Category Archives: Research and Reference

GS2950: Digital Wisdom for Work

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Led by University Librarian, Michael J. Paulus, Jr., and Head of Library Technology Ryan Ingersoll, this 1-credit class will help students assess and enhance their digital readiness for work. In addition to focusing on digital literacy and technological skills for professional development, this class will provide an opportunity for students to reflect on the relationship between vocation, technology, and career preparation. The course will also aim to help students define and develop “digital wisdom”, focusing on concepts that include digital identity, the integration of digital technologies, seeking information, and the ethics and values of creation, community, and citizenship in the context of technology.

Welcome back!

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Welcome back students, faculty, and staff! We are excited to begin a new academic year with you and help support you in any way we can.

Here is brief overview of some of the services we offer:

The SPU Collection
Books, journals, online articles, DVDs, and more – our general collection, reference collection, and special collections are home to an extensive number of resources that are readily available to you. Items are organized according to the Library of Congress system, which means they are shelved alphabetically based on their call number (the combination of numbers and letters located on the lower spine of an item). Call numbers A-J are located on the second floor and call numbers K-Z are located on the third floor. The Work and Faith collection is located in the graduate study room on the third floor, and the Popular Fiction Collection is located in the reading room on the main level – along with recent issues of magazines and newspapers. Locate any of our items by typing keywords, titles, or known call numbers in Primo – the online library catalog found at the top of the Library home page in the blue box.

Summit
An item that cannot be located in our collection can be ordered through Summit. Summit is a shared library system run by an alliance known as the Orbis Cascade Alliance, which includes 37 libraries from across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. An item ordered through Summit (you may also discover items by searching Primo) will be delivered to SPU within five business days.

Liaison Librarians
Each Librarian at the SPU Library is affiliated with specific departments and schools, and is able to give students, and faculty, instructional and research assistance. The reference desk, is staffed by our librarians, is open daily and its hours can be found here.

Course Reserves
Books and DVDs that professors put on reserve for a class are located at the Circulation Desk. Look up the course in Primo, bring the call number to the Circulation Desk, and a staff member will locate the item for you. Most Reserve items need to stay in the library and have a time cap on them so that items will be available to other patrons.

Tech Desk
Located on the lower level of the Library, the Tech Desk offers laptops, cameras, video recorders, chargers, and tech help services among other things. The lower level is also home to the computer lab featuring computers equipped with double monitors, extensive software, and printing capabilities.

Printers
Printers are located on every floor of the Library. Log into a computer, open your document, send to print, log in to the printer with your SeaPac Pass, and select the documents you would like to have printed. More information on campus-wide printing can be found here.

Study Rooms
Study rooms are located throughout the building and provide private spaces for more effective individual and group study. They are equipped with tables, large monitors, and cables to connect these monitors to laptops. Rooms can be reserved through Room Finder (found on the Library home page). Library study rooms are not sound proof, so please be respectful of noise levels when using them.

Please contact us with any questions or concerns you may have – we are always happy to help. Have a wonderful Fall quarter!

Special Collections: Luther Bibles

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img_2023Special Collections Exhibit 2014:

Bibles and Bible commentary:

Endter Luther Bible no. 1 (Monroe)

SPU possess three of the Luther Bibles published by Wolfgang Endter and descendants between 1629 to 1788.  The Luther Bibles published by the Endter clan came in three basic forms:  the octavo-sized Saubert (from 1726 the Mörl) Bible (1629-1822), and the small and large folio-sized Weimar (1641-1768) and Dilherr (1656-1788) Bibles.  All three of the copies owned by SPU lack a firm date of publication, and the first two, an opening title page.  For this reason I refer to them by the donor-names Monroe, Marston, and Frost.  Monroe, the one featured here, is clearly the earliest.  Though it bears internal (and copperplate-based) title pages dated 1643 (not to mention a faint penciled inscription to that effect on a blank—and detached—opening page), this information may not be trustworthy, if only because all three of the copies owned by SPU may be Dilherr (1656-1788) rather than Weimar (1641-1768) Bibles.  They appear to be Dilherr Bibles because each meets the three Dilherr criteria specified by Oertel:

1) They are all folio-sized, and they all contain both 2) Johann Dilherr’s “Vorrede an den gottseligen Leser” (only partially still there in Monroe); and 3) Salomon Glassius’ notes (or Nutzen, embedded in the text in Monroe, but marginalized in Marston and Frost).  For these reasons (and because the first of the many editions of the Dilherr Bible appeared in 1656), I am inclined to wonder whether those three internal title pages (located at the onset of the Historical books, the New Testament, and the Epistles), though clearly authentic, would match the title page proper, did we have it.  (Indeed an excessively suspicious person might suspect that there are signs that the former may have been tipped in.  Yet it should also be noted that (and here I contradict myself), the second edition of the Weimar bore 1644 “auf dem gedruckten Haupttitel” (“on its printed main title [page]”), but 1643 “Auf dem in Kupfer gestochenen Titel” (“on the title [page] engraved on copper”) (Panzer, Geschichte (1778), 197).)  A further clue may be the fact that, except for the copperplate-based title pages, 4) Monroe is dominated (as an early Dilherr would be) by woodcuts.  (Were there two-column woodcuts in the early Weimar editions?)

