Milligan Library Life

by the staff of P.H. Welshimer Memorial Library & Seminary Library

Milligan Libraries links to Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library

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Milligan Libraries has created a link to Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library from our website homepage. The National Emergency Library was launched to support student learning at home, as schools and libraries have been forced to closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to the over 2.5 million openly available public domain texts that reside on Internet Archive’s servers, the National Emergency Library contains over 1.4 million digitized books that are still under copyright protection—including nearly 480,000 titles published since 2000.

The National Emergency Library is built on Internet Archive’s Open Library, which makes single copies of books in this collection available to be borrowed for a 14-day checkout period. As an analogy to a physical book that gets checked out from a physical library, a checked out book is not available for anyone else to borrow until the copy is “returned.” Persons wanting a book that is checked out must join a waitlist.

What Internet Archive has done for this national emergency is suspend the waitlist limitation until at least June 30, 2020. This effectively means that there are now an unlimited number of copies for each book in the collection. Here is a screenshot of the National Emergency Library’s homepage:

Borrowing books is a simple process. Search for titles, authors, or subjects from the search box in the left sidebar. When you find a book of interest, click the “Borrow” button under the book cover. This brings up the Internet Archive book viewer and bibliographic record information. Initially, the viewer shows you a limited preview. You need to create a user account to actually borrow the book.

Once your account is created, log in, and click the “Borrow” button on any book to borrow it for 14 days. The book can be read in the browser viewer online, or downloaded as an encrypted PDF or EPUB and read offline using Adobe Digital Editions on your computer or mobile device (Internet Archive provides prompts for setting up offline reading). When you are finished with the book you can click a “Return” button, or just allow the time to expire. Downloaded files also expire after 14 days. This is an important safeguard against unauthorized duplication and distribution of these otherwise copyrighted books.

Internet Archive has been getting some pushback from authors and publishers about whether suspending the waitlist (much less the very notion of the Open Library) is legal from a copyright standpoint (see for example, recent stories here and here). Conversely, numerous educational institutions, libraries, and individuals have issued a public statement endorsing Internet Archive’s action during this time, noting that Internet Archive has taken steps to restrict unlawful redistribution, and stating: “These actions will support emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed.” Milligan Libraries supports this mission and will continue to host the link to the National Emergency Library, though we will also follow any developments in this story.

Own a piece of Milligan Library history!

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How do you go about finding a book in the Welshimer or Emmanuel Seminary Library? If you are like most Milligan College or Seminary students or faculty today, the answer is obvious: you fire up your computer, launch your web browser and point it to the Milligan Libraries website, pull down the “Resources” menu, select “Books/Media Catalog” and then select “Milligan & Libraries Worldwide” to launch the online catalog. Search for the title. If we have the book in print or electronic (ebook) format, the record will pop up in your search results. The record will show you where the book can be found (library and call number location), and it even tells you if the book is currently available.

The card catalog

This wasn’t always the case, however. If you can believe it, once upon a time book records were typed on physical 3 x 5 inch cardboard cards (Title, Author/Editor, and Subject cards were created for each book) which were then arranged in wooden cabinets, collectively called the card catalog.

Here is a card that instructed students and faculty on the use of the card catalog.

The Holloway Archives at Milligan College, located in the basement of the Welshimer Library, still has one of the library’s old card catalog cabinets.

The Milligan College Library used a physical card catalog until the first online catalog went into service in the Fall of 1995. As it happens, the library was at the forefront of implementing computer technology on campus. The library implemented its first computerized library management system in 1988. Of course this was before the internet was (commonly) a thing, and the system was not networked. In a Stampede editorial from March 1988, then library director Steven Preston noted that the library system was used to print catalog cards.

In 1992, a collaboration between Milligan College, Emory & Henry College, King College (now King University), and (since closed) Virginia Intermont College resulted in the receipt of a 5-year United States Department of Education Title III grant that would be used to computerize the library catalog and create a barcode checkout system. Also during this time the Milligan College IT Department was installing fiber optic cable to create a campus-wide computer network that would be connected to the internet. Of interest, in an article from the September 30, 1992 issue of the Stampede, Steven Preston mused that “in the future, students and faculty will be able to link into the [library] system from their rooms and offices.” A Stampede article from May 3, 1996 covering Spring Board of Trustees meetings made specific reference to the newly implemented online catalog when it reported “[library] information is now easier to find due to the computerization of the card catalogs.”

