On a blustery, overcast day in February, visitors to Eastern Washington University's Cheney campus could have witnessed a world-renowned scholar, two deans, several faculty members, and a group of students standing in the (dry) fountain in front of JFK Library. Amid much laughter, they snapped pictures of each other standing on the strange stone symbols that rise from the floor of the fountain before trouping into the library for cookies and conversation. The Faculty Reading Room filled to capacity as students crowded in to meet a woman whose work is informed by passion and perseverance.

On February 21, 2007, JFK Library hosted a reception for Denise Schmandt-Besserat, professor emerita of Art and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Texas-Austin. Schmandt-Besserat's book How Writing Came About was chosen by American Scientist as one of the top one hundred books that shaped science in the twentieth century. In her research on the clay tokens of Mesopotamia, Schmandt-Besserat outlines the development of these small figures (used to track crops and livestock) into abstract symbols on tablets, the precursor to cuneiform. Her work has influenced disciplines ranging from mathematics and economics to education and art. Her latest book, When Writing Met Art (University of Texas Press, 2007), builds on the earlier research and argues that the development of writing had a profound impact on Middle Eastern art.

Schmandt-Besserat's research was the inspiration for artist Gloria Bornstein when she was commissioned to create a work of public art for the remodel and expansion of JFK Library in 1998. Bornstein created the fountain titled "From One to Z" as a tribute to the pre-writing system explored in Schmandt-Besserat's work:

Making connections between people, land, history, and culture, the stream's embedded stepping stones were developed from "tokens" -- an archaic record-keeping device that established the continuity between the invention of abstract counting and incised signs of writing.
Gloria Bornstein, plaque on "From One to Z"

Until the gray day in February, Denise Schandt-Besserat had no idea the fountain existed. Her delight was evident as she took photographs of the students and faculty who gathered to ask questions and share in the experience.

As an academic library whose mission is to stimulate and support intellectual inquiry, we help faculty and students connect with ideas, history, culture, and each other. One of the library's strategic objectives is to "provide a virtual and physical environment that encourages intellectual inquiry and stimulates connections between students and faculty." This event provided an opportunity to make such connections and to celebrate the scholarship of an extraordinary woman.