Grace Notes

The Kentucky Library houses a collection of over 2,000 pieces of nineteenth-century sheet music. Dr. and Mrs. James P. Johnson of Naples, Florida, recently enhanced this collection with several hundred pieces from the estate of Edward B. Stout, Jr. The music was collected and used by two Louisville sisters, Alice and Annie Middleton. The older daughter, Alice, married Edward B. Stout, Sr. and moved with her new husband to the Stout farm near Smiths Grove. Eventually Annie and her widowed mother also moved to Warren County.

The Middleton/Stout Collection features a wide array of sentimental Victorian titles, such as "Annie Laurie," "Down by the Old Mill Stream," "When the Leaves Begin to Turn," and "See That My Grave's Kept Green." The latter title features a cover engraving of a widow mourning over a gravesite in a derelict cemetery. The collection also includes a significant number of minstrel tunes as well as the standard classical repertoire. Of particular interest to the Kentucky Library are titles related to one of the Commonwealth's most prolific composers and lyricists, Will S. Hays. The Middleton/Stout Collection contains several Hays titles, including "Angels, Meet at the Cross Roads," and the pictured, "The Little Old Cabin in the Lane," which was decicated to George J. Cowan of Louisville. A significant percentage of Victorian sheet music carries dedications from the composer/lyricist. Hays is credited with writing over 500 songs and sales of his tunes reached 20 million copies. The Library already owns a significant number of Hays' compositions and the Manuscripts unit houses an important collection of Hays' papers.

By examining the topics and styles available, cover illustrations, printing processes and publisher information found on sheet music, researchers can garner a whole host of social history details. One of the Stout pieces features a stamp on the cover that reads: "Emily Tripp, Music Publisher, Louisville, 1881." This woman-run publishing business was undoubtedly a continuation of an earlier concern know as Tripp and Cragg.

Each piece of sheet music is cataloged, so patrons can access it by title, composer, and lyricist. Connie Mills, Kentucky Library coordinator, who has worked with the library's sheet music for the past eighteen years, calls the Middleton/Stout Collection "typical of the period. For many nineteenth-century families, the household entertainment center was the piano in the parlor. The Stouts and Middletons obviously enjoyed many hours of pleasure listening to Miss Alice and Miss Annie."

The Kentucky Library's sheet music collection has been used chiefly for the cover illustrations which feature sentimental depictions of Victorian life. These illustrations, chiefly engravings, are representations of some of the finest contemporary printing processes. One piece in the collection features an attached chromolithograph (a popular Victorian color printing process using paints). Illustrations from the Library's sheet music collections have been used for program covers, posters for musical events, and for exhibits.

The Kentucky Library continues to seek popular sheet music titles related to Kentucky and Kentucky musicians.

~Jonathan Jeffrey 

WKU Libraries in China?

WKU Libraries Web Coordinator, Haiwang Yuan, was invited to present a paper for the China Society of Library Science at their Second Annual Conference, July 17-22 in Hailar, China. Yuan's presentation was on WKU Libraries innovative new Topper InfoPortal (TIP), an award winning information gateway present on the WKU Libraries Home Page. Yuan's paper was co-authored by Dr. Michael Binder, Dean of Western Kentucky University Libraries, and was delivered on July 19, 2000 before an enthusiastic crowd. Yuan, who is bilingual, prepared to present the paper both in Chinese and in English, and had such a terrific response, he was also asked to speak again to convocation of librarians several days later on the same topic.

The China Society of Library Science Annual Conference 2000, although only the second in China's history, started off with an assembly of around 700 librarians from libraries all over China. Participants also included Chair of Korean Society of Library Science, and Chair of CALA (Chinese American Librarian Association), who led a delegation of 18 Chinese American librarians. Among them were Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, Dean Emeritus, University Library of Ohio University and Yu-Lan Chou, East Asia Library of California University at Berkeley.

The theme of the conference was "Libraries in the 21st Century: Development and Change," which Yuan promptly demonstrated when he used a PowerPoint presentation to deliver his paper in a country which is still was relying heavily on transparencies and overhead projectors as it catches up to the technological revolution. Yuan prepared some colorful handouts to pass out to the participants in both Chinese and English. After the conference, participants were taken on a package tour July 20 and 21. Visits to libraries and museums in Hailar, the border city Manchuria, and the border between China and Russia were organized. The second day included a visit to the grand bunker built by the Japanese during its occupation of China in World War II and a visit to the Mongolian grassland.  

Yuan will be making a presentation about his visit to China at 7:00 p.m. on November 16, in the Starbucks Café‚ in Barnes & Noble (1680 Campbell Lane) as part of an ongoing joint WKU Libraries/Barnes & Noble series: Far Away Places...With Strange Sounding Names. This series is held the last Monday of each month, where scholars discuss their scholarly pursuits in various international countries, accompanied by slides, maps, and all manner of other items. Attendance is free and open to the public.

~Haiwang Yuan and Beth Knight 

New Kentuckians

The Kentucky Museum and the Kentucky Arts Council are pleased to present The New Kentuckians art project as part of their 2000/01 community and school programming. Community Artist-in-Residence, Lynne Ferguson, will work with organizations and students in creating collaborative works of art for exhibitions at the museum and elsewhere in the community. The project is called The New Kentuckians because it focuses on this region's international population. The project will include countries from Latin America, South East Asia, as well as Africa, Japan, and Bosnia.

Tours and workshops for school children will coincide with upcoming museum exhibitions; Firstar Contemporary Coverage: Not Your Grandmother's Quilt Anymore, African American Folk Art in Kentucky, and KentuckyWomen Artists, 1850-1970. There will also be a series of smaller exhibits of artifacts, textiles and photographs representative of the culture identified above. Two professional development sessions will be presented by the community artist-in-residence for teachers. They will deal with Arts and Humanities Core Content and emphasize culture, the purpose of art and subject matter in hands-on projects for the classroom. Both student and teacher workshops will incorporate a variety of art media and processes which will illustrate visual elements and design principles. Other New Kentuckians projects will include participation in the Bowling Green International Festival, the Southern Kentucky Book Festival, several performances of International Holiday, a play written by Bowling Green native Mary Hall Surface and performed at the museum, clay workshops with Mitchell Rickman for summer camp, and the production of a New Kentuckians coloring book as a documentation of the project.

~Lynne Ferguson

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