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Friends of the UTA Libraries Make a Difference!By Gerald D. Saxon
Since the spring issue of UTA Library Notes was published, the Friends of the UTA Libraries have been busy indeed. On April 17, 2002, Richard Francaviglia, second vice president of the Friends, presented the annual STAR Award to Jean Sherwin, stacks manager for the library, for outstanding contributions to the library. Jean received a cash prize of $350. On April 26th, the Friends’ annual election and business meeting was held. Friends’ president Daniel Kauth conducted the election of officers and new Advisoy Council members. Elected at the meeting were Betty Bob Buckley, president; Richard Francaviglia, first vice president; Dorothy Rencurrel, second vice president; Mary Ellen Emery, secretary; Stephen Stillwell, jr., treasurer; and Daniel Kauth, parliamentarian. Betty Clark, Sally Gross, Brent Nicholson, and Phyllis Peters were elected as new members of the Advisory Council. Also, two new positions were added to the council. Nathan Dillinger was added as undergraduate student representative and Marcus Smith as graduate student representative. The new officers and council members took office on September 1, 2002. After the election, author and oral historian Rebecca Sharpless spoke on “Words to the Wise: A Celebration of Women’s Oral History.” Sharpless is the director of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History and author of the award-winning book Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940 (1999). At the meeting, the Friends recognized and honored many of the women who had participated in the Women in Arlington Oral History Project, a project conducted by UTA and underwritten by Frank and Cynthia Hill of Arlington. The tapes and transcripts for the project are housed in Special Collections.
The Friends also presented the first annual UTA Libraries Learning Partnership Award. Friends’ president Daniel Kauth made the presentation to Lorrie Hegstad, of the UTA School of Nursing, and Helen Hough, the Libraries’ health science librarian. The award recognizes significant collaboration between faculty and library staff. After a summer of mounting a renewal and membership campaign and planning the fall programs, the Friends hit the ground running in September. The officers mentioned above took office on September 1, and the first meeting of the year was on September 20. Special guest speaker for the evening was Joyce King, author of the new book Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas (2002). The book chronicles the tragic murder of James Byrd, Jr., a black man, at the hands of three white men, who drug him behind the truck they were riding in on a deserted road outside of Jasper, Texas, in June 1998. King’s message was one of hope and understanding. She characterized tiny Jasper as a “jewel” of a town that had no race problems before this incident and that reacted beautifully to this senseless act, despite the fact that the murder and later trial became a cause celebre for many individuals and groups outside of the region. The Friends responded favorably to King’s talk and purchased every copy of the book that the bookstore had to sell at the reception.
Keith Alcorn was the special guest at the October 18th meeting. Alcorn is the executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated film Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and a UTA alum. He discussed taking the idea of Jimmy Neutron from conception as Johnny Quasar to the big screen as Jimmy Neutron. The character is now the star of a program on Nickelodeon, and another movie is in the works. Alcorn brought a series of vignettes of Jimmy’s evolution to show the audience as well as Alcorn’s favorite segments from the TV series. Alcorn was a hit with the attendees, and the Friends sold—and Alcorn autographed--every copy of the movie DVD that was available after the program.
On November 8th, the Friends sponsored a program to mark the 35th anniversary of the Texas Labor Archives, a part of Special Collections. There were a number of speakers at the event, including George Green, co-founder of the labor archives and professor of history at UTA; Theresa Ann Case, a faculty member at the University of Houston-Downtown and a labor historian; Gary Spurr, labor archivist in Special Collections; and Sammy Rudel, general chairman of the United Transportation Union in Fort Worth.
Case, the keynote speaker for the event, discussed “The Rise and Fall of the Southwestern Knights of Labor; The 1885-1886 Gould Railway System Strikes,” while Green and Spurr talked about the thirty-five year history of the labor archives and the variety of labor records held at UTA. Rudel presented to the Texas Labor Archives the UTU records from Fort Worth, more than fifty linear feet of material. After the program, the attendees enjoyed a reception, complete with a birthday cake marking this important milestone.
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UTA Library Notes, vol 8 no 2 Fall 2002 |