Is Feb. 9th too late to do a January in review post? Not sure, but here goes!
This month saw the end of the Courtney Milne exhibit in the link, and the rise of the Sask Music Collection exhibit under the curatorship of Carolyn Doi. A beautiful show, highlighting the unique role of music in Saskatchewan’s heritage. It will be up until the 27th of March, with a reception being held on March 11th at 3:00 pm, for all who are interested.
(ok, so that wasn’t really UASC news, but exciting nonetheless!)
The second exhibit to go up was another of our “mini-displays” on the third and ground floors. In anticipation of Aboriginal Achievement Week, we decided to concentrate on that theme, with the two cases downstairs featuring the University’s first male and female Aboriginal grads (to learn more on them, visit : http://library.usask.ca/archives/exhibitions-digital/exhibitions/aboriginal-achievement.php)
On third, we have some materials on Allen Sapp, as well as selections from our special collections featuring Aboriginal writers. Although Aboriginal Achievement week is now over, we hope to leave the display up until the end of the month.
Last week was not only Aboriginal Achievement week, it was also Saskatchewan Archives Week–always an exciting time for us here at UASC. I was lucky enough to once again sit a table at the archives pavilion at the Heritage Festival of Saskatoon on December 30th at the Western Development Museum, alongside Laurie Wing and Tim Hutchinson. It was one of the busiest years anyone could remember, with the parking lot full to bursting, Boom Town was booming, and we had a steady stream of interested, and interesting people come by our table to say hello, ask questions, and peruse the many Greystone yearbooks we had out.
What struck me in particular was a pair of young people, high-school age, who came by and spent quite a bit of time with the Greystones. They were less interested in the contents of the books, and more interested in the heft of them–the thick, textured covers, and where color prints were used, and where not. The physicality of the book in action.
On Wednesday Feb. 4, we had our yearly celebrity readings night at the Bassment, always good entertainment (and good food and drink too! ). Among those reading this year were John Gormley, former city Councillor Donna Birkmaier and “Dr. Booze” James Romanow. Gormley reading an excerpt from a CCF radio address was particularly memorable.
And that’s about it for the month in review–which was really more of the past two weeks in review–which might say something alarming about my memory.
We choose to highlight challenged books that had legal action associated with them. On our book bands we included the province, reason the book was challenged, the case name and the citation of the case with the hopes that a curious law student would want to look up why the book was challenged in Canada.
