E-books: How do they work?

Things have slowed down a lot here at the Library. The sheet where we keep our statistics is much whiter than it used to be, and the building has quieted down considerably. It's kind of nice, but a little dull between projects.

To enliven things a little bit, I read through The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I guess you could call this a young-adult book, which is okay with me, because some of the most interesting novels being written these days are being written for the 11-17 age group (with certain notable exceptions, such as a certain vampire-themed series I won't name here).

I briefly mentioned The Hunger Games in a previous post as a recommendation, but didn't think anything of it beyond a decent premise. Boy, how wrong I was.

It's a terrific book! You've got this young woman, Katniss, who lives in the poorest of 12 districts centered on the Capitol. Her district is the furthest out and is mostly focused on coal mining; starvation is rampant, while the few merchants and business owners live fairly comfortably. There's a healthy black market, to which the Capitol's enforcers turn a blind eye, and Katniss ekes out a basic living for her mother (who hasn't been the same since her husband died) and her younger sister by hunting in a forbidden section of the woods with a boy she's known her entire life. It's not a very good life by the most generous of definitions, but she does all right with what she has. She's a survivor.

In Katniss's country (which stretches from the Capitol, located in present-day Denver, to the Appalachians, where Katniss lives), a yearly event involves a lottery drawing in which teenagers are required to participate. This lottery results in one boy and one girl from each district being sent to the Capitol, where they must participate in the eponymous Hunger Games.

However, something nasty happens; this year just so happens to be the first year Katniss's younger sister, Prim, becomes eligible for the drawing. Because of the way the lottery is set up, the odds of a first-year candidate's name coming up are astronomically low, but Prim is selected. Katniss freaks out and volunteers to go in her little sister's place, which is allowable by an old and little-used rule.

In general, the book between this point and the actual Games itself is by far the most interesting part. That's not to say it's the only interesting part -- all of it is good -- but it's certainly thought-provoking. After volunteering, Katniss is immediately whisked off to the Capitol, where she has her very first encounter with an abundance of food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, and money. Meals are intricately detailed, surroundings richly described, clothing exulted in. It's an interesting perspective, because although, of course, this is a different culture than ours, there are enough similarities that lead you to wonder what a diamond miner from the darkest regions of the Congo would think if he saw New York, courtesy of Donald Trump.

Of course, I forgot to mention the boy sent to the Capitol along with Katniss; the son of the local baker, he lives more comfortably than most in their district. The two of them have history -- he did her a significant kindness in one of the darkest periods of a an already-dark life -- but, in the poisonous atmosphere of the Games and the industry surrounding it, she questions his motivations and embarks on a little adventure in paranoia culminating in the Games.

The Games are set up in a very interesting way. A large area of land -- whether woods, desert (unpopular because the competitors die too quickly), mountains, whatever -- is sectioned off, wired with cameras and microphones, and booby-trapped. A cornucopia is put in the middle of the initial staging area, full of important supplies, which the competitors have to scramble for when the starting gun goes off. Of course, a good number of players are killed in the initial scramble, and the rest disperse to ally with one another and strategize their way through the competition. The whole point is to have only one person left alive.

It sounds pretty dark, and it is -- the wealthiest districts train all of their kids for participation in the Hunger Games, while the poorest districts see it as a possible way out of crushing poverty for the survivor. The odds are against the poorer players, though; a lifetime without proper nutrition and medical care works against them. District 12, Katniss's district, though poor, is the sole exception; they see it in its true light as a way of subjugating the population and emphasizing the power of the government centered on the Capitol. Katniss manages to outlive all but a few of the players, but this means she has to fight for her life against the most efficient killers in the Capitol.

I devoted a lot of space in this post to The Hunger Games because it's probably one of the best pure-fiction books I've read so far this year, and that is saying a lot. Recommended!

Now, moving on ...

I said last week that I'd talk a little bit about e-books today. Some folks do get a little confused about how they really work, mostly because, I think, they have an image in their mind of a PDF they can download, save to their computer, cell phone, or e-reader, and carry around with them. At the very least, they can print it out, right?

Not ... really. This would be the point where I embark on a rant about ridiculous proprietary software restrictions and digital rights management and so on and so forth. There's some debate happening right now on the "right" way to distribute published texts electronically for profit, and we won't go into that today (unfortunate, because I had an awesome metaphor all ready to go, involving Lunchables!).

Basically, an e-book is an electronic book; it's generally a text that's been scanned or published digitally in some form. E-books are distributed in a few different ways; some are totally free to read and play around with (like most of Cory Doctorow's work, including Makers and Little Brother, everything in Project Gutenberg, and many things in Google Books), while others require special software and carry restrictions depending on the publisher and distributors.

In the case of the Gallaudet University Library, the e-books available are of the latter kind. Proprietary formats and the protection of the rights of the people producing and distributing the work is more or less typical of academic publishing; if you've ever had to buy textbooks for a class, you know how expensive they can be. This is because of the various contracts at play here; usually, the author has some rights, the university where the author works has some rights, and the publisher has some rights, and they all need to make some money. Fortunately, if you're a Gallaudet student or faculty or staff member, you have free access through the Gallaudet University Library!

Most of the e-books you'll find in our catalog will open inside the distributor's e-reading software; it's usually eBrary, one of our biggest providers. Occasionally, you'll come across a book with both a print copy in our collection and an electronic copy online, which is nice if you're not the only one researching your topic; classmates and other researchers can get access to the same book electronically without competing with one another for a single print resource.

However, we do sometimes have restrictions on use, which are outlined in the e-book's record in ALADIN Discovery. You'll see a note in the Item availability area of a record that'll tell you if you can only view the e-book for two hours at a time, or if only one person can view it at a time. For example, take a look at the record for Everything you need to know about deafness; you'll see under Location in "Item availability" the following:

GA: UNIV Electronic Book--Two Hour Limit

It's fairly self-explanatory. However, not a lot of our e-books have 2-hour limits or viewing restrictions; the vast majority of our e-book holdings are available through eBrary, and they generally don't restrict viewing of the material. They do, however, limit the ability to print; I've seen e-books that only allow you to print up to 9 pages at a time, while others allow 60 or 100. Again, this is mostly because of licensing and copyright. Still, we do our best to purchase e-books from less-restrictive distributors like eBrary -- that's why so many of our electronic holdings are from them.

Now, access. People usually have a problem with this, because the link to actually get into the book isn't surrounded by flashing lights; it's just one link among quite a few in your average record. However, each record usually has at least two links you can use; one in the URL field near the top of the record and one in "Item availability" near the bottom in the Linked resources field (take a look at the above record for Everything you need to know about deafness to see what I mean). For the most part, if you're on campus, clicking on either link will take you straight to the e-book. If you're off-campus, you'll need to log in in the same way as any of our other electronic resources; this means that if you're not a Gallaudet-affiliated individual with a Gallaudet ID number or Library bar code number, you won't be able to get in.

Once you're in ... well, I will be the first to admit that the e-reader interface is usually less than intuitive. Some people like it, and some people don't; I know faculty who have their own (free) accounts with eBrary, which allows them to save bookmarks and highlighted passages in our e-books to their account, but this feature isn't used very much by students. Still, accounts are free and available to anyone who needs this kind of functionality.

So why do we have e-books at all? First, because they do represent a significant pool of available knowledge that can only benefit our collection. There are plenty of fantastic books in there, especially if you're exploring more esoteric subjects like, for example, proteomics (the large-scale study of proteins, their structures, and their functions). We do have a few print books on the subject, but the majority of our holdings in the field are e-books. Depending on the circumstance, this can mean that access to e-books is superior to access to scholarly articles; most articles are very narrowly focused on specific aspects of a particular field and the general overviews usually contained therein are too brief to offer a useful understanding of the field at large.

Second, they're fairly cheap; we can get a big block of thousands of books at a significantly lower cost than print. Actually publishing books on paper isn't getting any cheaper, while distributing them electronically is. This is a fact of our lives today, and we do benefit from it.

Third, e-books are a terrific way to stay current in your field of research. Print books can sometimes be outdated by the day we get them, two weeks after we ordered them -- another mixed blessing of our age. This way, eBrary or our other e-book providers can swap out outdated books for newer editions almost instantly, thereby ensuring access to up-to-date and in-depth information.

And fourth, they are, on the whole, easier to work with than printed text in some ways. For one, they're searchable; it's much easier to zero in on the exact chapter or passage that you want without having to search through the entire book. E-books can save a lot of time and headaches.

In general, e-books are great resources to have for research purposes. Granted, they're not perfect -- the air is still being massaged out of the pipes of this new mode of access to information -- but their benefits outweigh their inconveniences.

Next week, a more in-depth look at some examples of our e-books. We've got some fun ones!

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Question of the Week
I noticed that the way you capitalize book titles is pretty weird. I was always taught that you capitalize every word except prepositions, articles, and conjunctions, but you usually only capitalize the first word and proper nouns -- except for the books you review every week. What's up with that?
What's up with that? Well, I'm weird in general. If that answer isn't enough to satisfy you, try this: I'm an APA guy.

