You can’t judge a book by its cover… or can you?

Visitors to LSU Special Collections’ new mini exhibit, “A Brief History of European Bookbinding from the Middle Ages to 1900,” will have a chance to ponder that question. In the days before mass-produced publishers’ bindings, books were often bought with no covers on them at all, leaving their owners to have them bound as they saw fit. The result was a wide and colorful range of binding styles that varied from time to time and place to place. The exhibit also introduces visitors to some of the work and materials that go into binding a book. Did you know, for example, that scraps of medieval manuscripts are often “hidden” in the bindings of later books? Have you ever wondered how marbled paper is made? Did you know that there are books bound in ivory, velvet, and even Scottish tartan?

Come and find out more about these and other fascinating aspects of the history of the book. The new exhibit will be on display in the Hill Memorial Library lecture hall from May 9 through June 30. The library is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays, and Tuesday evenings (while classes are in session) until 8 p.m. For more information, contact Michael Taylor at (225) 578-6547 or mltaylor@lsu.edu.

Last time we asked a couple of questions about the history of the Lady Tigers basketball team.

Q: When did the Lady Tigers basketball team begin intercollegiate play?
A: 1973 and had a 3-8 season.

Q: Who was their first coach?
A: Jinks Coleman.

Barry Cowan of University Archives writes

Intercollegiate play for the Lady Tigers, also known at the time as the Ben-Gals, began in 1973 as a club sport, but women played intramural basketball as early as 1908.

Jinks Coleman, head coach from 1973-1979, taught kinesiology classes and was also volleyball coach until 1977. Coleman was the first coach in Louisiana to offer athletic scholarships to women athletes.

In their first seasons, the Lady Tigers had to drive their own cars to away games, stay in dormitories, and had no medical help for minor injuries. Coleman said “well, you just had to live through the blisters.”

The Lady Tigers and other women’s teams played under the auspices the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) until the early 1980s when the NCAA began sanctioning women’s athletics. Although the Southeastern Conference started holding postseason women’s basketball tournaments after the end of the 1979-80 season, the SEC finally recognized women’s basketball at the beginning of the 1982-83 season.

The 1908 Intramural Varsity team was made up of Annie Boyd, Louise Thonssen, Ena Paulsen (Capt.), Elizabeth Bott, Allie Spyker, Gladys Doherty, Jesse Turnage and Essie Guithreaux.

The 1908 Intramural “Scrubs” were Thera Nicholson (Capt.), Lida Coleman, Lulie Norwood, Lucille Scott, Ida Howell, Margeret Schoenbrodt and Mary Clarke.

Unfortunately we have no roster for the 1975 team.

Want to see a reel of microfilm from Special Collections but can’t make it during business hours? Thanks to equipment purchased with a grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents you can now request Remote Film Access and view the film on your home computer using a web browser like Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari.

In response to the increasing interest and need for digital access to microfilm, Hill Library purchased a Canon MS-800 and two ST-Imaging ST200 reader/scanners for the reading room. Using one of the three new machines, Special Collections patrons can view microfilm in the reading room where they have the option of saving scanned images from the reel to a USB drive, e-mailing the files to themselves, or printing the images.

LSU Special Collections was able to purchase an additional component, the Remote Film Access System, for one of the ST200 machines with the grant money. The remote access capabilities enable patrons who cannot visit the reading room to view film. Utilizing remote desktop software and a unique remote film access system created by ST-Imaging, Inc., Special Collections patrons are now able to view, scan, e-mail, and print from reels of microfilm in the comfort of their homes.

Individuals from around the state and the country who have used this LSU Libraries service are very pleased with the results. Special Collections provides the remote access service for a fee of $20 per session/reel. A session with one reel is offered from 5:00 p.m.- 9:00 a.m. (central time) Monday through Thursday, which is outside regular business hours to allow for in-house patron use of the machine.

Additional information about the service is available on the Special Collections website. Please contact Judy Bolton, Head of Special Collections Public Services or Gina Costello, Digital Services Librarian if you would like further details about Special Collections’ microfilm services for library patrons.

Although the season is over, let’s take a look at how the Lady Tigers basketball team began. Before you get the history, however, you get two trivia questions.

Q: When did the Lady Tigers basketball team begin intercollegiate play?

Q: Who was their first coach?

