The JKM Library Blog

Chatham celebrated a big edible book milestone this spring with our 10th International Edible Book Festival event! The JKM Library has been partnering with Chatham's food studies program since 2012 to host this celebration of food and literature. After a three-year hiatus during the heights of COVID-19, the tradition was revived in 2024, and on March 31st, 2025 we celebrated our 10th event!

To make this year extra special, we welcomed additional collaborators to help grow the festival. Chatham's Student Success and the Academic Success Center hosted an Essential Needs Item Drive to benefit Chatham's Essential Needs Corner. Anyone who donated to the item drive was entered into a raffle for a $100 gift certificate to Mad Mex.

The PA Hunger Free Campus Task Force hosted a silent auction (sans real money) for kitchenware kits, funded by the PA Department of Education. Students were given five tickets that they could use to bid on the specific kits they were interested in. There were five kits auctioned off.

And in addition to those amazing activities, we also had honey tasting and education provided by the Eden Hall Apiary. Attendees could taste honey from different seasons and learned a bit about how the flowers from each season alter the flavor profile of the honey created by the area bees.

This year's edible book contest was judged by our amazing volunteer faculty members: returning judges Heather McNaugher and Barbara Ann McMonigal, and new judge Laura Livingston. Thank you to our judges for their time and taste buds! 

Winners of the 10th International Edible Book Festival are:

People's Choice Award: "Pete the Cat: I Love My White Choux" submitted by Maggie Vargo and Evelyn Fay

Best Tasting: "Franks 'N' Brine" submitted by Anne St. Jean

Most Creative Literary Interpretation: "Demon Copperhead" submitted by Karin Chipman

The Rachel Carson Award: "Pete the Cat: I Love My White Choux" submitted by Maggie Vargo and Evelyn Fay

Grand Prize: "The Masque of the Red Death" submitted by Kate Emory

A huge thank you to Chatham’s food studies program, Alice Julier and Rebecca Nathan in particular, for their sponsorship and support and enthusiasm in planning. Thank you to the Academic Success Center, Chatham Student Success, the PA Hunger Free Campus Task Force, and the Essential Needs Corner for their help growing this event this year. And thanks to all of our ‘edible book’ contestants!

We are excited to announce that all group study rooms are now equipped with whiteboards for collaborative work. Prior to this semester, only the third floor group rooms had mounted whiteboards. The second floor rooms had either aging chalkboards or nothing at all, making collaborative group work challenging. This has been a project long in the making, and the library thanks ITS for ordering and installing the remaining whiteboards. In addition to the mounted whiteboards, the library has several portable whiteboards on wheels that can be easily moved around and are heavily used by big groups working at the larger study tables. The library has plans to add more of these portable whiteboards in the near future.

As the JKM library's highly respected resident film critic (my boss asked if I'd review one of the movies on the shelves) I’ll admit that this review took longer than I thought and that is mainly due to the truly unique inventory that the library has to offer. For example, there are dozens of films in the collection that I know for a fact aren’t on streaming, such as the 1999 Kevin Smith film Dogma, or the 1992 Rick Seback documentary simply titled Downtown Pittsburgh. This very exciting collection of films left me eager to review the movies that I hadn't heard of before, and that's exactly what I hope to do with this series.  

The film I chose was 1984’s Teachers– a movie I've never heard of before despite its totally incredible cast, featuring karate kids and McFly's alike with the duo of Ralph Macchio and Crispin Glover as trouble-making students who sneak out of school and hot-wire cars.

This fun casting choice (and the DVD cover of an apple with a stem lit like a stick of dynamite) would make you think that this would be a wacky comedy where the school staff (Nick Nolte, Judd Hirsch, and Morgan Freeman)  struggle to teach a group of trouble-making students, and end up learning new unorthodox ways to teach the students. Instead of the comedy basics I expected from a 1980s movie called Teachers, I was surprised to see that the movie  focused on very real issues of gun violence, budget cuts, and the neglect of children in a massive public school. It goes without saying that these are real problems, and if you have talked to a teacher about difficulties in teaching, or even just had the experience of attending an underfunded school, I feel you will take something away from this movie.

