When Vanderbilt won the Music City Bowl on New Year’s Eve last year, it marked the university’s first bowl victory in 53 years. Special Collections yielded this photo from the Commodores’ 1955 Gator Bowl win over Auburn, showing Vanderbilt scoring a touchdown en route to its 25-13 victory. Special Collections is home to the university’s impressive collection of rare books, manuscripts, photographs and memorabilia. The Photographic Archives has nearly 300,000 images dating back to Vanderbilt’s founding in 1875.

Flo Wilson, interim university librarian, served as the master of ceremonies and introduced Connie Vinita Dowell, the new dean of libraries at Vanderbilt University.

Librarian Yvonne Boyer (right) visits with Cindy Bandy O’Brien and her husband, Larry Harris, at the 40th anniversary celebration of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies. O’Brien is W.T. Bandy’s daughter.

Another highlight of the November 18 celebration was the reading of one of Baudelaire’s poems, “Enivrez-vous (Be Drunk)”, by Vanderbilt graduate students Lucas Faugere and Daniel Ridge. Faugere recited the poem in French followed by Ridge’s translation in English.

Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, professor of French and director of the W.T. Bandy Center, closed the formal part of the program with a toast to Baudelaire and Dr. Bandy.

Cindy Bandy O’Brien and her husband, Larry Harris, traveled from their West Virginia home to attend the celebration in honor of the center named for her late father. After the program, O’Brien played her dulcimer as background music for the party and also visited with a number of former graduate students who had been mentored by her father.

Robert Penn Warren during his Vanderbilt years

For the first time, anyone with Internet access is able to hear tapes of Robert Penn Warren’s 1964 interviews with prominent Civil Rights activists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and the Rev. James Lawson. The interviews were conducted for Warren’s book Who Speaks for the Negro?, and the project was made possible through the cooperative efforts of the Vanderbilt, Yale and University of Kentucky libraries. The digitized audio as well as transcripts for most of the interviews can be found online.

Nashville native and astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard was known as one of the greatest observational astronomers of the 19th century. He was one of the first academic superstars to emerge from Vanderbilt, and is the only person to ever receive an honorary academic degree from Vanderbilt. In 1892, he used this 36-inch telescope at the Lick Observatory in California to discover Amalthea, the fifth moon of Jupiter. He was the first to discover a new moon of Jupiter since Galileo discovered the first four in 1610.

An online exhibit titled “Edward Emerson Barnard: Star Gazer,” features photographs, letters, publications and ephemera from the Edward Emerson Barnard Papers manuscript collection. Barnard, who was born into extreme poverty before the Civil War, rose to prominence as an astronomer and was known as the world’s greatest observer of his time. Barnard began his career at the Vanderbilt observatory in 1883 before moving on to larger observatories at the University of California and the University of Chicago. Special Collections developed the exhibit, which can be accessed at http://snipurl.com/barnard.

“I’ve joked with friends that living with 18-year-olds in a first-year residence hall is my version of a midlife crisis. I know that I was looking for new ways of engaging with students, new challenges in teaching and to shake things up in my life. I have found all this—and more—in The Commons.”

—Jo-Anne Bachorowski, faculty head of West House, associate professor of psychology.

The Commons, a brand new community of first-year students, residential faculty and professional staff, welcomed its first class last fall. This is not your parents’ freshman dorm. All first-year students live in The Commons in one of 10 new residence halls called houses, which are grouped around quads on the Peabody side of campus. Each residence hall has an apartment for its faculty head of house, rooms for seminars, study and music practice, and lots of light and space. This is not your typical freshman dorm.

Faculty, students, staff and administrators put a decade of planning into The Commons. The Jean and Alexander Heard Library staff was actively involved, including the formation of The Commons Service Exploration Team, led by Sue Erickson. This group was formed to streamline library service to The Commons. Librarians talked to Dean of the Commons Frank Wcislo and his staff to get input on needs and services the library could provide. Sophomores and juniors who had lived in some of The Commons residence halls that were completed last year also gave suggestions.