Come back next week for the answers and for some background on women’s basketball at LSU.

In the early 19th century, Midwestern farmers loaded their crops on flatboats at the end of every summer and floated them down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The timber that was used to make these boats came from places like Minnesota and Wisconsin, and yet because the river’s current was so strong, it was impossible to take the boats back upriver after they had been unloaded. Instead, they were sold for scrap in New Orleans and were subsequently used to build many of the city’s houses.

Although the flatboat trade ended with the coming of the railroad, another product of the Wisconsin woods recently found its way to Louisiana. Between 1996 and 2006, Gaylord Schanilec and Ben Verhoeven (both of Midnight Paper Sales) collected 24 species of wood near Schanilec’s home fifty miles southwest of Eau Claire—ranging from maple and birch to ironwood and black walnut—and wrote a “biography of a forest.” But it’s not just a catalog of dry, scientific facts. “Gaylord and I have found that trees are fitting vehicles for human history,” Ben writes. “They have been not only witnesses, but also players in many pivotal events, both nationally and locally.” Bound in beautiful wooden boards and featuring, in the text, cross-sections or “portraits” of each of the 24 trees, the book is entitled Sylvae (from the Latin word for “forest”). LSU Special Collections recently purchased a copy of it for the E.A. McIlhenny Natural History Collection.

Almost 350 years ago, the English writer and horticulturalist John Evelyn wrote a similar book, Sylva, or A Discourse on Forest Trees (1664). The English may not have used flatboats to get their crops to market, but they did need trees for something else that was just as important—their navy. England’s famous “wooden walls” protected it from being overrun by foreign armies, and yet, as Evelyn complained, landowners “oftener find wayes to Fell down, and Destroy their Trees and Plantations, than either to repair or improve them.” A great nation, he pointed out, needed great forests. Although England ended up getting most of its timber from North America and Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries, Evelyn’s work was very popular and went through many editions. LSU now owns two copies—the second edition of 1670 and a later, annotated edition dated 1801.

A new book and exhibition entitled Andrew D. Lytle’s Baton Rouge: Photographs, 1863-1910 showcase the life and work of photographer Andrew D. Lytle. The exhibition in Hill Memorial Library is based on Mark Martin’s newly released book on Lytle, published by LSU Press.

On Sunday, April 6, two events will mark the opening of the exhibition, which runs through June 28. At 3 p.m., Martin will give an illustrated lecture, followed by a reception and book signing. At 2 p.m., preceding the talk, photographer Bruce Schultz will demonstrate the wet-plate collodion photographic technology that Lytle used during in his career. Both events are free and will take place at Hill Memorial Library.

With his roving camera, Lytle captured the city’s history in all its facets, from formal portraits of leading citizens to hilarious group shots of amateur theatricals. The Federal occupation of Baton Rouge during the Civil War is chronicled, as well the annual spring Fireman’s parade. Lytle photographed the cadets at LSU, as well as inmates of the state penitentiary. The exhibition offers views of the evolving landscape of Louisiana’s capital city through more than sixty years. Lytle’s photographs are, according to Martin, “the only visual record of that period of the life and times of Baton Rouge and its people.” Martin is the Photographic Processing Archivist in the LSU Libraries’ Special Collections division.

Bruce Schultz got involved with photography while a student at LSU, and went on to work as a photographer, reporter, and bureau chief for various newspapers in Louisiana, before joining the LSU AgCenter’s Communications Department. In April 2007, he took a workshop under expert wet-plate photographer Robert Szabo. After the workshop, Schultz says, “I was hooked. I haven’t shot any film since that fateful weekend in April 2007.” He often photographs Civil War reenactments and gives demonstrations of the wet-plate process for schools, libraries, and other similar institutions.

The demonstration, lecture, and exhibition are all free and open to the public. Hill Memorial Library, which houses the exhibition and extensive historical archives, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. When classes are in session, the library is open Tuesday evenings until 8 p.m. For more information about the library, visit the Special Collections’ Web site.

Andrew Lytle photographed many facets of life in Baton Rouge between the 1860s and 1910, including the city’s occupation by Union forces during the Civil War. Special Collections’ own Mark E. Martin has edited a collection of Lytle’s photos, released this month by LSU Press. Andrew D. Lytle’s Baton Rouge begins with Martin’s overview of the life and work of the photographer and contains 120 of Lytle’s photographs. Many of Lytle’s photographs were lost when his heirs tossed the glass negatives down a well after his death. Prints of each of the photos had to be created for publication, and this task was undertaken by Sissy Albertine who made use of the surviving glass plate negatives as well as duplicate negatives to make the prints. Sissy and Mark then worked together on the sequencing of the images for publication.

