Category Archives: library

event, library

Digital Scholars in Practice Lecture Series

dsip-logo-undatedLast spring, the Architecture and Planning Library piloted a new lecture series with the mission is to promote innovative scholarship and build a community of practice of Digital Scholars both on a local and national scale. To that end, we developed the lecture series, Digital Scholars in Practice (DSiP), which provides a platform for scholars – who conduct research through digital technologies, who conduct research on digital technologies, and who critically examine digital technologies – to share their research with the UT academic community.

The primary focus of the lecture series is to connect those interested in digital scholarship with each other, and we also seek to introduce the work, theories, methodologies, and practices of digital scholars to the campus community. In doing so, we hope to engage in the much larger debates around digital scholarship and to situate UT Libraries as a locus of Digital Scholarship.

The spring pilot included two simg_7867peakers and an accompanying workshop. Danelle Briscoe was our first speaker. She is an associate professor and the Meadows Foundation Centennial Fellow in Architecture. Professor Briscoe’s lecture, Archiving the Information Model, focused on the research from her new book, Beyond BIM: Architecture and Information Modeling.

Our second speaker was Ed Triplett, a recent graduate from the Departmenimg_8600t of Architectural History at the University of Virginia and currently a Council on Library and Information Resources Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke. His lecture, Mapping and Modeling the Christian Reconquest of Muslim Iberia, discussed his dissertation research and his use of photogrammetry and GIS as applied to his research questions. He also led a work shop on photogrammetry, Capturing Large, Sculptural Art and Architecture with Photogrammetry, in the Scholars Commons Data Lab in PCL. Both the lectures and workshops were well attended and received positive feedback.

Contributed by Benjamin Ibarra-Sevilla
Contributed by Benjamin Ibarra-Sevilla

Our first lecture of the new term will feature, Benjamin Ibarra Sevilla from the UT’s School of Architecture. Using digital technologies, Professor Benjamin Ibarra will address the challenge of representing and explaining the details and intricacies applied in the design, development, and construction of three sixteenth-century buildings constructed in the Oaxacan Mixteca. His research has received numerous awards.

The lecture will be held in the reading room of the Architecture and Planning Library in Battle Hall on November 17, 2016 from 12pm – 1pm. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP: https://utexas.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_d4rBpNcolxYTVel.

This semester APL formed a partnership with the newly founded Digital Scholarship team in UT Libraries. We look forward to collaborating with this new unit to promote the work of Digital Scholars on campus.  Moreover, we hope the partnership will broaden our network of Digital Scholars. We are also currently developing a website for the lecture series and working to archive the recordings from the lectures.

library, special collections

APL Spotlight Interview: Tony Tomasello

Tony in the Battle Hall Reading Room

Back in 2014, Stephanie Phillips interviewed APL’s interim Architecture and Planning Librarian, Katie Pierce Meyer, who has since accepted the permanent position at APL as the Humanities Librarian for Architecture and Planning. We have not shone the spotlight on anyone else since, and we decided it was time to recognize the amazing work Tony Tomasello does by caring for APL’s physical collection!

Tony is our local book preservation technician, working in conjunction with Wendy Martin’s team at PCL in Preservation and Digital Curation Services. As a preservation technician, he works 19 hours for UTL. He explains rather modestly the nature of his job:

Ah well,  [my role is] the same as everyone’s at the libraries I suppose. Just to see to it that the collection material here is made available to anyone who needs it now and into the future. So more particular just make sure the books are in good shape and can be read without risking its availability for future patrons.

He continues discussing the day to day of his job:

I pretty much just do it – the ones that need the most repair, I give my fullest attention so I pretty much just fix them as they come in. I do the most severe ones first or if someone just really needs the book, you know, if it’s in rough shape I’ll do that one really quickly. Special Collections materials, I can say are my highest priority. They’re the most fragile. They’re the ones that are most at risk for long term use, and they’re probably our most valuable materials as well.*

His interest in preservation stems from his love of the relics and experiences of the past – the connections made through the experience of the books themselves.  Tony explains:

I guess it starts from my character. I have always had a fondness for old things – old music, old furniture, old books, old ways of doing things, riding bicycles instead of driving cars, looking nostalgically back on trains.

