February.
-Dylan Sands
by Sarah Kanning
This February, a former KU librarian returned to campus, this time as an award-winning author. Ann Hagedorn has written narrative nonfiction books on topics as broad-ranging as the American grass roots movement known as the Underground Railroad, international kidnapping, the upheaval and struggles that faced America in 1919, and the scandals and intrigue that brought down one of America’s greatest sports dynasties, the horse-racing legend Calumet Farm.
Hagedorn received one of two Simons Public Humanities Fellowships for 2009 from the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas, which included a two-month residency and talks to various audiences throughout campus.
Hagedorn worked at KU Libraries from 1976 to 1982 in her first professional job, and it was here in Lawrence that she became determined to take the plunge, move to New York, and become a writer.
“When I was here—I actually thought about this today—I remember sitting on the Lippincott fire escape, thinking about my life.” At the time, Hagedorn was managing a project at the Libraries, compiling a reference work on the history of economics. She recalled getting in trouble because she had written her employee evaluations as narratives, as stories. “I think the people who worked for me really enjoyed them. I was just trying to make an administrative task into something really creative, and I got in trouble for it,” she said with a grin.
After some soul-searching on that Lippincott fire escape and some conversations with a friend, she decided to leave KU to pursue her dream of writing in New York.
There Hagedorn landed another library job—this time at New York University—then earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
“That combination of librarian/journalist has been terrific for what I wanted to do. I had to use my investigative reporting skills to find where the Underground Railroad was active,” for Beyond the River, Hagedorn explained. Beyond the River was one of the American Library Association’s 25 Most Notable Books for 2004.
After Columbia, Hagedorn worked as “a cop reporter at San Jose Mercury News, then went to the Wall Street Journal to cover white collar crime,” she said. “I may be the only staff writer at the WSJ who had an MLS [library science degree].”
Hagedorn’s meticulous approach to research and her rigorously factual writing have impressed academics; her command of storytelling and other literary tools earn her popular accolades. Her work has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and she will receive an honorary doctorate from Denison University later this year.
Hagedorn’s current project is about the privatization of the U.S. military. “In this period, now, a narrative about the private military companies shows once again what a struggle it can be to keep democracy alive,” she said.
What’s next? Hagedorn is already planning her next nonfiction project (after the one currently in progress), but expects that the book after that will be a novel. She says of her nonfiction work, “I’m a facilitator, I use literary techniques to facilitate the delivery of mounds and mounds of information to the general audience, and so it’s a technique, it’s a tactic. But I find I’ve fallen in love with writing in the last two books, and after the current project and the next one, that will be six narrative nonfiction books, so I think the next one will be a piece of fiction.
“But each one of my nonfiction books, I realize lately … gets a little more literary. So I’m just getting closer and closer to what E. B. White calls ‘that grand act of courage,’” Hagedorn said. “Not that these [books] don’t take courage,” she added, laughing.
For now, she seems happy to be back in Lawrence. “Even just this morning, driving from the Kansas City airport to Lawrence, there’s this one stretch of land … I looked to the right and saw the angles of light falling on the prairie, and it all came back to me. I realized there was something about the light and the prairie that gave me this surge of creativity when I was here, that forced me to realize what had been inside me all along.”
The University of Kansas Libraries has unveiled a new major exhibit space in Watson Library. The new Library Gallery, which opened on February 12, features five floor and wall cases as well as multimedia displays. Revolving exhibits will highlight library collections and campus scholarship through the exploration of different themes.
The inaugural exhibit, “Environmental Change: an Interdisciplinary Perspective,” marks a collaboration between the Libraries and other departments, including the Institute for Policy & Social Research; Climate Change, Humans and Nature in the Global Environment (C-CHANGE); the KU Department of Design; the Department of Dance; KU EcoHawks/School of Engineering; CReSIS and the Spencer Museum of Art.
Sarah Goodwin Thiel, KU digital services librarian and chair of the KU Libraries Exhibits Committee, said she looks forward to the eclectic exhibits to come.
