Spring 2015

Each spring the OSU Library and Department of Botany host a lecture exploring the interaction of people and plants. Kelly Kindscher, senior scientist and professor at the University of Kansas, will headline the event with his presentation, "Prairie Ethnobotany: The Native Medicinal Plant Research Program."

"The Great War and Its Legacy" series concludes for the spring semester with an event featuring pianist and OSU French professor, Dr. Perry Gethner. The performance is April 15 at 7:00 p.m. in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room, followed by a discussion about composers and music during the World War I era.

"One Book, One Community: Stillwater Reads 'True Grit'" slowly winds its way to a close with its big finale Saturday, April 11, from 7-9 p.m. at the Stillwater Community Center. "An Evening with the Oklahoma Balladeer" features Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame singer/songwriter Les Gilliam and his Silver Lake Band. The free concert features Western music and the fascinating stories behind the songs and their writers.

"The Great War and Its Legacy, 1914-1918" series continues with Joel Jenswold's presentation April 8 at 3:30 p.m. in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room. The lecture will address the Romanov dynasty of Russia and the role the WWI played in the fall of the empire and the rise of the Bolshevik state

The "One Book, One Community: Stillwater Reads True Grit'" series will explore history in depth during a program on firearms and one on roping. On March 22 at 2:30 p.m., David Kennedy from the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center will present "Gun That Won the West" at the Sheerar Museum.

There are more than five hundred federally recognized indigenous communities and nations comprising nearly three million people. These individuals are the subject of the latest book by noted historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, which she will discuss at the OSU Library on March 25.

Join us March 12 in Room 206 for a live virtual visit with the international research laboratory CERN. At 10:30 am, we'll introduce CERN and the ATLAS experiment with short videos and OSU faculty will talk briefly about how our physics professors are working with CERN. At 11 am the virtual visit will begin. The CERN scientists will discuss upcoming projects and take questions from the audience. If you can't attend in-person, watch the live stream at ostate.tv.

Room 105 is growing with recently added equipment and studio room renovations. The Library now circulates 14 Go-Pros video cameras, two HD Video Cameras, four still point-and-shoot style digital cameras, four ZoomH2n recorders, three camera tripods and three Atlas Sound tabletop microphones. Room 105 is under renovation for new Mac, PC and presentation studios for students to enhance creativity, practice speeches and develop new skills with the software.

The Stillwater Public Library and the OSU Library are partnering to present a big screen viewing of the original "True Grit" film on Thursday, March 19, at 6 p.m. The movie, which is free and open to the public, is part of the library's series "One Book, One Community: Stillwater Reads 'True Grit.'" The 2010 remake of the film will be shown at the OSU Student Union on March 27 at 7 p.m.

"I like that this award allowed me to look back on the research process, which I felt was not only beneficial for that experience but for future experiences as well," Jackson said.

"Research is so important because it makes the world of academics come alive,"Yumul said. "Students are able to engage in theoretical concepts that are often times kind of boring, but because of research, you see the theories come to life in everyday situations."

Early fascination with Mars led Donna Shirley to study aerospace engineering at OU in the 1950s, a rare conquest for women at the time. Highlights from her career include managing the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and serving as founding director of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle. Shirley will share her story Feb. 17 at 6:30 p.m. in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room.

"The HathiTrust collections add a breadth of materials with outstanding searchiblity of the full-text," Dean Sheila Johnson said. "The collection is continuously growing because new members like OSU are always adding new materials. It's a wonderful example of collaboration among academic libraries."

Prehistory was full of bumps created by adverse climates. Yet, we survived all of them. We will explore the so-called Ice Ages and demystify the icy part to see how climate changed during the period known as the Pleistocene, how scientists reconstruct climate, and most importantly, the importance of understanding past climate changes to understand the current one.