While Tony had worked for the library for several years prior to assuming his current role, he jumped at the chance to become our local preservation technician when the position opened. He was initially trained by his predecessor, Lorrie Dong – a Ph.D. graduate from School of Information at UT. When asked how he developed his expertise, Tony notes:

I had excellent teachers. First Lorrie who trained me before she left. She just taught me all the basics, the procedures I still do the most often which are rebacks, end paper replacements, and tip-ins for pages that have come loose or need to be replaced, and doing minor repairs on tears and things like that. Then I got help from the larger preservation department, and they taught me even more procedures like how to make custom housing for books that we’re really not allowed to repair without ruining their value in someway.

Tony also taught himself other skills that he needs to tend to the collection –

Then there are things I picked up on my own – I watched YouTube videos to learn how to sew. The rest of it is doing it, doing as many repairs as I can everyday I’m here.

When asked about his favorite aspect of the work, Tony explains:

Apart from getting my hands on some really old, rare books from time to time, there are certain satisfactions from the job…like being able to work slowly, take my time in a world that mostly rewards speed. I get to take my time and really care for what’s in front of me. And then there’s a certain satisfaction in the math, just measuring things, drawing straight lines. I think there must be something but not really close to the satisfaction that Kepler must have had when he looked up at the sky and saw that the celestial bodies were moving in a way that his math predicted. I get the same satisfaction when I measure out a new case and find that it fits the books.

In his final thoughts, it was evident that conservation and preservation are less a job and more a calling. He concludes:

I have some vague philosophical ideas about the importance of my work – just about maintaining enduring objects that are the basis of our culture that are ignored by the larger part of the populous. I think it’s important to have little monuments – like little physical reminders of the past. I’m glad that I get to have some part in maintaining those objects. He continues: It would be horrible to loose the paper, the board, and the glue, and the sewing, and the little mementos of past people’s work.

 *I asked Dan Orozco to comment upon all the work Tony does for APL, knowing that his contributions are wide ranging. Dan writes of Tony’s work:

It has truly been awe inspiring to see the growth of Tony’s knowledge and abilities at doing book repair.  I was very alarmed at the demise of the Kilgarlin Program at the iSchool. We had an impressive run of conservators come through to practice their craft in this position.  My fear abated when I saw the skill with which Tony takes care of our Special Collections materials. He also does our pest monitoring and dehumidifiers in Special Collections – very important in a 105 year old building.

If this wasn’t enough, Tony can also provide back up for every position at Architecture. He can create reserve lists, undertake ILS scanning, and he knows our collection as well if not better than most.  Recently, Tony created lists in Sierra to oversee a massive weeding project to free up about 300 linear feet in the stacks of the circulating collection.  He has also been here to help with extra events in our reading room, from symposiums to filming chancellor McRaven’s interview to hosting first lady Laura Bush. This young man can truly do it all.

library

New Books at APL: Bricks and Texas Churches

For those interested in materials, we received two survey books on the history of building with bricks.

  • Hall, William, editor. Brick. Essay by Dan Cruickshank. London: Phaidon, 2015.
  • Campbell, James W. Brick: A World History. Photographs by Will Pryce. London: Thames and Hudson, 2016.

William Hall takes a thematic approach to the topic focusing on concepts like form, light, mass, and scale, while James W. Campbell presents the history of brick, beginning with the ancient world and concluding with What Future for Brick? While both works are extensively illustrated, Hall’s work presents almost as a photo essay.

Texas_steeplesChristensen, Carl J., Jr., artist. Lone Star Steeples: Historic Places of Worship in Texas. Text by Pixie Christensen and Foreword by David Ruesink. College Station, Tx: Texas A&M University Press, 2016.