What to do with all those card catalog record cards?

The transition from a physical card catalog to a computerized online catalog was a labor intensive process, as all the library’s catalog records needed to be translated into computer readable format. This process was outsourced to a company called Western Library Network (WLN) utilizing our card catalog record cards. The long and the short of this process was that after the records were computerized, boxes and boxes of catalog cards were returned to us to dispose of, or use as we saw fit. Since the old record cards were only printed on a single side, what ended up happening was that they were used around the library as scrap note cards. Ironically, a common use was that students or faculty would search the online catalog for a book and write the book’s call number on an old card catalog record card before heading to the stacks.

The library had so many boxes of these cards that it seemed as though they would last forever. But as it turns out, we recently reduced our backlog to a single box. We started to put the cards out next to the catalog computer as usual. But it then occurred to us that these cards were a part of Milligan Library history — a history we wanted to share with our users. So we’ve put this box at the Circulation Desk of Welshimer Library. Come by and take a card or two as a memento — a piece of Milligan Library history for you to own. But don’t wait too long. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

New Books and Media Received (February 2020)

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The following Books and DVDs (93 items) were received into the Library collection for both the Welshimer and Seminary Libraries through the Acquisitions Budget, endowments (Seminary), and by donation during February 2020.

Seminary Library

Language and Literature
Lexical aids for students of New Testament Greek, 1998.

A week in the life of a Greco-Roman woman, 2019. 

Philosophy, Psychology, Religion
1 Kings 16 – 2 Kings 16, by Steven L. McKenzie, 2019.

Asceticism of the mind: forms of attention and self-transformation in late antique monasticism, 2018.

Bloody, brutal, and barbaric?: wrestling with troubling war texts, 2019.

Churches of Christ in Oklahoma: a history, 2020.

Contemplating Christ: the Gospels and the interior life, 2018.

Fully human, fully divine: an interactive christology, 2004.

The God who trusts: a relational theology of divine faith, hope, and love, 2019.

God’s voice within: the Ignatian way to discover God’s will, 2010.

A guide to living in the truth: Saint Benedict’s teaching on humility, 2001.

Jeremia 25-52, 2019.

A kingdom for a stage: political and theological reflection in the Hebrew Bible, 2018.

Managing leadership anxiety: yours and theirs, 2019.

Œuvres spirituelles, 2011.

Our bodies tell God’s story: discovering the divine plan for love, sex, and gender, 2020.

Reading Paul, 2008.

Søren Kierkegaard: discourses and writings on spirituality, 2019.

Spiritual direction 101: the basics of spiritual guidance, 2018.

Supplément au dictionnaire de la Bible vol. 15, 2019.

Three hours: sermons for Good Friday, 2019.

Toward God: the ancient wisdom of Western prayer, 1996.

The voiding of being: the doing and undoing of metaphysics in modernity, 2020.

We have heard, O Lord: an introduction to the theology of the Psalter, 2019.

Archives
First and Second Timothy and Titus, by Christopher R. Hutson, 2019.

The God who trusts: a relational theology of divine faith, hope, and love, 2019.

Hard-fighting soldiers: a history of African American Churches of Christ, 2019.

Reclaiming the great world house: the global vision of Martin Luther King, 2019.

New Testament Seminar
The Godman and the sea: the empty tomb, the trauma of the Jews, and the Gospel of Mark, 2019. 

AV Video
Revolution of the heart: the Dorothy Day story, 2020.

Welshimer Library

Education
Homeschooling: the history and philosophy of a controversial practice, 2019.

The missing course: everything they never taught you about college teaching, 2019.

Slaying Goliath: the passionate resistance to privatization and the fight to save America’s public schools, 2020.

History
The Cuba reader: history, culture, politics, 2019.

Language and Literature
A Cuban cinema companion, 2019.

Placeless people: writing, rights, and refugees, 2018.

Law
Corporate personhood, by Susanna Ripken, 2019.

Impeachment: what everyone needs to know, 2018.

Medicine
The Cambridge handbook of anxiety and related disorders, 2019.

Contemporary challenges in medical education: from theory to practice, 2019.

Philosophy of medicine, by Alex Broadbent, 2019.

