When you log into Refworks, you now have the option to try out the Refworks 2.0 beta version. Just click on the link in the upper right corner for “Refworks 2.0.” When using Refworks 2.0, you will have access to all the citations in your Refworks database. From Refworks 2.0, you can switch back to the traditional interface by clicking “Refworks Classic” in the upper right corner. Make sure you save any new work before switching between the two interfaces.
Bryant Simon
Temple history professor Bryant Simon is the author of Everything But the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks, published by University of California Press in 2009. It describes how the Starbucks phenomenon reflects many of the social and cultural trends in American society and business. On March 24, 2010, he stopped by Paley Library to talk to me about his new book. He discussed the history of the company, the research methods he employed, the coffeehouse tradition, the shrinking of public spaces in America, and how we might renew our civic culture.
Listen to the audio of the interview
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On March 18, 2010 I had the opportunity to speak with Classics professors Dan Tompkins, Robin Mitchell-Boyask, and Sydnor Roy. I wanted to understand how Classics research–and humanities research more generally–had changed in the course of the past few decades in the wake of broad transformations in academia, technology, and society.
Dan Tompkins received his PhD from Yale University in 1968 with a dissertation entitled Stylistic Characterization in Thucydides. Robin Mitchell-Boyask graduated in 1988 from Brown University with a dissertation entitled Tragic Identity: Studies in Euripides and Shakespeare. Sydnor Roy is a 2010 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation is entitled Political Relativism: Implicit Political Theory in Herodotus’ Histories.
We began by discussing their respective dissertation experiences: where they studied, what kinds of sources they used, the technology that was available, and the scholarly community that surrounded them. Since the three dissertations spanned the years from 1968 to 2010, the discussion revealed interesting similarities and differences in the academic environment over the past forty years. Below is Part 1 of our discussion. Parts 2 and 3 will follow.
Listen to the audio of the discussion, Part I
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On September 9, in a ceremony at Sullivan Hall, over one hundred interested faculty, students, staff, friends, and members of the public celebrated the arrival of the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center (PJAC) to Temple’s Main Campus. This 5 million piece collection is perhaps the best local Jewish archive anywhere in the country and finds an excellent home in the Temple University Libraries’ Urban Archives, a research center specializing in twentieth century Philadelphia. Another new arrival to Temple’s Main Campus, from its former Temple University Center City home, is the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History. Both of these organizations will invigorate Jewish studies research at Temple University. On November 6, Sarah Sherman, Archivist for the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center, and Lila Berman, head of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, sat down with librarian Fred Rowland to discuss the recent arrival of these two organizations. They discuss the long arc of Philadelphia Jewish history, the history of their respective organizations, and their roles in promoting research at Temple University. Interview (mp3; 28:24 minutes; 26 MB)
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The Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Jewish Studies Program held its 3rd Annual Symposium on Race and Judaism on November 19, 2009. The day’s program was devoted to themes in memory of the late Dr. Gary Tobin who died on July 6, 2009. Gary Tobin was the President of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, and, along with his wife Dianne, the founder of Be’chol Lashon/In Every Tongue, “a think-tank devoted to the study of Jewish diversity and bringing diverse communities of Jewish people together across the globe.” (View this short film about Be’chol Lashon.) Gary Tobin was a social scientist, teacher, and community organizer with interests in Jewish demography, philanthropy, antisemitism, and anti-Israelism.
On the morning of the symposium, librarian Fred Rowland sat down with four of the participants to discuss Gary Tobin, the organizations that he created, the issues to which he devoted his life, and the day’s events. They were Lewis Gordon, professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies; Laura Levitt, professor of religion and women’s studies; Rabbi Capers Funnye of the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, and Walter Isaac, graduate fellow for the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies.
Temple University Libraries’ subject specialists create guides to library resources for general subjects as well as for specific courses and assignments. Faculty should contact Subject Specialists to get more information on these. Here are the Subject Guides that are currently available.
Blackboard is a great place to make these guides available to students. View the Screencast below to see how easy it is to embed a library guide into your Blackboard course.
For more information, see Integrating the Library Into Blackboard.
If you search for journals in our Journal Finder, you can now access RSS feeds to get notifications of new issues’ table of contents. What is RSS? We’ve created a subject guide on that very subject called “Current Awareness with RSS Feeds”. It includes information about what RSS feeds are and how you can use them for different purposes. If have you used RSS feeds before, Journal Finder can help you find RSS feeds for the tables of contents of hundreds of academic journals from a wide range of publishers such as: Sage, Wiley, Blackwells, Elsevier, Oxford, Nature, American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, and many more. When you search in Journal Finder, if a journal in your results has an associated RSS feed, you will see the standard RSS icon, which looks like this:
Clicking on the RSS icon will take you to the url for the RSS feed. Next to the RSS icons are small information icons which will take you to the aforementioned subject guide on RSS. If you have any questions feel free to ask your subject librarian.
–Derik A Badman Digital Services Librarian
Mark Moskowitz sat down for an interview with librarian Fred Rowland after discussing books and filmmaking in an appearance at the Paley Lecture Hall on March 24, 2009. Moskowitz is the producer and director of the non-fiction narrative film The Stone Reader, in which he tracks down the elusive author of The Stones of Summer, Dow Mossman, a young writer who slipped into obscurity after publishing his first novel. The Stone Reader won awards at both the 2002 Slamdance Film Festival and the 2003 Philadelphia Film Festival. In this interview, Moskowitz talks about the book, his film, its reception, and his current projects.
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Leslie Banks appeared at the Temple Book Club on March 4, 2009 to talk about her new book, The Thirteenth, and her new projects including a forthcoming graphic novel. In an engaging presentation with many fans in the audience, she discussed the final book of her Vampire Huntress series, as well as her journey to becoming a writer, the publishing industry, and the challenge of writing as a career. Afterward, she kindly agreed to an interview with librarian Fred Rowland, who engaged her on many of these same issues. Take some time to listen to this interesting interview.
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The interviews with the winners of the 2009 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research are now available for download. Take some time and listen to these engaging young scholars.
Interview (mp3, 13:06): Danielle Country and Faculty Sponsor Laura Samponaro
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Interview (mp3, 21:36): George Keddie and Faculty Sponsor Vasiliki Limberis
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Interview (mp3, 15:05): Cara Shay and Faculty Sponsor Diana Woodruff-Pak
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iTunes U link (for downloads)
For more information on this year’s winners and honorable mentions, go to the Winners page.
