Rafael Tarrago, librarian for Iberian and Ibero-American Studies at the University of Minnesota, will lecture today on the origins, development and contemporary implications of indigenous Andean religious art in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The presentation will be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 12, in Room 108, the O’Shaughnessy Room, of O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center. A short reception will follow the lecture.
European artistic media and styles were introduced to the Andean region of South America during the 16th century. By the end of that century, the cities of Potosi and Cuzco had produced
accomplished artists in all the fine arts.
Like their European counterparts, Andean painters in the 17th century began incorporating regional landscapes and fauna in their depictions of traditional religious subjects (Jesus Christ, Mary and the saints), though some unique forms of representing the Virgin were beginning to appear in Potosi and Cuzco.
In the 18th century, Cuzco painters divorced themselves entirely from European models by accentuating symbolic design over naturalistic image. In religious paintings this development resulted in depictions of Jesus Christ, Mary and the saints that resemble paintings of sculptures rather than pictorial representations of reality. Tarrago will describe the origin, nature and contemporary implications of these developments with ample numbers of reproductions used as illustrations.
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Catholic Studies and the Art History Department.

By Dan Gjelten, Director of UST Libraries
Bulletin Today, March 10, 2009
In the fall of 2008, as we began the yearlong celebration of 50 years of service to the UST community at this location, the UST Libraries contracted with the Association of Research Libraries to conduct the LibQual survey among our users. This highly regarded survey has been completed more than 1,000 times at 500 college and university libraries around the world.
The goals of the survey as stated by LibQual:
Foster a culture of excellence in providing library service
Help libraries better understand user perceptions of library service quality
Collect and interpret library user feedback systematically over time
Provide libraries with comparable assessment information from peer institutions
Identify best practices in library service
Enhance library staff members’ analytical skills for interpreting and acting on data
The UST Libraries were interested in finding new ways of measuring the quality of our services in the three main areas covered by the questions in the survey:
The quality and affect of services provided by staff
The quality and scope of the libraries’ content collections (print and electronic)
The quality of the library’s physical spaces
We conducted the online survey for two weeks in October and had a total response rate of more than 22 percent. The survey was sent to students (undergraduate and graduate), faculty and staff. Of all respondents, 25 percent described their academic areas as business, 17 percent as humanities, 13 percent as social sciences, 12 percent as education and 8 percent as science and math, and the rest were distributed among other disciplines. Fifty-nine percent of our respondents were over the age of 30, and 21 percent were between 18 and 22.
(In addition to the questions, respondents were given the chance to comment. A few of the more than 200 comments we received are included in the column to the right.)
The answers to the 27 questions in the survey (22 standard and five “local”) had three dimensions each:
What is the minimum acceptable level of service?
What is the desired level of service?
What is the perceived level of service?
Asking the questions in this way allows the library to measure the degree to which we are meeting our user’s expectations. We interpret “desired” to be an indication of the importance that our users place on each of these aspects of library service – giving us a good idea of what our users really want us to be doing. The gap between the perceived level of quality and the desired level of quality, then, is a measure of the opportunity to improve library services. In a few cases, we learned that we were actually exceeding user expectations – with “perceived” levels of quality that were higher than “desired”– and for one population, on one question, we fell below minimum expectations.
Our preliminary findings
As we began to look at the preliminary results, it became clear that the user groups had differing expectations of the libraries at UST. Faculty are most concerned about having resources that support their work (understanding that “work” can mean teaching, research or consulting.) Faculty are happy with our interlibrary loan services and feel that the libraries are doing well at providing community and learning spaces for students, but felt we need more extensive collections. We are more aware now that there is room for improvement in communicating and describing the full extent of our collections to the faculty – many are unaware of the resources that the libraries’ already own.
Graduate students, on the other hand, care most for the ability to use our resources remotely – with a Web site that makes our electronic services and resources as easy to use as possible. When they come to the library in person, they want a building that is easy to navigate and with working and accessible technology – they don’t want to waste their time.
Our undergraduate populations clearly care about the library as place – with plentiful and well-functioning equipment, places for group study as well as places to “get away.” Interacting with library staff isn’t necessarily a priority for the undergraduate population, which would like to do their work on their own and be able to navigate and search without help. Undergraduates also place a high value on a clear and easy to navigate Web site. Our UST staff colleagues appreciate library staff who are courteous and willing to help – they, among all of our user groups, seem to value a personal connection to the library staff.
For each of our constituent groups, we see opportunities for improved library services that more closely address the identified desires and needs of our users. We will be increasingly focused on designing and developing a Web site that is clear and easy to navigate, and which makes available a wide and deep collection of information resources. We also will work to communicate more effectively so that all of our users know what the libraries own. Creating physical and virtual library spaces that are sophisticated, information-rich and “easy to use” is a challenge, and one that the libraries take seriously.
More data and analysis will be forthcoming from the LibQual survey and the libraries intend to continue the conversation within the UST community with the goal of continuous improvement in library collections and services.
We have posted the full text of the survey along with our preliminary analysis on our LibQual Web site, and further additions will be added to this page and announced on our UST Library blog.
Some Survey Comments:
“I have been very pleased with how the library supports teaching and research and how it provides book-oriented events and displays (April poetry reading, banned book week, etc.)”
“I think the Library staff is first rate and the service provided – reference, interlibrary loan, multimedia, etc. – is very strong. I could not do the work I do both in the classroom and in my research without the UST Library.”
“The staff has always been courteous and extremely helpful in answering questions and helping me get desired materials. The one thing I would really like to see is for the library to become a more central gathering place for the campus community.”
“I am a very very frequent user of interlibrary loan. It is my doorway to research.”
“I use the library electronically constantly through the day every day. I am able to find the research materials I need. With five books in little more than five years, I believe the library is very much part of my personal success … .”
“I think our expectations for online access to materials have just zoomed, so it is understandable that the library can’t possibly keep up. I have to admit that I share the same frustration as students when something I’d like to see is not available online … .”
“I’d like to see more electronic journal collections or other research resources accessible from the Web.”