In the preface, Pixie Christensen begins:

As the six flags that flew over Texas help define its history, the hundreds of Texas churches recognized by historic markers help define the culture, heritage, religion, and architectural identities of the people of Texas. Lone Star Steeples takes the reader on a tour of historic churches across the state. Architectural features, individual stories, cultural markers, and significant events make each church unique and also contribute to the big picture of this big state….

But more than a view of history through church buildings, Lone Star Steeples invites the reader to experience the beauty and integrity of each church building through the eyes  of the artist/architect who envisioned and illustrated the book.
(Preface, ix)

The Christensens documented more than 60 Texas churches. The book is arranged geographically, dividing Texas into 7 districts: West Texas & Panhandle; North Central Texas; East Texas; South Central Texas; Hill Country; Gulf Coast; and South Texas. Each entry includes at least one watercolor, the location, the date, and architect if known. A brief history is also included.

library, special collections

Special Collections Capstone

This semester is my last at the iSchool, which means I am working on my Capstone project. I am sure it comes as no surprise that I have elected to develop a project at the Architecture and Planning Library!

For my project, I will undertake an assessment of APL’s Special Collections so that we might better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the collection. Moreover, I hope that the process undertaken here can serve as model for other collections on campus.

In working with Special Collections, my goal has always been to raise the visibility of the collection, even if it was book by book through the Friday Finds post. I always enjoy sharing the materials that I find within. The project will hopefully raise the visibility of the collection on a much larger scale. Throughout the semester I will post about the project to keep you updated and in the end I will point you to the resources I create about Special Collections!

library

New Books: APL Studios

Last week I was able to sit in on the studio lotteries to hear about all the classes that will be taught this semester in the School – I am a little jealous that I cannot take some of them myself! While reviewing the new books this morning, I discovered that two of our recent arrivals may be of interest to two of the studios – Wilfried Wang’s studio on Berlin and Margaret Griffin’s studio on tower design in LA.

Ward, Simon. Urban Memory and Visual Culture in Berlin: Framing the Asynchronous City, 1957-2012. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

Ward_Berlin

Gigon, Annette, Mike Guyer, and Felix Jerusalem. Residential Towers. Zürich: GTA Verlag, 2015.

Residential_Towers

I will keep an eye out for other new arrivals that may be valuable to the work done in the studios throughout the semester. If you need help locating a resource or would like to request a purchase for material we do not have, please feel  free to stop in or drop us a line.

library

New Books: The Letters of Philip Webb

Webb, Philip. The Letters of Philip Webb.  Edited by John Alpin. 4 vols. New York: Routledge, 2016.

I was so pleased to see the edited volumes of The Letters of Philip Webb arrived this week. The letters are organized chronologically in four volumes: 1864-1887, 1888-1898, 1899-1902,  and 1903-1914. There is also an extensive index to help navigate the letters by people, place, or topic.

John Alpin, the editor of the volumes, writes:

This four-volume collection of letters comprises a comprehensive selection from his surviving correspondence, little of which has previously been published. As well as revealing the range of Webb’s professional endeavours and the value he invested in a number of close friendships, the evidence presented in his letters confirms his position as a key member of the Morris circle. (Preface, ix)

I spent a bit of time this morning reading through some of the letters. Many of the recipients of Webb’s letters were familiar names: John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Richard Lethaby, William Butterfield, and members of the William Morris family.  For example he wrote letters to Jane, Jenny, and May Morris while they were away in Italy in 1877.  One of my favorites though is an exchange about the landscape at Kelmscott with Jane Morris (Letter 43 in volume 1, 1871).

 

library

New Books: Stefan Sebök

Dubowitz, Lilly. In Search of a Forgotten Architect: Stefan Sebök 1901-1941. With essays by Èva Forgács and Richard Anderson. London: Architectural Association, 2012.

