Category Archives: Library News

New History Database Trials

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The Libraries are currently running trials to four history-related databases: British Periodicals; C19: The Nineteenth Century Index; House of Commons Parliamentary Papers; and Periodical Archives Online. I have received lots of positive feedback from faculty on the latter two databases, both of which appear prominently on the history resources “wish list” for 2006-2007. Periodical Archives Online is the full-text, online version of the old Periodicals Contents Index. It would be very helpful to receive feedback on C19: The Nineteenth Century. Can this database take the place of the currently-subscribed-to 19th Century Masterfile? For good or ill, The Masterfile has a relatively simple search interface. Please send your feedback on the usefulness of any of these resources to me at dcm@temple.edu. —David C. Murray

Religion in the news

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Over the past year many of the popular weekly news magazines, like Newsweek, Time, and US News and World Report, have featured cover stories on religious themes, most involving religion in the public sphere. Below are links to a number of these cover stories, accessed through the database Academic Search Premier.


WHERE WE STAND ON FAITH. (Cover story)
Newsweek

Religious Protection. (Cover story)
New Republic

In Search of The Spiritual. (Cover story)
Newsweek

A New Welcoming Spirit in the Mosque. (Cover story)
Newsweek

DOES GOD WANT YOU TO BE RICH? (Cover story)
Time

God vs. Science. (Cover Story)
Time

A Passionate Voice And a Moral Vision. (Cover story)
Newsweek

A New Social Gospel. (Cover story)
Newsweek

The Case Against Faith. (Cover story)
Newsweek

A Shepherd Protects His Own Backyard. (Cover story)
Newsweek

Debating ‘Da Vinci’ (Cover story)
U.S.News & World Report

The Kingdom of Christ. (Cover story)
U.S.News & World Report

THE WAYS OF OPUS DEI. (Cover story)
Time

—Fred Rowland

Guest Speaker on the Middle East

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Hassan El Menyawi will speak on Monday, November 27, at 2pm in the Women’s Studies Lounge on the 8th Floor of Anderson. Menyawi is currently Assistant Professor at the United Nations University for Peace, teaching courses on international law and human rights. Toward Global Democracy is an article by Manyawi published in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies. —Fred Rowland

Learn About the Center for Research Libraries

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Temple Libraries recently joined the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), an important consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research institutions based in Chicago. Affiliates of CRL member institutions can borrow expensive, rare, and/or otherwise hard-to-find research material, in some cases for up to two calendar years. Imagine access to that formerly unobtainable resource without having to travel halfway across the country! Please join me in the History Department’s “fish bowl” — Gladfelter 913 — for one of two informal sessions designed to introduce faculty and graduate students to CRL. We will discuss the benefits of CRL membership, and will proceed through a search / request from start to finish. The sessions will be held from 2:45 to 3:30 p.m. on November 9 and 10. If you cannot attend either session but would like an introduction to CRL, please contact me. —David C. Murray

Wendy Doniger to speak at UPenn

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Professor Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago will give presentations at the University of Pennsylvania on Wednesday (11/8, 5:15, Logan 17) and Thursday (11/9, 3:00pm, Penn Humanities Forum, 3619 Locust Walk). “Mythology of Gender in Kama-Sutra” (Wednesday) // “Bisexuality in Classical India: A Workshop” (Thursday) These events are co-sponsored by Fund to Encourage Women (FEW) of the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women, Department of South Asia Studies, Department of Religious Studies, and Women’s Studies and the Alice Paul Center. Here’s a description of Doniger from the University of Chicago Divinity School web site. Here are some works by Doniger (books) (articles1) (articles2).

Darwin Exhibit at the Franklin Institute

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There’s a Darwin Exhibit running at the Franklin Institute from October 6 to December 31 that I will try to get to. Darwin is arguably the most influential thinker of the past two centuries and his theories continue to be a rich source of inspiration and controversy. I’m not sure the exhibit will be as “astonishing” as the Franklin Institute self-reports but certainly worth seeing. Museums have become a bit like theme parks so get ready for plenty of rides, games, and make-believe as you enter Chuckie D’s world. Getting back to the real world, the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities is hosting The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, described as the “largest collection of Darwin’s writings ever published”. Thanks to science librarian Kathy Szigeti for pointing this site out for me. Check it out, it looks very impressive.

You might also take a look at some of the books the library has from Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould, two scientists who have done much to make Darwin accessbile to popular audiences. William A. Dembski has written a lot in support of Intelligent Design. Here’s a review in the Skeptic magazine of five different books (including one edited by Dembski) that challenge evolutionary theory. As the name suggests, the Skeptic is all about debunking, in this case Creationism/Intelligent Design. Here John C. Polkinghorne, physicist and theologian, critiques “Darwinian thinking” run amok. Mary Midgley is a philosopher who has written some interesting stuff on the religion in science.

