WSU Retention List Stories

The late Honorable Dennis Challeen, former municipal judge in Winona, wrote a collection of brief stories and meditations on the nature of life and justice, and it is on the Krueger Library’s retention list. He was a national advocate for restorative justice, as opposed to incarceration. He writes in his eighth story/meditation: “We know by conclusive research that locking up people to rehabilitate them doesn’t work; in fact, it makes most of them worse. … Punishment buys votes, but not public safety.”

In his very first story, he recounts that, when he imposed a stiff fine on a defendant, the defendant complained that if he had to pay that much, he would have to move in with the riff-raff living in the boathouses on Latsch Island. The rest of the courtroom burst into laughter, because Judge Challeen at the time lived in a boathouse on Latsch Island.

Challeen, Dennis A., and William Boughton. Swamp Water Jurisprudence: A Candid, Sometimes Humorous Journey into the Backwaters of the Criminal Mind and Our Criminal Justice System. Winona, MN: Swamp Water Press, 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.

The orbits of Venus and Earth around the Sun cause Venus to pass across the face of the Sun (as seen from the Earth) periodically. The pattern is: two transits eight years apart, then a pause for 121.5 years, then repeat. In the 18^th century, astronomers were only just starting to apply Newton’s laws of physics to the solar system. Because they did not have an easy yardstick to measure, they used the transits of Venus in the later part of that century to establish a benchmark for their calculations of the distances between the planets and the Sun.

This book on the Krueger Library retention list discusses those adventurous astronomers who traveled the globe at that time to get measurements of the transit. The observations by David Rittenhouse in 1769 in Philadelphia made him famous within the American colonies. Because of that work, he was selected to be the first endowed Chair in Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Woolf, Harry. The Transits of Venus; a Study of Eighteenth-Century Science.Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1959.

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.

Most of the WSU library books about gender roles are broad in scope. One book on the Krueger Library retention list is local to La Crosse, WI.

Larson, Margaret. For the Common Good: A History of Women’s Roles in La Crosse County, 1920-1980. La Crosse, Wis: League of Women Voters of La Crosse County, 1996.

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 original volumes called The American State Papers, which were published by the US federal government, were published between the 1830s and the 1860s. Those original publications were revised and republished in the 1960s and 1970s. 

The Krueger Library has several of the revised ASP subject series. The series which deals with the public finances of the federal government from 1789 until 1860 is complete enough (at 32 volumes) that the Krueger Library was assigned to have them on our Shared Print retention list. Therefore, if you want to dig into the early finances of the United States of America, grab your suntan lotion and come on down to Winona, the Miami of Minnesota.

The New American State Papers: Public Finance. Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1972. 

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.

One hundred years ago next month, Werner Heisenberg published the seminal article that kicked off the era of Quantum Mechanics (Zeitschrift fur Physik, v. 33: pp 879-898). Einstein, Planck, and others had—a generation earlier—begun dealing with physical entities using quanta instead of continuous values, but Heisenberg and Schrodinger truly revolutionized our understanding of the physical world with a fully fledged quantum mechanics. One of the weirdest aspects of quantum mechanics (which has been experimentally confirmed) is the concept of non-local interactions such as entanglement, which Einstein derisively called “spukhafte Fernwirkung” or “Spooky distant-action.” Below is a book on the Krueger Library retention list that discusses non-local behavior at the quantum scale.

Quantum chance and non-locality: probability and non-locality in the interpretations of quantum mechanics / W. Michael Dickson. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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.

This past Friday was Albert Einstein’s 146^th birthday. Einstein is so popular in academic libraries that none of our biographies of him are on the Krueger Library retention list. However, a collection of his letters with fellow Nobel-prize-winner Max Born is on our retention list.

Einstein, Albert, Max Born, and Hedwig Born. The Born-Einstein Letters: Friendship, Politics, and Physics in Uncertain Times … with Commentaries by Max Born. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 2005.

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.

With flooding in the news, it is wise to recall the flooding problems in Winona, MN. After the catastrophic floods of 1965, the current levee was built between Winona and the Mississippi River. Fifty years ago, a team of Winona State faculty, led by Cal Fremling, published an environmental impact report on that work. Phase II of that report is on the Krueger Library’s retention list.

Fremling, Calvin R, Ervin G Bublitz, and Roger A Carlson. Environmental Impact Assessment Report on the Flood Control Project and Waterfront Development at Winona, Minnesota: Phase II Report. Winona, Minn: Winona State College, 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.

The tragedy on September 11, 2001, rallied the vast majority of Americans to our flag. Most of the books in our library about 9/11 are widely held in Minnesota. One of the books in the Krueger Library about 9/11 which is rare in Minnesota is a text that criticizes its memorialization.

Skotnes, Andor and Jim O’Brien. Historicizing 9/11. Duke University Press, 2011.

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.

As we approach the Labor Day holiday, below are two of the many titles related to labor issues and strikes on the WSU retention list.

Manning, Thomas G., editor. The Chicago Strike of 1894; Industrial Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century. Holt, 1960.

Sulzberger, Cyrus Leo. Sit down with John L. Lewis. Random House, 1938.

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 of the books on the WSU retention list deal with death, and some deal with taxes. Regarding death, a book in the medical section lists some of its causes. In the tax department, WSU owns a forty-volume version of the land survey created after the Norman Conquest called the Domesday Book. This survey facilitated the collection of taxes in eleventh century England. (And, with a name like the Domesday Book, it sounds like it would be about death.)

Carrington, Hereward. Death, Its Causes and Phenomena. Arno Press, 1977.

Domesday Book. 40 volumes. 1983 ed., Phillimore, 1983.

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.