The Elton S. Karrmann Library is now on Facebook, the free-access social networking website. Log on to your Facebook profile and search for the Karrmann Library to find links to the book catalog, journal and newspaper articles, library departments, highlights of library services and resources, and of course much more.
Stop by your UWP library’s Facebook page for helpful links, library hours, photos, and to become a fan!
Thanks go to librarian Jessica Donahoe for the creation of the library’s Facebook page and links.
With the move to Ullsvik Hall of the Southwest Wisconsin Room and University and Area Archives, the library’s lower level has been renovated and now offers four new classrooms and two computer labs. Primarily designed for teaching of English classes, the rooms bring instruction and research together in the same facility!
Southwest Wisconsin Room in Ullsvik Hall
New Classroom on library’s lower level
Click on the new icon by an author’s name while using the web-based citation tool RefWorks and viewing your personal database of references. Additional information on the author’s research, profession, or affiliation will be provided, thanks to links from Scholar Universe.
Want more information for yourself or your students about how to use RefWorks? Please call or stop by the library’s Reference Desk on the main floor, 342-1668.
Sharing the Secret - Reviewed by Jennifer Snoek-Brown, Reference Librarian
PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives N71 .W37 2005 (General, 3rd Floor)
My Secret: A PostSecret Book NX650.S435 M9 2006 (General, 3rd Floor)
The Secret Lives of Men and Women BF697.5.S427 S34 2007 (General, 3rd Floor)
A Lifetime of Secrets BF697.5.S427 W37 2007 (Current Reading Area, Main)
In 2004 Frank Warren printed 3,000 postcards for a community art project. He handed them out to strangers, left them in art galleries, and slipped them into library books. The challenge: write any secret on the postcard — as long as it’s true and hasn’t been shared with anyone — decorate the card in any way, and mail it in anonymously. This concept, so simple, has spread into a phenomenon. Out of the original 3,000 postcards, Frank Warren received only about 100; he thought the project was finished. By late 2007, over 150,000 self-made postcards had been mailed to him, resulting in four PostSecret books (so far), a travelling art exhibit, and a popular web site. The project was also featured in a music video, "My Dirty Little Secret" by the All-American Rejects band.
Why has PostSecret reached so many? Psychologist Anne Fisher states in the first book’s introduction that "In PostSecret, art and healing are one, brilliantly condensed into the elegant simplicity of filling out a postcard." Or as Frank Warren says, they are a "personal experience of healing through art." These collections of postcards are not to be read through quickly and discarded; they are meant to be looked at, pondered over, with a hope of humanity and understanding and without judgment. Can you (sheepishly) nod along with the person who admitted, "I play with my hair on the shower wall" (from PostSecret) or "I used to think the Sistine Chapel was called the 16th Chapel" (from My Secret)? Are you the one who "leaves encouraging notes in open lockers" (from A Lifetime of Secrets)? These cards reveal joy, sadness, humility, pain, humiliation, anger, even relief — expressed through a combination of art, words, and emotion. Harry Potter even shows up: "The day I turned eleven, I waited all day for the letter written in emerald-green ink telling me I had been accepted to Hogwarts" (from A Lifetime of Secrets).
PostSecret was published in 2005 and is a collection of postcards from the original art project. A message of hope rings out: "After I created my postcard, I didn’t want to be the person with that secret any longer. I ripped up my postcard and I decided to start making some changes in my life." My Secret, published the following year, focuses on postcards created by young people, teens and college students (a sample: "I think I’d enjoy life on a deserted island because almost everybody gets on my nerves"). The Secret Lives of Men and Women (2007) centers on relationship issues, from marriage to parenting to workplace relations. The most recent addition to the series, A Lifetime of Secrets (also 2007), is a selection of secrets that stay with us, perhaps for decades. Warren arranged the postcards by age "to follow the common journey we all take through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, maturity."
These postcards are an expression of who we are, who we were, and who we could be. The collections are experiences to remember — not just for ourselves, but for all we have met and will meet in our lives. As one person writes in The Secret Lives of Men and Women, "Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart. If we could just remember that, I think there would be a lot more compassion and tolerance in the world."
Kay Young, Editor
608.342.1134
young@uwplatt.edu