What? That's not good enough? Well ... okay. See, for books I read for pleasure, I usually capitalize them the way I was taught in my English classes growing up, basically the same way you were. However, for academic titles, I've fallen into the habit of using the APA citation style's capitalization rules for book and article titles in references, which usually mandates that you capitalize only the first word, any proper nouns, and the first word in a subtitle. Everything else is in lower case. Journal titles, like the ones I listed in my previous post, have every major word capitalized, also according to APA.

What can I say? Academic indoctrination can be very effective, especially when you've been involved with one university or another for close to a decade. But why the difference between books I read for pleasure and scholarly texts? Call it an idiosyncrasy. Diff'rent strokes ...

exploring our e-journals

I guess this blog is becoming an amalgam of weather reports, book reviews, library information, and questions. The truth is, I've noticed that many of this blog's readers originate from outside the Washington metropolitan area, some as far-flung as the other side of the world -- hi, guys -- and noting the weather of the week has become a habit. Gallaudet is, after all, an institution in our nation's capital, and has been for almost 150 years, so we have strong ties to our place.

So, the report: finally clear and sunny today after a long, cold, rainy week. When I was riding to work the other day, another Gallaudet staff member complained that she was still wearing winter clothes -- and it's the middle of May! The weather this year has been odd, and I am fervently praying that this means a mild summer, not the drippingly humid underworld of last year. We'll see.

This week, I took one of my own recommendations (found in this post, back in March) and read Heresy: A Thriller by S.J. Parrish. Yes, I admit it; the New Book Cart Day recommendations don't necessarily mean I've read the book itself. I do read their book reviews, though, and usually go for some of the most interesting finds, and when I do get around to reading them, I'm invariably proven correct.

That was the case for Heresy. It's every bit as interesting as its basic premise sounds; although it doesn't actually focus on the debate between the main character, Giordano Bruno, and the rector of Oxford, Underhill, about cosmology (an actual historical event), it does focus on the murders (which are fictional), creating a case that's both spooky and utterly ordinary for Elizabethan England. Most of the murders are locked-room mysteries; speculation is rampant about the supernatural nature of the killer. Bruno has to cut through all of this twaddle and ferret out the real murderer, who turns out to be wrapped up in a Papist conspiracy in a Britain ruled by an Anglican monarch and where Catholicism is severely -- and publicly -- punished.

A major part of Heresy's appeal is the believability of the environment that Parrish creates; you really feel like you're there in 16th-Century Oxford. It rains all the time, there's mud everywhere, and Catte Street is a major destination of the Oxford dons (for this to make sense, consider the word "cathouse"). A bunch of foreign aristocrats are running around and Philip Sidney, a well-known author, poet, and diplomat, groans at the idea of entertaining them. In the meantime, Bruno displays the intelligence, wit, and cutting sarcasm for which the actual historical figure is especially noted, befriending the lower class instead of currying favors with his noble patrons. This helps him win out in the end and save a few lives.

In general, it's crazy gripping; I finished it in a couple of days because the suspense kept building up in classic detective-novel fashion. It also introduces you to the ideas that were extant at the time, like Aristotelian notions about the structure of the heavens, the class system, and life at one of the West's oldest universities. For more information about the real Giordano Bruno, Wikipedia's a good place to start. Fascinating guy!

So it's summertime now. This means that there isn't a whole lot of new Library stuff I can report on at the moment; we have several major projects (or at least I do) in the works, but they don't bear a lot of public scrutiny until they're done. I'll report on those later on in the summer, as we get closer to the fall.

In the meantime, from this point on, at least until early-to-middle August, you can expect some more posts that explore our holdings. Instead of expounding at great length on how to perform searches or locate various items in the stacks, those posts will be general overviews of what those items are: What do we have? Why do we have them? What are they about? Why are they interesting? For questions on how to find them, refer to the following posts:

• How to find books, films, and other items in the catalog
• How to find electronic journals
• How to get into e-Journals, databases, and other ALADIN functions from off-campus
  

All three of the above posts are enumerated; they're all parts of two or three different series I've done on related topics, so if the above doesn't quite work for you, find the previous or next parts. Those will almost certainly have what you need. If all else fails, ask a librarian, whether in person or through the information on our contact page.

So this week, I'll take a look at some of our more interesting (and obscure) electronic journals. They're interesting for reasons beyond simple research; not only do they represent the breadth of the research available to folks who work or go to school at Gallaudet, but they also represent its depth. Just bear in mind that many of them are accessible as part of an overall package we subscribe to, so it's not as though we're spending money specifically on topics that don't always come up in the average discussion -- they're sort of the fringe benefits, and what benefits they are!

Here goes:

Nineteenth-Century Literature (ProQuest)
Almost immediately contradicting what I said in the previous paragraph, this is a resource that's tremendously useful for most of the students in our English classes; in fact, last year, the English department's Capstone presentations revolved around crime in Victorian literature, which dovetails neatly with this journal. It covers everything, American and British literature, as well as the literary culture emerging in India under the Raj. You get analyses of Emily Dickinson compared to contemporary writers, Victorian-era vampire literature quite aside from Bram Stoker's Dracula, and studies about modern-day argument as a rhetorical strategy based on Parliamentary proceedings of the 19th Century. It's good reading and very useful research.

Renaissance Quarterly (Ebscohost)
Don't worry; I'll move on from the literary and artistic stuff soon enough. It just happens to be my specialty, so this is the kind of thing that catches my eye. Anyway, RQ goes even further back than Nineteenth-Century Literature and is more multidisciplinary; one article published this year examines Albertus Magnus, a 13th-Century monk who was the subject of attempted canonization as a saint three centuries later; one significant obstacle preventing this was the fact that he was a well-known magician. Not the Siegfried & Roy kind of magician; I'm talking full-on Merlin's-beard, Harry-Potter stuff.

Philosophy of Science (Ebscohost)
I like the title, but I'm not sure about the stuff it has in it. What is 'multiple realization,' why does it matter, and how come people are arguing about it? Heck, it's just fun to read stuff that you're pretty sure is English but which makes no sense. If, however, you're genuinely interested in the systematic exploration of the epistemological processes behind scientific discovery, this might be the journal for you. Incidentally, multiple realization, based on my reading of a random article, appears to be the various applications of a basic kind of science -- kind of like astrophysics, nuclear physics and orbital mechanics, which are different ways in which the underlying discipline of applying physical laws is realized. One cool example I found: it's like two different kinds of corkscrews. They both get the cork out of the bottle, but do it in two different ways.

Journal of American Folklore (Project MUSE)
Interesting title to begin with, fascinating subject matter. For example, when your friend tells a joke at a dinner party, you may have noticed that some people think it's hilarious, while others don't think it's funny at all. Why is that? Apparently, "unlaughter" serves as a means of delineating boundaries between social groups; people who identify with one group may find a specific joke funny, while those who identify with a different group find nothing funny about it. The 2006 fracas over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Denmark, albeit extreme, serves as a good example of this. Apparently, this is significant research, because folklorists and those who study humor have focused mostly on the guy telling the joke, not the people who have to listen to it.

Religion and American Culture (ProQuest)
It sort of goes without saying that religion plays a large part in our culture -- especially in politics -- these days, but was it always that way? Well, yes; we can trace the history of the current wave of colonization of the New World directly to a group of religious refugees. Things aren't quite so simple, though; the modern-day evangelical movement notwithstanding, there have been other groups in the United States whose spiritual beliefs have shaped our history, such as a group of Japanese Buddhists who engendered the San Francisco poetry renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s, which led to the hippie movement, which ... well, you get the idea.

Supreme Court Review (LexisNexis)
The Supreme Court Review is a collection of summaries of Supreme Court judgments, released annually, that critically analyzes the decisions made by the Supreme Court each year, places them in historical, social, and political contexts, and offers a useful primer on the decisions which are made on the behalf of both the people and the government. The analyses in the Review are written by historians, political scientists, law professors, judges, economists, and policy planners. The annual summaries are fascinating to read; you really get an idea of how the Court works, the personalities of the justices, and the impacts their decisions can have.

Journal of Aesthetic Education (Project MUSE)
Now there's an esoteric name. "Aesthetic education" refers mostly to the fine arts, as well as theater; you see articles about art and porn, conceptual models of stagecraft, and the pedagogy of Rembrandt. Highly useful for academic work in fairly rarefied disciplines or upper-level undergraduate or graduate work in theater or art history; engrossing if you're just a museum and theater buff like me.

Journal of Nietzsche Studies (Project MUSE)
Yup, Nietzsche (of "God is dead" fame) gets his very own journal. One article I came across grabbed my attention right way: Francis Fukuyama, a writer who said that we reached "the end of history" in 1989 with the failure of the Soviet Union, is compared with Nietzsche in terms of their social philosophies. Nietzsche has typically been associated with the American left because of his refusal to subscribe to moral absolutism; morality, he says, is a human projection on nature. However, the right has appropriated him because of his support for traditional institutions as being essential to a functioning society. However, Nietzsche implied that the ultimate effect of modernity is the death of thymos, or human spiritedness -- which is why he's usually associated with nihilists, those depressing people who wear black and look anemic all the time. Fukuyama argues that this is not necessarily true, which places him in opposition to his own political mainstream.

