Library News: In the News 
Historians Brian J. Daugherity, assistant professor of history at VCU, and Brian E. Lee, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, visit the James Branch Cabell Library's Special Collections and Archives for a talk at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 10, about their article "Program of Action: The Rev. L. Francis Griffin and the Struggle for Racial Equality in Farmville, 1963," in the current issue of Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. The talk is free and open to the public, and a reception follows.
In the article the historians make use of several images from a new VCU Libraries digital collection of photographs documenting civil rights protests in Farmville in the summer of 1963. The images in the collection show dozens of Prince Edward County African-American students and others using an array of protest tactics to draw attention to racial discrimination.
The protesters were demanding that local and state authorities eliminate racial segregation in public facilities and reopen the public schools in the county which had been closed since 1959 to avoid integration. Rev. L. Francis Griffin, pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmville, organized the protests. Protesters called their summer of protests a "Program of Action."
Many of these activities are documented in this collection of images. Many of the black and white photographs were taken by J.D. Crute, an amateur photographer hired by the Farmville Police Department, under the supervision of Police Chief Otto Smith Overton, who served 42 years before retiring in 1996. These police surveillance photographs were intended to be used in court as evidence against many of the protesters who were arrested and jailed. Currently the originals are in a private collection.
Central Virginia author Dale Brumfield is set to launch his latest book this month. And on September 4, he'll be giving a VCU Libraries Presents talk sponsored by Special Collections and Archives at 1 p.m. at James Branch Cabell Library.
The library is a familiar place for Brumfield, who relied heavily on VCU Libraries collection of independent and alternative newspapers, weeklies, zines and magazines to research "Richmond Independent Press: A History of the Underground Zine Scene."
According to publisher notes on Barnes & Nobel website: "During the political and cultural upheaval of the 1960s, even the sleepy southern town of Richmond was not immune to the emergence of radical counterculturalism. A change in the traditional ideas of objective journalism spurred an underground movement in the press. The Sunflower, Richmond's first underground newspaper, appeared in 1967 and set the stage for a host of alternative Richmond media lasting into the 1990s and beyond. Publications such as the Richmond Chronicle, the Richmond Mercury and the Commonwealth Times, as well as those covering the African American community, such as Afro, have served the citizens of Richmond searching for a change in the status quo. ... Brumfield explores a forgotten history of a cultural revolution."
Brumfield draws clear distinctions between the monopolistic mainstream press (The Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Richmond News Leader) and the jaunty, nimble underground papers.
Some observers of the journalistic scene, he says, "may recall the underground press of the '60s and '70s only as a temporary deviation, choosing to emphasize the papers' divisions and their failures while de-emphasizing their successes. Richmond's 1960s underground press may have been short-lived but it did not fail. It achieved its purpose of giving a voice to radical criticism and social change.
"The legacy passed on by those gritty, early papers was the alternative press that rose in the mid-70s and the '80s, leading the way for longer lasting publications such as STYLE Weekly, now in its 32nd year."
Brumfield contributes to STYLE Weekly and the Austin Chronicle. He is the co-founder of ThroTTle Magazine, a Richmond indie publication. A VCU alumnus and MFA graduate student, he also worked on the Commonwealth Times. The book, "Richmond Independent Press: a History of the Underground Zine Scene," is published by History Press of Charleston, South Carolina.
Changing scholarship, shifts in the publishing industry and new technologies are driving this improvement. "It is a system that positions VCU Libraries for the future of managing materials in all media on an increasingly large scale," said John Duke, senior associate university librarian, who has led the technical team. "A huge benefit of being an early adopter is that VCU Libraries has had considerable voice in refining the software to answer the unique needs of a research library with a large academic health sciences campus. We also received some cost savings in opting in early," noted Duke.
Alma has been created using modern, rapid software development tools. This makes for very quick software production, with managed feedback from users to guide development as it is constantly tested. Alma was designed with partner libraries to help manage the variety of materials a modern library holds, taking advantage of technology and learning from other libraries to reduce costs and speed processing. Over time, it is expected that many internal workflows will change and library leadership envisions new efficiencies and savings that can be invested in enhanced services or improved collections.