Speaking for the dying: life-and-death decisions in intensive care, 2019.

Violence and trauma in the lives of children, 2018.

Music
Aaron Copland: the life and work of an uncommon man, 2000.

Charles Ives: a life with music, 1996.

Igor Stravinsky, by Jonathan Cross, 2015.

Music in medieval Europe, by Jeremy Yudkin, 2017.

Music in the baroque, by Wendy Heller, 2014.

Music in the Renaissance, by Richard Freedman, 2013.

Music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, by Joseph Henry Auner, 2013.

A new English music: composers and folk traditions in England’s musical renaissance from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, 2016.

Songs of America: patriotism, protest, and the music that made a nation, 2019.

Philosophy and Religion
Amazing grace of quantum physics, 2017.

Faith and wisdom in science, 2016.

Food, text and culture in the Anglophone Caribbean, 2019.

Handbook of positive body image and embodiment: constructs, protective factors, and interventions, 2019. 

Recreation
Sport and the neoliberal university: profit, politics, and pedagogy, 2018.

Science
A complete course on theoretical physics: from classical mechanics to advanced quantum statistics, 2019.

The lazy universe: an introduction to the principle of least action, 2017.

The model thinker: what you need to know to make data work for you, 2018.

Physics from symmetry, by Jakob Schwichtenberg, 2018.

Social Sciences
Is gender fluid?: a primer for the 21st century, 2018.

Maternal optimism: forging positive paths through work and motherhood, 2019.

Uncanny valley: a memoir, 2020.

Technology
The art of electronics, 2015.

The art of electronics: the x-chapters, 2020.

Learning the art of electronics: a hands-on lab course, 2016.

Peak plastic: the rise or fall of our synthetic world, 2019. 

Juvenile
Bear came along, 2019. 2020 Caldecott Honor Book.

The book hog, 2019. 2020 Geisel Honor Book.

Chick and Brain. Smell my foot!, 2019. 2020 Geisel Honor Book.

Flubby is not a good pet!, 2020. 2020 Geisel Honor Book.

New kid, 2019. 2020 Newbery Medal Winner.

Other words for home, 2019. 2020 Newbery Honor Book.

Scary stories for young foxes, 2019. 2020 Newbery Honor Book.

Stop! Bot!, 2019. 2020 Geisel Medal Winner.

The undefeated, 2019. Caldecott 2020 Medal Winner; 2020 Newbery Honor Book.

Office Reference
Copyright conversations: rights literacy in a digital world, 2019.

DVDs
At eternity’s gate, 2019.

Fiddler on the roof, 2001. [replacement]

The Good Place. The complete third season, 2019.

High and low, 2008. [replacement]

Logan lucky, 2017.

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, 2019.

Donated Gift Items to the Milligan Libraries
American exceptionalism and civil religion: reassessing the history of an idea.

The chosen, by Chaim Potok.

Dieterich Buxtehude, organist in Lübeck.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: essays toward a fully trinitarian theology.

The great beauty. [DVD]

J.S. Bach, 2 volumes, by Albert Schweitzer.

Music in the Renaissance, by Gustave Reese.

An outline history of music, by Milo Arlington Wold and Edmund Cykler.

Vikings, by Neil Oliver.

Belated Report: Therapy Dog visits and January Escape from Welshimer event

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As I write, we’re at the end of the fifth week of Spring Semester 2020. What?! Seems like the semester just got started! Before the time totally gets away from me I was reminded to report on two recent events at Welshimer Library — therapy dog visits during Fall 2019 Finals Week, and the Escape from Welshimer event held in late January.

Local therapy dogs and their owners have been visiting Milligan students at Welshimer Library every semester during Finals Week since Fall 2013 to provide much needed stress relief. (We’ve also had kittens visit off and on in the past thanks to the efforts of Occupational Therapy students.) This last Fall semester, we had visits from Burton and his owner, former Milligan Biology professor Julie Wade, and Will with his owner, Mr. Bill Powley. Both Burton and Will are Golden Retrievers that are trained and certified as therapy dogs. Thanks so much Burton and Will for spending time with our students. We look forward to seeing you again in the Spring!

In January 2019, we held the first Escape from Welshimer event designed by Research and Instruction Librarian Mary Jackson to teach Milligan students, faculty, and their families about the library. The event was such a great success that we decided to run it again this year on Friday evening, January 24. Turn-out was not as great this year, but it was every bit as fun.