Okay, I admit this is probably not very interesting to you. But I studied Fukuyama in my undergraduate years and had plenty of friends who considered themselves Nietzschean at the time, so it's a long-standing interest for me.

Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society (Ebscohost)
Judaism is one of the world's oldest religions still in practice today, and its influence remains strong. Israel is one of the most technologically-advanced societies in the world, and Jewish thought, humor, and philosophy are an important part of American culture. Just look at Woody Allen, for crying out loud. This journal's a good read, examining everything from intermarriage in 20th-Century America to a debate over an ancient law set down before the rise of the Roman Empire, which is characteristic of a system of belief that values interpretation much more highly than most.

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (ProQuest)
One of the oldest and most-respected feminist journals in the country, Frontiers covers a broad range of topics in the context of feminist theory, women's history, and philosophical thought on gender, with a focus on drawing in material that attracts people outside of academic disciplines. For instance, there's a lot of poetry, art, and criticism of work in various media. One article I found that was especially interesting was a review of a feminist methodologist's discussion of the concept of "paradigm" in scientific research and its epistemological implications; specifically, the establishment of a normalized science places boundaries around it that imply that science is a "special" kind of knowledge that is hegemonic in nature, ignoring "the Other/the Rest." As a layman, I'm inclined to think so myself -- science is special! -- but it's an engrossing argument.

Okay ... that's enough for now. Please bear in mind that the stuff I've covered here isn't just a drop in the bucket; it's a drop in the ocean. This post represents a vanishingly small cross-section of the volume of information that's available in the Library. The famous Library of Alexandria didn't have nearly as much in it. And it's all available to Gallaudet students, staff, and faculty for free.

Again, I'd like to remind you: If you have any questions, please feel free to contact a librarian! Here's the page again, in case you're worn out from this little adventure through our electronic offerings!

Next week, a look at e-books as the first of a two-parter: Part 1 will talk about what they are and what purpose they serve, while Part 2 will look at some of what's available.

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Question of the Week
I want to show a film as part of a campus event, but I heard I had to make sure things were okay with the copyright. Can the Library help me with that?
Yes, we can. Sarah Hamrick, our Director of Library Public Services, is very knowledgeable of common copyright issues and can offer suggestions on what to do to make sure everything's legal and above-board. You can e-mail us at library.help@gallaudet.edu for in-depth help or come in and ask at the Service Desk!

New books for the summer

Another indecisive week for our weather. Cool and rainy, hot and rainy, cool and not rainy, hot and not rainy. I'm kind of over it and would like to pack my jacket away ...

Anyway, to insulate myself from the vicissitudes of our weather, I injected some heat into my life by picking up Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. No nonfiction, no "serious" fiction -- ha -- just flat-out mayhem. It's the story of a magician who is torn away from the woman he loves and tricked into Hell by his friends, where he spends eleven years fighting -- and defeating -- the worst monsters the abyss can throw at him. He finally escapes into modern-day Los Angeles and discovers that things have changed. Not only can one "have Internet" on one's cell phone, but his girlfriend was murdered shortly after his exile, and the leader of the group that sent him to Hell has become something rather godlike.

Upon realizing this -- which involves our main character digging himself out of a grave and immediately robbing a young businessman of all of his money and clothes -- he embarks on what could be called the quintessential rampage and seeks revenge, starting with decapitating one of his old friends within several minutes of his emergence on Earth and keeping the severed head alive for information and abuse as he searches for the people responsible for what has happened to him. Along with an immortal Frenchman, a contemporary punk, a fallen angel, and a few tricks up his sleeve, he tears up LA, leveling city blocks, making friends with the local bartender by tearing apart the neighborhood skinhead extortioners, and discovering the real story behind the creation of the world.

In a nutshell, it's Constantine without the lousy acting and paper-thin plot and with a much, much higher body count. Totally brainless and it doesn't demand anything from you except a little credulity, so it's a good read for when you want a break from the heavy stuff.

As promised, here are a few more breaks from the heavy stuff, fresh off the book-cart and wrapped in today's newspaper:

Graphic Novels

Fables: Legends in Exile
The first installment of the popular Fables series, this volume introduces the reader to the world of the Fables, living storybook characters that have been exiled to our world following a huge war. When I say "living," that's what I mean -- the characters you normally associate with Disney are here turned into gangsters, prostitutes, power-mongers, dictators, and cops, among many other things. The adventure begins with the murder of Rose Red -- Mayor Snow White's sister -- and the subsequent investigation by the Big Bad Wolf. All the volumes are fantastic reads, and we have several available on the shelf.

Y: The Last Man
This series is set after a mysterious plague kills every single male mammal on the face of the Earth -- except two. Yorick and his pet Capuchin monkey, Ampersand, find themselves navigating a world desperate to ensure the perpetuation of the human species, whether through medical advances or sheer bloody-minded conflict. It's fascinating to look at the author's conceptions of a world run by women, and the social upheaval this implies. Gender roles are upended for a certain segment of the population, and interpersonal interaction becomes very different. It's definitely not a graphic novel for chauvinists!

Black Hole
A small town in the 1970s is suddenly afflicted with a mysterious disease of unknown origin. It's a fairly typical premise, except that this particular disease is sexually transmitted among teenagers, and it causes their bodies to mutate in unpredictable ways. The mutations vary from the barely-noticeable, like an extra mouth in your clavicle that can be disguised by a t-shirt, to the dramatic, which can alter your entire appearance and turn you into something that resembles the walking dead. The infected are perfectly healthy (except for The Bug) but are ostracized by their town, for both their physical appearance and what that appearance signifies in terms of their morality, and forced to live in the woods. Black Hole follows the stories of two of those students: a young, attractive woman who sleeps with the wrong boy and finds herself shedding her skin on a weekly basis, and a young man who can't ever seem to get laid -- until he does and grows tentacles out of his sides. It's surreal, sweet, and incredibly disturbing; the art is spooky but the story is engrossing.

Britten and Brülightly
A noirish detective tale, this graphic novel follows Britten, a private-eye who looks French but is actually South American, as he investigates the apparent suicide of his client's husband and uncovers a creepy family conspiracy with ties to organized crime. It's a thin book, but the plot is appropriately moody; so is the art, which is fantastic for this genre. The capper, of course, is that his partner is a talking teabag that lives in his coat.

A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge
A nonfiction graphic novel that tells the story of several New Orleans residents and their lives after Hurricane Katrina, this book is, in a word, incredible. It only takes the author a dozen panels to fully depict what happened to the city in the hurricane. It's an unbelievable representation of one of the worst -- if not the worst -- natural disasters in American history.

Novels

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
More or less self-explanatory. From the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes the story of our 16th President and his secret double life as a vampire slayer -- er, hunter. Based on "secret diaries" given to the author by a major player in the story, this book details the course of Lincoln's life as he discovers that vampires are real, and that his family has had tragic run-ins with them. As he grows older, he begins to hunt them by night while working as a lawyer and politician during the day. After he eventually becomes president, he discovers that Confederate vampires plan to set off a civil war so they can feast on the remains and decides to fight back. Truthfully, it's just a retelling of the real story, with vampires added (guess what John Wilkes Booth really was?), but it's done very well, and ends on a lighter note with Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, which is attended by -- well, read the book!

Backing into Forward: A Memoir
If you've ever read The Phantom Tollbooth, you're familiar with Jules Feiffer's work -- he illustrated the book. He's also been a syndicated cartoonist for over 60 years, although he's mostly done stuff that appears in the likes of the Village Voice more than newspaper comic strips. In any case, his autobiography is fascinating; if you're a fan of Kerouac and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (my review is linked), you'll see elements of both in Backing into Forward. An eminently worthwhile read.

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang
Chelsea Handler comes back with her third collection of essays, jokes, and stories. After the success of My Horizontal Life and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, she appears to have been encouraged to write again. And it's funny ... I just wouldn't recommend it for people who aren't into extremely, extremely off-color anecdotes ...

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
One of the most-lauded books of the year (thus far), this novel follows the story of Major Pettigrew, a sort of quintessential Englishman who is struggling against his unscrupulous family to reclaim a heirloom rifle after the death of his younger brother. Although he also struggles to pass his traditional values on to his son -- who can be most kindly described as a "yuppie" -- he falls into an untraditional friendship with a Pakistani shopkeeper from his neighborhood. It all sounds fairly boring but it's done with a terrific dry wit, and as the plot comes to a head, things get exciting. Almost a modern-day comedy of manners with a nice dash of romance.

Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight
The title is fairly fanciful, and so is the book. It tells the story of a few Russian slum residents who cope with the strangeness of post-Soviet life by escaping into their dreams. There isn't much of a plot -- not a whole lot of explosions or misadventures happen -- but the fleshed-out characters and the odd natures of their individual lives make this novel an absorbing read.