The University of St. Thomas’ O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center and Center for Irish Studies will co-host their annual St. Patrick’s Day Open House from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, in the library’s Special Collections Reading Room (Room LL09).
A brief program begins at 12:15 p.m., and the public is invited.
The event features readings and the display of new and rare Irish books from the university’s Celtic Collection. St. Thomas’ 9,200-volume Celtic Collection, the largest of the university’s special collections and one of the 10 largest collections of Celtic materials in North America, includes works on Irish history and politics, church history and religion, and folklore, art and music of the Celtic nations.
The collection was begun in 1917, when the Ancient Order of Hibernians of Minnesota gave to the library 500 titles on then-contemporary Irish politics and 19th-century Irish history, evidently to commemorate the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland.
Donations and acquisitions since have bolstered the collection. About 85 percent of the collection focuses on Ireland; 10 percent on Scotland; and 5 percent on the other Celtic nations ( Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Brittany). Nearly 30 percent of the Celtic Collection consists of titles written in Celtic languages, most often Irish.
The St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies was established in 1996 to advance teaching and scholarship in Irish studies for students, faculty and friends of the university through publications, instruction and public programs. Among other activities, the center publishes New Hibernia Review, a quarterly journal of Irish Studies.
For further information about the open house, call Special Collections, (651) 962-5467, or the Center for Irish Studies, (651) 962-5662.

The University of St. Thomas’ O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center and Center for Irish Studies will co-host their annual St. Patrick’s Day Open House from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, in the library’s Special Collections Reading Room (Room LL09).
A brief program begins at 12:15 p.m., and the public is invited.
The event features readings and the display of new and rare Irish books from the university’s Celtic Collection. St. Thomas’ 9,200-volume Celtic Collection, the largest of the university’s special collections and one of the 10 largest collections of Celtic materials in North America, includes works on Irish history and politics, church history and religion, and folklore, art and music of the Celtic nations.
The collection was begun in 1917, when the Ancient Order of Hibernians of Minnesota gave to the library 500 titles on then-contemporary Irish politics and 19th-century Irish history, evidently to commemorate the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland.
Donations and acquisitions since have bolstered the collection. About 85 percent of the collection focuses on Ireland; 10 percent on Scotland; and 5 percent on the other Celtic nations ( Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Brittany). Nearly 30 percent of the Celtic Collection consists of titles written in Celtic languages, most often Irish.
The St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies was established in 1996 to advance teaching and scholarship in Irish studies for students, faculty and friends of the university through publications, instruction and public programs. Among other activities, the center publishes New Hibernia Review, a quarterly journal of Irish Studies.
For further information about the open house, call Special Collections, (651) 962-5467, or the Center for Irish Studies, (651) 962-5662.

