Last year's poster is on top, this year's on the bottom. Sorry the quality on this year's picture is a little crunchy, there's no online pictures of it that I could find, so this is a cameraphone representation of the poster. I picked it up from the front desk at College Library. I don't know if they have it at other libraries, but I would imagine they have to. I think the "READ" themed poster is to promote the American Library Association's National Library Week, which is from April 12-18 this year. Julie Andrews of Marry Poppins fame is this year's Honorary Chair.
Getting back to the 2008 Big Ten Champion Badger basketball team endorsed "READ" poster, my complaint with this year's poster is they gave Coach Bo Ryan, and from left to right Joe Krabbenhoft, Jason Bohannan, Marcus Landry, Brian Butch, and Trevon Hughes a much "realer" book that was afforded Alando Tucker last year. I can't say I've read Alando's Book, Professional Sports Team Histories: BASKETBALL but I can say with a more than reasonable amount of certainty that BASKETBALL is below the reading level of the modern college student. BASKETBALL seems like the kind of book a kid who likes sports would do a 7th grade book report on. At the same time, the book isn't really fair to Alando Tucker since he's not the dumbass college athlete he ends up being portrayed as on the poster. He graduated with a degree in Life Science Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I don't know how "real" a major Life Science Communications is but it most certainly carries with it a more strenuous course load than the football team's major of choice, Agricultural Journalism, so you have to give him some credit. I don't imagine there are that many other First Team All-Americans who actually graduate like Alando did either.
This year's book, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, seems to be more on the level of the college students holding them. Still, it doesn't have the charm of BASKETBALL because it doesn't drive home the same "I'm a basketball player and I like reading books about basketball!" message since it's not about basketball on any level. It's still a fine poster, just not a classic.
Bonus: After searching the UW library system via MadCat I could only locate four copies of Clemente, two of the 2006 edition, and two of the 2007 edition. You'll notice that there are six copies of the book in the poster. This means that at least two the books in the picture could not have been from the University of Wisconsin-Madison library system.
Three of the UW's copies are located in College Library, one in the Main Collection, Room 3191, one in Open Book Sports and Fitness, Room 1250, and one in Ethnic Studies, Room 1193. The last is in the Historical Society stacks. Two copies call number status's are "Not Checked Out" and the other two are "In Process" as of March 7. I wonder if people saw the poster and decided to check out the book in response. It can't be a coincidence that they're "in process" right after the poster came out.
2 comments:
and in last years photo alando is in the Afro american section if you look closer you can see that all the books behind him are about afro american topics
Hi there - I'm a librarian at the UW-Madison Wendt Library, and this looks like an opportunity to share some trivia (woo hoo!)...
* Yep, these posters have been promoted during National Library Week for the last couple of years. Some libraries also print their own customized READ posters with photos of faculty or students and their favorite books.
* The department of "Agricultural Journalism" was renamed "Life Sciences Communication" in 2000 or 2001.
* You're right - there are only 4 copies of "Clemente" at the UW-Madison. The other copies may be from another UW campus. You can search and request books across the entire UW System at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.web/uwsystemsearch (free!)
* When a book is labeled "In Process" it actually means that it was recently purchased and is now being cataloged, labeled, etc. before being placed on the shelves. If a book is checked out, it will usually be labeled "Checked Out," "Renewed," or "Overdue." For an explanation of all status messages: http://madcat.library.wisc.edu/help/contents.htm#messageexplanations
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