Lafayette College Library

Paul Barclay, Associate Professor of History, & Eric Luhrs, Digital Initiatives Librarian will outline the challenges and benefits of building digital archives at Lafayette College. Over the course of a three-year project to create an image database from Skillman Library's Special Collections holdings, a series of technological and curatorial dilemmas have prompted innovations and ideas not envisioned at the project's beginning. Moreover, as the collection has grown, possibilities for classroom use, scholarship, and promoting the college have surpassed expectations. Refreshments will be served. (Gendebien Room, Skillman Library)

In the Lass Gallery, photographer Marguerite Nicosia Torres’ images document an immigrant community’s devotion to Mexico’s patron saint, Our Lady of Guadalupe. The exhibit explores the preservation of a religious and cultural heritage through rituals and traditions honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe in Marshalltown, Iowa. Torres is an award-winning photojournalist who has been photo editor and photographer at the "Ithaca Journal" and an artist-in-residence at St. Lawrence University.

She will give a talk on the photographs on Thursday, October 1 at 4:15 p.m. in the Gendebien Room, Skillman Library. A reception with traditional Mexican fare will follow.

The color-saturated paintings of Mexican artist Rolando Rojas are shown on the north wall of the McCluskey Reference Studio on Skillman's main floor. Rojas, a rising star from Oaxaca, Mexico, creates these vibrant works by mixing native soil with his rich pigments and applying them to the canvas. Professor of Art, Curlee Holton, who made possible the loan of these works, says of Rojas: “Rolando possesses a deep creative impulse and passionate commitment to his Isthmus of Tehuantepec birthplace. He is described as an “Oaxacano painter,” an artist who stays pure to the aesthetic and visual history of the region of the Mexican Central Valley. In a relatively short time, he has become a master of this tradition and has achieved international recognition for his talent as an artist.”

Which books have most altered the intellectual and social terrain of America? This is the question that Jay Parini grapples with in his 2008 book, Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America, and that is the subject of Skillman Library’s fall exhibit in the Simon Room. Parini’s “thirteen” include some expected choices (The Federalist Papers, Uncle Tom’s Cabin) as well as surprises (How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care). The exhibit features various editions of the works with commentary from Parini’s book.