Founded in 1959, Motown is not just the name of an iconic record label, but it is also a linguistic term the same as ‘infotainment’, ‘blog’ and ‘fanzine’. What is the name of this splendacular linguistic term first coined by Lewis Carroll?
If you know the answer please let me know.
Speaking of icons there is one historic politician who looms largely not only in this world but in the world of ‘The Watchmen’. It seems like those who knew that I was looking for Richard Nixon came to that conclusion based on what he did in this world in 1959 – namely debating with Nikita Khrushchev the pros and cons of capitalism vs. communism in front of a model kitchen at an exhibition in Moscow.
Those who were in the know are
Mike Hudson
Ryan Carter
Michael Blissenbach
Thanks to all who played!

Dr. Michael Bellamy, professor emeritus of English, will present “Civil Religion in America: Virtue, Vice or Necessary Stage?” – the fourth lecture in the 2008-09 English Department Colloquium Series.
This event, open to all UST students, faculty and staff, will be held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Friday, March 13, in the O’Shaughnessy Room, Room 108, in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. Light refreshments will be served.
Bellamy will explore the idea of patriotism as religion, beginning with a close reading of the original and current versions of “The Pledge of Allegiance.” What is the genre of this famous pledge that begins school for elementary students and sessions of Congress for senators and representatives?
Questions about the colloquium series can be directed to the English Department, (651) 962-5600.

Dr. Michael Bellamy, professor emeritus of English, will present “Civil Religion in America: Virtue, Vice or Necessary Stage?” – the fourth lecture in the 2008-09 English Department Colloquium Series.
This event, open to all UST students, faculty and staff, will be held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Friday, March 13, in the O’Shaughnessy Room, Room 108, in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. Light refreshments will be served.
Bellamy will explore the idea of patriotism as religion, beginning with a close reading of the original and current versions of “The Pledge of Allegiance.” What is the genre of this famous pledge that begins school for elementary students and sessions of Congress for senators and representatives?
Questions about the colloquium series can be directed to the English Department, (651) 962-5600.

You are all invited! There are some very nice student posters in the O’Shaughnessy Frey Library from Ann Klejment’s class, African American Liberation, History 116, African American History in Global Perspective.
This set of four posters highlights music written and performed by African American musicians. We have set up a laptop with samples of their music playing nearby. Stop by and listen for a while – Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong are playing right now. Bessie Smith will be added to the sample as well.
These posters will be on exhibit on the first floor of the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library through next week, March 9-13.

You are all invited! There are some very nice student posters in the O’Shaughnessy Frey Library from Ann Klejment’s class, African American Liberation, History 116, African American History in Global Perspective.
This set of four posters highlights music written and performed by African American musicians. We have set up a laptop with samples of their music playing nearby. Stop by and listen for a while – Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong are playing right now. Bessie Smith will be added to the sample as well.
These posters will be on exhibit on the first floor of the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library through next week, March 9-13.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, the English Department and the English honor society, Sigma Tau Delta/Literary Club, are hosting a Poe celebration. Professional character actor Jake Esau will dramatically recite several classic Poe stories and poems and will present biographical information on the writer. Featured Poe tale and poems include, “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Raven,” and “Annabel Lee.”
Jake Esau has been a professional character actor/adapter-writer for 37 years, and has developed and performed more than 30 one-person shows and programs – mostly on literacy and historical themes. Portraying Poe’s friend and employer, N.P. Willis, Esau has performed “A Tribute to Edgar Allan Poe” since 1979 and is considered a Poe scholar. A native of St. Paul, MN he has also lived and performed in Southern California, Arizona, and Washington state.
The celebration will be held at 3 p.m. Friday, March 6, in Room 108, the O’Shaughnessy Room, in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center.
Everyone is invited and audience questions about Poe’s life and writing are encouraged.