While the film tackles very dark subject matter, it is able to find ways to add humor undermining the real world issues it portrays–something I feel many movies often struggle with. In short, Teachers may not be laugh out loud funny, but it still gives the audience funny moments while exploring what it means to work in a difficult profession.    

Rating: 8 cartoonishly dark red apples out of 10

Ethan Newton is currently a freshman at Chatham University (and JKM Library student employee) who has decided that instead of choosing a major he will start smaller and choose different films from the library to review. Ethan urges cool Chatham students to come up to him to discuss old movies and 70s comic books.

Do you like The Great British Bake Off? How about puns? Do books and/or food delight you? If the answer is yes to one or all of these questions, the International Edible Book Festival is for you! This time-honored tradition here at Chatham is co-sponsored by the JKM Library and Chatham's food studies department and seeks to bring people together over a shared love of books and food.

We know many of you have never had the pleasure of experiencing the International Edible Book Festival, so this post is here to answer all (or hopefully most) of your questions. Have more? Contact the library at reference@chatham.edu.

What is the International Edible Book Festival? Started in 2000, this celebration of food and reading brings communities together to share creative literature-inspired food or beverage items (the ‘edible books’ in question). Contestants sign up to bring an ‘edible book’, and on the day of the event they present their book to judges and attendees. The judges taste and evaluate each entry and award prizes, and the attendees vote on their favorites for the People’s Choice prize. A wonderful time is had by all!

What does the event look like? We set up a bunch of tables in the JKM Library’s first floor lobby. Contestants set up their ‘edible books’ for display, and the judges begin their tastings and deliberations. Once the judges have had a chance to taste all entries, the tasting is opened up to all attendees. Attendees enjoy the ‘edible books’ and vote for their favorite (the People’s Choice Award). After everyone has had a chance to taste, vote, and socialize, we then announce our winners and distribute our prizes!

Who is allowed to participate? Everyone! This event is open to all Chatham students, staff, and faculty. It’s also open to the public at large! Anyone can enter an ‘edible book’ into the festival’s contest.

How can I participate? You can attend as just a spectator and vote for your favorite ‘edible book’, or you can participate as a contestant in the festival’s contest! Either way, we ask that you register. It’s important to know how many folks are planning to show up so we can plan for how many people to feed.

What do I need to know if I’m submitting an ‘edible book’ to the contest? Register for the event on Happenings and be sure to mark that you will be submitting an ‘edible book’. You will then receive informational emails from the librarians. Your ‘edible book’ can be as simple or complicated as you’d like. It can be a food or beverage item, but it has to have some tie to literature, libraries, or reading. You should include with your ‘edible book’ a list of ingredients (for both judging and dietary restriction purposes) and a copy of the book that inspired you! You are expected to stand with your ‘edible book’ during the judging process to answer any questions, but then are are free to go sample other contestant’s ‘edible books’ and vote for your favorite.

‘Edible books’ can be as complicated as an ornate cake or as simple and low maintenance as bringing in pre-made candy or cookies. Below are some examples of ‘edible books’ submitted to our past events:

What are the prize categories? Each ‘edible book’ entry is eligible to win prizes. Prizes usually include items like water bottles, cookbooks, gift baskets, gift certificates, honey from Eden Hall, and more. Our current categories are:

• Best Tasting: This one is fairly straight forward. It’s not how good your ‘edible book’ looks, but how good it tastes.
• Most Creative Literary Interpretation: Taste is not as important in this category. Instead, it’s your creativity the judges are looking at. The most creative ‘edible book’ wins!
• People’s Choice: This is the popular vote! All attendees get to taste the ‘edible books’ and vote for their favorite.
• The Rachel Carson Award: This is awarded to the ‘edible book’ that honors sustainability and/or nature. This could mean that the ingredients are locally or ethically sourced, that the ‘edible book' was created with environmental impact in mind, or that is represents something in nature. Those who would like to be considered for this award need to indicate on their ingredients list if something is local/sustainable or if environmental concerns went into the creation of the food item.
• Grand Prize: Awarded by the judges, this prize is best in show. It is awarded to the ‘edible book’ that really knocked it out of the park in both taste, creativity, and presentation. 

