Now THAT needs to be reported in the newspaper.  Do you want to send your child to a university that doesn't make buying books a priority?

USM's library is #1 in the nation in terms of volumes held.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Curmudgeon
" The total holdings of the State, Ole Miss, and USM libraries combined do not add up to the LSU library."

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Curmudgeon, I was just pretending I was a member of your administration. I was in fantasy land.

quote:

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Originally posted by: We're #1
"USM's library is #1 in the nation in terms of volumes held."

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Please, cite your source. Anecdotal evidence need not apply.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Miles Long
" Please, cite your source. Anecdotal evidence need not apply."

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Miles, Miles, Miles. You didn't take my cynical posting seriously did you? Here my response to Curmudgeon to a similar question posted earlier on this thread:

"Curmudgeon, I was just pretending I was a member of your administration. I was in fantasy land."

Now let me see a smile on those cheeks of yours.

 

quote:

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Originally posted by: Dr. Joseph Goebbels
"......So why purchase any more? In fact, maybe we should burn a few of the books we presently own.  I'll come up with a list of unnecessary books and submit it to the President."

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Oh, I do dearly love bonfires -- the Ladies Missionary Society sponsors one for the children in the senior high Sunday school class every year at homecoming -- and there are so many nasty things in books these days ... but the LMS will never approve of anything that might potentially harm librarians. (Several of our members, including the infamous Miss Always Right, are retired librarians.)

So, what is the administration's final solution for the library problem, Dr. Goebbels?

quote:

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Originally posted by: We're #1
"
Miles, Miles, Miles. You didn't take my cynical posting seriously did you? Here my response to Curmudgeon to a similar question posted earlier on this thread:
"Curmudgeon, I was just pretending I was a member of your administration. I was in fantasy land."
Now let me see a smile on those cheeks of yours.
 "

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But I believe you would have been correct if you had said "children's books". I believe I have heard that USM has the largest collection of childrens's book. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Reader
"

But I believe you would have been correct if you had said "children's books". I believe I have heard that USM has the largest collection of childrens's book. Please correct me if I'm wrong."

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"The de Grummond Collection is one of North America's leading research centers in the field of children's literature. Although the Collection has many strengths, the main focus is on American and British children's literature, historical and contemporary. Founded in 1966 by Dr. Lena Y. de Grummond, the Collection holds the original manuscripts and illustrations of more than 1200 authors and illustrators, as well as 70,000+ published books dating from 1530 to the present. Part of Special Collections at The University of Southern Mississippi, the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection is housed in the McCain Library and Archives."

I like their logo, too. No birds head there!

Some of you may remember this piece from the FireShelby board:

A Square in Berlin, Dissent at USM

Several years ago I spent the weekend at a conference in Berlin. On its final evening, after the last panel had finished, my new friend Ruth, an American student on a Fulbright, turned to me and said, “Come on. You haven’t really seen anything yet.” So at 2 a.m. I found myself wandering the dark and quiet streets of east Berlin with two other Americans.

Ruth was an insightful guide, providing running commentary while leading us past deserted buildings and monuments illuminated only by streetlights. For me the most memorable sight on that surreal tour was beside Humboldt University: the memorial in the courtyard where Nazis burned great stacks of books on May 10, 1933. It is a glass square embedded in the cobblestones of the courtyard. Through the glass, under the ground, you can see a small, completely white room lined entirely with empty bookshelves. The only marker is a plaque on the ground which contains a quote from the poet, Heinrich Heine: “Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.” The three of us peered silently down into the emptiness symbolizing one small part of the horrors of Nazi Germany, the eerie white light shining up on our faces.

When the fliers depicting Shelby Thames as Hitler appeared on campus last month, I found them somewhat extreme. But as the students’ protest fliers mysteriously disappear off the bulletin boards of USM day after day, I remember that moment in Berlin. The first action of a totalitarian regime is to stifle dissent, to limit free expression. To limit free expression is the most destructive thing that can happen to education. When I encounter a book published by a German scholar in the 1930s, I know I must be highly skeptical about its veracity. I also know that many lasting contributions to Western culture were burned or banned during the Nazi era.

The past two years at USM have reminded me of the ways in which artists, intellectuals, and activists had to function under Hitler or Stalin. Unsigned satirical fliers have appeared mysteriously in my mailbox. Faculty members have huddled in corners and whispered, “have you seen the one about. . . ?” The infamous “Czar Wars” CD has been shown behind closed doors, and everyone has laughed uproariously—when they knew that no one they didn’t trust was listening. The proclamations of “the party” given by Lisa Mader to the unquestioning press were quietly measured for their distance from reality, and they were rarely anywhere close. We are less quiet now, but we are still frightened.

Before I came to USM I worked at a small college. The faculty there were devoted to teaching, but even more devoted to the college’s committee work. Everyone was on at least one committee, everyone was always at a meeting. The older professors prided themselves on their almost photographic recall of Robert’s Rules of Order and their ability to catch a committee chair in a procedural error. Lunch time conversations centered on the latest college issues, the strategies of the various factions, and the upcoming agendas. The committee work obsession seemed small-minded and self-indulgent to me—couldn’t these professors get a life?

Now at USM, I realize that what I was experiencing was democracy in action. Yes, it was slow and inefficient, and no, the faculty at my previous institution didn’t always make the best decisions. But in spite of their countless disagreements, they were in it together, working for what they believed to be the good of the institution as a whole. One of my colleagues here recently told a job candidate that due to the crisis at USM the faculty are as united as they have ever been. I commend the Faculty Senate for leading the fight for shared governance, though the administration isn’t interested in “sharing.” However, I long for the time when the USM faculty can get back to the important work of disagreeing with each other. That is how USM will “make progress,” not by having decisions made by a small body of isolated individuals whose decisions are reported to us in the Hattiesburg American, and not by suppressing the opinions of the students this institution exists to serve.

Without freedom of expression, the best minds seek, like German or Russian intellectuals forced to leave their homelands, a freer society. The mass exodus of hundreds of faculty and staff members from USM testifies to the numerous problems of the last several years. It is clear from the little things—the disappearing fliers—as well as the big things—professors fired and locked out of their offices—that the Thames administration does not have the courage to tolerate dissent nor the intellect to address the issues brought up by the USM community, issues best represented by the recent open letter from the Faculty Senate. It resorts instead to public name-calling in the media and terrorizing the faculty. Black humor pervades the campus, as faculty try, unsuccessfully, to joke about checking their office locks to see if they are the next dissenter to be targeted. It is difficult to believe this is America, much less higher education.

So I urge the community to remember the light of history shining up from a square next to a university in Berlin, and to recognize the damage that is being done here to the principles of democracy and to everything a university stands for. “Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.”