The Commons includes 10 residence halls, known as houses.

The team communicated with heads of houses about targeted library services available to them. The Heard Library also offered free book delivery to The Commons for faculty members residing in the houses. Greg Barz, faculty head for North House, said the library services have made his job much simpler. The medical ethnomusicologist is an associate professor at Blair School of Music, the College of Arts and Science and the Divinity School.

“As a faculty head of house, I’ve had to shift daily teaching and research patterns in ways that I thought would be challenging,” Barz says. “Instead, I find myself reinvigorated. As a professor at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, for example, I now find myself relying heavily on the fabulous facilities and support staff of the Peabody Library due to its proximity to The Commons. Teaching in new Commons spaces has also encouraged faculty, staff, students and librarians to collaborate in unique ways, as witnessed by the successful ‘Stealing in Music City’ Commons music piracy seminar this fall.”

Barz is not the only one who has found the Peabody Library a convenient option. “I check out my books at the Central Library, but I do all my studying at the Peabody Library,” says John Alexander of San Antonio. Freshman Jeff Deming of Eldorado, Ark., adds, “I use Peabody Library every time I have a major test or paper.”

The mosaic sculpture “Black Cat” by Lynn Driver overlooks a side entry to the Peabody Library. The library, housed in a classically styled building dating to 1919, offers 250,000 volumes, completely modern technology, a popular group work space called the Learning Commons, and more than 40 computer workstations.

Tiffany Patterson, head of Stambaugh House and associate professor of African American and diaspora studies, is planning to establish a library for use by her residents. “Our fine library has offered to help me in this endeavor,” she says. “The students are a generation interested in being leaders in the world and our country needs thoughtful, well-informed leaders who are not afraid of a complicated and often dangerous world. Many are well-read beyond their years. Yet, like all freshmen, they have gaps.”

The Heard Library played a key role in helping The Commons residents get oriented to campus through Vanderbilt Visions, a one-semester, university core program required for all first-year students. Students worked in groups of 17, guided by a student leader and a professor. Students could choose from more than 20 topics, some prepared by the library. They included:

• Racing across Campus—Students hurried across campus using a variety of navigation aids (maps, GPS, etc.) to get familiar with campus libraries and other landmarks.
• Class of 1912—Students used materials from the University Archives to discover what life was like for the Class of 1912, which preceded them by a century, using archive images, student publications and newspaper articles from that era.
• What the C.R.A.P.—Students learned to evaluate information by using the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as a springboard and the C.R.A.P. (currency, reliability, accuracy and point of view) test as a method to evaluate information.
• Election of 2008 —Students either watched political ads on YouTube and then used the Internet to check them for accuracy and fairness or to research the stands of major and minor parties.

Learn more about the library-provided themes to the Vanderbilt Visions program at www.library.vanderbilt.edu/ visions.

Activity abounds on all levels at The Commons Center, a popular campus crossroads.

The Commons isn’t all about studying and research, however. It was developed to provide first-year students a caring community away from home. Heads of house regularly host study breaks when students can stop by for a chat or enjoy popcorn, ice cream or cookies. Over at East House, head Mark Dalhouse and his wife share their apartment with year-old twin sons, Teddy and Braden. Tuck and Stick, the Portuguese water dogs of Jo-Anne Bachorowski, make regular appearances at West House.

“One of the things I was looking for was a university that really put a lot of effort into making the freshman experience a great one,” says Matt Aliber of Needham, Mass. “You got the impression that they’re really caring about the first year and we were not just going to be thrown into the first year without any guidance or transition time.”

Vanderbilt Provost Richard McCarty

Vanderbilt Provost Richard McCarty turns to fiction only rarely, usually as a relaxing mental escape. But he miscalculated when he picked up A Thousand Splendid Suns, a harrowing story of survival in modern Afghanistan, written by Afghan émigré Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote The Kite Runner.