While looking through book catalogs on recent architecture publications, I discovered this work on Stefan Sebök. Though the architect was unknown to me, I recalled that a couple of our patrons in the spring semester had interests in Hungarian architecture and El Lissitzky, respectively. His connections to László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus, and Moscow further suggested that this work would be a welcome addition to our collections.

DubowitzLilly Dubowitz traces her journey through family memory (she is Sebök’s niece) and archives in Europe, Moscow, and the US, encountering both silences and truths. She was aided by archivists, scholars, and relatives of Sebök’s colleagues and peers. She writes of one aspect of her research, “Levente [Nagy] suggested that I should contact his cousin, Erwin Nagy, who had unearthed all the KGB files on his father’s trial and execution, which not only told him about the false charges, but also gave him information on his family about which he was completely unaware (as part of their interrogation prisoners had to give a detailed account of their whole family history). It was through this lead, and a visit to the KGB archives, that I was later able to discover not only Sebök’s eventual fate and details of his work in the Soviet Union but also many other aspects of his life.” (pg. 43) While not everyone may not be interested in the architecture of the Modernists, the book offers a narrative on discovery through archival research. The work is also heavily illustrated with the materials Dubowitz discovered – drawings, photographs, letters, and government documents.

library

New Books: Palladio

Architecture and Planning recently received two texts assocciated with recent exhibits on Andrea Palladio from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Palladio Museum, respectively.

Mortensen, Marie Bak, ed. Palladian Design: The Good, The Bad and The Unexpected. London: RIBA, 2015.

RIBAPalladioGuido Beltramini, who is one of the editors of Jefferson and Palladio (below), Pier Vittorio Aureli, and Daniel Maudlin each contribute a short essay to the catalog. Mortensen notes that each author was selected to offer a specific reading of Palladio’s work and influence. She writes, “The contributed essays are not beholden to the exhibition’s raison d’être. Rather, they are intended as fresh contributions to a continuing polemical conversation around Palladio and Palladianism, which extends beyond the curated confines of any single exhibition project.” (Mortensen, Charles Hind, and Vicky Wilson, “Introduction,” 9.) The catalog primarily focuses on the content of the exhibit itself. Accordingly, “Through three themed sections this exhibition introduces Palladio’s unique design principles and explores the very different ways in which they have been interpreted, copied and re-imagined, and how they continue to inspire architects today.” (“Palladian Design:  The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected,” 22.) The three themes include Revolution (subset themes: Andrea Palladio: Reinventing Antiquity; The Rise of Anglo-Palladianism; Spreading the Word), Evolution (subset themes: Bending the Rules; From Architectural Ideal to a Choice of Style; Statement Architecture; Pattern Book Architecture), and Eternally Contemporary (subset themes: The Comfort of the Familiar; Postmodern Palladianism; Abstract Palladianism).

Beltramini, Guido and Fulvio Lenzo, eds. Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing a New World. Vicenza: Centro internazionale di studi di architetttura Andrea Palladio; Milano: Officina Libraria, 2015.

I have not been lucky enough to see Palladio’s work in person; JeffersonPalladiorather, my engagement with his architecture has been through the lens of Thomas Jefferson. I was, thus, excited to see Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing the New World come through our new books. Beltramini and Lenzo, write, “The ‘seasons’ of the relationship between Jefferson and Palladio are revisited, focusing on the thread of affinity and a shared vision in their project to build a new world based on the example provided by the ancients.” (“Preface,” 10.) The work includes numerous articles with contributions by James S. Ackerman, Richard Guy Wilson, and Bruce Boucher. The book also includes a photo essay by Filippo Romano and documentation of the works designed by Jefferson.

library

New Books for Summer Reading

This week we received quite an assortment of new books. To follow are the ones I am most excited about, but you should stop by the new books table at APL to find one that excites you!

American Furniture 2015. Edited by Luke Beckerdite. Lebanon New Hampshire: Chipstone Foundation and University Press of New England, 2015.

