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.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
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:
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.
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!
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 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.
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!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
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!
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.
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!
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.
Friday, April 2, 2010
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:
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:
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!
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!
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
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:
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!
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!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
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!
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!
Friday, March 19, 2010
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:
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!
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!
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:
- American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb (v.1-38, 1847-1893)
- Deaf American (v.26-39, 1973-1989)
- Deaf American Monographs (v.40-48, 1990-1998)
- Deaf Life (v.1-11, 1987-1998, 2002)
- DeafNation (v.1-3, 1995-1998)
- Silent Worker (v.1-14, 1948-1962)
- What articles has this person written?
- What articles have been written about this topic, individual, organization, or family?
- What was published during this year?
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!
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!
Friday, March 12, 2010
Postponement
This week's post has been postponed to next week due to a case of the creeping crud.
*snif*
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
on reading
Another half-week, another half-post ...
I'm heading to Florida tomorrow to work at the Academic Bowl's Southeast regional competition. It should be a fun outing -- it's my home state, after all, and it's hosted at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, a school I've visited many times. Of course, the town we're going to, St. Augustine, is, by some estimations, anywhere from four to six hours from my actual hometown, so no triumphal return for this good ol' boy. It's okay -- I'll be busy.
In any case, I'm on a little Italo Calvino kick after finishing If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (final verdict: great read but likely to require several attempts first), so I'm deep into Why Read the Classics?, which is a collection of his literary essays. He discusses works ranging from Pliny the Elder's Natural History (we have two volumes; the rest are held by other Consortium schools) to Cyrano de Bergerac's hilarious The Other World, or the States and Empires of the Moon (the linked record goes to our own copy of a combined edition of this book and its sequel, Voyages to the States of the Sun) to Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Calvino turns out to be a pretty entertaining, thoughtful, and extraordinarily well-read critic; he reviews some works I haven't read or even heard of -- and makes me want to read them, too. He's got a little slant towards Italian literature, which is understandable, given that he's Italian himself. It's also a terrifically well-written book, generated by an author who knows what he's doing and fully understands what he's looking at.
In general, though, I have so far gotten the impression that the essays contained in this book are more useful for figuring out why Calvino reads the classics than why you should read the classics. He makes use of a fairly high-level literary vocabulary that would probably leave most people a little lost, so it's not much of a book to read if you aren't already a strong reader -- in which case, you probably don't actually need the book. This seems to be a fault on the part of the publisher or editor, though, not Calvino; those essays were collected posthumously from various introductions, prefaces, and articles he wrote over the course of thirty years. None of them were written with the express purpose of convincing Joe Six-Pack that he should read some Voltaire between NASCAR races.
Still, it's got me asking myself why I read. It's been a topic of some debate over the past few years, especially when the subject of my age comes up (hint: I was young enough to really appreciate Power Rangers when the very first episode aired); the prevailing opinion seems to be that not very many people under the age of 30 read at all (see The Age of American Unreason and The Dumbest Generation), and that I'm somehow an aberration because I actually like to read. Our Library director suggested months ago that I do at least one post about why I like to read so much, so I guess I'll grab the opportunity to do so right now.
So.
The reason why I read -- and read so much, at that -- is fairly simple: I developed the habit early and reinforced it often. I read at the dinner table, in the car, on the school bus, waiting for the dentist, and before I went to bed at night. I exhausted my preferred genre at the local public library -- science fiction -- sometime in high school and moved on to other subjects and have ended up reading anything that grabs my eye.
I mean anything. One of my favorite professors in graduate school -- she taught cataloging and classification, the stuff that determines what call number ends up on a book's spine and what you see in ALADIN Discovery -- said the same motto at least once in every class session for all three semesters that I had her: Never apologize for your choice of reading material. This rather neatly encapsulates my approach to books.
As a reader, I read whatever I can get my hands on. As a librarian, I don't judge people for the choices they make in what they check out. The same is true for the other librarians working here at the Gallaudet University Library and pretty much any other librarian you'll ever meet. If you want to read Mein Kampf, go ahead and check it out. It's a little meandering -- Adolf wasn't the most coherent thinker at the best of times -- but an interesting read.
