WSU Retention List Stories

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.

The late WSU Professor Jacob Steigerwald, who died in 2022, taught students how to teach languages other than English. One of the workbooks he authored was printed by the WSU Press and is on the Krueger Library retention list. 

Steigerwald would frequently return to his native Austria during the summer and would often purchase and donate to the library books in German, regardless of the subject. This is one reason why we have a wide variety of books in German scattered throughout our collection (such as the book on futurology which was featured in story number nineteen Back to the Future).

Exploring French, German, and Spanish / by Jacob Steigerwald. Winona, Minn: Translation & Interpretation Service, 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.

If you ever wondered (as I so often have) whether ancient Chinese proverbs about the weather were actually borne out by scientific data, look no further. This book on the Krueger Library retention list investigates that very question. While the authors are from China, the translator lived for many years in Minnesota and passed away in Woodbury in 2014.

Houghton, Barbara Coan, translator. Application of Weather Proverbs to Long-Range Weather Forecasting. Beijing, China: China Meteorological Press, 2012.

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.

Surprisingly, the book that discusses the “Got Milk?” marketing campaign of the 1990s is scarcely-held in Minnesota. (But there are more copies in Wisconsin than in the rest of the world combined. What a bunch of cheese heads!)

Manning, Jeff. Got Milk? The Book. Rocklin, CA: Prima, 1999. 

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.

This story should fit nicely with the story from September 18, 2024, “They came from outer space … or did they?” However, this author is not critical of the idea of space aliens.

Ernest Norman was born in 1904. As a young man, he became interested in clairvoyance and fortune telling. Later, he started a spiritualist movement called the Unarius Science of Life. This book on the Krueger Library retention list was the first book of his new movement. In it, he meets someone named Nur El, an ambassador from Mars. In his astral body, Norman visits the underground cities of Mars. In his writings, Norman discusses reincarnation and the Archangel Raphael. This book was originally assigned a call number in the astronomy section, but we decided to move it to the shelf that has books on New Age spiritualism.

Norman, Ernest L. The Truth about Mars. 3d ed. Glendale, Calif: Unarius-Science of Life, 1967.

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.

Islamic tradition takes a dim view of charging interest on borrowed money. (The pejorative term from European history is “usury.”) However, much of the global financial system is based on a system of charging interest on loaned money, whether it is with mortgages or bonds. Some of the books on the Krueger Library retention list, such as the one below, discuss methods of managing financial systems without charging interest on debt.

Rudnyckyj, Daromir. Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

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 WSU library books about gender roles are broad in scope. One book on the Krueger Library retention list is local to La Crosse, WI.

Larson, Margaret. For the Common Good: A History of Women’s Roles in La Crosse County, 1920-1980. La Crosse, Wis: League of Women Voters of La Crosse County, 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.

The original volumes called The American State Papers, which were published by the US federal government, were published between the 1830s and the 1860s. Those original publications were revised and republished in the 1960s and 1970s. 

The Krueger Library has several of the revised ASP subject series. The series which deals with the public finances of the federal government from 1789 until 1860 is complete enough (at 32 volumes) that the Krueger Library was assigned to have them on our Shared Print retention list. Therefore, if you want to dig into the early finances of the United States of America, grab your suntan lotion and come on down to Winona, the Miami of Minnesota.

The New American State Papers: Public Finance. Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1972. 

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.