WSU Retention List Stories

Emerita Professor Robin Devinney (formerly Richardson) wrote a handbook for her biology classes, which is on our retention list.

Richardson, Robin. Handbook for the Curious. Kendall Hunt, 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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

The German education pioneer Friedrich Fröbel developed the concept of the Kindergarten (which is why in the United States we still refer to it by its German name). One of the books on our retention list is a small pocketbook of children’s songs by Fröbel (in German).

Fröbel, Friedrich. Mütter-, Spiel-, und Koselieder: Entworfenes und Gedrucktes zu aus Friedrich Fröbels Familienbuch. 1. Aufl., Volk und Wissen, 1984.

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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Four years ago, on December 8, 2020, mass vaccinations began to combat the COVID-19 virus. Worldwide, millions of people died of COVID (https://tinyurl.com/5n8thkfs). Without the vaccine, millions more would have died (https://tinyurl.com/mr322jdd).

Sometimes a book is rare because, at the time it was written, its ideas were considered both wrong and marginal. One book for which WSU gets interlibrary loan requests from around the world is a book that was in on the ground floor of spreading fears about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. While I would not recommend you adopting the views promoted by this book, if you wanted to study the history of the anti-vaccine movement, this book should not be overlooked.

McBean, Eleanora. The Poisoned Needle: Supressed Facts about Vaccination. New ed., Health Research, 1974.

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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

November 28^th is the 267^th birthday of the poet William Blake. Professor Wayne C. Ripley (English) is the bibliographer for The William Blake Archive. Thanks in part to his research, some of the books on WSU’s retention list are studies of Blake. 

Makdisi, Saree. Reading William Blake. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Two years ago, on November 30^th, 2022, ChatGPT was released world-wide as a free service. Since then, artificial intelligence has dominated Wall Street and even the Nobel Prizes. The Computer Science department has long studied artificial intelligence and many books on that topic are on the retention list of the Krueger Library.

Heaton, Jeff. Artificial Intelligence for Humans. Three volumes. St. Louis, MO: Heaton Research, Inc., 2013.

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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

In case you were worried that we had exhausted the humorous titles, it is time to pay tribute to paper airplanes.

Steidl, Robert H. Stick-Paper Airplanes. Abelard-Schuman, 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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Regardless of who won the presidential election yesterday, some of the books on the WSU retention list discuss presidencies past.

Daynes, Byron W. and Glen Sussman. The American Presidency and the Social Agenda. Prentice Hall, 2001.

Bailey, Harry A. and Jay M. Shafritz. The American Presidency: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Dorsey Press, 1988.

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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

November 1^st is celebrated in the several different Christian denominations as All Hallows’ Day, or All Saints Day. The College of St. Theresa in Winona closed its doors in the 1980s. At the time, Winona State purchased that college’s Children’s Literature collection because it was much more extensive than our own. Because of that purchase, for a public university, Winona State has a relatively large collection of children’s books about Catholic saints. Indeed, about half of all the books on our retention list that deal with Catholic theology are in the children’s collection, and conversely, a significant number of the children’s book on our retention list deal with the lives of the saints.

Diethelm, Walther. Saint Pius X, the Farm Boy Who Became Pope. Vision Books, 1956.

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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Winona State offers a Master’s Degree in Accounting. The Krueger Library supports the program with books such as this title on our retention list.

Ruppel, Warren. GAAP for Governments 2012: Interpretation and Application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for State and Local Governments. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

In late 2022, Emily Hanford’s investigative reporting publicized a controversy in reading instruction between proponents and detractors of the pedagogical technique called “cueing theory” (https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/). Both Minnesota and Wisconsin have since passed laws (MN 2024 HF-2497 and WI 2023 Act 20) discouraging reading curricula that rely on the now-discredited cueing theory.

This modern “reading war” echoes a disagreement a generation earlier between proponents of “whole language” instruction and phonics instruction. Two of the books on the Krueger Library retention list come from the opposing sides of that earlier reading war.

Goodman, Kenneth S, and Yetta M Goodman. A Whole-Language, Comprehension-Centered Reading Program. Arizona Center for Research and Development, University of Arizona, 1981.

Cox, Aylett R. Structures and Techniques: Remedial Language Training: Multisensory Teaching for Alphabet Phonics. Cambridge, Mass: Educators Publishing Service, 1974.

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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.