Nonfiction

Love Letters of Great Men and Love Letters of Great Women
As promised, these are two collections of love letters from poets, kings, queens, presidents, authors, politicians, and philosophers. Although it can be hard to get over the sappiness of some of those letters, they offer fascinating insights into the minds -- and hearts -- of people whose names live on today. Good stuff if you're into mushy romance or truly outstanding prose from those best-suited to spout expressions of the ineffable.

Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens
Written to commemorate the centennial of Clemens's death, this book explores the singularly crowded life of one of America's greatest authors. The book itself is written as a comprehensive overview of both Clemens's life and work, mixing analyses of Huckleberry Finn and other works with an exploration of Clemens's complex attitudes toward slavery, American life, and religion in turn-of-the-century Vienna. It's a good way to get to know the man himself and understand his work in the context in which it was undertaken. He's one of my favorite authors, although that's more because of the person he was than because of his work, and it's a terrific book.

Things That Make Us [sic]: The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar Takes on Madison Avenue, Hollywood, the White House, and the World
From the founder of SPOGG comes this hilarious answer to Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a guide to grammar in the modern-day world. Although I think we can safely say that this premise has been done to death -- I've read six or seven books based on this idea since I started working here a year and a half ago -- Things That Make Us [sic] addresses more interesting stuff like spam, The Princess Bride, LOLcats, and letters sent to David Hasselhoff and George W. Bush. And it's funny; if you've read SPOGG's blog, you have a fairly good idea of how snarky the author can be, and she pulls it off beautifully here.

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan
Published in conjunction with one of the first American exhibitions of Pakistani contemporary art, this book is gorgeous. It offers an unparalleled look at art in Pakistan today and the issues affecting Pakistani society in the wake of the past several decades of struggle and conflict in the region. It's a good way to overcome preconceived notions about life in Pakistan; complementary essays place the works in important cultural, historical and artistic contexts. It's easy to think of Pakistan in terms of news headlines, but the country -- and its people -- are so much more than that, and this book reflects that and offers a valuable aesthetic perspective.

Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories
Groan-worthy pun notwithstanding, this has to be one of the most fascinating books I've seen recently. The title covers it all; this is a collection of stories associated with important pieces of architecture, which are taken as both settings and symbols of their times, places, and cultures. It's not strictly accurate, though: the book actually ends with a chapter at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, titled "In which everything, and nothing at all, has changed." That should give you an idea of the important overviews both of history and of the importance of place in individual lives offered by this book.

Sixteen books in today's post. I'm tired. No Question of the Week in honor of graduation. I'll see you next week.

Good luck to all of our graduates!

Preview: The advent of summer

Our climate appears to be a little indecisive. Last week, things were chilly for a few days, and this week, we've been living with some truly misbegotten humidity coupled with temperatures in the 80s. I am pretty sure we were supposed to have a spring; possibly it came and went at some point in the wee hours one night last month. And now it's time to sweat ...

Fortunately, there's one nice, low-impact activity one can undertake in the out-of-doors, under the shade of a tree, on a chaise lounge by the pool, or on your beach towel as you slowly sizzle: reading!

People say winter's the best time for undertaking the pursuit of a Good Book -- all those hours spent indoors away from the cold and snow naturally lend themselves to a comfortable chair, some hot chocolate, and the latest bestseller -- but I'm a summer guy myself. The National Arboretum, for instance, close to campus, offers tons of spots to relax in when you're in the mood to get close to nature and all the attendant insects; the hill leading up to the western facade of the Capitol, on the other hand, lets you people-watch at the same time. Or even on the green in the middle of campus, which allows for some quiet time and the chance to socialize with passersby.

During my weird weekend last week, I managed to grab some time to slip through Cory Doctorow's Makers. You might remember my review -- written, not-so-coincidentally, last summer -- of his Little Brother. In this case, though, the rebellion isn't against the government, but against Disney. Doctorow has a thing for Disney; it plays a part in most of his novels. He seems to be pretty conflicted: on the one hand, he's captivated by the magic Disney accomplishes through metric tons of papier-mache, but on the other hand, he hates its corporate soullessness and cutthroat protection of intellectual property.

Anyway, in Makers, we follow the careers of Perry and Lester, two renegade engineers who stumble into some major funding from a business genius and accidentally spawn a movement based on the reuse of junk to create weird contraptions; one item you see consistently throughout the novel is a little humanoid robot made of seashells that makes toast. There's also Lester's obsession with creating difference engines out of various materials, like a basic computer built out of hundreds of used soda cans that can perform arithmetic using brown M&Ms. The emergence of 3D printers that can build almost anything quickly and cheaply really gooses the trend and gets a huge percentage of the American population involved.

There's a whole do-it-yourself aesthetic that creates viable economic communities out of squatter camps full of homeless people, and which leads naturally to a theme-park-style ride built in an abandoned Wal-Mart that collects all the fantastically weird stuff that comes out of this movement and lets people vote different things in or out of each segment of the ride. As the ride phenomenon spreads, its various franchises become networked, so that any changes effected by the participants in one part of the country gets propagated throughout the whole system, and a strangely coherent narrative emerges from this collective subconsciousness.

Of course, Disney hates this; the ride, in all its incarnations across the country, directly competes with Disney World, and even the company's own employees are slowly becoming addicted. As Disney scrambles to compete, revamping Fantasyland into a dark, twisted, Goth theme park, things come to a head when disappointed employees start contributing Disney-trademarked stuff to Perry and Lester's ride and Disney immediately takes the opportunity to file an injunction to shut them down. This leads to a fifteen-year lawsuit, the legal process of which, in a burst of financial innovation, is immediately parceled out and sold off to investors looking for a long-term return.

The book is classic Doctorow. Although the main focus is the do-it-yourself lifestyle and its relationship with innovation, it pulls in a lot of ancillary weirdness that makes the world seem a little more fleshed out. For instance, Lester, morbidly obese at the beginning of the book, suddenly pioneers a new procedure that allows overweight people to slim down and muscle up in a matter of weeks -- as long as they consume 10,000 calories per day. This results in the "fatkins," a class of people who are ridiculously good-looking, constantly consume food, and are incredibly lazy. However, as the book continues along its forty-year arc, tragic physiological consequences begin to emerge, eventually impacting Lester himself and lending the end of the book extra emotional weight (which doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he dies, so I'm certainly not giving anything away here).

In general, three thumbs up!

Now that I'm done gushing -- I'm an avid Doctorow fanboy -- what's going on this summer? In the words of each librarian:

Diana Gates
I will be working on the Deaf LibGuides and pathfinders. We will be identifying videos for a video preservation project. I plan to continue with the Deaf Subject file. As usual, I will wrap up and close my "file" on this year's deaf orders and prepare orders for next year.

Laura Jacobi
Just like Bing Crosby in White Christmas, I'm taking the train to Vermont with my pals for several days of hiking -- a great time to catch up on gossip and reading (alas, not singing like Bing). At the Library, I'll be working on a project to reduce costs by cutting subscriptions to little-used items; training staff and student assistants; and writing LibGuides for Fall courses.

Jim McCarthy
Weeding, weeding, and weeding. I also have a backlog of donated items that will be cleared out this summer. I'll also be working on a slight redesign of library.gallaudet.edu, creating tutorials for some of our resources, and, as always, reading a lot and blogging about it. I also plan to attend the American Library Association conference for the very first time! And maybe get a tan ...

Patrick Oberholtzer
I'll be developing and updating LibGuides for my courses, Weeding, weeding, weeding books and journals, working on the Deaf FAQ Web pages, and attending ALA. I also plan to update and expand my technology and software skills by enrolling in courses in Arlington County Education courses as time permits.

Jane Rutherford
Weeding OLD education books that have not been used in 10 years or more. Cleaning up the general periodical shelves and making sure those records in our ALADIN system are correct and understandable. Preparing to retire the end of August by trashing, redistributing, or taking home the things in my office.

The upshot of what you can expect: Cleaner and more up-to-date shelves, more LibGuides and other online resources, a somewhat redesigned Web page, and one less long-time librarian. We're sorry to see Jane go, but very excited on her behalf -- she's earned her retirement many times over, as you can see from all of our plans for this summer; we don't stop when graduation ends.

Next week, you get to look forward to another list of new books!

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Question of the Week
Does the Library have any videophones?
This is a question that's come up a few times in the past few weeks. I'm not sure why; I could have sworn this was general knowledge. Since it doesn't seem to be, here goes: We have four videophones available for public use, all of which are on the first floor. Three of them are in booths next to the men's room, while there's one in a cubicle in the Deaf Library Study Center near the women's bathroom; the cubicle is tucked away in the corner immediately to the right of the entrance to the room and is easy to miss, so look carefully. It's also usually occupied.

Some summer questions and free coffee

The end of the semester is inching ever closer. We're all suffused with fearful anticipation!

To that end, the Library, in its infinite beneficence (and you'd better believe it, buster), is offering free coffee starting this Sunday, April 25, through Wednesday, April 28, from 8-10 p.m. on the first floor by the Service Desk. We offer sweeteners of varying chemical compositions, creamer, stirrers, a little candy, and while they last, free travel mugs!