Winners from our 2019 event:

We hope this piques your interest and that you’ll enter an ‘edible book’ creation of your own in one of our upcoming International Edible Book Festivals. You can also visit the JKM Library's International Edible Book Festival virtual display for book more delicious literary fun!

The JKM Library's blog has migrated to a new platform! For over a decade, we published to a Chatham University owned Wordpress instance. This served us well until Chatham made the decision to sunset those instances and migrate to Squarespace. We took this opportunity to reevaluate our own blogging platform and decided to move to a tool we already subscribe to and use daily: Springshare.

Springshare is focused on libraries and offers unique functionality to fulfill the specific needs of libraries of all kinds. This includes building subject guides with library resources seamlessly integrated, building and managing library websites, calendars, room reservation management, FAQ pages, reference tools, project management workflows, and more. Springshare also provides a blogging tool.

Because we use Springshare products to manage the majority of our digital (and much of our physical) operations, moving to Springshare for the blog was an easy choice.

All posts dated prior to this one have been recovered, reformatted, and reposted here by our Head of Technical Services Dan Nolting. These posts originated on our Wordpress instance, and you may find formatting issues with them due to the nature of the migration. 

Moving forward, all blog content for the JKM Library will be posted to this feed and will feature: library updates and announcements, information about library services and resources, book and film reviews, information about events, updates about the library building, and more. Blog content is written by all library staff, including full time and part time librarians and student employees.

If you have questions about this blog, reach out to the librarians by emailing reference@chatham.edu. 

April 2024

The solar eclipse wasn’t the only monumental event to happen on Monday, April 8th! The library once again teamed up with Chatham’s food studies program to bring back our much loved and much missed International Edible Book Festival for its ninth installment. Prior to COVID-19, this internationally recognized event was celebrated by Chatham annually, and we were delighted to finally resume the celebrations after a four-year hiatus. Started in 2000, the International Edible Book Festival celebrates the loves of food and reading. It brings communities together to share creative literature inspired food or beverage items (the ‘edible books’ in question). Contestants sign up to submit an ‘edible book’, and on the day of the event they present their book to judges and attendees. The judges taste and evaluate each entry and award prizes, and the attendees vote on their favorites for the People’s Choice prize. In 2024 we had four teams and individuals enter ‘edible books’ to the festival’s contest, and our amazing team of faculty judges (Heather McNaugher, Marc Nieson, and Barbara Ann McMonigal) did their sworn (voluntary) duty! We also had about 30 to 35 attendees filter through the festival, tasting ‘edible books’ and voting for their favorites for the People’s Choice awards. 
A huge thank you to Director of the Food Studies Program Alice Julier (and the food studies program as a whole) for the financial support, Falk School Program Assistant and Apiary Manager Rebecca Nathan for all of the logistical and creative support, and FSSE graduate student Grayson Skupin for helping brainstorm creative details. This event would not have been possible without you! 
Best Tasting went to Aidan Bobik and Evelyn Fay for Harry the Dirty Dog (“dirt” )
Most Creative Literary Interpretation went to Kate Emory for Madeline (madeleines)
Most Likely to Impress Rachel Carson went to Jocelyn Codner for A Connecticut
Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (half-moon cookies / eclipse cookies)
People’s Choice (popular vote) went to Aidan Bobik and Evelyn Fay for Harry the Dirty Dog (“dirt”) Grand Prize went to Dan and Sean Nolting for Cat’s Cradle (kitty litter cake). Their inventive submission managed to both disgust and delight attendees. Alice Julier and Rebecca Nathan had a wonderful time acquiring fun and creative prizes for our winners. Many of the prizes were bee, honey, or pollinator themed, as Rebecca was also hosting a week of pollinator events up at Chatham’s Eden Hall campus via the Eden Hall Apiary. Many people were lucky enough to get a jar of delicious local honey from the EHA! Prize cart!
Thank you to the entire Chatham community for helping us keep this tradition alive. We hope you all join us for our big 10-year celebration in 2025. We’re cooking up ways to make it absolutely fantastic. Until then, we hope you all enjoy your creative moments in the kitchen and are blessed with many incredible books. 