Kitty Snow, Stilson's great-granddaughter, is the driving force behind the work to save the photographs and films. She told STYLE: "His pictures show how people made a living, where they shopped, where they worked and what Richmond was like in the early 20th century." Some 125 of these rare photos will be published in the forthcoming book, "From a Richmond Streetcar." VCU Libraries will be hosting a book launch event Oct. 30.
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Torres will be on the Virginia Commonwealth University campus Nov. 8 for a reading, book signing, Q&A and sessions with students.
The following week, on Monday, Nov. 12 at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO,
Brooklyn, the National Book Foundation will kick off National Book
Awards Week with a party for this year's 5 Under 35 authors.
Host for the evening will be musician Neko Case, with poet and photographer Thomas Sayers Ellis as DJ. Author Anya Ulinich, a 2007 5 Under 35 Honoree, will moderate a conversation between the young writers. Musician and author Alina Simone will interview all of the authors at the event, to be shared in clips on the foundation's website.The 5 Under 35 program, now in its seventh year, honors five young
fiction writers selected by past National Book Award Winners and
Finalists.
VCU
Libraries: Vote in Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts campaign. This
public awareness campaign of the Virginia Association of Museums is designed to show the importance of
preserving artifacts in care at collecting institutions such as museums,
libraries and archives.VCU Libraries has nominated one artifact in need of preservation and it tells a significant story about one of VCU Libraries' special collections, the Comic Arts Collection.
In the running: the office door of pioneering cartoonist Billy DeBeck featuring an oil painting of Barney Google and his equine sidekick. The door resides in the office of Special Collections and Archives at James Branch Cabell Library.
William Morgan DeBeck, 1890-1942, was a giant in the "comic strip" art form. To readers in the Jazz Age and Depression era, his characters were as beloved as Superman, Peanuts and Doonesbury became to later generations. Dialog from Barney Google became part of the cultural syntax. Catchphrases from his strips included: "Horsefeathers!" "Heebie-jeebies;" "Jeepers Creepers!" "Bus' Mah Britches!" and "Time's a'wastin'!" DeBeck invented the moniker "Google" for his character. Like many illustrators and cartoonists, DeBeck didn't confine his art to paper but painted on his office door. The door was donated to Special Collections and Archives at James Branch Cabell Library by DeBeck's former secretary, who had ties to Virginia.
- To vote, use this link and scroll down to the click-off button for the DeBeck door.
- If you have difficulty voting, send your choice by email to srobinson26@vcu.edu
- Voting ends August 29. Public voting will be considered by an
independent panel of collections and conservation experts who will
select the final Top 10. That list will be announced in November.
The recipient receives a $5,000 prize. Travel expenses and lodging also are provided for the author and his or her agent and editor to attend the VCU Cabell First Novelist Festival, a series of events that focus on the creation, publication and promotion of a debut novel.Co-sponsors of the award and the festival are the VCU Department of English, the VCU MFA Program in Creative Writing, the James Branch Cabell Library Associates, the VCU Friends of the Library, VCU Libraries, the VCU Honors College, Barnes & Noble @ VCU and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences.
The deadline for the 2013 VCU Cabell First Novelist
Award is September 15 for books published January through June
2012. For books published July through December 2012, the deadline is
January 12, 2013.
For more information, visit www.firstnovelist.vcu.edu.
Torres will receive the award at the VCU Cabell First Novelist Festival at Virginia Commonwealth University on Nov. 8. He was one of three finalists for the prize, now in its eleventh year. The other finalists were Alexi Zentner for "Touch" and Peter Mountford for "A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism."
Published in August 2011 by Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, "We the Animals" is narrated by the youngest sibling in a
voice that is both compelling and urgent and prose that is brutally
honest and beautifully poetic. Composed in short, disjointed chapters,
the novel swiftly moves through six years in the tumultuous childhood of
the three brothers as they claw their way toward adulthood. More