I'll admit something shameful: we actually offered coffee earlier this week, from Monday until Wednesday. It totally slipped my mind last week when I was writing my post then. Still, our coffee hour does not seem to have suffered in popularity thereby -- it seems we are not the only ones not getting much sleep in the face of finals week.

Speaking of not getting much sleep, I read The World According to Garp by John Irving. That book's a "yikes" all around. It's about T.S. Garp, a fellow who was raised by a woman who impregnated herself upon the carcass of a comatose (and terminal) soldier specifically so she would not have to deal with the father of her child while she raised him, a tactic that roils 1950s America: as she rears Garp, she writes an autobiography that almost becomes her own hagiography and carries her to worldwide fame. With such auspicious origins, it is no wonder that Garp, in a bildungsroman covered by most of the novel, grows up to become a highly-accomplished novelist himself. This part of the story is accompanied by a couple of framed narratives -- nearly the full text of one of Garp's own short stories is incorporated into the book about his life -- that bespeak a certain surrealist sentiment.

In any case, Garp grows up, falls in love, gets married, and fathers children of his own, only to have tragedy strike. Remembering the details of this particular tragedy still makes me shudder. Anyway, it's all very sexy and is a good read in general. Highly recommended, as long as you aren't prudish about some things.

At this point in the semester, I'm going to go ahead and answer a few Significant Questions floating around, mostly regarding the Library, graduation, and the summer.

I got an e-mail from the Library saying I have fines to pay before I can graduate. Is that true?
Yes, it is, especially if you're one of those who have managed to ride your balance into the upper atmosphere. You can't officially graduate without paying your fines. You can walk at graduation, sure, but that's little comfort if, when you're applying for jobs or graduate school, you need an official transcript, which you won't get. If you owe us a lot of money, don't be shy; we're not going to arrest you and throw you into the debtors' prison behind the Echo360 classroom downstairs. Come in and talk to us!

If I come in to pay my fines, what do I need to bring?
Your Gallaudet ID. I can't emphasize this enough; we do not accept driver's licenses, passports, military IDs, baby photos, or your mom's ultrasound. It has to be a current, valid Gallaudet ID. Also, bring cash or a checkbook. We understand that it's a pain in the neck, but we can't take plastic -- cash or check only.

What if I don't bring enough money and have to come back? Can I do that?
Yes, you can do that. You can pay down your balance on any schedule you'd like -- just pay it before graduation. Also, please try to stick to normal business hours, especially if you owe fines at other universities like George Mason or Georgetown -- the librarians that are usually around between 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. are pretty good at sorting these things out.

If I owe fines on books I got through CLS, how do I pay them? Do I have to go to those schools and pay there?
No, you don't. You can pay all of your fines right here.

Last question, I promise: What's up with the summer hours?
They're here! Scroll down to the bottom and take a look. One thing you'll notice are the hours for Reference Librarian service; there won't be a librarian here after 5 p.m. all summer, and weekends will also not have a librarian at all. This is an important thing to keep in mind! If you need help, come in before 5 p.m. Before 4, even, if you think you won't be the only one seeking help. If you still can't make it, get in touch with us via the contact information on this page to make arrangements to meet.

That about wraps it up for this session. No Question of the Week this week; there will also probably not be a post next week, as most of my time then will be consumed by the National Academic Bowl and time off. The following week, though, will see a quick preview of what you may be able to expect upon your return in the fall.

Why does research take time?

We're just about three weeks away from the end of the Spring semester. Wow. Where'd the time go?

Part of it probably went to all the traveling I did for the Academic Bowl. Chances are good that the rest went into the Library. We've been busy this semester! Summer will be a good time to relax a little bit and focus on other projects that don't have a rapidly-approaching deadline.

Either way, I'm still plugging away at those ol' books. I just finished The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer, and it was an interesting book. Told mostly through flashbacks, the story covers a sort of alternate 20th Century where things are pretty different from our own world. Most of the changes seem to stem from a single person, Prospero Taligent, a mechanical genius who builds robots, flying cars, and other such wonders without going anywhere near an electronic circuit. Because of this, the world of the novel is more technologically advanced than ours, but ours is more scientifically advanced. They haven't discovered the atom, how to manipulate electrons, or progressed much further than basic electrical generation.

It's an interestingly different universe that bears some eerie similarities -- the art world there is an almost exact copy of our own, for instance, with artists being lauded as geniuses for creating large canvases that have only single words painted on each. The effect is a weird sense of bleed-through between our 20th Century and theirs, which is exacerbated when the author himself appears in the novel. There are also a few little jokes, like when one character muses on the possibility of developing a mechanical system that relies on switching between "open" and "closed" in order to think or accomplish tasks -- which is the basis of binary code itself.

Oh, right. I forgot. The plot. The main character is a writer of greeting cards who has a long association with Prospero Taligent and his daughter, Miranda. Prospero is the wealthiest man in the world, but is incapable of relating to an actual human being until he adopts Miranda. Unfortunately, he has an engineer's need for a sense of control and predictability, and as Miranda grows up and begins to rebel, Prospero descends into madness, drives Miranda insane, and drags the main character down with him into a surprising and tragic conclusion. Or maybe it's not tragic; it's so bizarre, really, that I'm not sure what to make of it.

And, of course, all of this takes place in Xeroville, an alternate New York that continually haunts the novel with its decaying gloom. Usually when reading one of those other-dimension novels, it's pretty clear that the premise stems from the basic question: "What if that happened instead of this?" What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, what if the Confederacy had won the Civil War, what if Franz Ferdinand had survived? None of this is clear with Dream of Perpetual Motion; I thought maybe it was the emergence of the Taligent empire, but there are indications that the differences go back further than that, including frequent references to an "age of miracles," where angels and demons shared the world with humans until industrialization came and killed them all. So who knows?

Either way, it's an absorbing novel. It reminds me a lot of Gears of the City in some ways (which I'll get around to reviewing in here someday -- I read faster than I blog).

So last week, I promised you some words about the nature of research in general.

This is mostly because I've encountered some students in the last couple of weeks who are surprised to find out that there is no magic bullet that will bring up everything they need in a single try. When I explain that research takes time, effort, and a little mental footwork, they look at me as though I'm an alien.

Questions regarding my status as an Earthling aside, the students' reaction is both unsurprising and regrettable. Unsurprising because they're used to Google, which has become incredibly good at finding you what you want based on your initial search query. Regrettable because it predisposes those students to give up quickly, turn in substandard work, and contend with either a low or failing grade. Sometimes, if they don't learn how to handle the research process soon enough, they wash out altogether, even though some actually have enough smarts to go pretty far once they have that diploma in hand.

Here's the thing: Academic databases are not Google. Google uses an algorithm that's so secret no other search engine can use it without going through Google, even for academic purposes, and so advanced it nearly qualifies as an artificial general intelligence, relying on contextual clues that most ordinary machines can't understand in order to figure out what you mean.

Okay, so why can't an academic database use Google to run its search, as Gallaudet does when you want to search through its website?

Because to do so, Google's algorithm and ancillary programs -- like the spiders that comb the Web and index everything they come across so it can be searched -- would need to be copied into the (copyrighted and subscription-only) database itself, something Google never permits. Even when you see a Google-based search on a Web site that's not Google, it's using the same resources as google.com; you can see this by clicking on the search I sent you to in the last paragraph and looking in the address bar of your browser. The first thing you see: http://www.google.com.

This is a lot of technical stuff. The upshot: Academic databases just aren't as easy to search as Google, so that's the first reason why it can be a little more difficult to find what you're looking for and why it takes time.

The second reason can be chalked up to vocabulary. There are two different ways your vocabulary can make research take some time:

• Academic jargon. Some fields are very specialized and use words you've never heard to describe a common thing. For instance, in a medical journal, don't go searching for "nose job." Doctors don't use that term in scholarly work.
  

• Synonyms. This is sort of the opposite of the first reason; often, especially in so-called "soft" sciences like psychology and sociology, different terms can be used to refer to the same thing, like "domestic violence" or "spousal abuse."

The best way to address this kind of problem is to start off a little broader than you need -- "cosmetic surgery" instead of "nose job," for example. You'll get an overwhelming number of articles about various plastic surgeries, but somewhere in the list, you'll find -- and I'm just making this up -- an article that discusses the most popular types of plastic surgeries in the United States. In that list, you'll see a few terms you're not too familiar with. Write them down, find a dictionary or go to Wikipedia and look them up. You'll come across "rhinoplasty," which is the surgical term for nose jobs. Voila! You've now got a useful term you can use to find what you're looking for, whether by itself or combined with other terms.

The nose job example also illustrates the third, and probably most significant, reason why research takes some effort: It requires some detective work. You have to figure out your starting point, and use whatever clues you find to proceed from there, step by step. Sometimes it's easy, especially if you pick a well-studied topic like the Maginot Line in World War II, but when you're working on more esoteric topics -- like the effect of rhinoplasties on a specific psychological model of self-perception -- this strategy is invaluable. However, it's also time-consuming and can take a few hours.