Participants were divided into teams that were variously tasked with solving a series of puzzles on topics from the 1970s, 80s, or 90s using clues located in the physical library and on the Milligan Libraries website. Librarians were on hand to offer a hint or two. Solving the puzzles enabled team members to unlock a treasure chest that was filled with small prizes. Though mildly competitive in terms of which team could finish first, every team and every team member was declared a winner once they successfully unlocked their chest, and were awarded with a large candy treat.

The library hasn’t decided yet whether to make Escape from Welshimer an on-going annual event, but January seems like an ideal time. I’m certain it will return in some form.

Speaking of annual events at Milligan Libraries, stay tuned later today for the announcement of the winner of our 9th Annual February Madness Library Pen Tournament, and be on the lookout for details of our 10th Anniversary Edible Books Festival coming in early April.

 

New Books and Media Received (December 2019 & January 2020)

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The following Books and DVDs (112 items) were received into the Library collection for both the Welshimer and Seminary Libraries through the Acquisitions Budget and by donation during December 2019 and January 2020.

Seminary Library

Education
Creating wicked students: designing courses for a complex world, 2018.

Language and Literature
A biblical Hebrew reference grammar by C. H. J. Van der Merwe, J. A. Naudé, Jan Kroeze, 2017.

Classical Syriac by Arman Akopian, 2019.

Critics, compilers, and commentators: an introduction to Roman philology, 200 BCE-800 CE, 2018.

Poems on Scripture: Greek original and English translation, 2012.

Philosophy, Psychology, Religion
A theological introduction to the Old Testament by Mark W. Hamilton, 2018.

Adrian’s Introduction to the divine Scriptures: an Antiochene handbook for Scriptural interpretation, 2017.

Athanasiana Syriaca, 1972.

Athanasiana Syriaca. Pt. 2, [Syriac text], 1967.

Bearing Yhwh’s name at Sinai: a reexamination of the name command of the Decalogue, 2018.

The beginning of difference: discovering identity in God’s diverse world, 2019.

The book of Genesis by Joy A. Schroeder, 2015.

Catechetical discourse: a handbook for catechists, 2019.

Christ and the common life: political theology and the case for democracy, 2019.

Christian ethics for a digital society, 2019.

The cross and salvation: the doctrine of God, 2006.

Cultural engagement: a crash course in contemporary issues, 2019.

Didymus the Blind’s commentary on Psalms 26:10-29:2 and 36:1-3 (P.BYU.1), 2019.

The dragon, the mountain, and the nations: an Old Testament myth, its origins, and its afterlives, 2018.

Ethics in Ancient Israel, 2014.

Everything is interconnected: towards a globalization with a human face and an integral ecology, 2019.

General introduction and Megilloth = Megilot, 2004.

The history of Mar Behnam and Sarah: martyrdom and monasticism in medieval Iraq, 2018.

Introduction to the Septuagint, 2019.

Isaiah 6-12: a critical and exegetical commentary by H.G.M. Williamson, 2019.

Jacob of Sarug’s homilies on the Nativity, 2010.

Jacob of Sarug’s homilies on the six days of creation: the fifth day, 2019.

Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the chariot that Prophet Ezekiel saw, 2016.

Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Lord’s Prayer, 2016.

Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Tower of Babel, 2009.

A lens of love: reading the Bible in its world for our world, 2018.

Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem, 2019.

Mar Narsai: Homily 33 on the sanctification of the Church, 2018.

Maternal thinking: toward a politics of peace; with a new preface, 1995.

Not scattered or confused: rethinking the urban world of the Hebrew Bible, 2019.

On the ecclesiastical mystagogy, 2019.

Parenting as spiritual practice and source for theology: mothering matters, 2017.

Preaching in the purple zone: ministry in the red-blue divide, 2019.

Reading Scripture canonically: theological instincts for Old Testament interpretation, 2019.

Sexism and sin-talk: feminist conversations on the human condition, 2019.

Solidarity and defiant spirituality: Africana lessons on religion, racism, and ending gender violence, 2019.

A spiritual life: perspectives from poets, prophets, and preachers, 2011.

The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible with English translation. Acts, 2014.