The book was emotionally draining. It made him weep when he got to the last pages as he sat on a plane. But it was exhilarating, so much so that he had to read it again, savoring its power a while longer. The book’s emotional impact—its testimony to human tragedy and resilience—struck deep with this trained psychologist and scholar. He is still sorting out the experience.

“From Hosseini’s writing you get a sense of how devastating the wars and conflicts play out at the individual level,” he says. “Our view of Afghan history is from 30,000 feet, if not higher, and we don’t appreciate the culture that emerged there so many centuries ago—and how much of it has been lost or forgotten now. What we lose sight of in our discussions of Afghanistan is the impact of events on the lives of real women, men and children.”

The novel traces the destiny and friendship of two Afghan women who are married to the same difficult man in the years before Taliban rule. The book dramatizes the abuse the women face, their suffering in war, and how their family commitments survive. The story unfolds amid the nation’s fierce convulsions from the time of the Soviet aggression in the 1980s to Taliban domination and post-Taliban reconstruction after the U.S. invasion in 2001.

For McCarty, one powerful theme is the history of a proud, multi-ethnic culture and its ruin. To the world, the emblem of that dismantling of Afghan history came in March 2001, when the Taliban destroyed two towering Buddhist statues, artifacts nearly 2,000 years old.

“With so many Afghan refugees now, the question is, ‘How does a country bring back its most talented people and restore that culture?’ ” McCarty says.

He was forcefully gripped by the plight of the book’s two female characters, their hope of endurance despite staggering misfortune in a patriarchal society ripped apart by warlords and repression.

“Each makes a decision that puts her life in her control,” he says. “These women are not simply controlled by external forces. Neither allows herself to be a victim. It’s a tribute to the author that he could write about women in such a compelling way.”

McCarty, a Virginia native, was named Vanderbilt provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs in 2008. He joined Vanderbilt in 2001 as professor of psychology and dean of the College of Arts and Science. McCarty could cite other books that recently held his interest, including David McCullough’s John Adams, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Michel Carmona’s Haussmann: His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris, and also a study entitled “The Governance of Teaching Hospitals.”

But he remains haunted by an Afghan tale of the fragility of culture, the courage of the human spirit, and the flesh-and-blood consequences of ideology and statecraft.

“All of us have lost something in the last 40 years because of the suffering and turmoil in that country,” McCarty says.

Women’s basketball star Christina Wirth had a standout senior season, captaining the team for the second year as it won the SEC Tournament championship. She has been named SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year, Most Valuable Player in the SEC Tournament, first team All-SEC forward and third team Academic All-American.

Which books matter most in your life? That’s the question we asked Vanderbilt Provost Richard McCarty and Vanderbilt women’s basketball star Christina Wirth. Both are avid readers. Even in the era of iPods, blogs, podcasts and satellite radio, a book you can hold in your hand still has the power to influence lives. Yes, books still matter.

Star senior forward Christina Wirth is, of course, accustomed to her teammates passing around the basketball with purpose and passion as they pursue glory for the Vanderbilt women’s basketball team.

Off court, they occasionally pass around other priceless cargo—books—to share with each other. Three years ago, one ended up in Wirth’s hands that soon had a profound effect on her view of life.

Two other teammates had read the novel Redeeming Love when they sent it her way after her freshman year. The fictional work by Francine Rivers turned out to be a page-turner that dramatized religious truth like no novel Wirth had encountered before.

“You don’t hear of a story like Redeeming Love very often,” she says. “And the message is powerful: There’s nothing you can do to make God stop loving you. Half the team has read it by now.”

Redeeming Love retells a turbulent story of romance and faith based on the Book of Hosea in the Old Testament. Author Rivers takes the biblical story and shifts it to the rough-and-tumble pioneer days of mid-19th century America, with a Christian emphasis. Her novel depicts the difficult life of Angel, a girl sold into prostitution who struggles to cope with the terrible damage done to her life, including an embittered distrust of men, before she encounters (reluctantly at first) the healing, redeeming love of the upright, persistent Michael Hosea.