That's why you learn about time management in your First Year Seminar course when you arrive at Gallaudet as a freshman. School takes time, and it always will, especially if you decide you want to do the best work possible.

One final note, and this is something I say to a lot of the courses I present to: There will be times at which you hit a wall. You can't figure out how to proceed any further with your research. Maybe you've run out of terms to try, or there simply isn't anything in the databases you've been looking in. At this point, ask a librarian. It's what we're here for.

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Question of the Week
Are you open during the summer?
We're open year-round! Our hours are usually reduced during the summer -- we generally close at 8 p.m., for example -- so things will be a little bit different, but we're open nonetheless. We'll be releasing our summer hours pretty soon; keep an eye on this blog, and I'll let you know when you can find out!

Some words on the Little Paper Family

Ah, spring is here to stay! It's been a warm, sunny week and that just makes me extra happy to have a long weekend.

Adding to the so-called "happy," of course, is reading How to be Inappropriate by Daniel Nester. Truthfully, I'd have been happy with this book based solely on its cover. Go to the linked Discovery record and take a look at the Google Books-linked cover image, down there on the right. Lord knows plenty of other folks on the Metro during my morning commute did, and I got to enjoy an abundance of raised eyebrows and disgusted glares.

Of course, being the kind of person I am (I always seem to find unusual books), How to be Inappropriate turns out to be less irreverent than it sounds. Granted, it devotes an astounding number of pages to a cultural analysis of mooning and the author goes out of his way to chronicle every single inappropriate thing he has done or said, but it's actually a bait-and-switch job. See, you're kind of tooling along through the book, which is easy enough to do (it's full of things like conversations with Gene Simmons of KISS that switch Gene's side of the conversation with a chatbot), and then you hit something unexpectedly literary, like an in-depth analysis of the history of farting in poetry. It turns out a lot of classical poets had a finger pulled here and there and didn't mind including it in their work.

It's not so much the subject matter as Nester's approach to it; it turns out you're actually reading a book written by someone who's spent over a decade as a poet, and who's studied language and literature all his life. Although a good deal of the book is screamingly funny -- as in his misadventures while learning how to tan in his pale, doughy late 40s -- there are also sections where he gets his point across in subtler ways, as in the part where he lists every comment he writes in his students' papers as an example of what he encounters daily as a college professor. It's never mean-spirited or woebegone, though -- it's just funny.

This week, we've seen a lot of students coming in to do research on the Little Paper Family, which I thought would make a decent discussion here, starting with an explanation of what the Little Paper Family (or LPF) actually is and ending with how to do Research to it.

First, the LPF's name isn't nearly as self-explanatory as one would hope. When I first heard the term, I thought it was some kind of project where people cut out families from paper and put them together into a collage or something. Maybe I'm just weird like that.

The LPF actually refers to a group of deaf residential schools' newspapers and magazines that were published and traded among those schools for over a century. This lasted until the 1970s, when most of the LPF died out for various reasons; the rest persists today in some form. The publications included information on recent events at the school, student standouts, and other important events in deaf culture and history. They represent a tremendously valuable resource for understanding deaf history and the origins of what we see today.

For some more detailed information, including a listing of most known LPF publications, check out our Web page on the LPF. A surprisingly decent amount of LPF material's been preserved in one form or another and is available for research, particularly here at the Gallaudet University Library.

The only thing is that it's all been mostly preserved on microfilm, which is an obsolete medium by any standard. It requires a big old machine to read what's on it, and most of our students have little or no frame of reference for it.

It's okay. It happens. That's what we librarians are here for.

In any case, nearly all of our LPF stuff is kept in a bright-orange microfilm cabinet on the first floor, at the end of the Deaf Periodicals, behind the atlases. There's a sign on it that says "DEAF Microfilm." Although most of the cabinet is dedicated to deaf-related theses and dissertations, the LPF takes up a corner of its own, and is alphabetized by the name of the publication, not the name of the publishing school (which throws some people off). Each reel of microfilm can contain a few years' worth of issues, depending on the school's publishing schedule.

So that's fairly simple, until you hit the machine. I'm not going to explain how to string the reel on the thing because it's fairly picayune. Suffice it to say that when you pull on the handle that moves the glass tray toward you, you should notice a horizontal spindle pointing right at you on the left-hand side, where the reel goes. Above that spindle, you'll see a cute little diagram that tells you everything you need to know, if you follow it exactly. Then gently slide the glass tray back under the lens, turn the machine on, and press the obvious buttons to rewind or advance the film. It's also possible to print directly from microfilm, which is incredibly useful if you need to have specific pages to refer to later; it's 10 cents a page and requires the same copy card you use for our photocopiers.

On a less professional note, the sheer novelty of the experience for people who've never used microfilm before is pretty fun to watch. Of course, they get tired of it quickly and wish it were easier to sift through the thousands of pages each reel contains. When I get complaints or rueful "suggestions" on how to improve the way microfilm works, all I can do is let them know that it's called "old-school research," and they go back to their computers, grateful for our databases.

But I digress. In general, the LPF is an incredibly valuable thing to have, and we're proud to have it here and make it available to everyone (format notwithstanding)!

It's a short post this week because it's been a rather short week. Next week, I'll discuss research itself and what's really involved -- most people think you just enter a keyword and bam: You've got Research. Not true, and I'll explain why. Tune in next Friday!

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Question of the Week
I checked out a DVD from the Library a few days ago, and just realized that I can find the disc, but not the case. What do I do?
First, tell a staff member at the service desk (or contact us) so we can give you another few days to look. Then look for it. It's usually in your room, your friend's room, your bag, or your friend's bag. Those are the four most common places these things usually wind up. Then check your dresser, behind your bed, in your freezer (you'd be surprised), and under your cat. If you come up empty-handed after performing due diligence, let us know. We'll take the video off your record (though any fines you might have accrued as a result of not returning the video on time before we renewed it for you will have to be paid) and add a $10 charge to replace the case.

Don't worry, we can replace the case. We have mysterious librarian ways. No need to buy a whole new film if we have at least the disc, but the cost of the new case, reprocessing, and adding the appropriate liner needs to be addressed. We do strongly encourage that you at least look as hard as you can to make sure the original case is well and truly lost.

Research paper award, Dutch painters, baseball, and free stuff

A couple of last-minute additions have made this particular post a little long and confusing -- to me, at least -- so I'm breaking it up into discrete sections.

The part where I plug our research paper award
First off, let's start with a Shameless Plug: The Library's Undergraduate Research Paper Award. It's quite a mouthful and maybe it'd be neater if we called it the Lurp Award (or ... not), but if you ever wanted to be rewarded for good writing with more than a simple letter -- I assume that letter is an "A," right? -- this is your chance.

Why? We're giving away $200 to the best paper. There isn't an extra zero there; that's how much money we'll give you for a good paper. Of course, it's in the form of a gift card to Barnes & Noble, so if you like books, DVDs, and a whole lot of Starbucks coffee and pastries, this is the one for you. Plus, it'll be announced at the Awards Day ceremony toward the end of the semester, so everyone'll know about your writing chops.

The Web page with all the info is here; the deadline's 9 p.m. next Tuesday, April 6th, so if you want a chance at that two large, get hopping!

The part where I plug Hendrick Avercamp
I was thrilled to hear earlier this week that the National Gallery here in town is hosting an exhibition on Hendrick Avercamp. If you don't know him, shame on you; he's one of the earliest known deaf people! And a fantastic artist to boot; he's famous for his scenes of life in 17th-Century Netherlands, which also allow us a glimpse at that period of time known as the Little Ice Age, which occurred sometime between 1400-1900 (estimates vary based on local conditions). During that period, global temperatures dropped significantly for no apparent reason for about four hundred years (again, estimates vary), and the world became a much colder place until the Industrial Revolution kicked into gear, started polluting, and got the world to warm up again. Or the Industrial Revolution actually had a negligible impact -- they're still trying to figure that one out.

In the Netherlands, though, unlike the rest of Europe, the incredibly harsh winters were actually welcomed; remember, this is the country where ice skating as we know it (with an edge on the skates so they cut into the ice instead of gliding on top) was invented in the 13th or 14th Centuries. Avercamp was known even in his own time for his beautiful depictions of wintertime ice skaters on the local canals; folks of the time found his talent especially notable because he was deaf and couldn't speak at all, which is why we know as much about him as we do today.

This is a unique opportunity: the Dutch museum that usually holds his paintings is undergoing a major renovation, so Avercamp's paintings and those of his countrymen are on a tour around the world until 2012 or so. They're bunking down at the National Gallery until July 5.