As far as the classics are concerned, I do think everyone should read at least a few. Not because you should so everyone thinks you're smart, but so you can see how little human nature has changed over thousands of years. It also expands your horizons a little bit on a couple of levels: first, you'll encounter words and ways of saying things that haven't been around for a long time, so you'll gain the benefit of finding out how different the world can be, depending on how it's said or written -- and maybe even learn how to apply this practically in your approach to the world, your job, and your relationships with others. Second, it really does let you look at the world through different eyes in different places and different times. It's the benefit of experience; 19th-Century Britain looks very different from the way it is today, and you can find out how by reading Dickens. The same goes for Greece through Aristotle, China through Sun Tzu, and, yes, the United States through Washington Irving or Mark Twain.
Ovid's Metamorphoses lets you see the Greek myths in their plainest forms, whether through the eyes of the goddess Athena competing with Arachne on the loom or Pyramus as he whispers to Thisbe through a hole in the wall. Cyrano's States and Empires of the Moon -- or Voltaire's Candide, for that matter -- shows you that the French of the 18th Century were funny. Pliny's Natural History lets you see a magical Greece where unlikely creatures coexist with the animals we know well today.
Above all, reading the classics will let you see that a lot of the problems we struggle with today have been around for a very long time. That we're still around today speaks volumes about us as a species, most of which is good.
That seems to cover things pretty well. Next week's post will appear on Thursday, as I'm again out of town next Friday -- busy guy, I am -- and we'll talk a little more about our Deaf Research Help page.
I'm heading to Florida tomorrow to work at the Academic Bowl's Southeast regional competition. It should be a fun outing -- it's my home state, after all, and it's hosted at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, a school I've visited many times. Of course, the town we're going to, St. Augustine, is, by some estimations, anywhere from four to six hours from my actual hometown, so no triumphal return for this good ol' boy. It's okay -- I'll be busy.
In any case, I'm on a little Italo Calvino kick after finishing If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (final verdict: great read but likely to require several attempts first), so I'm deep into Why Read the Classics?, which is a collection of his literary essays. He discusses works ranging from Pliny the Elder's Natural History (we have two volumes; the rest are held by other Consortium schools) to Cyrano de Bergerac's hilarious The Other World, or the States and Empires of the Moon (the linked record goes to our own copy of a combined edition of this book and its sequel, Voyages to the States of the Sun) to Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Calvino turns out to be a pretty entertaining, thoughtful, and extraordinarily well-read critic; he reviews some works I haven't read or even heard of -- and makes me want to read them, too. He's got a little slant towards Italian literature, which is understandable, given that he's Italian himself. It's also a terrifically well-written book, generated by an author who knows what he's doing and fully understands what he's looking at.
In general, though, I have so far gotten the impression that the essays contained in this book are more useful for figuring out why Calvino reads the classics than why you should read the classics. He makes use of a fairly high-level literary vocabulary that would probably leave most people a little lost, so it's not much of a book to read if you aren't already a strong reader -- in which case, you probably don't actually need the book. This seems to be a fault on the part of the publisher or editor, though, not Calvino; those essays were collected posthumously from various introductions, prefaces, and articles he wrote over the course of thirty years. None of them were written with the express purpose of convincing Joe Six-Pack that he should read some Voltaire between NASCAR races.
Still, it's got me asking myself why I read. It's been a topic of some debate over the past few years, especially when the subject of my age comes up (hint: I was young enough to really appreciate Power Rangers when the very first episode aired); the prevailing opinion seems to be that not very many people under the age of 30 read at all (see The Age of American Unreason and The Dumbest Generation), and that I'm somehow an aberration because I actually like to read. Our Library director suggested months ago that I do at least one post about why I like to read so much, so I guess I'll grab the opportunity to do so right now.
So.
