lifestyles
Edmee Rodriguez / KANSAN
Manuel Rodis, Spain graduate student, looks at the display of damaged books in Watson Library.
Vandalism masking as politics: pages from The Epistolary Novel: Its Origin, Development, Decline, and Residual Influence, by Godfrey Frank Singer.
Burned-out books
"Killing me Softly," an exhibit on display at Watson Library, shows examples of damaged books.
By Lula Flores Kansan staff writer
Kansan staff writer
Probably nobody will see again the book The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals at any library at the University of Kansas. A dog chewed it up.
"The damage was beyond restoration because the animal chewed not only the cover but the pages. The book was out of print, so it was impossible for the library to get another one," said Robert Melton, publications coordinator at Watson Library.
To create consciousness among library users about damage to the books, Watson's personnel created a public exhibit of books with intentional and accidental damages. The exhibit, which can be seen on the third floor of Watson Library, began three weeks ago and will end Friday.
The exhibit, "Killing us Softly! Abusive use of Library Materials," shows all types of damage, from pictures cut out to mold and mildews.
The repairing budget of the library is approximately $170,000 a year. Some of the money is for books, journals and periodicals worm out by normal use. A minor portion is for repairing material damaged by the users. Because records concerning why materials need to be replaced are not kept, library officials do not know how much of the budget is spent on damaged books.
Students who damage or destroy books must pay for the restoration or the replacement of the books. The money pays for sending the books with damaged covers or spines to Hertzberg New Method Co., Jacksonville, Ill.
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Costs range from $5 to $10 per book, depending upon the extent of the damage. Once repaired, the book is back on the shelves in six to eight weeks. Miller said.
If the damage to the book is severe enough to effect the pages, the fines personnel can declare it lost.
When a book is declared lost the library has two options. If the library owner other copies or editions as good or better than the destroyed book, the book may not be replaced. If the library does not own a copy or another edition of the destroyed book and the book was particularly good, a book selector will try to buy that edit-
Selector will try to buy that edition.
The book selector determines which books
need to be replaced and which editions are better than others. One factor in the selector's decision is if the book is still in print.
Kala
"Publishers take books out of print when they feel that they can no longer make enough profit from the book to justify print and distribution costs," said Melton, who functions as a book selector for Watson.
If the book is out of print, sometimes it cannot be replaced because it cannot be located, Melton said.
Sometimes book selectors are able to get out-of-print books from antique dealers. That process is time-consuming because book selectors must go through catalogs to find the book.
Then library personnel recatalog the books. To find the book could take from several months to several years, and the cataloging process takes from four to six weeks. The user responsible for the damaged book is charged for staff work and time. Melton said.
Damage to library material not only affects books; it affects periodicals and microforms as well.
"Sometimes users tear identification labels in periodicals," said Sarah Couch, periodicals and microform supervisor at Watson.
"Some people want photographs of Madonna," she said. "Some people also highlight and underline in periodicals, and it makes it difficult for other users to copy them." she said.
"People make notes in the margins. People draw mustaches on women or write comments on pictures. In popular magazines, people will cut out recipes," Couch said.
According to Zee Galliano, circulation desk supervisor at Watson Library, the destructive behavior of the users of the KU libraries follows a pattern.
"Cases of book damage are more frequent at the end of the semester, right before
midterms and finals," Galliano said. Galliano said that toward the end of last semester, personnel at the circulation desk caught someone who had damaged a book once a week.
"Our policy is to prosecute anybody that we catch," he said. "We call KU police, and the case goes to court downtown."
Kilroy
m m m
Coming to a racetrack near you...Pearl Jam?
Pearl Jam is giving no ground in its ongoing battle with Ticketmaster, the nation's largest concert ticket agency. That means its two-month, 40-date tour promises to be one of the most unusual of the 1980s, both for where concerts are held and how they are run.
"We may be forced to create venues from the ground up, which means fences and power and water and parking and stages," said Kelly Curtis, the Seattle-based band's manager. "We're really concerned that we put on a safe event. That's why it's difficult."
Pearl Jam fought with Ticketmaster last year about a service charge tacked on to the price of tickets. Two of its members testified against the agency last year in a congressional antitrust investigation.
The Associated Press
Pearl Jam, the nation's hottest young rock band, is heading on tour this summer. But don't look for them at your local civic center
Instead, try a nearby ski area, racetrack or even amusement park.