The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible with English translation. Luke, 2013.

The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible with English translation. Mark, 2012.

Syriac tradition of the infancy gospel of Thomas: a critical edition and English translation, 2019.

Trees and kings: a comparative analysis of tree imagery in Israel’s prophetic tradition and the ancient Near East, 2018.

When one religion isn’t enough: the lives of spiritually fluid people, 2018.

Social Science
Studying gender in the ancient Near East, 2018. 

New Testament Seminar
Christobiography: memory, history, and the reliability of the Gospels, 2019.

Gendering war and peace in the Gospel of Luke, 2019.

The gospel of the son of God: an introduction to Matthew, 2019.

History and eschatology: Jesus and the promise of natural theology, 2019.

Intermediate Greek grammar: syntax for students of the New Testament, 2019.

Jesus, the Essenes, and Christian origins: new light on ancient texts and communities, 2018.

Jews and Christians?: second-century “Christian” perspectives on the “Parting of the Ways,” 2014.

Myths and mistakes in New Testament textual criticism, 2019.

The New Testament in its world: an introduction to the history, literature, and theology of the first Christians, 2019.

The New Testament in Muslim eyes: Paul’s letter to the Galatians, 2018.

Participating in Christ: explorations in Paul’s theology and spirituality, 2019.

The state of New Testament studies: a survey of recent research, 2019.

The text of the earliest New Testament Greek manuscripts (2 volumes), 2019.

Textual criticism of the Bible, 2018.

Reference
Encyclopedia of Martin Luther and the Reformation, 2017.

Welshimer Library

Anthropology and Recreation
Food, politics, and society: social theory and the modern food system, 2018.

A history of the world in seven cheap things: a guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet, 2017.

Sport and the neoliberal university: profit, politics, and pedagogy, 2018.

Language and Literature
You don’t have to say you love me: a memoir, 2019.

Medicine
Cooper’s fundamentals of hand therapy: clinical reasoning and treatment guidelines for common diagnoses of the upper extremity, 2020.

Music
Aaron Copland: the life and work of an uncommon man, 2000.

Charles Ives: a life with music, 1996.

Dangerous melodies: classical music in America from the Great War through the Cold War, 2020.

Elizabethan mythologies: studies in poetry, drama and music, 2006.

Experimental music: Cage and beyond, 1999.

Experimental music since 1970, 2016.

The Grove Music guide to American film music, 2019.

The history of music and musical instruments in Europe : prehistory through the Renaissance, 2019.

Ives and Copland : a listener’s guide, 2004.

Minimalists by K. Robert Schwarz, 2008.

Music in medieval Europe, 2017.

Music in the baroque, 2014.

Music in the Renaissance, 2013.

A new English music: composers and folk traditions in England’s musical renaissance from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, 2016.

Transformations of musical modernism, 2015.

Science
Semiconductor material and device characterization, 2006. 

Social Sciences
American radicals: how nineteenth-century protest shaped the nation, 2019.

The cigarette: a political history, 2019.

Eating NAFTA: trade, food policies, and the destruction of Mexico, 2018.

The great reversal: how America gave up on free markets, 2019.

Technology
MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) physics and technology, 1982.

Total design: integrated methods for successful product engineering, 1991.

DVDs
Won’t you be my neighbor? 2018.

Donated Gift Items to the Milligan Libraries
The body in motion: its evolution and design.

Body, breath & being: a new approach to the Alexander Technique.

Building a scholarly career: the ATS guide to religious and theological publishing.

Byzantine philosophy.

Death before the fall: biblical literalism and the problem of animal suffering.

Dynamis of healing  patristic theology and the psyche.

The Fall reconsidered: a literary synthesis of the primeval sin narratives against the backdrop of the history of exegesis.

Individuality in late antiquity.

The Jacksonian era, 1828-1848.

The life and times of Martha Laurens Ramsay, 1759-1811.

A pair of silk stockings and other stories.

Personhood in the Byzantine Christian tradition: early, medieval, and modern perspectives.

The poems of Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus.

Quarantine.

Reading sin in the world.

Readings in world Christian history.

Repentance in late antiquity: Eastern asceticism and the framing of the Christian life c.400-650 CE.

Sense and sensibility.

Tradition & diversity: Christianity in a world context to 1500.

The yellow wallpaper and other stories.