“The book starts off depressing—this girl can’t catch a break!” Wirth says. “But you keep going, and by page 100 you can’t put it down.”

Wirth, an Arizona native and Roman Catholic, found the story to embody theological truths about God’s unconditional love.

The novel’s original biblical roots led Wirth to pick up the Book of Hosea itself, written in the eighth century B.C. by one of the latter Hebrew prophets.

“In the Old Testament, the characters aren’t so developed as in a novel, but that’s what is interesting about it,” Wirth says. “It’s not a made-up story; it’s the word of God.”

Wirth, a senior in Peabody’s human and organizational development program, is an enthusiastic reader who was named SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year in women’s basketball and also earned a spot on the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-American third team. She keeps stacks of books near at hand as an end-of-day break from studying—novels and biographies mostly.

“I have always loved reading, and that love for reading has continued to grow over time,” she says. “As a student, I read all kinds of books for academic purposes, but nothing beats opening up a good book during my free time and just getting lost in it. I am always amazed at how books have a way of speaking to me. Whether I am reading a book for the first time or re-reading a favorite book for the fifth time, I always come away with an insight that seems to open up my eyes to something I hadn’t noticed before.”

In the case of Redeeming Love , she can thank some Vanderbilt teamwork for scoring a memorable read.

Ten first-year students in the “Stealing in Music City” seminar were challenged to reinvent the music industry by creating a fair model of music distribution that discouraged music piracy. The solutions were different but shared common threads.

Freshmen (from left) Victoria Catanese, Allie Semler and Maria Crist present their solutions to the music piracy problem while instructors Holling Smith-Borne and Sara Manus evaluate the presentation.

Country Music Hall of Fame member Jim Foglesong commended the students for their interest. “I highly applaud these efforts to educate our students about the legal and illegal aspects of downloading music without paying for it,” he says. “For the most part, they have no idea that this practice is actually stealing, not only from the artist, the songwriter and the record company, but it also has a devastating ripple effect on the many thousands of people who make their livings in the music business.”

In fact, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s 2009 report on digital music says that despite initiatives by the music industry, 95 percent of music downloads continue to be illegal.

Seminar draws on Music City expertise

Holling Smith-Borne, director of the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library, and Sara Manus, its education and outreach librarian, taught the class. In their efforts to educate the students on copyright and intellectual property law, the instructors drew from the wealth of expertise available just blocks away on Nashville’s famed Music Row. Panel experts included Tim DuBois, currently a management professor at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management and formerly senior partner at Universal South and president of Arista Records/Nashville; Randall Foster, licensing and business development manager at Naxos of America Inc.; and John Allen, vice president of Bug Music.

“We are very thankful we live in Music City,” Smith-Borne said. “This course would not be able to be taught in this manner if we did not live here.”

The government needs to be more involved

The student groups agreed that the government needs to regulate the usage of digital rights management (DRM), currently used by companies like Sony, Apple and Microsoft.

“Fewer DRM rules make purchasing (versus pirating) music much more appealing,” student Leslie Miller said.

Other suggestions for more government involvement included:
• Running a neutral, nonprofit peer-to-peer network.
• Holding peer-to-peer network owners responsible for registering and policing users.
• Overseeing mandatory copyright education at the elementary and middle school level.

“Every one of the groups acknowledged the fact that government was going to have to play some kind of role (in fighting piracy),” Dubois said. “For me, a jaded old person, it was refreshing to see college freshmen having faith that government could do something like this and be a help in it. I think it’s reflective of an attitude that I sense in a lot of young people.”

Develop subscription-based peer networks

The students agreed that peer-to-peer networks such as LimeWire, BitTorrent and Gnutella are extremely popular. Rather than fighting the networks, groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and record labels should join with them and offer subscription services at reasonable rates for consumers.