The reason why I read -- and read so much, at that -- is fairly simple: I developed the habit early and reinforced it often. I read at the dinner table, in the car, on the school bus, waiting for the dentist, and before I went to bed at night. I exhausted my preferred genre at the local public library -- science fiction -- sometime in high school and moved on to other subjects and have ended up reading anything that grabs my eye.
I mean anything. One of my favorite professors in graduate school -- she taught cataloging and classification, the stuff that determines what call number ends up on a book's spine and what you see in ALADIN Discovery -- said the same motto at least once in every class session for all three semesters that I had her: Never apologize for your choice of reading material. This rather neatly encapsulates my approach to books.
As a reader, I read whatever I can get my hands on. As a librarian, I don't judge people for the choices they make in what they check out. The same is true for the other librarians working here at the Gallaudet University Library and pretty much any other librarian you'll ever meet. If you want to read Mein Kampf, go ahead and check it out. It's a little meandering -- Adolf wasn't the most coherent thinker at the best of times -- but an interesting read.
As far as the classics are concerned, I do think everyone should read at least a few. Not because you should so everyone thinks you're smart, but so you can see how little human nature has changed over thousands of years. It also expands your horizons a little bit on a couple of levels: first, you'll encounter words and ways of saying things that haven't been around for a long time, so you'll gain the benefit of finding out how different the world can be, depending on how it's said or written -- and maybe even learn how to apply this practically in your approach to the world, your job, and your relationships with others. Second, it really does let you look at the world through different eyes in different places and different times. It's the benefit of experience; 19th-Century Britain looks very different from the way it is today, and you can find out how by reading Dickens. The same goes for Greece through Aristotle, China through Sun Tzu, and, yes, the United States through Washington Irving or Mark Twain.
Ovid's Metamorphoses lets you see the Greek myths in their plainest forms, whether through the eyes of the goddess Athena competing with Arachne on the loom or Pyramus as he whispers to Thisbe through a hole in the wall. Cyrano's States and Empires of the Moon -- or Voltaire's Candide, for that matter -- shows you that the French of the 18th Century were funny. Pliny's Natural History lets you see a magical Greece where unlikely creatures coexist with the animals we know well today.
Above all, reading the classics will let you see that a lot of the problems we struggle with today have been around for a very long time. That we're still around today speaks volumes about us as a species, most of which is good.
That seems to cover things pretty well. Next week's post will appear on Thursday, as I'm again out of town next Friday -- busy guy, I am -- and we'll talk a little more about our Deaf Research Help page.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Getting Started on Deaf Research: Part 3
Argh ...
It's a unique sort of book that can simultaneously frustrate you beyond all belief and draw you in even deeper. Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is one of those books, and it's driving me nuts at the moment.
On the surface, it's a deeply complicated book -- at least four major plots (one of which includes you. Yes, you, the poor soul reading it), the beginnings of ten engrossing novels, and at least one secret society out to steal the source of all stories. Throughout it all, Calvino meditates on the nature of literature, the act of reading, and the way both interact within the reader's mind.
Below the surface, it's irritating. Each of the ten novels in the book starts off a little slowly, then builds up terrifically well all the way to a particularly suspenseful point -- and then is chopped off. Of course, all of this is in service to the overall plot, which centers around two readers who are having the same problem you are: Getting suckered into a particularly good book only to have it cut off at a particularly critical moment for one reason or another. Gah.
I'm sure by the book's end, I'll rave about it, but at the moment, I just want to know what happens next.
Okay, moving on. First, I'd like to announce that it's once again time for our Undergraduate Research Paper Award. If you're an undergrad who's written what you feel is an especially good research paper at any point since the beginning of Spring 2009, send it to us. If you win, you get a $200 Barnes & Noble gift card, which is a prize I'd envy under any circumstance. You can find more details, including our submission criteria and instructions, here. If you're a faculty member reading this, by all means, please feel free to encourage the authors of the best papers you've seen to submit their work!
Now, let's get back on track with deaf research. I believe we left off with our pathfinders, a list of which you can find here.
