by Grace Eppinger~
Image from Penn State Libraries
In the mood for something quick to read during your next study break? Look no further than our very own Penn State libraries. Since last spring, the University Park campus has been home to five different short story dispensers: two in the Pattee and Paterno Libraries, one in the Physical and Mathematics Sciences Library in Davey Lab, one in the Grange Building, and finally, one in the Schlow Library downtown.
The dispensers are a result of a partnership with the company Short Edition, a French publishing house that specializes in short literature, such as short stories, poetry, and flash fiction. Their online platform and story dispensers have fostered a supportive community of writers around the world.
Hailley Fargo, the Student Engagement and Outreach Librarian here at Penn State, has been working to bring the Short Edition philosophy to the State College community.
“Someone in our facilities department saw it and thought it was a really interesting idea, and so Penn State is actually the first university that got short story dispensers. We’re sort of breaking new ground in that sense,” she says. “What the libraries wanted to do was to get this product…and think about the ways to share literature in a variety of ways.”
Visitors to the dispensers can receive a unique piece of writing upon each visit. Every dispenser has three options to select: one minute, three minutes, and five minutes. Pressing a button will print out a story that takes the amount of time to read as selected. At the top, the story lists the genre, author, and whether or not the story is written by a Penn State student, staff, or faculty member.
The story pictured to the right, generated for me when I personally visited one of the short story dispensers, was written by Penn State student Ellis Stump. Ellis has previously had work published in Kalliope, and she was even featured as part of our Musings project at Klio, which highlights work published in previous editions of Kalliope. Below is a photograph by her first published in Kalliope’s 2016 issue.
Ellis’ photograph in Kalliope’s 2016 issue
When considering what to publish in dispensers, a student Editorial Board reads all potential submissions to the dispensers, which are collected through an online platform. This year, the Board will be accepting both fiction and poetry submissions limited by number of characters.
When looking at the stories, Hailley says that they try to ask, “Is [this story] doing anything new or exciting, or is it sort of following a conventional trope or storyline?”
If a story gets selected for inclusion in the dispenser, it gets published on the PSU Short Edition website as well as in the dispenser, and viewers to the site are able to comment and leave feedback. Readers can also vote for their favorite stories, and the author with the most votes this fall semester will receive a $100 gift card.
In addition, the library holds writing contests with themes to help generate enthusiasm for the project. In the spring of 2018, the theme was New Beginnings. The theme for this fall’s contest is Lost and Found, and the deadline for submissions is November 16th, 2018.
According to Hailley, the biggest obstacle to getting student submissions is figuring out how to let students “know that the dispensers exist.”
“We’re hoping to eventually move the dispensers around campus so that people might run into them in these spaces,” she says.
In addition, some people may express hesitation at the idea of putting their work out there for possible rejection.
“In the spring, anytime someone would print a story I would run up to them and be like, ‘Hi did you know you can submit content to this platform?’ and they were like, ‘Well, that’s cool, but I don’t write,’” she says. “They didn’t want to take that next step of submitting their own content.”
Increasing the amount of content in the dispensers is not the only goal for the Penn State Short Edition project this year—there is also an effort to incorporate the commonwealth campuses. The short story dispensers will be installed at five branch campuses this fall.
“I’m hoping that as the contest grows and more people know about it that we can figure out ways to keep getting content,” Hailley says. “We work really closely with Short Edition because we’re the first university and they’re really excited about what we’re doing…and thinking about how we can bring it beyond Penn State to other places.”
So whether you’re looking for something new to read or a platform to showcase your own writing, the library short story dispensers have something for everyone.