Reed Library: Staff Projects

Begun in 2010, Zweig at Fredonia is a biennial celebration of the life and works of Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, whose writings inspired the 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Fredonia is home to one of the world's largest collections of Zweig's writings and correspondence, begun by his friend and Fredonia professor Dr. Robert E. Rie.

The 2016 event featured an exhibit of Zweig's correspondence with friend and collaborator Richard Strauss, lectures on both men, and performances of selections from their collaborative work, Die schweigsame Frau.

For more information, see the Zweig at Fredonia blog.

Library staff involved in this project: Kim Taylor, Pat Cummings-Witter

Freedonia Marxonia is an annual festival, created by Fredonia students in 1987, recognizing the fictional country of "Freedonia," the setting of the 1933 Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. Each year in the fall, activities are held to honor the Marx Brothers and their relationship to local, national, and film history. Beginning in 2014, Reed Library assumed primary responsibility for the event, and hosts a display of materials related to the Marx Brothers through the month of October.

For more information, see the Freedonia Marxonia webpage, or Freedonia Marxonia on Facebook.

Library staff involved in this project: Cindy Yochym

The theses digitization project digitizes master's projects and theses to make them available online for further research and reading.

Library staff involved in this project: Darryl Coleman, Kim Taylor

The sheet music digitization project involves digitization of mainly popular folios of sheet music, ranging from the late 19th-century through the 1940s.

Library staff involved in this project: Kevin Michki

In 2015, Reed Library secured a grant from the Carnahan Jackson Foundation toward the creation of open textbooks. Four books were written by Fredonia teaching faculty and edited by Reed librarians. These books were among the first published by the Open SUNY project.

Library staff involved in this project: Scott S. Richmond, Sara Parme

Four Fredonia librarians edited this volume of articles on the digital humanities, the use of digital tools to support learning and research, with an introduction discussing the Anna Clift Smith project (discussed below).

Sacco, Kathleen L., Scott S. Richmond, Sara Parme, and Kerrie Fergen Wilkes, editors. Supporting Digital Humanities for Knowledge Acquisition in Modern Libraries. Information Science Reference, 2015.

Library staff involved in this project: Kathleen Sacco, Scott S. Richmond, Sara Parme, Kerrie Fergen Wilkes

This project digitized Anna Clift Smith's journal Van Buren Life, owned by Fredonia's Special Collections & Archives, and created a website dedicated to the project for common editing as well as community and campus use. The project's purpose was to use a local author and local materials to encourage students within the county, both at the college and K-12 level, to use digital materials for learning, exploration, and creation.

Library staff involved in this project: Sara Parme, Kathleen Sacco, Cindy Yochym, Kerrie Fergen Wilkes

This survey, performed in the spring of 2014, solicited information to determine eBook use across multiple universities, of which the State University of New York at Fredonia was a participant. The results of this survey were presented at the 2014 Charleston Library Conference.

Library staff involved in this project: Kathleen Sacco