The part where I talk about what I read this week
Now, what did I read this week? Interestingly, I wandered a bit further afield and got a book delivered from George Mason University using our CLS service, mostly because it's a book I'm considering purchasing for the Library and was curious about what it really entailed. It's called Museum by Danny Danziger, and it's a collection of interviews with a total of around 50 employees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The book is fascinating; all of the Met employees interviewed work in different departments, from one of the cleaners to a few trustees and the then-director himself, Philippe de Montebello (he retired in 2008). They come from all walks of life, from Harlem and baseball cards to extraordinarily wealthy families that hung Picassos and Monets in their living rooms. The paths that led them to the Met vary from twisty -- as in the case of the Central Park cop with two degrees in history -- to ruler-straight -- like the trustee who inherited her love for, and deep involvement with, the Met from her parents -- and every single one is interesting. A large number of curators from a few of the Met's collections are represented, from 20th-Century American textiles to 16th-Century arms and armor.

Overall, the effect is one of intimacy; you really get a terrific snapshot of the people behind the art and the building, and you gain an idea of the world that lurks behind all museums. It adds a nice significance to the whole idea of preserving and exhibiting cultural artifacts, and lets you see a few nuts and a handful of bolts. It's just fantastic on general principle. As far as adding it to the collection, I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, it's a terrific read and really does give you a good idea of some of the things that go on behind the scenes to ensure that you have access to some tremendous history and culture. On the other hand, it's more anecdotal than I'm quite comfortable with as an addition to a collection of practical utility. I'll probably end up getting it anyway -- many of our books have interest and value beyond simple education, like many of the ones I've covered in this blog over the past year or so.

The part where I acknowledge this blog's birthday a month late
Oh! That reminds me. Somehow I managed to completely overlook the fact that this blog's first anniversary passed a month ago. Happy belated birthday, blog!

The part where my baseball-obsessed director told me to remind you of an upcoming important national celebration
Opening Day. April 5. Next Monday. ESPN or be square. Although I joke around a little bit about my director and her all-consuming mania for cowhide, I'm busily planning out my schedule of Saturday games through October, and you probably should too. To do otherwise would be un-American.

The part where I inform you about useful resources for research
As for this week, a recent comment on this blog -- which is a rare event! you guys are quiet -- got me thinking about the different resources that are available out there. This is also partly prompted by some students who've been coming in over this past week asking about how to find information related to government programs, thinking that academic databases are the only way to garner any useful insights, and that any research worth looking at carries a price tag.

That's not always so. Here's a quick list of the three major free, little-known, high-quality academic resources available to everyone:

• Education Resources Information Center (ERIC): It used to be an index/bibliography of education-related articles and publications, but they've been adding more and more full text over the years. Its name is fairly self-explanatory, but within the field of education, it's astonishingly comprehensive and has proven to be valuable for deaf education in particular. It's a federal project through the U.S. Department of Education. For more information, check out this page about their holdings.
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): This one created quite a stir when it emerged a few years ago, mostly because academic publishers can be super-protective of the stuff they publish. This is partly because of copyright, because of intellectual property issues, and because of, well, the pursuit of profit. As a librarian, I support open access to research for everyone -- it's not fair that only people who can afford to go to college get to see the work that underlies much of what we know today -- but I'm realistic enough to really appreciate a thing like DOAJ. It's an online directory of journals that offer their content free of charge. Some might require registration, but won't ask you to pay a cent; you know this because DOAJ itself has a policy that states that anything linked to from their Web site must be free. They also require peer review or some kind of editorial quality control to be included, which means that most of the stuff in there is good to use for your academic work (see more information about their criteria here).
  
• The Federal Government

This last one seems to take most people by surprise. I'm not sure why; Uncle Sam is probably the single most prolific producer of freely-accessible research in the world. The sheer amount of information shoved at you is overwhelming. The Census Bureau alone provides a significant amount of the basic demographic data you'll ever need, and sites like disability.gov, irs.gov, health.gov (weird and looks like it hasn't been redesigned since 2000, but immensely useful), and grants.gov, among many, many others, offer still more practical resources that address a wide variety of needs.

In addition, Congress is currently working on the Federal Research Public Access Act, which would mandate that all federally-funded research (with some exceptions, like certain classes of defense research -- ahem) be available online to the public for free within 6 months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal. For everything else, the funding agency has to at least come up with a policy of some kind that would make the research publicly available.

That's without going into public records, such as specific pieces of legislation, budget information, and governmental assets. Nearly everything the federal government does is available to look up; the only limitations are either time (it can take a while to post it online) and any issues with national security (classified research, for example, or troop movements in times of war).

In general, don't be afraid to think outside the box that ProQuest and Ebsco can build around your research habits. Those two databases, and others like them, are must-haves for any scholar worth his or her salt, but your work does not, by any means, need to be exclusively a product of the material contained therein. There's plenty of stuff out there!

Just one cautionary note, because it's come up before: Just because it's freely available doesn't mean you don't need to cite it. Cite everything and cite it properly and completely. In the spirit of this post, here are links to decent style guides available online for free, all thanks to Purdue University:

• MLA
• APA
• Chicago

I think that's my good deed for the week. I'm off next Friday (yes ... again), so you'll see a new post on Thursday!

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The part where I answer the question of the week
What's this Aladin Mobile thing I keep hearing about?
Pretty much what it sounds like -- something pretty fabulous.

See, I have this habit of buying books for myself. I like to read. What can I say? But I try to avoid buying for myself any books that the Library has, so when I'm in the bookstore, right in front of the bookshelf, I like to check the catalog to make sure I'm not spending money I shouldn't. The problem is, the catalog -- both the old version and Discovery -- ranges from extremely difficult to near-impossible to check on a cell phone. I've got an Android phone and even that struggles with the catalog; I've heard similar complaints from my Apple-cultist friends.

Aladin Mobile fixes all that and looks pretty too! It works for iPhones, Blackberries, Palm Pres, and, of course, Android. You can search the catalog at the university of your choice, check your account online, have notifications about CLS books or overdue warnings texted to you, request CLS books from your phone, and get access to library maps and hours (just in case you're in Georgetown and want to check out the university library ... because everyone loves libraries like I do, right? Right?). I was a beta tester for this, so take my word for it when I tell you it's just terrific.

Hit up m.wrlc.org on your phone and ooh and aah away!

New books!

What a dirty trick. I was hoping it'd stay cold and rainy so nobody has any post-break spring fever. So much for that.

At least the colorful pages of Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes is keeping me distracted. I mentioned it in a blog post a few months back and have finally finished reading it. It's a fascinating book!

It's actually a collection of essays about the suburb as a form of American community and the many ways in which it influences -- and is influenced by -- the "typical" American lifestyle and habits. There's one terrific essay, for instance, about malls and how they came to be, how they're designed and built, and their roles in suburban life. Other essays look at various types of suburbs, how suburbs have influenced American art and been influenced by American architecture (ever seen a Cape Cod-style home in the New Mexico desert? It's very odd), and how the suburbs are changing in response to shifting American habits and preferences.

One especially engrossing essay discussed "big-box reuse." For instance -- and I assume it's happened to your hometown; it definitely happened to mine -- Wal-Mart suddenly started building brand-new SuperCenters about a decade ago, and in the process abandoned most of its older, smaller stores. Similar things have occurred with other companies, like K-Mart, Target, and restaurant chains. What happens to those empty shells after they've been replaced by their larger and shinier descendants? Most of them are torn down, of course, to make way for other businesses, but in America's small towns, it's not uncommon for those empty spaces to remain standing for years on end, simply because those towns are too small to attract the interest of a company wealthy enough to buy the property and dismantle the building. Instead, many towns have opted to raise money in order to convert those buildings for other uses. Some old Wal-Marts have become museums, farmers' markets, or -- as in the case of one in my own hometown -- a small-business incubator where local businesses can rent booths that they can use as offices or to sell their goods to curious shoppers. It's a weird mix of flea market, office building, and county fair, but is tremendously popular.

Yes, I admit it. I come from a suburb. So do most of you, so nyehhhh. Anyway, I highly recommend it for art freaks and community planners alike, as well as anyone who's curious about how certain aspects of our society are examined and analyzed through various lenses.

Since this post has appeared on a Wednesday, I'm sure you know what it means: Wednesday Half-Post! I'm off to Massachusetts tomorrow for the last Academic Bowl regional competition, and things should normalize (for the most part) from here on out.

I said a few weeks back that I'd do a New Book Cart Day so you all are up to date on the new books (fiction and art-related, anyway -- we'll hear from the other librarians about their subject areas in a few weeks) that have been coming in. We've got an exciting crop this year; 2009 and 2010 are proving to be fantastic years in publishing!

Without further ado, the greatest hits:

Horns by Joe Hill
The author of last year's terrific The Heart-Shaped Box is back with Horns, a weird little story about a guy who wakes up one day and discovers that he has grown ... yes, wait for it ... horns. Why? Who knows? But there's more to the story: this guy is kind of busy being blamed for the grisly murder of his childhood sweetheart (which he didn't do), and the horns give him a mysterious power that forces people to tell their secrets. The Heart-Shaped Box made a splash last year for its sheer creepiness; it seems Joe's in fine form for his sophomore novel.

