Water(B)logged: Water in the Public Domain: Part 1

Part of library reference work is helping patrons discover the wealth of resources in the public domain for use in research, teaching, creative (re)production, and simply for inspiration. Copyright.gov offers: “A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner.” Excellent guidance on copyright is offered by most libraries, including these helpful sites from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries and Cornell University. When works have been returned to the public domain because of copyright expiration—which happens in overwhelming volume every year—the biggest challenge for librarians is discovering them! One of the many benefits of the growing digitization of formerly print and analog resources is that we now have talented digital curators taking up the task of locating items coming out of copyright, contextualizing them, and rendering them accessible. A favorite public domain sleuth is the brilliant The Public Domain Review. Naturally, we searched their content archive today for “water,” and here is a small sample of the treasures we found. Read an essay about algae’s place in the history of science of the eighteenth century. Learn about the art of swimming (and enjoy gorgeous woodcuts) in Everard Digby’s De Arte Natandi,  published in 1587. If winter water sports are your jam, take instruction from a French ice skating manual published in 1813. If greeting Kermit the Frog yesterday left you needing more friends of the hopping variety, you might enjoy a surrealist short film by Spanish film director and cinematographer Segundo Chomón to get your weird on. Finally, top it off with the stunning illustrations from the first known color publication on fish in 1754. The companion essays by astonishing contributors to the Public Domain Review won’t let you down.

Click on the titles below to read further.

PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW | Visions of Algae in Eighteenth-Century Botany

PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW | The Art of Swimming (1587)

PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW | Skating with Bror Myer (1921)

PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW | Images from the First Colour Publication on Fish (1754)

PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW | The Frog (1908)

Water(B)logged is a series we bring to you this July/August 2017 as a departing project of an adoring Wisconsin Water Library library assistant who wishes to celebrate her favorite things about water and this most special of special libraries.

I am a child of the original Sesame Street era. Now, decades later as a librarian, I hold an even greater appreciation for the legacy of children’s educational programming and its essential service helping little learners question and discover. For the Water Library this morning, I fell down the splendid rabbit hole that is the Sesame Street YouTube Channel to search its clip archive for skits, animations, and short films about water. In doing so, it’s clear what a gift the Children’s Television Workshop (now the Sesame Workshop) has been—especially for low-income families—in the effort to share knowledge about everything from water properties, ecology(ies), economies, climates, consumption, and infrastructure. And it has done so with such remarkable tenderness, wit, silliness, sadness, and joy. The following fifteen Sesame Street snippets remind us of classic public broadcast television at its best, that we were never the poorer for its fewer pixels, lower-definition, and spare aesthetic. This is also a special nod to the late Jim Henson, my hero as a little kid, and even more so as a big one.

THE MARTIANS (and the leaky faucet) | Skit

SWIM LIKE SEA LIONS | Film & Song

BERT & ERNIE GIVE NEPHEW BRAD A BATH! | Skit

LUIS LOOKS FOR AGUA | Skit

EXPLORE A FISHING BOAT | Film

FAUCET WORKINGS | Animation

KERMIT SINGS “ON MY POND” | Skit & Music

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN WITH GROVER | Skit & Song

SWIM LIKE A FROG | Film & Song

WASTING WATER | Animation

GOLDFISH IN A BOWL | Animation

WHALES BRUSHING TEETH | Film & Song

“CRIPPLE CREEK” SONG | Skit & Song

KERMIT’S ABC’s OF THE SWAMP | Skit & Song

“I DON’T WANT TO LIVE ON THE MOON” | Skit & Song

Water(B)logged is a series we bring to you this July/August 2017 as a departing project of an adoring Wisconsin Water Library library assistant who wishes to celebrate her favorite things about water and  this most special of special libraries.

Sometimes, while the water librarians are reshelving books, or cataloging information resources, or preparing supplies to conduct story times in schools and public libraries across the state, we listen to music. The Official Handbook of Water Library Rules and Procedures stipulates, however, that this music be about water.

Alright . . . that’s not true, BUT, even if it were true, we wouldn’t suffer any deficit. The greatest songwriters and musicians, across time and musical genre have written and performed songs that present a literal or metaphorical relationship to water: from raindrops to teardrops, rivers, lakes, and oceans, duck life, swan life, and everything in between. Here’s what we’ve got on rotation today!

Fred Neil, “A Little Bit of Rain” | 1970

Charles Trenét, “La Mer” | 1946

Lemon Jelly, “Nice Weather for Ducks” | 2004

Don Cavalli, “I’m Going to a River” | 2008

The Sallyangie, “Banquet on the Water” | 1969

Jackie Wilson, “Lonely Teardrops” | 1958

Water(B)logged is a series we bring to you this July/August 2017 as a departing project of an adoring Wisconsin Water Library library assistant who wishes to celebrate her favorite things about this most special of special libraries.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]One of our enduring commitments at the Wisconsin Water Library is helping caregivers and educators build scientific and ecological literacies in young children. We often discuss how lucky we are to catch pre-K to second graders at a time, developmentally, when reading literacy and other forms of literacy are not quite as decoupled as they become for middle graders and teens. As we make selections for our children’s picture book collection, we take care to ask how a title speaks to our science education mission. Three gorgeously poetic books by Julia Fogliano (in partnership with the talented illustrators Erin Stead and Julie Morstad) make our job easy.

Subtly, but masterfully, Fogliano writes about whale watching, the expectant march to springtime, and the natural-cultural texture of the four seasons while conveying—intentionally or not—some of the most important tenets of the scientific method: waiting and observing.

If You Want to See a Whale serves as a tender instruction manual for what it takes to spot a whale in the ocean: mainly, an avoidance of distraction! Fogliano simultaneously celebrates the beauty distraction offers while conveying an important lesson about patience and waiting . . . and watching with the goal of making new discoveries.
Fogliano, Julie, and Erin E Stead. 2013. If You Want to See a Whale.

if you want to see a whale
you will need a window
and an ocean
and time for waiting
and time for looking
and time for wondering “is that a whale?”

if you want to see a whale
you’ll have to just ignore the roses
and all their pink
and all their sweet
and all their wild and waving

because roses don’t want you watching whales
or waiting for
or wondering about
things that are not pink
and things that are not sweet
and things that are not roses

And Then It’s Spring follows suit marching through the waiting entailed to see the first green of spring, including a brown that becomes less and less intolerable.
Fogliano, Julie, and Erin E Stead. 2012. And Then It’s Spring. New York: Scholastic.

First you have brown,
all around you have brown
then there are seeds
and a wish for rain
and then it rains
and it is still brown,
but a hopeful, very possible sort of brown . . .

Finally, in her more recent, When Green Becomes Tomatoes, Fogliano offers poetry for all seasons, building an observational taxonmy: a crocus blooming in the snow, a dog sniffing spring lilacs, the quiet of summer and its brilliant stars. . .
Fogliano, Julie, and Julie Morstad. 2016. When Green Becomes Tomatoes.

a star is someone else’s sun

more flicker glow than blinding

a speck of light too far for bright

and too small to make a morning

We hope to collect Julie Fogliano’s work for a very long time. And we hope you will, too.

Water(B)logged is a series we bring to you this July/August 2017 as a departing project of an adoring Wisconsin Water Library library assistant who wishes to celebrate her favorite things about this most special of special libraries.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]