WSU Retention List Stories

If you ever wondered (as I so often have) whether ancient Chinese proverbs about the weather were actually borne out by scientific data, look no further. This book on the Krueger Library retention list investigates that very question. While the authors are from China, the translator lived for many years in Minnesota and passed away in Woodbury in 2014.

Houghton, Barbara Coan, translator. Application of Weather Proverbs to Long-Range Weather Forecasting. Beijing, China: China Meteorological Press, 2012.

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.

In retention story #5 from last February, I mentioned that most of the books on our retention list are not considered especially notable by scholars. In that retention story, I highlighted two books that were both notable and on our retention list. They were from the humanities and social sciences. Here are two more examples—one from chemistry and one from physics—that are both notable and on the retention list.

Goldwhite, Harold. Introduction to Phosphorus Chemistry. Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Wasserman, Robert. Tensors and Manifolds: With Applications to Mechanics and Relativity. New York: Oxford University Press, 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.

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.

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.

Books about UFO abductions may catch the popular imagination, but they generally do not warrant serious study. One book on Winona State’s retention list is a serious study that examines claims that UFO abductions critically (and debunks them). Also, it has a great cover.

Klass, Philip J. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game. Buffalo, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 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.