“Instead of looking for a solution, the RIAA has attacked consumers,” student Brian Wilke noted. “Not much progress has been made.”

Education crucial to stopping music piracy

The groups agreed that education was key to ending the music piracy problem. “It’s amazing to me how many students don’t understand the legalities of sharing intellectual property and copyrighted material,” Manus said.

“But none of the students have had an education in copyright law. They listen to their peers about what they can and cannot do.”

“I thought the students did a good job of coming up with some ideas for fighting piracy—some of which I had heard before but some of which were pretty original,” Dubois said.

Connie Vinita Dowell, a Vanderbilt alumna, will launch a library enhancement initiative in her new role as the university’s first dean of libraries.

For the past nine years, Dowell served as dean of the library and information access at San Diego State University, a public institution with 35,000 students. She was responsible for leadership of the library, which has a collection of almost 2 million volumes.

Dowell has also held library positions at Connecticut College, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of North Texas and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. One of her first library positions was as a reference assistant at the Vanderbilt Science Library from 1978 to 1979, while studying library science here.

Dowell is a three-time recipient of the John Cotton Dana Public Relations Award from the American Library Association. She also received the SirsiDynix-ALA-APA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting Salaries and Status for Library Workers.

Dowell is a member of The Zamorano Club, a Los Angeles book-collecting club founded in 1928. She is also a member of the Grolier Club of New York, America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts.

Q.How did you feel when Vanderbilt first approached you about coming home to the place where you earned your master’s in 1979?

A.With an oceanographer husband who loves working in LaJolla, (Calif.), where he grew up, (coming back to Vanderbilt) seemed more like a dream. The quality of the institution, the remarkable people I met, and the possibilities I saw within the library and on the campus were too exciting to miss.

Q. You’ve said that Vanderbilt’s generosity paved the way for your entire career.

A.Vanderbilt awarded me a fellowship for my graduate studies, which made my career possible. As you can imagine, I understand as well as anyone on campus what Vanderbilt’s new expanded-aid program (eliminating need-based loans for undergraduates) will mean to each student.

Q. You are the first dean of libraries. Tell us your thoughts on being “the first” in this important role.

A. Vanderbilt’s senior leadership clearly recognizes the importance of libraries and information for our future. The change in my position’s title is only one indication. Being the first woman in this role at Vanderbilt is just one of several aspects that made this appointment a special honor.

Q. What do you see ahead for the Heard Library?

A. Our chancellor has challenged us to envision a destination library, and I know we will. My purpose here is to help plan the best possible library for our great university—building on our strengths and capturing the ideas and great energy that make Vanderbilt the remarkable place that it is.

First, I look forward to hearing from all those who use the libraries and all those who care about Vanderbilt. Also, our libraries need to be ready to meet the rapidly changing needs of students and faculty. Our libraries already offer remarkable electronic resources and have several innovative projects which I want to see receive the attention that they deserve.

Of course, the current economic climate is a concern to libraries and universities along with everyone else. I am confident our community will support us because they recognize the profound importance of a great library system to a world-class university.

Q.What is the status of planning for the expansion and renovation of the library?

A.Currently, library staff is surveying other top libraries so that we are current on the latest developments. I’m taking time to learn more about Vanderbilt and to meet my colleagues. In the fall, we will begin to move forward with a planning process involving representative voices from all those committed to our institution. I cannot imagine a more enjoyable or rewarding assignment!

Q.Was it a difficult decision to leave San Diego State University after serving as dean for nine years?

A.I was fortunate to work closely with outstanding people and to receive remarkable support from students, faculty and the community. That’s hard to leave, since so many became close friends. Together, we made so much progress and it made for a very rewarding job. However, we are only an e-mail away and we are hoping for lots of visitors to Nashville.

Q.You are a book collector with a particular interest in the late Southern author Eudora Welty. How did you start collecting her books?