Subway Art by Martha Cooper
This is a big book. It's also quite lovely; showcasing some of NYC's best train-car graffiti, Subway Art is quite an education in how spray paint can be used so incredibly deftly that you're left wondering whether that stuff actually came out of a can. You also learn a little more about the history of graffiti on subway cars, and how creative vandals in other countries -- Germany, for example, which has long been known for its exemplary graffiti -- have adopted techniques and models first pioneered in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. You come away completely fascinated and with a new appreciation for the paint encrusting most of the walls facing the northbound Red Line on the Metro.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.
Little needs to be said about this one, I suppose. Better hurry and check it out before anyone realizes that we've got it here -- once word gets out, it's all over.

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (not quite available yet)
Along with its sequel, Catching Fire, this book follows in the footsteps of such luminaries as Running Man and Death Race 2000. Set in a postapocalyptic future, the entity that has supplanted the United States and controls several territories demands tribute in the form of two children from each territory who must participate in a televised fight to the death. Sort of a combination of American Gladiators and Survivor with a bunch of UFC thrown in, this practice brings up a lot of questions about reality television and what its logical end might actually be.

Heresy by S.J. Parris
I guess this could be referred to as a period piece: in 16th-Century England, Queen Elizabeth I has been excommunicated by the Pope for refusing to allow the Church of England to rejoin the Catholic Church. As a result, her spymaster, Francis Walsingham, has informers planted all over the country, keeping their ears to the ground for any possible threats to the Queen. This novel centers around one of those informers, a disliked leader of Oxford, and his participation in a historic debate (which actually happened) with a guy who has a heretical idea: the cosmos has no center, and all the stars we see are actually suns seen from a great distance, with planets of their own. In other words, he was born about four centuries too early. However, the debate isn't the only thing going on; a serial killer is on the loose, and the mystery only deepens the further in you get. It's a nice mix of historical accuracy and fiction; a few characters never existed, and neither did the murders, but everything else actually occurred.

First Contact, Or, It's Later than You Think by Evan Mandery
A ... frankly bizarre book, to put it mildly. The plot reminds me of Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace: The aliens have landed, and they look like Orthodox Jews who have a taste for Woody Allen. A clueless Republican president (ahem) plans a kosher state dinner, but a huge misunderstanding leads to a bunch of American nuclear weapons taking off for the aliens' homeworld. Of course, it's up to the protagonist, an attaché to the president, and his new alien pal to save both worlds from irrevocable war. In a really funny way, of course.

Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw
Indonesia in the 1960s was, much like the United States, undergoing major upheaval. This is the story of a young man whose father is arrested by Communist soldiers and imprisoned; the young man must travel to Jakarta and find out what happened to his father. Along the way, he shanghais a female American professor who knew his father as a child, and they develop an inexplicable bond as they wander through the streets of a nation in the process of tearing itself apart.

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn
A writer known for his interesting takes on life in various periods of American history, Charyn takes on Emily Dickinson. A complex task by any measure, he pulls it off in exactly her voice as she works through her relationship with her father (who admired her for her intellectual companionship, but condescended to her gender), her family, and her dog. It's extraordinarily well-written; the voice in the novel is very nearly consanguineous with the voice in Dickinson's poems. She was a fascinating woman with a rich inner life and unbridled creativity, and this novel allows you to imagine something much closer to what the inside of her head may have been like. Thumbs up!

Okay, that's it for this week. Until next week!

Getting Started on Deaf Research: Part 4

This is highly non-academic weather. Students skip classes, professors cancel them, and librarians wish they were outside. It's such a significant change from the last three or four months of ice, clouds, and generic freezing misery that I keep looking around and wondering where I landed.

These last few weeks of clouds have been good for my reading list, though. I managed to eke out one last book: Silent Dances by A.C. Crispin and Kathleen O'Malley. Pure sci-fi, total mental vacation. It's nice!

This book is notable because one of the authors is deaf, and so is the protagonist. It's part of the StarBridge series of novels, set in a future where humanity has, for the first time, discovered that there is life out there -- and most of it belongs to an interstellar group of species (called the CLS, interestingly enough). As part of the process of applying for membership, Earth helps establish a multispecies school for young people who want to work for the CLS, called StarBridge Academy.

Silent Dances is the second book in the series. Tesa is a student at StarBridge Academy; she's a deaf American Indian who relies on ASL and a highly-advanced portable computer/translator that's capable of distinguishing between multiple speakers at once and accurately transcribing all the dialogue that's going on. She graduated from Gallaudet (!) before starting at StarBridge, and is about to get started on her last major project, sort of a practicum, before officially graduating. However, she gets sidetracked by the news that a new world has been found, populated chiefly by hundreds of species of giant avians. One species in particular, resembling cranes, appears to be intelligent -- but have such powerful voices that they can kill a human being from hundreds of yards away. They rely on their voices only for what they call "primitive" uses -- for mating or for warnings -- and use a form of sign language in all other cases.

Of course, hearing people are at a marked disadvantage here, what with tending to explode and die, so they send Tesa in so she can learn to communicate with them and evaluate their intelligence. This is complicated by the sudden news that a black-market ring of privateers has been capturing the intelligent cranes and selling their skins in an especially sketchy part of the galaxy, as well as the discovery that the cranes are actually at war with another species on their own planet -- which turns out to also be intelligent.

It's your typical sci-fi action-adventure in space, colored by the fact that everyone signs in one way or another. There's also a sort of minor -- but significant to deaf readers -- plotline about the development of a new surgical technique that can restore Tesa's hearing. She's ambivalent about it at first, in spite of her parents' encouragement, but in the end decides against it. There are also instances that ring very true with me, as a deaf person -- like when Tesa's hearing love interest suddenly turns away from her when someone interrupts as she's signing to him. He does it totally unconsciously, and then realizes a few minutes later that he completely cut her off mid-sentence without thinking anything of it, and turns back to see that she's livid. Another example of something that I can relate to, of course, are the few instances when she completely forgets herself and yells a profanity at the top of her lungs for one reason or another.

There's also the fact that she's an American Indian, which lends itself to a unique relationship with the intelligent avians, especially when it's discovered that many aspects of their cultures and relationships with their environments are similar in many ways.

It's really an interesting book -- thought-provoking and a nice read in general. I especially liked the way O'Malley inserted her own prediction about Gallaudet and the form it takes after another two centuries of growth and development. It's especially interesting when taking the Sixth Street Project into consideration ... but I'll just leave it at that.

Today, we'll finish up the rest of the Deaf Research Help series with a quick run-through of whatever's left. We've done the pathfinders, FAQs, and the Guide to Deaf Biographies. Really, those are the three big things that usually manage to answer most questions.

After those three, you'll see a link to our Index to Deaf Periodicals. Another product of Tom Harrington, it's a good, basic way to find out about anything that was published on a given topic or by a specific person in the following deaf-related periodicals during specific years:

1. American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb (v.1-38, 1847-1893)
2. Deaf American (v.26-39, 1973-1989)
3. Deaf American Monographs (v.40-48, 1990-1998)
4. Deaf Life (v.1-11, 1987-1998, 2002)
5. DeafNation (v.1-3, 1995-1998)
6. Silent Worker (v.1-14, 1948-1962)
   

One extremely important thing to bear in mind is that this is an index. There's no full-text here. It's just intended to help you figure out out the following:

• What articles has this person written?
• What articles have been written about this topic, individual, organization, or family?
• What was published during this year?

Keeping in mind, of course, that the index includes only what was published in the periodicals listed above, and only during the years listed. It can come in handy, though, if you're trying to remember the name of that article you read in DeafNation about how the ADA might have caused interpreter shortages sometime in the 1990s, for example, or if you're curious about myths about sign language.

Once you've got the basic information on where, when, and who published the article you're looking for, you can then find the full text of the article here at the Library. The earliest years of American Annals have been digitized, as well as the Silent Worker, and are available online for Consortium members, while the rest may also be available electronically, on print, or on microfilm here at the Library. It's pretty nice!

Following the Index to Deaf Periodicals on the Deaf Research Help page, you'll find links to other Gallaudet-created resources, including the Gallaudet Video Catalog and the Clerc Center's Info to Go for parents and educators of deaf children, and then a link to a list of outside resources such as the Described and Captioned Media Program.

Down at the bottom of the Deaf Research Help page is mostly information for our librarian brethren and sistern. Tips on communicating with deaf library patrons, which is intended for hearing librarians who have little experience in working with deaf patrons, and Deaf Subject Headings, which is pretty technical and not for the layman. It's a collection of deaf-related terms, designed to help librarians in other institutions catalog deaf-related materials.

And that's it for Deaf Research Help. I hope this ... well, helped!

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Question of the Week
Why do you stay open during Spring Break?
I have asked myself that very question! Just kidding ... or am I?

Truthfully, I get the feeling that students think the campus completely shuts down during the break while they're gone, which doesn't actually happen. It's business as usual, except there are no classes and we have reduced hours to go with the reduced number of students. We really do continue working -- there's always plenty to do, with or without a line at the Service Desk!

We're also open during the breaks between each semester. The only exception is part of the break between the Fall and Spring semesters, when the campus shuts down entirely between Christmas and New Year's Day, but the rest of the time, we're wide open!