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.