“This new program illustrates the Libraries’ commitment to supporting scholarly research on campus and encourages further collaboration between the libraries and other cultural centers,” she said. “It further asserts the library as a partner in this respect.”
Goodwin Thiel said the first exhibit, which will run through April 2, will offer a wide range of supplements, including improvisational dance videos from the Department of Dance.
“This first exhibit coincides with the Spencer Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibit on climate change,” she said. “Environmental issues are of particular interest to the KU community right now.”
Information Services and Student Success have combined forces to design and develop a modern learning environment within Anschutz Library. The proposed “learning commons” will integrate library, information technology and student success services to provide a dynamic place that encourages learning through inquiry, collaboration, discussion and consultation.
Built to promote academic rigor and engagement among students, the learning commons will support all student learning styles, from collaborative to quiet study. The architectural design of this state-of-the-art learning space, which is planned for development in 2009, will be an inviting, flexible environment that supports learning through centralized access to expertise and spaces for active learning, individual and group work, inspiration and socializing, research and collaboration between students, faculty and staff.
“The commons will use a scalable operational model for integrated service delivery of all these activities, blending cutting-edge technology, learning space design principles, collaborative venues and improved access to information resources and high-impact academic support services,” said Jennifer Church-Duran, KU Libraries assistant dean for user services. “By promoting student persistence and student retention, the Libraries can play a key role in helping develop information literate graduates and self-directed lifelong learners.”
The project will be funded in part by private contributions. For more information on the learning commons project, please contact Rebecca Smith at 785-864-1761 or rasmith@ku.edu.
We’d love to see you at one of our spring events! For more information or to RSVP, contact Courtney Foat at cfoat@ku.edu or 785-864-3601.
Snyder Book Collecting Contest Awards Reception
Watson Library, Third Floor West
Friday, April 10, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Reception honoring donor
Michael and Joyce Shinn
Spencer Reseach Library
Thursday, April 16, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Fundraiser featuring Mark Mangino
Anderson Family Football Complex
Tuesday, May 5, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
The Board of Advocates, the chief volunteer group of KU Libraries, met for the second time in February 2009. As advisors to the Dean, its members provide human and financial resources necessary to promote and achieve the mission and vision of KU Libraries.
Dean Lorraine J. Haricombe recently announced William Crowe, former dean of libraries at KU, will serve as chair of the new board. Crowe, who is currently in phased retirement, is also the special assistant to the dean. “Bill’s great loyalty to KU and his commitment to the success of KU Libraries are evident to all who know him,” said Haricombe. “I am confident that all members of the board, who do so much, will help us to advance the cause.”
At the February meeting, Crowe led the board in creating committees to address major gift development, outreach and board governance. To learn more about the board, please visit www.lib.ku.edu/giving/board.shtml.
Kevin Kelly, associate development director at the KU Endowment Association (KUEA), is now working to raise funds on behalf of KU Libraries. Kelly, who joined KUEA last fall, is a KU alumnus with degrees in journalism and law. He practiced privately in Lawrence for more than 16 years before serving as the KU Law School’s director of outreach activities for two years prior to joining KUEA.
Thank you to the many former library student employees who have contributed to the ongoing campaign in support of KU Libraries! Your contributions fund projects like the Learning Commons that benefit students across campus. We are grateful for your support! To learn more or to make a gift, please contact Associate Development Director Kevin Kelly at KKelly@KUEndowment.org or 785-832-7408.
Bibliophile is published in print and online semi-annually by the University of Kansas Libraries for alumni, friends and benefactors. Printing is paid for with private contributions. Correspondence should be sent to rasmith@ku.edu or mailed to:
Bibliophile
502 Watson Library
1425 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence, KS 66045
Editor - Rebecca Smith
Design, production and editorial assistance – Sarah Kanning, Brett Poe
Contributing writer – Dylan Sands
Editorial Board:
Lorraine J. Haricombe, KU Libraries Dean
Tami Albin , Jeff Bullington, Bayliss Harsh, Jana Krentz, Holly Mercer, Bill Myers, John Stratton, Sarah Goodwin Thiel and Sherry Williams.
Copyright © 2009 by the University of Kansas