But there are also reasons to think that, if a Dilherr, it may not post-date 1679:  the fact that, possessing only a Register of Sunday Gospel and Epistle readings, 5) it lacks the traditional four Registers transferred over from the Weimar Bible from 1720, the fact that 6) it sports no engraving of Luther and his family, and the fact that 7) it appears to lack a feature characteristic of Weimar Bibles and also many Dilherr Bibles from 1679, namely the copperplate engravings of the eleven Saxon Herzöge.

So though it is entirely possible that Monroe could date from 1643, or even be a second (i.e. 1644) edition of the Weimar rather than a Dilherr, I would place it for the time being tentatively somewhere between 1656 and 1674 (which is the date of the last Dilherr edition before the one dated 1679) inclusive.

Nonetheless, because a lot has been published on these Bibles, a great deal of additional progress could, given time, be made.  (So for my latest thoughts on this, see the exhibit notes themselves.)

This Endter Dilherr (?) Luther Bible was a gift of SPU Instructor of Nursing Heidi Monroe, who says that it would have come over from Germany with her paternal great grandfather Hermann Robert Baum, who was a druggist and the proprietor of the former Baum’s Pharmacy in San Francisco.

Possible fuller title:  [Biblia, das ist, die gantze heilige Schrifft dess alten und neuen Testaments.  Wie solche von Hernn Doctor Martin Luther Seel. im Jahr Christi 1522 in unsere Teutsche Mutter-Sprach zu übersetzen angefangen anno 1554 zu End gebracht. . . .]

– Steve Perisho

Sources:

Creative Conversations: Winter Quarter Recap

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Creative Conversations is the library’s new speaker series that highlights scholarly and creative work begin done by members of the SPU community. We continue to focus the program on the creative processes that go into their work with the aim of stimulating conversations about these processes among students, scholars, and others at SPU.

This quarter Rob Wall and David Nienhuis started us off by presenting their work on their new book A Bite-Sized Introduction to the Whole Bible, a collaborative work that will ultimately include most of the Theology faculty. Each chapter in the book will focus on a different book or collection of books of the bible and will be written by a different faculty member. Slated for becoming a new textbook in the core curriculum, the aim is to provide a book for students (and edited by students) that provides a foundational big picture look at the whole biblical story.

Executive editor of Image Journal, teacher, and author Suzanne Wolfe presented the following week, sharing from her latest novel in progress, The Iron Ring: The Confessions of St. Augustine’s Concubine. She talked about her research process – including her adventures abroad, the process of seeing characters come to life, and the ups and downs of being a writer. Suzanne read the finished epilogue which was rich and beautifully written and is very promising of things to come.

We welcomed Myrna Capp as our third speaker, a gifted pianist who also teaches piano at SPU. Myrna and her husband spent a significant amount of time in Namibia, during which she conducted a great amount of research on Namibian music and musicians. Her book, Namibian Soundscapes: Music of the People and the Land, gives us a glimpse into a fascinating culture so different from our own, and an introduction to a musical people committed to keeping that culture alive.

Don Yanik rounded out this quarter’s Creative Conversations with a talk on scene design. Don has designed sets for a prolific amount of plays in his time, at SPU and outside of it. He shared a little about the process of design as a process that includes collaboration between the director, designers, and actors. It is a process that creates a world for the play to live in and not detract from it. It accomplishes a purpose. To show his work, Don brought along to-scale models of the stage at SPU.

After a successful Winter quarter, we’re excited to welcome Dr. Kimberly Segall, Dr. Jennifer Maier, Dr. Kevin Watson, and the alumni behind SHEP Films in the Spring. Times and dates to come!

New Library Discovery System for 2014

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Dear Members of the SPU Community,

Beginning January 1, 2014, we will have a new search tool for finding materials in the SPU Library and Summit libraries. Our library is one of the 37 Summit libraries transitioning to this shared system, which will enhance the discovery and sharing of resources within the Orbis Cascade Alliance.

The new interface is similar to our current SPU WorldCat system and other search tools you may have used before: you search for books, articles, and more using a single search box and then select from various options to filter your results.

Here are some key changes to be aware of once the new system is live:

  • The “Classic Catalog” and SPU WorldCat will be replaced by the new system after December 31. Learn more here.
  • Signing in with your SPU username and password will maximize your search experience. Learn more here.
  • You will see new “Get It” and “View It” tabs under each title to help you access and request items. Learn more here.
  • Journals A-Z will become eJournals A-Z. Learn more here.

Additional information and guidance is available here.

If you have questions or feedback, please speak with the liaison librarian for your area or any member of the library staff.

Michael J. Paulus, Jr.