WSU Retention List Stories

The Federal Government of the United States publishes a great deal of information. Historically, the federal government has operated a depository system, whereby it sends out copies of publications to a large group of libraries. Before the Internet, those publications were primarily sent to libraries in a paper format. Technically, the publications are still owned by the federal government, and the libraries are simply making them available to the public. 

Part of the reasoning for sending out many copies of publications to libraries was that a future administration or congress could not restrict information about what previous governments had done, which might be historically relevant. (That is also why federal government publications are not copyrighted.) 

Today, much of the information made public by the federal government is in the form of electronic files which are online. Some libraries download those born-digital files into institutional repositories so that they will not be lost as the government changes. (For example, if an agency goes out of existence, the files on its servers might disappear and be lost to posterity if they were not saved by libraries.) For the last two months, government documents librarians have been busy downloading online information from the outgoing administration and congress to preserve their historical record in preparation for the new presidential administration and congress.

Because the federal government has distributed free copies of government documents to depository libraries, such as Winona State, those documents do not tend to be rare in Minnesota. Here are two government documents that are, nevertheless, on WSU’s retention list. 

National Power Survey: Environmental Research. The Report and Recommendations of the Task Force on Environmental Research to the Technical Advisory Committee on Research and Development. U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1974.

Waterborne Commerce of the United States. Part 2. Waterways and harbors, Gulf Coast, Mississippi River and Antilles. U.S. Army Engineer District, 1978.

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.

Our faculty have taught courses on how to make tourism more environmentally sustainable. Here are two books on the retention list on that topic.

Edgell, David L. Managing Sustainable Tourism: A Legacy for the Future. Haworth Hospitality Press, 2006.

Fossati, Amedeo, and Giorgio Panella. Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development. Kluwer Academic, 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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

Books in languages other than English are often scarcely-held in Minnesota. This is especially true of children’s books.

Olsen, Ib Spang. Hvordan vi fik vores naboer. Gyldendal, 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. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.

As this children’s book from our retention list shows, over the years, many creative writers have offered their own variations on Christmas legends.

Edler, Tim. Santa’s Cajun Christmas Adventure. Little Cajun Books, 1981.

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.

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.