Bracken Library Will Host Marathon Screening of Ken Burns’ The War

Bracken Library will host a two-day marathon showing of The War, a film by Ken Burns, on January 30-31, 2010, as part of the Muncie Public Library/Ball State Public History Program’s upcoming speakers series, “America and the World in the 1940s.” The film is fifteen hours long and was six years in the making.

Dr. Michael Doyle is the Academic Advisor for Adult Programming at Muncie Public Library. After making the decision to show the film to the public, he began looking for a place that had high student traffic, was conveniently accessible for Muncie community members, and comfortable for viewing such a long presentation. Bracken Library’s room 104 was the perfect choice. Dr. Doyle said, “I am always looking to foster more town and gown relationships for Ball State.”

With Bracken Library being so well-known by both students and community members, Doyle imagines that many people will find it convenient to slip in and slip out, as desired.

“World War II is a perennial subject of fascination,” says Dr. Doyle, since it touched everyone’s lives, whether soldiering in the European or Pacific Theaters or staying on the home front growing victory gardens, working in assembly plants, or watching loved ones go off to war. Doyle notes that through the years, many veterans of the war have not been talkative about their experiences in the war, which “enhances its mystique” for so many family members of all ages, from college students on up.

Dr. Doyle says that the Ken Burns film is the first in our generation to interweave the European, Pacific, and home front activities, rather than treat them separately. It “gives a sense of what it was like to be alive in the 1940s, when you did not know what would happen from one day to the next.” The film also pays special attention to the affect of the war on and the involvement of African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans.

When The War originally aired on PBS in September 2007, many local PBS stations were given the opportunity to develop related
programming. For WIPB, Ball State personnel directed and produced the Telly-winning Echoes of War, a live 60-minute interactive educational program (www.bsu.edu/wipb/echoesofwar/about.asp), which Ken Burns introduced and closed. Because of Burns’ involvement in 2007, he personally made the decision that his production company, Florentine Films, would waive the usual public screening fee for this upcoming 2010 showing of The War at Bracken Library.

The marathon screening of Ken Burns’ The War will take place in Bracken Library’s room 104 over the weekend of January 30-31, 2010, from 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. both days. The War was directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

Cardinals through the Decades: 90 Years of Ball State University on Exhibit in Bracken Library

Beginning September 15 through October 31, 2008, the Archives and Special Collections will feature an exhibit, Cardinals through the Decades: 90 Years of Ball State University. The exhibit will be located on the second floor of Bracken Library.

Showing history and memories of Ball State from 1918-2008, the exhibit will feature memorabilia, artifacts, and historical items. The display includes:
photographs of the dedication of Beneficence in 1937
a glass time capsule from Burris
75th anniversary memorabilia, miniature staff-student B-Book directories
1940’s wooden scrapbook from Lucina Hall
Orient yearbooks, and other historical documents
books exploring the history of Ball State from its beginnings in the late 1800s

African-American and Jewish Oral History Interviews from Muncie are Now Accessible through the Ball State University Digital Media Repository

Students, faculty, and researchers at Ball State University and from around the world can now hear the voices of Middletown USA as they tell the stories of the African-American and Jewish experience in Muncie, Indiana. The words illustrating the life and culture of persons past and present can be heard and read anywhere, anytime through a new collection that is now accessible through the Ball State University Digital Media Repository, a project of the University Libraries.

Two oral history collections from the University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections Research Center have been digitized and transcribed and are now available for study, research, and classroom instruction via the Internet. The audio and transcripts of the “Black Muncie Oral History Project Collection” and the “Middletown Jewish Oral History Project I Collection” can be accessed in the Digital Media Repository, http://libx.bsu.edu, under the “Middletown Digital Oral History Collection.”

The Black Muncie Oral History Project was conducted from 1971 to 1978 by Hurley C. Goodall, Ball State professor J. Paul Mitchell, and Ball State graduate students, with a grant from the Muncie Human Rights Commission. The interviews with long-time African-American residents of Muncie include discussions of subjects such as segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Depression, organized labor, and the economic, social, and religious experiences of African-Americans.

The Middletown Jewish Oral History Project I was conducted in 1978 and 1979 by Ball State University professors Warren Vander Hill and Dwight Hoover, under the sponsorship of Mr. Martin Schwartz. The interviews document Muncie’s Jewish community during the 1920s and 1930s. Topics discussed include anti-Semitism, the Ku Klux Klan, and other economic, social, and religious issues.

These two collections will be joined by two other African-American oral history collections, another Jewish one, and three collections of oral histories conducted with members from the parishes of the Catholic churches in Muncie to make up the Middletown Digital Oral History Collection.

The creation of this digital oral history resource was made possible by a $25,125 grant from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) that was awarded to the University Libraries by the State Library of Indiana for fiscal year 2006-2007. This is the second consecutive LSTA grant for digitization awarded to the University Libraries.

For more information, contact John B. Straw, Ball State University Libraries’ Director, Digital Media Repository, JStraw@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 8; March 2007.