Ex Libris Stavridis

I wrote last week about skills workshops that the Ginn Library will offer this fall, and there’s no denying that technology (teaching it, managing it) is a major component of the library staff’s work.  But books remain the defining characteristic of a library, and Ginn Library assistant, Lori Zimmerman, recently shared information about a special new collection.

Late in August, a delivery arrived from Dean Stavridis’s office: a cart filled with books by Fletcher faculty and alumni, most with handwritten dedications from their authors to Dean Stavridis or his predecessor, Dean Stephen Bosworth.  The books have been placed on display outside the reference and technology offices in the library’s main reading room, and the three packed shelves provide a visual representation of the impressive scholarly work by Fletcher faculty members and graduates.

The diverse book cover designs hint at the breadth of the Fletcher community’s areas of interest.  Laurent Jacque’s Global Derivative Debacles: From Theory to Malpractice, its cover showing a digital illustration of a tightrope walker suspended between mountains of numerical data, sits above Leila Tarazi Fawaz’s A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War, its cover showing an early-twentieth-century photograph.

Thank you to Dean Stavridis for providing this sample of his personal book collection.  We invite anyone to come in and browse through the books; if one piques your interest, it’s likely the library has a copy available to be checked out and read at your leisure.