Finally, we are often romantically inclined to see Big Ideas as the result of some lone genius working his magic, the paradigmatic cases in science being Newton and Einstein. It’s important to remember in this case that Darwin was not the only one who was thinking about the principles and lines of evidence that would lead to the theory of evolution. Alfred Russell Wallace came up with the mechanism of natural selection about the same time that Darwin did, which just goes to show that Big Ideas are often “in the air”.

Also, take a look at my Science and Religion subject guide for more resources on the intersection of science and religion.

—Fred Rowland

Memory, Counter-Memory and the end of the Monument

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James Young, professor and chair of the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst speaks tonight in Annenberg Hall, Room 3, 5:40-8:30. Young was on the German commission for the “Monument for Europe’s Murdered Jews” and also on the jury for the World Trade Center Memorial competition. Below are a book and two articles by Young. Germany’s Holocaust Memorial problem–and Mine The Holocaust as Vicarious Past The Texture of Memory –Fred Rowland

ARTstor Arrives!

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The Temple University Libraries are very pleased to announce online access toARTstor, a magnificent database of approximately 500,000 high resolution digital images covering “architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design as well as many other forms of visual culture”. ARTstor’s mission is to make great works of art and visual culture available for educational and noncommercial use. It has the potential to revolutionize the relationship between text and image as students and faculty liberally sprinkle images on presentations, research papers, and web pages. Each image comes with a detailed description that allows for effective searching at both a general and fine-grained level. You can even search ARTstor and JSTOR together! Participating institutions include the MOMA Architecture and Design Collection, the Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution, the Huntington Archive of Asian Art, and the Schlesinger History of Women in America, among others. It is a growing collection adding new content regularly.

ARTstor was created with both users and content-holders in mind. Users can access and share hundreds of thousands of images that until now were accessible to a relative few. At the same time, controls are in place to satisfy the concerns of content-holders with regards to their copyrighted materials. Each ARTstor image comes in high and low resolution. To view the high resolution images, users must either view the images online in ARTstor or offline using ARTstor’s presentation software, the Offline Image Viewer (OIV). This means that you can only download high resolution images to the OIV, which can itself be downloaded for free on the ARTstor web site. Users can import PowerPoint presentations and their own images into the OIV as well. With the low resolution images, on the other hand, you have much more flexibility as long as the use is for educational and noncommercial purposes. You can download low resolution images to your desktop and use them in presentations, research papers, and web pages.

Within ARTstor users can create Image Groups and Shared Folders to organize, annotate, and share images with other users. Everyone can create Image Groups after creating an ID and password. To use Shared Folders you have to receive instructor privileges. This level of access is reserved mainly for faculty members. You can email your request for instructor privileges to Andrea Goldstein atandrea@temple.edu.

For more information, access ARTstor from the library web site and you’ll find a wide variety of tutorials and explanatory materials. On a more technical note, you will have to disable your popup blockers to use ARTstor. Click on Using ARTstor to see how to do this. To get started, just click Launch and away you go!

—Fred Rowland

Ask a Librarian in Your Department

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A growing number of librarians are offering office hours in various departmental lounges across the University. The librarians are there for quick questions, in-depth research sessions, or just as a way to get to know you.

The departments, librarians, hours, and locations currently involved:

Department: English
Librarian: Kristina Devoe
Location: 1044 Anderson
Hours: 3-4:30 Monday and Tuesday

Department: History
Librarian: David Murray
Location: History Lounge, 9th floor Gladfelter
Hours: 11-noon, Monday and Thursday

Department: Religion
Librarian: Fred Rowland
Location: Religion Lounge, 6th floor Anderson
Hours: 10:15-11:45 Tuesday

Department: Boyer College of Music
Librarian: Anne Harlow
Location: Presser Learning Center, 1st floor Presser Hall
Hours: 2:30-3:30, Monday

Department: Conwell Center
Librarian: Anne Harlow
Location: Tutoring Lab, 2nd floor 1700 N Broad St
Hours: 2:30-3:30 Wednesday

Department: Theater
Librarian: Anne Harlow
Location: to be determined
Hours: 2:30-3:30 Friday

Department: Honors
Librarian: Susan Golding
Location: Honors Lounge, 2nd floor, Tuttleman
Hours: 12-1 Wednesday and Thursday

Free Online Research Tools Class

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presentationflyer-web.jpg October 10, 2006 from 1-2:30pm in Paley Library Room 130. Writing a paper or article? Working on a group project? Need a better way to organize all those websites, journal articles, and citations you’re saving for a thesis? Want to keep up with the latest articles in your area of study? Maybe you just want easier ways to search the internet? Or information about freely available software? Come to the library and learn about free online resources that can help you find, organize, share, and output information, as well as keep up with the latest news and articles. Topics include the extensible internet browser Firefox, advanced internet searching, social bookmarking sites for sharing information, free software (of all types), information on using RSS to keep up to date with journals, websites and news, and an introduction to RefWorks. All interested parties are invited. Questions? Email: dbadman@temple.edu or AIM: derikbad