A.As I came to appreciate special collections at a number of libraries, I was drawn to the beauty of letterpress-printed items and was often fascinated with their history. The logical next step was book collecting. Eudora Welty was a friend of (Peabody Library School Professor Emerita) Francis Neel Chaney, and through that connection I became fascinated by her work. Welty’s complex novels often portray a multitude of people who used to be referred to as “common” by those who thought better of themselves. Her work shows us that things which appear simple often are not—especially when it comes to people. She once said that all serious daring starts from within and that even those with a sheltered life can become daring. She must have been a caring and generous person, judging from the tributes from other writers and how she treated people in her stories and photographs.

Q.What other interests do you have?

A. Reading, gardening, travel, film, theatre, art, tennis, biking, and cooking, to name a few.

The Acorn Chronicle, Spring 2009 © 2009 by Vanderbilt University. All rights reserved.

Dean of Libraries: Connie Vinita Dowell

Editor: Lew Harris

Contributors: Connie Vinita Dowell, Flo Wilson, Beth Boord, Celia Walker, Ray Waddle and Missy Pankake

Art Director: Donna D. Pritchett

Web Edition Design and Development: Lacy Tite

Associate Dean of Development and Alumni Relations: Elizabeth S. Boord

Visit us on the Web at www.library.vanderbilt.edu/ or www.vanderbilt.edu/magazines/acorn-chronicle/

Connie Vinita Dowell, dean of libraries at Vanderbilt, is pictured in The Commons Center, a crossroads where students meet, study, interact with faculty and staff and dine.

Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos challenged us to plan “a destination library” in one of his first public appearances after being named to lead Vanderbilt. I cannot imagine a more compelling or rewarding task! My library colleagues and I are eager to serve the fast-changing needs and demands of Vanderbilt’s students and faculty and to develop a plan that will also serve tomorrow’s Vanderbilt community. Within the library, we have already begun planning. Now we look forward to reaching out to the campus community and to all the library’s supporters.

This is my first letter to all of you and is an invitation to join us in planning the future of Vanderbilt’s libraries. The next step in a comprehensive study of the Heard Library System is a campuswide conversation aimed at identifying the characteristics of the academic library that Vanderbilt will need to carry it forward through the first half of the 21st century.

These conversations will guide the creation of services and facilities to complement and enhance the excellence of Vanderbilt’s achievements. We will envision libraries that are our students’ intellectual home on campus, enriching their Vanderbilt experience. With the input of Vanderbilt’s faculty in our many departments and schools, our libraries will enhance and expand their collaborative and interdisciplinary activities to build a stronger sense of community.

Vanderbilt’s leaders understand that libraries are uniquely positioned to help guide the use of digital collections in scholarship. Today, an enormous amount of digital information is available, as is the capability to create original content. Organizing, preserving and, most importantly, understanding all this information may be our greatest challenge. I look forward to working with other institutional leaders to consider how to make the best use of information technology across the full range of the university’s activities and interests.

I am so honored to be Vanderbilt’s first dean of libraries. The change in the position’s title underscores our university’s commitment to our libraries. While I have the privilege to lead this extraordinary enterprise at such an important time, my success depends on your participation in our planning process. If we are able to capture the tremendous ideas and energy that make Vanderbilt the remarkable, extraordinary place it is, we cannot fail. Regardless of whether you are on campus or hundreds of miles away, we need your participation in this vital part of Vanderbilt’s future. I hope you contact me at connie.v.dowell @vanderbilt.edu .

Together, we will build a destination library.

Vanderbilt women’s basketball enjoys a long history on campus, from the early days of play to this year’s SEC championship team. The 1908 team pictured here had a 3-0 season a century ago, defeating Ward twice and Cumberland City once. This photo is part of the library’s Special Collections and University Archives, which is home to the university’s impressive collection of rare books, manuscripts, photographs and memorabilia.

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