The pathfinders are intended to be quick stops for people who are researching fairly common topics, such as cochlear implants, deaf authors, and interpreting. One thing to bear in mind about those pathfinders -- and this one thing is mentioned in most of them -- is that they don't often list the titles we have in those topics. They're intended to give you suggestions and methods for performing the research yourself. It sounds funny, but that's one of the most important things we try to do here at the Library: teach our students how to perform effective research on their own. It's an important skill to have, and these pathfinders are designed to encourage its development.
They're all laid out in a fairly standard format for most of the pathfinders (exceptions are discussed a little further down):
That's more or less standard, with some variation to accommodate films and microforms. Very few pathfinders don't follow this format; those non-standard pathfinders are concerned mostly with Gallaudet's more unique holdings, like our deaf school yearbooks, which aren't available online. Our yearbooks pathfinder, for example, describes how to search for a specific school's yearbook in our catalog.
In general, the pathfinders are terrific sources for step-by-step help in looking up some of the more common deaf-related topics. If you're looking for something that isn't covered by the pathfinders, you always have at least one more thing you can do: ask a librarian!
That takes care of this week. I'm out of town for the Academic Bowl again next week, so you can expect a shorter post a lá last week's. Enjoy the emerging grass and blue skies! After this week's 30-mile-per-hour winds, of course.
Question of the Week
When are we getting more new books?
We're getting them right now. Carts have been arriving at least once a week for the past few weeks. I'll write up a post about our new books sometime soon!
It's a unique sort of book that can simultaneously frustrate you beyond all belief and draw you in even deeper. Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is one of those books, and it's driving me nuts at the moment.
On the surface, it's a deeply complicated book -- at least four major plots (one of which includes you. Yes, you, the poor soul reading it), the beginnings of ten engrossing novels, and at least one secret society out to steal the source of all stories. Throughout it all, Calvino meditates on the nature of literature, the act of reading, and the way both interact within the reader's mind.
Below the surface, it's irritating. Each of the ten novels in the book starts off a little slowly, then builds up terrifically well all the way to a particularly suspenseful point -- and then is chopped off. Of course, all of this is in service to the overall plot, which centers around two readers who are having the same problem you are: Getting suckered into a particularly good book only to have it cut off at a particularly critical moment for one reason or another. Gah.
I'm sure by the book's end, I'll rave about it, but at the moment, I just want to know what happens next.
Okay, moving on. First, I'd like to announce that it's once again time for our Undergraduate Research Paper Award. If you're an undergrad who's written what you feel is an especially good research paper at any point since the beginning of Spring 2009, send it to us. If you win, you get a $200 Barnes & Noble gift card, which is a prize I'd envy under any circumstance. You can find more details, including our submission criteria and instructions, here. If you're a faculty member reading this, by all means, please feel free to encourage the authors of the best papers you've seen to submit their work!
Now, let's get back on track with deaf research. I believe we left off with our pathfinders, a list of which you can find here.
The pathfinders are intended to be quick stops for people who are researching fairly common topics, such as cochlear implants, deaf authors, and interpreting. One thing to bear in mind about those pathfinders -- and this one thing is mentioned in most of them -- is that they don't often list the titles we have in those topics. They're intended to give you suggestions and methods for performing the research yourself. It sounds funny, but that's one of the most important things we try to do here at the Library: teach our students how to perform effective research on their own. It's an important skill to have, and these pathfinders are designed to encourage its development.
They're all laid out in a fairly standard format for most of the pathfinders (exceptions are discussed a little further down):
- Scope
- This discusses exactly what the pathfinder covers. This generally includes a more specific definition of the topic covered (What exactly is covered in the term "Deaf culture?" How exactly does a cochlear implant work?) and gives you a better idea of what sort of information the pathfinder can help you dig up.
- Introduction
- Lists resources that offer introductions to the topic. For example, in the pathfinder about cochlear implants, this section details various texts that may offer useful introductions to cochlear implants and their importance in the deaf community, and points to the websites of some manufacturers.
