WSU Retention List Stories

For all of you fans of Hrotsvit von Gandersheim—the medieval nun who was perhaps the first female playwright from what is today Germany—one of the books on the Krueger Library retention list is a monograph of essays about her and her works. The final essay discusses her influence on the 20^th century novelist John Kennedy Toole.

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: rara avis in Saxonia? a collection of essays / compiled and edited by Katharina M. Wilson. Ann Arbor, Mich: Medieval and Renaissance Collegium, 1987.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Originally posted March 27,2024

Winona State has had faculty in both Leadership Education and Business Administration who have been interested in Lean Manufacturing and Lean Management ideas. Well-known titles in leadership, such as Bolman’s Reframing Organizations, are not on the retention list, but several books about Lean Management are.

Emiliani, Bob. Real Lean Volume Two: Critical Issues and Opportunities in Lean Management. Kensington, Conn: The Center for Lean Business Management, LLC, 2007.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Fifty years ago, in 1975, Benoit Mandelbrot coined the word fractal in a French-language book entitled Les Objets Fractals. The term describes geometrical shapes that have fractional dimensions. These mind-bending shapes can make beautiful graphics, because many fractal shapes are self-similar at increasingly small scales.

The original French-language book is so rare, it is only held by two libraries in the world, both in Switzerland. Fractals took off in popularity, though, and none of the English-language books by Mandelbrot held by the Krueger Library are rare enough to be on our retention list. The one book on our retention list that features fractals is a collection of abstracts from a conference where fractals were used to study materials science, such as the fracture mechanics of polymer composites. (The book has no graphics, so I have added below a photo of a fractal shape (creative commons license).

Fractal Aspects of Materials - 1989: Extended Abstracts. Pittsburgh: Materials Research Society, 1989. 

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Some philosophers argue that individual humans left to their natural impulses are fundamentally despicable, and that civilization reins in our negative tendencies. Other philosophers argue that humans are fundamentally good, but that civilization has corrupted us.

The shorthand for this debate is “Hobbes or Rousseau?” To paraphrase and simplify Hobbes, without civilization, life would be nasty, brutish, and short. To paraphrase and simplify Rousseau, humans were born free but are everywhere in chains. Rest easy, the Krueger Library retention list has you covered, whether you lean toward Hobbes or Rousseau.

Rogers, G. A., et al. Leviathan: Contemporary Responses to the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1995.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, and Pierre Burgelin. Du Contrat social. Paris: Flammarion, 1992.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

The City of Winona has a long-running dread of cottonwood trees.

When the Winona City Code first went online in the 1990s, I was amused by the long list of things that Winona officially considers nuisances. Some nuisances make sense, like “Explosives kept without a license.” One that made me laugh is having a cottonwood tree that expels too much cotton (section 32.01(b)(14)).

But lo and behold! The 1908 city ordinances are on the Krueger Library retention list, and they have an entire chapter—chapter 46—entitled “Trees, Cottonwood.” Section 3 states, “Any tree commonly known as the ‘cottonwood tree’ … which sheds its seeds in such a manner as to annoy the comfort of any considerable number of persons, shall be deemed a public nuisance …” Winona's war on the cottonwood is a Hundred Years War (and counting).

Finkelnburg, W A. The Ordinances of the City of Winona, Minnesota... Winona, Minn: P. J. Barth, 1909.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Most of the books on the Krueger Library retention list do not circulate frequently. Here is one book which is both on our retention list and is checked out often.

Girard, Xavier, and Henri Matisse. Matisse in Nice, 1917-1954. New York: Universe/Vendome, 1996.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Public health and community health are taught by faculty in several departments in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. One of the books on the retention list is a catalog of public health campaigns from around the world collected by the World Health Organization. 

World Health Organization. Public Health Campaigns: Getting the Message Across. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2009.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Books written in scripts other than the Latin alphabet are under no obligation to have any text printed in English. Here is a book in Chinese that has not a single letter of the Latin alphabet within its pages, though the library record which describes the book in our OneSearch catalog is in English. (I am not even entirely certain that the photograph below is of the title page.)

Sung, Shee-wu. A Study on the Monetary History of the Western-Han Dynasty. Hong Kong: Publ. Office, Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong, 1971.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

The orbits of Venus and Earth around the Sun cause Venus to pass across the face of the Sun (as seen from the Earth) periodically. The pattern is: two transits eight years apart, then a pause for 121.5 years, then repeat. In the 18^th century, astronomers were only just starting to apply Newton’s laws of physics to the solar system. Because they did not have an easy yardstick to measure, they used the transits of Venus in the later part of that century to establish a benchmark for their calculations of the distances between the planets and the Sun.

This book on the Krueger Library retention list discusses those adventurous astronomers who traveled the globe at that time to get measurements of the transit. The observations by David Rittenhouse in 1769 in Philadelphia made him famous within the American colonies. Because of that work, he was selected to be the first endowed Chair in Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Woolf, Harry. The Transits of Venus; a Study of Eighteenth-Century Science.Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1959.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

As students are moving into the residence halls, the Krueger Library’s retention list includes at least one book of advice for new-entering first-year students who are female. Granted, it is a bit dated … by one hundred years.

Jameson, Kate W. and Francis C. Lockwood. The Freshman Girl, a Guide to College Life. Boston: D.C. Heath, 1925.

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.