March 2024

Do you like The Great British Bake Off? How about puns? Do books delight you? If the answer is yes to one or all of these questions, the International Edible Book Festival is for you! We are delighted to announce that the International Edible Book Festival is making its return to Chatham after a four-year hiatus(COVID). This tradition, sponsored by the JKM Library and Chatham’s food studies program, will be back for its 9th installment on Monday, April 8th from 4-6pm on the first floor of the JKM Library We know many of you have never had the pleasure of experiencing the International Edible Book Festival, so this post is here to answer all (or hopefully most) of your questions. Have more? Contact Reference and Outreach Librarian Jocelyn Codner!
What is the International Edible Book Festival? Started in 2000, this celebration of food and reading brings communities together to share creative literature inspired food or beverage items (the ‘edible books’ in question). Contestants sign up to bring an ‘edible book’, and on the day of the event they present their book to judges and attendees. The judges taste and evaluate each entry and award prizes, and the attendees vote on their favorites for the People’s Choice prize. A wonderful time is had by all! What does the event look like? We set up a bunch of tables in the JKM Library’s first floor lobby. Contestants set up their ‘edible books’ for display, and the judges begin their tastings and deliberations. Once the judges have had a chance to taste all entries, the tasting is opened up to all attendees. Attendees enjoy the ‘edible books’ and vote for their favorite (thePeople’s ChoiceAward).After everyone has had a chance to taste, vote, and socialize, we then announce our winners and distribute our prizes! (click the above picture for more)

February 2024

The library is delighted and proud to see our long-time colleague Dana Mastroianni promoted to the position of Library Manager & Head of Public Services. Dana has done a wonderful job guiding the library through massive changes over the past few months. Dana joined the JKM Library team in 2003, back when the library was managed by Library Systems & Services (LSSI). Her first position at Chatham was Reference Librarian, which later became Reference & Electronic Resources Librarian. In ’22 she was promoted to Head of Public Services. With the elimination of the Library Director position in August, a new position was create to fill the leadership gap in the library. In August of ’23 Dana was promoted to Library Manager &  Head of Public Services. Dana received her undergraduate degree in English from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining the JKM Library she worked as the Social Work Librarian at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library. Prior to that, Dana worked as a student worker in Wesleyan’s library during her entire undergraduate career. At Chatham, she has led the way on such initiatives as electronic resources, instruction, and Open Educational Resources(OERs). “Advancing and advocating for OERs for student affordability is something I’m proud of,” Dana commented. “While the workshops Becky Borello and I have done over the past three years have been received well by faculty, working towards a wider institutional effort and acknowledgement of course text affordability for students would be useful.” Dana has also long served on UPC and was an adjunct instructor for IND175 Introduction to Library Resources for the nursing program for several years. Navigating the library through tumultuous times is nothing new for Dana. When she joined the JKM Library, Chatham was in a restructuring process that meant huge shifts for the library. Part of that was the immense task of rebuilding the library’s reputation among the greater campus as a place that could serve faculty and student’s information needs again. This demanded a huge amount of outreach and communication with faculty and other departments across the university. “From that work and those discussions, I was able to understand what faculty and students needed, was able to advocate for resources that met those needs, and also develop and refine library services that best leverage librarians’ skills while serving the Chatham community,” Dana commented. “I’m very proud of being a part of that rebuilding process and having a role in what the JKM[Library] is today.” Dana has been a constant source of thoughtful and pragmatic support for the library and the Chatham community at large. We are delighted to see her lead our team into this new phase. “Looking ahead, I believe there are other collaborative opportunities across campus where the librarians can bring value and insight. Becoming more intentional about those opportunities (which is already in progress) is important. Promoting an understanding of the library as a multifaceted space, the building, our collections, and our services is more important than ever as Chatham looks to move forward with furthering academic excellence and student success.”
Please join us in congratulating Dana in her new leadership role here at Chatham!