You can read more about the book in the LSU Press Catalog and 225 Magazine’s review.

Mark Martin will be on hand to sign copies of his book on April 12, 2008 at 1:00 pm at the Barnes and Noble store at Perkins Rowe on Bluebonnet Blvd.

An exhibition at Hill Memorial Library showcasing the work of Andrew D. Lytle is also in the works. Watch this blog for more details.

LSU Libraries’ Special Collections has opened a new exhibit inspired by One Book One Community’s 2008 winter/spring selection, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. “In Truth’s Bold Cause: Louisiana and the Freedom of the Press” will be on display in the lecture hall at Hill Memorial Library from February 20 to April 25.

Visitors will learn about the early history of the freedom of the press in England and the American colonies as well as in Louisiana during the period of French and Spanish rule. Highlights of the exhibit include a copy of the Comte de Mirabeau’s Sur la Liberté de la Presse (1788), owned by Daniel Turnbull of Rosedown Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. In addition to a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)—a work which was banned in the South due to its call for the abolition of slavery—a copy of Creole author Charles Testut’s Le Vieux Salomon will also be on display. Although Testut wrote his novel before the Civil War, he chose not to publish it until 1872, fearing that he would be lynched because of its anti-slavery views. Rounding out the exhibit are materials related to Huey Long’s attempts to gag the Louisiana press—including the LSU student newspaper—in the 1930s, one of which resulted in a landmark Supreme Court case.

The library is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays, and Tuesday evenings until 8 p.m. For more information, contact Michael Taylor at (225) 578-6547 or mltaylor@lsu.edu.

Last week we asked two questions about the origins of LSU’s 100 year old basketball program. If you gave the following answers, you were correct:

Q: When was LSU’s first basketball game played?

A: January 30, 1909.

Q: Which Louisiana team did they play?

A: Dixon Academy in Covington, LA.

If you had to choose an image for the first page of a book called An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, what would it be? A picture of a woman might seem like the obvious choice, but when this book was first published in 1696, somebody wasn’t just trying to be funny when they chose a picture of a man and his barber. Wearing a long curly wig, frilly cuffs, high-heeled shoes and even a beauty spot, the “Compleat Beau” admires himself in a mirror while his barber stands at attention, powder puff in hand.

The point the anonymous author (identified only as “a lady”) was trying to make was that men could be just as silly as women; furthermore, if women were silly it was only because they had been “industriously kept in ignorance”—i.e., denied an education—for so long. Mary Astell, an early feminist whose A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest LSU’s Special Collections division has also recently acquired, made a similar argument in 1694. In order to shield women from “the follies of the town” as well as the tyranny of men, Astell called for the establishment of a “religious retirement” or secular convent where “those who are convinced of the emptiness of earthly enjoyments… may find more substantial and satisfying entertainments.”

Some women, however, such as Jane Barker, tried to compete with men on their own turf. In 1688, Barker co-authored Poetical Recreations, a volume of poetry, with “several gentlemen of the universities.” In addition to being just as capable as men as far as book learning was concerned, women, Barker believed, had more common sense, too. Without women:

Houses, alas, there no such thing wou’d be,
[Men would] live beneath the umbrage of a Tree:
Or else usurp some free-born Native’s Cave;
And so inhabit, whilst alive, a Grave.

Another recent addition to LSU’s rare book collection is Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions, by Ann Finch, the Countess of Winchilsea. Published in 1713, it is, along with Barker’s Poetical Recreations, one of the earliest volumes of English poetry to have been published by a woman.

Last but not least among this month’s featured acquisitions is Eliza Haywood’s Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1725), a strange tale of lust, greed, scandal and corruption that offers a thinly-veiled commentary on the period in which it was written. Along with Daniel Defoe, Haywood was one of the most prolific authors of her time, publishing everything from plays and novels to poetry and translations, one of which—La Belle Assemblée, or, The Adventures of Six Days, by Madame de Gomez (1725)—is also now available to readers in Special Collections.