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Published: 22 August 2017 22 August 2017

Photos by Mary Alice Murphy

Western New Mexico University President Joseph Shepard introduced the new art installation of origami books hanging from the ceiling at Miller Library.

"Origami shapes are used in stealth fighter planes," Shepard said. "Origami shapes have been used in music halls to reflect sound to create perfect acoustics."

He said the art installation is simply part of furnishing the library. He said it wouldn't look like much with only white walls, no books and no furniture or flags and banners.

"This art installation adds to the ambience of our cultural center, the library," Shepard said. "The origami shapes are books. This installation reminds us that libraries are changing."

He said there is science behind how teachers teach, in kindergarten, elementary, high school or college. He said the earliest forms of knowledge were pictographs and petroglyphs. "Art conveys knowledge and has from the beginning of time. Art is the essence of what makes us human. This installation carries a meaning."

He said many would come into the library and never see or pay attention to the installation. Others will see it and wonder why, and still others will interact with it in some way.

"Our designation as a public liberal arts and sciences college helps us create students who can think," Shepard said. "Not only the thinking piece, but what you are thinking about. Our goal is to continue to push forward the arts. Often in tough economic times, the tendency is to cut the arts. That is the antithesis of what we should do."

He said the university has installations at Miller Library, in The Gardens, at the Nursing Building and all throughout campus. "That is precisely what makes us human and what makes us a university."

Alea Henle, Miller Library head of public services librarian, said the library is also holding a contest. "Each book represents 500 searches in 2016-2017, from July 2016-June 2017. These searches online are not only from students, but also from staff, professors and community members. They are searching our database, our home page or federated searches."

As a hint for those wanting to participate in the contest to guess how many searches and what month the most searches came in, she said each book represents at least 500 searches. There are 307 gold books, 180 black books, and 369 purple books. They represent about 428,555 searches.

Andrea Jaquez, public services interlibrary loan supervisor, said it took six weeks to prepare and hang this installation. "Alea had the original idea, but it was student worker, Hannah Gray's idea to do books. We employed the rest of the student staff in folding the covers, folding the pages, gluing them to the filaments and it took Hannah four hours to hang them."

The online form for the contest can be found at https://s.wnmu.edu/LibraryContest .

The installation will be in place through the end of the semester, but the deadline for entering is Oct. 21, with a limit of two entries per person.

Jaquez noted that although not many people are in the library at any given time, "the virtual usage is humming." She said the original idea was to hang small Mustang images, but Gray proposed books.

"Andrea suggested origami," Gray said. "I did a good portion of folding the covers, and pages of scrap paper were used by other work studies to form the inside pages. They glued the filaments to the pages and then we glued them into the books. I hung them with Andrea holding my legs, so I didn't fall off the ladder."