- Books
- Again, we don't often list specific items. If we were to try to offer a listing of specific books, we'd spend quite a bit of time adding new books as they come in. It would also not be a very good fit for the purpose of the pathfinder, which is, again, intended to guide you along your own course of research. Instead, we offer suggested search terms and instructions on how to access the catalog.
- Periodicals
- Similar to the "Books" section. We also include a discussion of how to approach searching for deaf-related topics in non-deaf-related periodicals; many deaf-related issues are covered in journals that don't have the word "deaf" or "sign" in the title.
- Online Databases/Newspapers/Other Resources
- A particular pathfinder may have anywhere from one to all three of these sections. We generally include suggestions for the best places to look and search terms that will work best in finding what you need.
That's more or less standard, with some variation to accommodate films and microforms. Very few pathfinders don't follow this format; those non-standard pathfinders are concerned mostly with Gallaudet's more unique holdings, like our deaf school yearbooks, which aren't available online. Our yearbooks pathfinder, for example, describes how to search for a specific school's yearbook in our catalog.
In general, the pathfinders are terrific sources for step-by-step help in looking up some of the more common deaf-related topics. If you're looking for something that isn't covered by the pathfinders, you always have at least one more thing you can do: ask a librarian!
That takes care of this week. I'm out of town for the Academic Bowl again next week, so you can expect a shorter post a lá last week's. Enjoy the emerging grass and blue skies! After this week's 30-mile-per-hour winds, of course.
Question of the Week
When are we getting more new books?
We're getting them right now. Carts have been arriving at least once a week for the past few weeks. I'll write up a post about our new books sometime soon!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Three feet of snow: now what?
Phew.
All this snow. It makes me wonder why I left Rochester at all. Of course, I spent a couple of years in Florida after I graduated from RIT, so that makes sense -- except now, of course, I find myself up here, buried under three feet of snow.
As I'm sure you may have noticed, the recent snowstorms have thrown off the blog schedule a little bit. Add on to that my work with the Academic Bowl, and you've got a strange schedule simmering away. This week gets a Wednesday post, since I'm in Utah starting Thursday, but next week will get a post on Friday.
Since things have gone a little askew, I'm going to put the remainder of the Deaf Research Help series on hold until next week; we're all still playing catch-up after a week off, and it's beyond me to try and focus on such involved stuff at the moment while I've got a few other things going.
Instead, we'll do a quick post, starting with a book review and then an update on the Library in the wake of last week's snowstorms. Sort of a half-post for a half-week.
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. I actually checked this book out for a re-read after hearing about Salinger's death a few weeks ago; it's one of my favorite books. It's basically the story of the Glass family, which consists of a pair of parents and a whole passel of overachieving kids who sequentially rose to fame on a radio show by being on a panel of smart-aleck children who answer questions posed to them by callers. Of course, by the time in which the novel is set, the kids have all grown up, complete with a war death (the Second World War) and a suicide; the surviving Glasses are left to cope with the attendant psychological problems that arise when child geniuses grow up.
Specifically, the two youngest Glass kids, now in their twenties, are the main characters in the book. Franny's the baby -- and beauty -- of the family, who's just experienced a nervous breakdown for reasons not fully explained in the novel (although they are very strongly implied), while Zooey is her older brother, a good-looking aspiring actor with a major chip on his shoulder. The majority of the novel concerns a long conversation between the two as Franny convalesces on their mother's couch about the frustration they experience while approaching a world that is often more senseless than they expect it to be. Really, both Franny and Zooey are more thoughtful versions of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye; they're more likely to attempt to come to terms with the world as it is, rather than hold a grudge against it for its refusal to conform to their standards.
It's a fantastic book and, if I may be so bold, superior to Catcher in the Rye in many ways.
Now: What happened to the Library in the middle of all that snow?
Believe it or not, while Gallaudet as a whole was closed, we stayed open! This is because our student assistants, most of whom live on campus, went way above and beyond; they came in, they opened the building, they checked out books and movies, checked them in, and generally held the fort and offered our most basic services until we librarians could come back to campus. Major kudos to them!
