Category: Library NewsBlog

The Friends of the Michigan Tech Library will have a used book sale and free hot chocolate and cookies in the lobby of the Van Pelt and Opie Library. They will also have copper mining scene notecards and Michigan Tech blankets for sale.

Saturday, February 11, 11AM – 4PM.

Please join us for a presentation by travel grant recipient Gabe Logan at 4:00 pm on Tuesday, November 15 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Logan will discuss the Labor Sport Union and its influence in the iron ranges of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. From 1928 through 1935 the United States Communist Party developed the Labor Sport Union. This athletic organization united left wing politics and athletics in an alternative vision of sport and society. The LSU drew much of its membership from the urban cities whose immigrant populations sought recreation beyond the schools and company teams. However, the LSU also found an appreciative audience in the rural iron ore region of Lake Superior. This presentation explains the significance of the LSU in the region and how its members embraced the “red sports” ideology.

Gabe Logan, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of History and the Director for the Center of Upper Peninsula Studies at Northern Michigan University. Logan’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Tech Archives has partnered with the FMTL to help scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at (906) 487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web at http://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

Please join us for a presentation by travel grant recipient Gordon Andrews at 4:00 pm on Thursday, November 3 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Andrews will discuss unionization efforts at the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford Motor Company was the last of the “Big Three” automakers to unionize. There were serious attempts to organize beginning in the 1930s, but it was not until the workers at the Rouge plant organized a sit-down strike in 1941 that they were successful. The “Industrial Colossus on the Rouge” employed over 100,000 workers, and once organized, it became the largest local in the nation. The presentation will address the parameters of UAW Local 600’s history, from its leadership role in organizing the successful unionization of Ford Motor Company, to the myriad ways in which Local 600 impacted the quality of life, and also the politics of its membership over a half-century. An integral part of that story is understanding the relationships among labor and resources from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the way those affiliations inform what we know about the organization of Ford, especially as employees confronted a brutally oppressive system in the hopes of establishing democracy in the workplace.

Gordon P. Andrews is an associate professor in the Department of History at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan. He has taught at the secondary and post-secondary levels since 1986, and his research fields include history education, modern United States history, and 20th-century labor history. His recent publications include, Undoing Plessy: Charles Hamilton Houston, Race, Labor and the Law, 1895-1950 (Newcastle upon Tyne, London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014), Collaboration and the Future of Education: Preserving the Right to Teach and Think Historically, New York: Routledge, 2015, co-authored with Wilson Warren, and James Cousins.

Andrews’ research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Tech Archives has partnered with the FMTL to help scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at 906-487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web at http://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

On Thursday, October 20, the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library will hold their annual meeting from 4:30PM – 6:00PM in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library.

Following a brief business meeting at 4:45PM, Jonathon Robins, assistant professor of global history in the Social Sciences department at Michigan Tech, will present a talk on his first book, Cotton and Race Across the Atlantic: Britain, Africa, and America 1900-1920.

In 1902, British business launched an ambitious program to transform Britain’s African colonies into major cotton producers, in the hopes of ending Britain’s century-long reliance on the American South for raw materials. In Cotton and Race Across the Atlantic, Jonathan E. Robins explores the complex history of this British project, which brought European industrialists, African-American scientists, and African kings together to reshape the ways in which millions of African farmers worked. Robins will present an overview of the book, and discuss how his work in a number of very different archives and libraries shaped his writing process.

Robins is a historian of commodities, examining the connections between agriculture, industry, and consumers around the globe. He has published articles and book chapters on food history, agriculture, colonialism, industrial organization, and consumerism.

This event is free and open to the public and refreshments will be served.

SAE Technical Papers from 1906 to present are now available through the library’s subscription to SAE Mobilus. SAE Mobilus replaces the SAE Digital Library, featuring an updated search interface as well as menus of most recently published and most popular publications. Journal articles and references to thousands of works in mobility engineering are included.

SAE Mobius may be accessed through the library’s Databases A-Z search on the library’s homepage.

Questions? Contact reflib@mtu.edu.

Michigan Tech’s Van Pelt and Opie Library subscribes to the Chronicle of Higher Education. This valuable resource is available to all current faculty, staff and students and is available here.

The Friends of the Michigan Tech Library are currently selling note cards depicting scenes from the historic copper mining district. The Keweenaw note card set is available for purchase at the library service desk on the first floor. The cost is $12 per set plus applicable sales tax.

Also available, the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library blanket displaying past and present buildings on campus. The cost is $65 plus applicable sales tax.

Check out these items and support the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library!

The Van Pelt and Opie Library is piloting a Presentation Capture Toolkit that students, faculty, and staff can use to record lectures and presentations, develop brief software tutorials, and participate in other streaming or communication activities (Skype, etc.)

The Toolkit consists of a microphone headset and a Surface Pro touchscreen tablet with the following specialized software:

• Panopto Recorder – record and upload video presentations to Huskycast
• Camtasia Studio 8 – edit and share your content as a portable video file

This tool kit may be reserved online here or at the Library Service Desk.

Learn more about the Computers and Technology available at the Library.

Below are the winning student photos from the 6th Annual Winter Carnival Photo Contest.  Devin Kohn, the photographer of the grand prize winning photograph, received a $200 Amazon gift card.  Bhargar Ram, the second place prize winner, was awarded a Friends of the Michigan Tech Library blanket, and Bryan Lowney, third place prize winner, won a 3′ x 4′ poster print.

As in previous years, the winning photographs were chosen by the student assistants of the Van Pelt and Opie Library.

1st Place
Devin Kohn

2^nd Place
Bhargar Ram

3^rd Place
Bryan Lowney