Library invites faculty to teach with Special Collections in Antje Bultmann Lemke Seminar Room

Pamela McLaughlin
(315) 443-9788

Syracuse University Library’s Antje Bultmann Lemke Seminar Room in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) is now open for classroom instruction. The state- of-the-art classroom makes it possible for faculty to bring new technologies, like a Wolfvision document camera and a 60-inch high-definition LCD screen, to bear upon the oldest of technologies: the written word.

Faculty members interested in leading a session without the assistance of a librarian will be asked to attend a brief orientation focusing on the technology in the classroom and the care and handling of rare books and manuscripts.

With more than 100,000 printed works and 2,000 manuscript and archival collections, SCRC is home to some of SU’s most valued treasures, including cuneiform tablets and illuminated manuscripts; early printed editions of Gutenberg, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton; and the library of 19th-century German historian Leopold Von Ranke. Twentieth-century collections are particularly strong; they include the personal papers and manuscripts of such luminaries as artist Grace Hartigan, inspirational preacher Norman Vincent Peale, SU alumna and author Joyce Carol Oates, photojournalist Margaret Bourke White and industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague, as well as architectural drawings by Marcel Breuer and the records of organizations such as avant garde publisher Grove Press.

The librarians of the SCRC also offer both general and subject-specific instruction sessions. Recent librarian-led sessions have centered on themes such as writing communities, the beautiful mind and the worlds of Oz. The center’s Dana Foundation teaching fellow is also available to lead and assist with instruction sessions.

Faculty can reserve the room by contacting Nicolette Dobrowolski, public services librarian in the SCRC, at 443-9762, or nischnei@syr.edu. A live demonstration of the Antje Lemke Seminar Room’s technologies will be held Tuesday, Oct. 28, at 10 a.m.; those interested in attending should R.S.V.P. to Dobrowolski.

The Lemke Room was built to honor the career of longtime member of the Syracuse community and Professor Emerita Antje Bultmann Lemke, with funds raised by the Syracuse University Library Associates. The daughter of an important German theologian, Rudolf Bultmann, Lemke was part of the underground resistance in Nazi Germany. In 1949, she came to the United States, becoming a fine arts librarian at SU Library in 1952, then a faculty member in the School of Information Studies until her retirement in 1986.

For more information, visit http://scrc.syr.edu.