However, for one reason or another, people may have gotten e-mails saying their items were overdue during last week, but were unable to make it onto campus because of unplowed roads, buried cars, or just plain old snow-laden ennui (maybe not that last one). This is kind of annoying, because folks who checked out any movies on the first day of the first storm, Feb. 4, were unable to come in on or before Feb. 7 to return their movies. Then, after a couple days of digging out, the next storm hit!
Don't worry, though: We're waiving any fines for items that you couldn't drop off last week because of the weather! If you've still got any of those, bring them in this week and you'll get off scot-free. This only applies to items that were due on or after Feb. 4 and before Feb. 14.
Aside from that, as I said, we're all playing catch-up, along with the rest of Gallaudet, but we're definitely open for business.
That's all for this week. Next week: Deaf research pathfinders!
All this snow. It makes me wonder why I left Rochester at all. Of course, I spent a couple of years in Florida after I graduated from RIT, so that makes sense -- except now, of course, I find myself up here, buried under three feet of snow.
As I'm sure you may have noticed, the recent snowstorms have thrown off the blog schedule a little bit. Add on to that my work with the Academic Bowl, and you've got a strange schedule simmering away. This week gets a Wednesday post, since I'm in Utah starting Thursday, but next week will get a post on Friday.
Since things have gone a little askew, I'm going to put the remainder of the Deaf Research Help series on hold until next week; we're all still playing catch-up after a week off, and it's beyond me to try and focus on such involved stuff at the moment while I've got a few other things going.
Instead, we'll do a quick post, starting with a book review and then an update on the Library in the wake of last week's snowstorms. Sort of a half-post for a half-week.
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. I actually checked this book out for a re-read after hearing about Salinger's death a few weeks ago; it's one of my favorite books. It's basically the story of the Glass family, which consists of a pair of parents and a whole passel of overachieving kids who sequentially rose to fame on a radio show by being on a panel of smart-aleck children who answer questions posed to them by callers. Of course, by the time in which the novel is set, the kids have all grown up, complete with a war death (the Second World War) and a suicide; the surviving Glasses are left to cope with the attendant psychological problems that arise when child geniuses grow up.
Specifically, the two youngest Glass kids, now in their twenties, are the main characters in the book. Franny's the baby -- and beauty -- of the family, who's just experienced a nervous breakdown for reasons not fully explained in the novel (although they are very strongly implied), while Zooey is her older brother, a good-looking aspiring actor with a major chip on his shoulder. The majority of the novel concerns a long conversation between the two as Franny convalesces on their mother's couch about the frustration they experience while approaching a world that is often more senseless than they expect it to be. Really, both Franny and Zooey are more thoughtful versions of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye; they're more likely to attempt to come to terms with the world as it is, rather than hold a grudge against it for its refusal to conform to their standards.
It's a fantastic book and, if I may be so bold, superior to Catcher in the Rye in many ways.
Now: What happened to the Library in the middle of all that snow?
Believe it or not, while Gallaudet as a whole was closed, we stayed open! This is because our student assistants, most of whom live on campus, went way above and beyond; they came in, they opened the building, they checked out books and movies, checked them in, and generally held the fort and offered our most basic services until we librarians could come back to campus. Major kudos to them!
However, for one reason or another, people may have gotten e-mails saying their items were overdue during last week, but were unable to make it onto campus because of unplowed roads, buried cars, or just plain old snow-laden ennui (maybe not that last one). This is kind of annoying, because folks who checked out any movies on the first day of the first storm, Feb. 4, were unable to come in on or before Feb. 7 to return their movies. Then, after a couple days of digging out, the next storm hit!
Don't worry, though: We're waiving any fines for items that you couldn't drop off last week because of the weather! If you've still got any of those, bring them in this week and you'll get off scot-free. This only applies to items that were due on or after Feb. 4 and before Feb. 14.
Aside from that, as I said, we're all playing catch-up, along with the rest of Gallaudet, but we're definitely open for business.
That's all for this week. Next week: Deaf research pathfinders!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