January 2024

It’s not uncommon for folks to come into the library and ask where our Young Adult books are. Up until this month, our answer was always, “the Curriculum Collection!” But what is the Curriculum Collection? And   how has it changed this semester? Many academic libraries have something they call the Curriculum Collection, which is a collection of items (mostly physical books) that support the education department. It’s designed to help education students develop curriculum plans for literacy, usually for pre-K through 12th grade students. A typical Curriculum Collection will include popular fiction and nonfiction books for those age ranges, as well as reference texts for college students studying to become teachers. This is a highly specialized collection built for a specific purpose. A Curriculum Collection will include everything from popular picture books for toddlers to YA books for teens and older, all in the same space. This causes some confusion for folks looking for a book to enjoy over the weekend but have to sift through a bunch of picture books to get to the books they actually want to read. The JKM Library’s Curriculum Collection has moved a few times over the last several years. Before the COVID19 lockdowns, it was housed where the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s current exhibit space lives now on the first floor of the library. In order to make room for that exhibit space, the librarians moved the Curriculum Collection to a new room built in Lab 101 specifically for these books. This new room also included (along with the books) furniture and toys for children, a study table, and comfortable seating. It doubled as a space where students who were also parents or guardians could bring their kids while they studied. Librarians understand that childcare is expensive and hard to coordinate, and we were happy to provide a more convenient space for parents to bring their kids while trying to get their own schoolwork done. Over winter break, IT Support Services (which includes the help desk) moved over to the first floor of the JKM Library. This move will be beneficial to students getting work done in the library, but it did mean some changes to the building. The 24/7 space has been decreased but still offers access to plenty of group study space, computers, and printers. The main computer lab has been moved from Lab 101 to room 103, the Teaching and Learning Commons has moved across the first floor to room 111 (and is still closed and undergoing renovations), and the Curriculum Collection has moved again. If you are looking for picture books, children’s nonfiction, specialized literacy reference materials for students studying to be teachers, and some middle grade fiction titles, you can find all of those down on our ground floor on shelving units up against the wall near the study tables. You’ll also find children’s toys and children’s furniture down there, and we encourage you to bring your children with you to the library if needed. Curriculum Collection’s new home on the ground floor near the study tables. Children’s toys are in the plastic bin next to the bookshelves. In order to make this move work (and to fit the Curriculum Collection on those shelves on the ground floor), we made the decision to separate the collection. Traditionally, YA and middle grade titles are included in the Curriculum Collection to help serve the purpose of the collection itself. The JKM Library has separated out our YA and most middle grade titles from the Curriculum Collection and integrated those books with our general circulating collection. They will now be shelved up on the second and third floors with adult nonfiction and fiction. Separating the books does make it more difficult for education students to use the Curriculum Collection for its intended purpose, but we’re working to help preserve the magic of that specialized collection with a browse-able online list. This can also help anyone interested in seeing what YA books we have in our collection. When that list is available, we will share it with the Chatham community. If you are interested in a specific book title or want to know how you can browse our physical book collection in the library building, stop by the main library service desk on the first floor and talk to a librarian. 

November 2023

The library supports faculty and students’ academic pursuits during their time at Chatham by providing access to academic databases, journals, and specialized research services. But the library also supports rest and recreation! Ensuring time for adequate relaxation and creativity supports better physical and mental health and allows for individuals to accomplish more in the long term. To this end, the library has always acquired recreational reading and viewing materials. We purchase bestsellers, comic books, cookbooks, buzzy nonfiction, and popular book club picks alongside our academic titles. And while we’ve always maintained a Popular Reading display, this year we’ve put a spin on it. The library’s new Quick & Easy Reading Display has taken the space of the Popular Reading Display after a request from English as a Second Language faculty inspired ideas around how the library presents its collections. We know that the Chatham community is busy, especially students. We also know that learning English is challenging. It’s not an easy language. But reading engaging books written in English at a more attainable level is a great way to extend proficiency in the language. Thus, the Quick & Easy Reading Display was born. Chatham community members can browse a selection of Young Adult, Middle Grade, and less challenging Adult titles written in English, as well as poetry collections, graphic novels, and comic books. The goal is not to patronize students, but to give them something they can quickly enjoy and easily digest. Stop into the JKM Library today to browse this display, which lives on the built-in bookshelves to the right of the main entrance when you walk in (against the windows). Questions about this or any other displays in the library? Contact Reference & Outreach Librarian Jocelyn Codner.