WSU Retention List Stories

When I was offered the job at Winona State in 1990, I mentioned to someone who was a professional photographer that I was moving to Minnesota. She said she had almost attended Winona State, because at the time, it was one of only two colleges in the United States to offer a bachelor’s degree in photography.

Due to declining enrollment and budget cuts during the 1980s, Winona State discontinued the major and close the Photography Department. (The Communication and Media Department still has a photography minor.) As part of that legacy, some of the books on the Krueger Library retention list deal with photography, such as these reprints of some of the earliest studies of this cutting-edge technology (of the mid-19^th century).

Hunt, Robert. Researches on Light. London: Longman, 1844. Reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1973.

The Wonders of Light and Shadow. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1851. Reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1973.

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.

John Lucas was from a prominent Winona family (as in Prentiss-Lucas Hall). He studied literature and was a professor of English at Carleton College in Northfield. He and his wife Pat spent their summers in Europe and collected a wide range of books. When John passed away, Pat donated many of those books to the Krueger Library. John and Pat Lucas focused their collecting efforts on the early 20^th century modernists, both in literature and the visual arts.

When the collection was donated, I personally assisted with its evaluation. In the second of these two books, I found a letter from the translator to John and Pat thanking them for providing the funds for the translation from English into Italian.

Picasso / par Christian Zervos. Paris: Fernand Hazan, 1949.

Berryman, John. Omaggio a Mistress Bradstreet. Prefazione, traduzione e note di Sergio Perosa. Torino: G. Einaudi, 1969.

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.

In the mid-1950s, a moral panic set in among politicians and psychiatrists who were concerned that overly gory, violent, and sexually explicit comic books were a threat to children. The U.S. Senate held hearings on the subject, and medical experts warned about the influence of comic books, culminating in the 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Frederic Wertham. The industry in response created the Comics Code Authority, which policed and self-censored comic book content for decades.

Today, not only are comics not banned, but the Krueger Library has comic books in our Special Collections. Further, we have on our shelves bound compilations of formerly banned comics. Below I have the cover of Tain’t the Meat … It’s the Humanity! illustrated by Jack Davis with text by Albert Feldstein and others. The bound volume is a compilation of graphic narratives that were originally written for the Tales from the Crypt series. Neither that book nor our copy of Seduction of the Innocent is on the Krueger Library retention list.

The book that is on the Krueger Library retention list is a master’s thesis in education written by a WSU student back in 1957. It cited Dr. Wertham among others, and it concluded, based on the published literature of the time, that comic books in fact were dangerous and might lead to juvenile delinquency, which is not the consensus view among experts today.

Davis, Jack, et al. ’Tain’t the Meat--It’s the Humanity! And Other Stories. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2013.

Otterson, Sidney. A Study in the Relationship of the Comic Book to Juvenile Delinquency: A Research Paper Presented to the Graduate Council of Winona State College. Thesis (M.S.)--Winona State College, 1957.

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.

(Note: The information regarding the historical context of this story was provided by Brian Ohm.)

The Krueger Library retention list includes some scarcely-held novels by the famed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It also has a book that discusses the legacy of a long-forgotten story that his nineteen-year-old lover and soon-to-be wife drafted one summer when she was inspired by a ghost-story-writing challenge. Everyone still quotes Zastrozzi, but no one remembers … Frankenstein!

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, and Stephen C Behrendt. Zastrozzi: A Romance; St. Irvyne, or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002.

Shaw, Debra Benita. Women, Science, and Fiction: The Frankenstein Inheritance. Houndmills, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2000. 

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.

(Note: None of our many copies of Frankenstein are rare enough to be on the Krueger Library retention list.)

For everyone who wants to put on a classroom skit to demonstrate a concept in business law, there is a book for you on the Krueger Library retention list. “To be or to litigate?” … now that’s a question!

Cordell, Christobel M. Dramatizing Business Law. Portland, Me: J.W. Walch, 1965. 

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.

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.