San Diego State University
                                       Library and Information Access

Summer 2007 Volume XX Number 2

New and Notable

Front Page | Archives | Infodome

Bird Watching
Birds of the Pacific Slope The Friends of the Library (via the Norland History of Biology fund) purchased Birds of the Pacific Slope by Andrew Jackson Grayson for the library. The portfolio was published by Arion Press in 1986 and contains 156 bird portraits, with a companion volume containing a preface by S. Dillon Ripley, a biography of Grayson by Lois Chambers Stone, and bird biographies and field notes on the plates by Andrew Jackson Grayson.

Artists Books
The library purchased two artists books from Booklyn Artists Alliance.
Snitch, a pop-up book
  • Snitch is a pop-up book by artist Shana Agid about surveillance and the ways people talk about what surveillance is. It employs digital printing and screenprinting using oil-based inks and includes 10 folios plus sources and colophon with a conservation binding..

  • The Slapdown uses both kinetic and auditory aspects of the flag-book structure to create a flurry of smacking hands. The concept and drawings are by Damara Kaminecki, and the text was written by Jeremy Schmall.

Gradual/Dominica Resurrectionis ad Missam Introitus
The Gradual/Dominica is a Franciscan choral book dating to the late-1690s. The folio-sized manuscript contains plainsong notation and five five-line staves and five lines of text per page. It is bound in leather and is comprised of 200 bound vellum leaves.

folio sized manuscript  another folio-sized manuscript
Pretty Pop-up
Vince Meades donated a reproduction of the antique pop-up book A Day in the Zoo. The large-format book contains six pop-up sections featuring realistic animal pictures.

Cowboy of the Silver Screen
William S. Hart was one of the original screen cowboys, beginning his film career in 1914 with the 2-reeler His Hour of Manhood. The SDSU Library recently acquired a two-page, autographed letter written by Hart to John J. Comfort dated January 31, 1942. The purchase also includes the original envelope and a four-page program for a 1971 Western film festival, the front cover of which features an 8-1/2" x 11" photograph of Hart in Western clothing standing at a bar.

Western History
The library recently acquired two rare books that describe the early history of California and Oregon.

  • The New West: Or, California in 1867-1868, by Charles Loring Brace, is a first edition that was published by G. P. Putnam & Son in 1869. This work contains one of the earliest accounts of the Pacific slope. The author offers detailed descriptions of natural scenery and products, the flora and fauna, the climate, the early industries and farms and the people he encountered during his travels.

  • This first edition copy of Geographical Memoir upon Upper California in Illustration of His Map of Oregon and California, by John Charles Fremont, was printed in 1848 by Wendell and Van Benthuysen and is U.S. Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 148. With this document, Fremont addressed the Senate with information regarding his topographical survey of Oregon and California.

Historic Shipbuilding
As improbable as it sounds, concrete ships were once constructed in San Diego. The S.S. San Pasqual and the S.S. Cuyamaca were built by Pacific Marine and Construction Co. between 1919 and 1920 at the location of what is now the Navy Yard. The project was sponsored by the U.S. Shipping Board's Emergency Fleet, a federal agency that was mandated to expand the country's wartime fleet following World War I. The SDSU Library was fortunate to acquire an archive containing 329 original photographs plus related papers, manuscripts and reports pertaining to this project.


                                                  Front Page | Archives | Infodome