#oberlincollegelibraries

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Please consider giving to the Oberlin College Libraries’ end-of-the-year Friends campaign.

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Happy Halloween!

In honor of the holiday, Special Collections is sharing our current display of some of our early 19th-century books on surgery. Definitely delivers some shivers! Stop by and visit from 1-4:30pm on weekdays or 5:30-9pm Monday nights.

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Things in books...

Preservation is heating up now that the semester is over and all the books are returning to the library. We’ve spent several days going through and finding the broken ones -- and coming across all the many things that end up in and on books. The pile of things used as a bookmark is steadily growing, some even actually are bookmarks, and some are not. Like the twig. 

Don’t use a twig to mark your place -- it’s weird, and only slightly preferable to dog-earring every third page in the book. 

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Eggcellent Find in Special Collections

Before the egg carton, there was the egg bag...

Here’s an interesting discovery from our Special Collections vault that we found when looking for something else in our card catalog (Yes, we still have one of those...). There is no online record for this item, and I’m not sure its original cataloger knew what to do with it either.

It presents a lot of questions, we will have to track down some of our Russian savvy colleagues to learn more about the book that was cannibalized in 1923 to make this envelope for eggs.

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Sunday Edition: Books about Food

    Is there anything better than food? Food is a bridge to understand culture, a tool to make a positive environmental difference, an excuse to hangout, and, usually, pretty tasty. This week’s Sunday Edition brings you books from Oberlin College Library's collections related to food. From the politics of food to eating healthier, these books challenge traditional conceptions of food and ask questions about the broader implications of how we get our food. Check them out!

The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People by Gerardo Otero

    Gerardo Otero considers the broad reaching effects of Neoliberal governments and the on-the-ground complications that citizens of countries with this style of leadership often face (one might think to the Bolivian water wars in 2000 as an example). Otero considers the way that food has been politicized and divided by class in order to make the most money possible. Furthermore, he argues that food companies with unhealthy products have targeted lower income communities and spurred obesity rates. This book is full of thoughtful gems that imagine the power of politics outside of staterooms, and at the dining room table instead.

Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat by Jonathan Kauffman

    Food doesn’t have to be part of the system, man! In Hippie Food, Jonathan Kauffman explores the creative, funny, and oddball guru-chefs and food movements of the 1970s that shaped American cuisine. Kauffman explores the ways that a healthy distrust in the government during Richard Nixon’s presidency fundamentally altered how we eat. Creative and popular movements responded to the politics of the time by changing food practices, recipes, and health priorities. While this book does take on a political lens, it is first and foremost a foray into the weird world of hippie dining. Take a seat, open up, and zen out to this beatnik book.

Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico by Alyshia Gálvez

    Eating NAFTA does not mince words. Why does almost every town in America have a Mexican restaurant, but actual Mexicans are eating more and more processed food over home cooked meals? Gálvez explores the political processes and cultural appropriation that is pushing Mexican people away from their food traditions while the rest of the world becomes more familiar with them. The trade relationship between the United States and Mexico becomes a focal point for this book, as the author writes about the negative implications that the relation has had for Mexican people. If you are interested in the ways that food can be a tool used for colonial power, then you should check out this book.

The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn Gillespie

    In this work, Kathryn Gillespie attempts to demystify the process through which milk arrives in grocery stores and our homes. As a staple of an American diet, milk has been one of the best selling food products in the history of the country. Sadly, this has led to the development of large scale dairy farms that disregard the individual health and happiness of their livestock. Gillespie evokes the cow’s perspective frequently, questioning the ethics of big corporate farming that deals with animals. This book very much follows the footsteps of works like the documentary Food Inc., or books like Fast Food Nation. Food can be violent and politic and Gillespie thinks that this information should accompany it.

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Mystery Collection of Chinese Coins

A rather unassuming book in our vault actually has this amazing collection of Chinese coins inside! We don’t know much about how this collection got here, or really anything about it. 

Our amazing East Asian Studies Librarian Runxiao Zhu is on the case!

[oberlincollegelibraries]

Lost in a Book

We keep a pin board in our Preservation Lab where we stick things we find in the books getting repaired--sometimes lining spines we replace, and sometimes just slid between the pages. 

Over the years some interesting things have collected, it’s a great place to think about how books are made and used.

[oberlincollegelibraries]

An Evening with Susan Orlean

        Monday, April 15th at 4:30pm in Dye Lecture Hall (Oberlin Science Center), New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean will be giving a talk on her latest work, The Library Book (p. 2018). From the positive reviews in Washington Post to the New York Times, her book has garnered immediate attention and success. Previously, her book The Orchid Thief (p. 2000) garnered immense amounts of critical acclaim and was even used as the basis for the Oscar-nominated Spike Jonze movie Adaptation. Her latest book sets out to chronicle the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire, and initially appears that Orlean intends to lead us on a classic, whodunit journey where suspected arsonists are hunted down and and pinned with this egregious crime. Yet, in her examination of the library’s history and the aftermath of the fire, the direction of the book pivots to consider human influence on the library. Readers begin to see that this one dramatic moment in the history of the L.A. public library did not shape its entire history, despite the intense recovery process that tested the strength of the staff. Instead, the many current and former workers and staff of the library, as well as the seminal curators and administration that shaped the institution, exerted as much control in the future of the library as the fire. Orlean considers the human touches that shape a library and its collections, as well as natural forces that can boldly intervene regardless of human interest. She writes on her website, “The very air in the library seemed charged with possibility and imagination; books seem to have their own almost human vitality.” This book talk is part of the Harold Jantz Memorial Lecture series and sponsored in part by the President’s Office and the Friends of the Oberlin College Libraries. It is free and open to the public.