WSU Retention List Stories - Research Hub at Winona State University

As one could predict, none of the books written by Nobel-prize winning author John Steinbeck are uncommon enough in Minnesota to be on the Winona State retention list, … but his FBI files are!

Fensch, Thomas. The FBI Files on John Steinbeck. Santa Teresa, NM: New Century Books, 2002.

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.

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Story Ninety-Six: History of Photography (at Winona State)

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-19th 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....

Story Ninety-Five: Local, yet International: John and Pat Lucas

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 20th 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....

Story Ninety-Four: Comic Madness

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.)...

Story Ninety-Three: Some Long-Forgotten Books and a More Memorable One

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.)...

Story Six: Who’s afraid of J. Edgar Hoover?