AmericanFurnitureThis year’s American Furniture includes two articles on sulfur inlay, an article on Barnard Eaglesfield, and one announcing a new research project at the Chipstone Foundation on John Widdifield. According to the Chipstone Foundation:

The collector who acquired the book [notebook of John Widdifield] has generously allowed the Chipstone Foundation to publish it in this volume of American Furniture and make it, along with a keyword searchable transcription, available on the foundation’s website, www.chipstone.org, and that of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Widdifield’s notebook will also be designated as an ongoing research project on Chipstone’s website, thus allowing scholars, students, and others to publish work related to that manuscript. This introduction to the book is intended to begin that dialogue. (“The Notebook of Philadelphia Joiner John Widdifield,” 17.)

I could not find the digitized material on Chipstone; however, the Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture, University of Wisconsin does have the digitized copy available with full text searching. If you are interested in early American furniture, the notebook and larger project  might be of interest to you.

Taut, Bruno. The City Crown. Translated and edited by Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015.

Mindrup and Altenmüller-Lewis  write: The texts and images in thisTautCrown translation are organized to retain the original format of the book – a composition of layers intended to guide the reader to understand the efficacy of his city crown proposal. Mindrup and Altenmüller-Lewis continue: As a work, we hope this first English translation of Tuat’s seminal anthology will become a critical text in architectural studies on the history of European Modernism, urban design theory and Taut’s oeuvre in general. (Preface, xii)

In addition to the translations of the works of Bruno Taut, Paul Scheerbart,  Erich Baron, and and Adolf Behne, the editors also wrote an introductory essay and afterword.

Köhler, Thomas and Ursula Müller. Radically Modern: Urban Planning and Architecture in 1960s Berlin. Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 2015.

RadicallyModernRadically Modern is the publication that accompanied the exhibit at Berlinische Galerie. Müller writes:

The focus is on the implementation, in both halves of the city, of modern planning objectives which – for all the heterogeneity and the efforts made during the Cold War to draw distinctions – can be interpreted today as emphasizing common ground between the two cultures of construction. Deeply unsettled by the events of the Second World War, and visually confronted by urban destruction, planners and architects rigorously refused – apart from a few exceptions – to rebuild the traditional city. (Introduction, 18)

The catalogue is extensively illustrated with archival materials, photographs, and models. Additionally, nine essays explore the topics- Risen from Ruins, Urban Spaces/Urban Dreams, Techno-Geometries, Serial Diversity, Large Housing Estates and Oppositions.

archive, library

AASL Seattle 2016

This past March several members of the staff from the Library and Archives attended the Association of Architecture School Librarians Annual Conference held this year in Seattle with ARLIS/NA and VRA. Beth Dodd, Katie Pierce Meyer, and myself were all part of the programming committee. We were charged with organizing the conference sessions, which included both traditional sessions and lightning rounds. The topics included: Building New Models: Library as Learning Lab; Engaging the School: Making Scholarship Visible; Co-constructing and Documenting Place; and Evolving Architectural Collections and Connections.  Stephanie Tiedeken had the chance to present her capstone project on Islandora, a data asset management system, while I spoke about a DH project, Still Looking for You, which I worked on at Lehigh University.

In addition to the conference sessions, we also had the chance to explore Seattle, both on our own and with guided tours. I attended the tours: University of Washington Campus Architecture Tour: “Building a Polyvalent Campus, 1895-2015” and “Pike/Pine: Change on a Urban Scale.” The latter was led by the Seattle Architecture Foundation Tour Guide.  I greatly enjoyed the Pike/Pine tour which examined the challenge of preserving the neighborhood identity and fabric in the face of urban renewal and the changing demographic of residents.

Katie and I also made the pilgrimage to see Hat ‘n’ Boots. We spent months talking about visiting this restored example of roadside architecture, now part of a neighborhood park!

HatBoots