Two-thirds of the nation's 10 million concert arena seats are governed by exclusivity contracts between Ticketmaster and arena
One of the nation's top promoters thinks Pearl Jam will succeed. Because the band is so popular and because the group's current LP, "Vitalogy" remains in the Top 5 of the charts, promoters will do all they can to work with them, said Jim Koplik, president of Metropolitan Entertainment in New York
The company isn't trying to hinder Pearl Jam's ability to go on tour, said Ticketmaster representative Larry Solters. And a successful tour by the band would prove Ticketmaster's argument that it is not a monopoly, he said.
Kopik, like other promoters across the country, is scouting out concert sites. He's looking at such areas as raceracks and a skia area near New York City. Amusement parks are a good bet because they have open land and some facilities already set up, he said.
"It just validates what we've said all along — that Pearl Jam and any band has the abili-
managers, according to the industry newsletter Pollstar. Since Ticketmaster established industry dominance in the late 1980s, it has helped handle tickets for every major arena tour, editor Gary Giovianovii said.
Within the next month or two, Pearl Jam
will choose the 40 best sites, said Curtis.
The band also must set up its own ticket distribution network. Toll-free telephone sales is the most likely route, Bonglovanni said.
Pearl Jam's venture is risky because of the potential downside if any concertgoers get hurt, experts said. Creating concert venues where they haven't existed before means literally dozens of things can go wrong; just as Woodstock promoters about logistical problems
And don't expect it to be a model for many rock concert tours in the future.
"I'm guessing that it's more of a political statement than any groundbreaking event," Bongiovanni said. "It's going to be so difficult for them to do it profitably."
Indeed, the rock band R.E.M., whose management publicly supported Pearl Jam in its Ticketmaster fight last year, is using Ticketmaster on its own tour of the United States this summer.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
"I'm sure most bands will take the easy way," Curtis said. "You can't ask everyone to go and do what we've done, to make the sacrifices we've made. We're taking a huge risk by doing this."
People and places at the University of Kansas.
LEAD STORY
In Columbia, S.C., in December, the Rev. Noel Vande Grift revealed plans to expand his 20-member (Richard M.) Nixon Memorial Church, a congregation blending Baptist and Quaker preachings. Vande Grift said the inspiration to name the church after the former president came during a prayer. He told reporters the church would be the largest in the South by the year 2010.
THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
■ Non-Whitewater news from Arkansas: In Eureka Springs, alderman candidate Louise Berry died on Oct. 6, but her supporters continued to run ads against her opponent. On Nov. 8, Berry pulled out a narrow victory. In
september, attorney-
general candidate Dan Ivy
hon his fight to
stay on the ballot
despite having
been convicted of
beating his wife
two months earlier. Mrs. Ivy had helpfully made an audio recording of the beating; on the tape, Ivy appeared mainly concerned about recovering valuable coins his wife had put in a safe-deposit box. After Ivy told her he wanted his coins, she reminded him it was Sunday and that the box was not accessible; during the remainder of the 30-minute tape, Ivy says "I want my coins" 76 more times. Ivy lost the election.
Marion Berry, re-elected as mayor of Washington after serving six months in prison on a 1991 cocaine possession charge, was assisted by the 75-feton-member Coalition of Ex-Offenders, who went door to door campaigning for him. According to organizer "Roach" Brown, the coalition members were especially helpful because they went into the toughest neighborhoods to register Washington's substantial criminal population, most of whom were unaware that a 1976 law gave them voting rights.
CLICHES COME TO LIFE
In April in Grand Junction, Colo., Ed Tucker bought his son a toy airplane made in Taiwan. When he unpacked it, he found a note in English written by a man who said he was held being prisoner and subjected to human rights abuses and begging someone to help him.
■ Federal law permits victims' lawyers in civil right cases, if they win, to have their fees and expenses paid by the losing party. Among the expenses that Rodney King's lawyers submitted to the City of Los Angeles for compensation were these: accompanying King to see the film "Malcolm X" ($1,300); reading a newspaper article about the trial (20 minutes) ($81.25); and attending King's 1991 birthday party ($650). The total requested was $4.4 million, $600,000 more than King won in the lawsuit.
A月 after Susan Smith said a carjacker made off with her two boys in Union, S.C., a man in Lubbock, Texas, jumped into Donna Robles' Dodge and sped off, probably unaware that her son, Ethan, 3, was strapped in the back seat. The car was found crushed two blocks away, with Ethan unhurt. Police speculate that Ethan's beginning to cry startled the thief that he lost control of the car. He escaped.