Tag Archives: Top News

Foundations Department at Tyler and Libraries Once Again Partner for Book Giveaway, Artists and Authors Talk

Posted on by
Reply

Third Annual Tyler School of Art Foundations/Paley Library Book Give Away and Artists and Authors Lecture Stop by the Paley Library Circulation Desk during the week of April 16 and receive your own copy* of Ellen Harvey’s New York Beautification Project. Between 1999 and 2001, Harvey executed small old-fashioned landscapes in oil on graffiti sites across New York City. New York Beautification Project documents the works and Harvey’s diaristic accounts of painting illegally throughout New York. The narrative of her “beautification project” is both provocative and hilarious, touching on such issues as who is allowed to make art in our society, and what distinguishes art from graffiti, while never losing touch with the frequently comical reality of creating a contemporary art project on the streets of New York.

Don’t miss Harvey’s lecture, Monday, April 16 at 11:00 in Tyler Room B004.

*The fine print:

  • From Monday, April 16 through Friday, April 20, copies of New York Beautification Project will be given away to the first 20 patrons to request a book and show their Temple ID to Library Circulation Staff. Any member of the Temple community can receive a book. Each day the giveaway will begin at a different time to accommodate the variety of schedules of our faculty, staff and students.
  • Monday, April 16, 9:00 AM, Get your copy of Ellen’s book right before she speaks!
  • Tuesday, April 17, 11:00 AM
  • Wednesday, April 18, 1:00 PM
  • Thursday, April 19, 3:00 PM
  • Friday, April 20, NOON

This annual program is sponsored by the Foundations Department, Tyler School of Art and Temple University Libraries.

It is made possible through the use of General Activity Fees.

Portrait of Ellen Harvey standing before paintings on a wall.

[image of Ellen Harvey]

Access to licensed Library subscription resources

Posted on by
Reply

The Temple University Libraries purchase at significant annual cost exceeding $5 million a wide array of subscription materials including databases, certain software programs, and online electronic journals and books. We negotiate these annual costs in order to minimize the expense to Temple University. In most cases the costs for these licenses have been based on Temple’s full-time equivalent enrollment although some are based on the number of simultaneous users allowed.

While we would very much like to offer alumni access from home or work to our subscription databases, online journals and ebooks, it is economically infeasible. When we negotiate and pay for licenses based on Temples 34,000 FTE enrollment, we are then contractually obligated to ensure that only current Temple students, faculty, and staff have access to the resource. If we were to allow the 200,000+ Temple alumni access to our licensed resources, library costs would increase an estimated five-fold.

We therefore regularly review with Computing Services staff the protocols such as the Temple Portal by which we together ensure that only current students, faculty and staff are able to access these restricted licensed resources and that alumni and others are excluded. On Tuesday April 10 such a review resulted in resetting access in order to properly exclude from off-campus access alumni with Temple email accounts. A handful of Temple alumni who had earlier been able to get into some of our restricted resources will as a result now encounter turnaways in keeping with our license restrictions.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. As always, alumni and other guests are welcome to come to campus and access these resources from within the library where we are allowed by contract to offer on-site access to these resources. As of April 11, we are making provisions for Temple alumni currently enrolled as students in the Senior Scholars program to continue to have access as current students.

Jonathan LeBreton
Senior Associate University Librarian

Talk Radio Host Rob Redding

Posted on by
Reply

[ensemblevideo contentid=i7qF-L1OBEWFYF1vHDyL7A captions=true height=90]

iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series

Rob Redding is the talk show host of the Redding News Review, a syndicated radio program heard Monday through Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Genesis Communications Network (GCN). On Sundays his program airs between 7 and 10 p.m. on GCN, SiriusXM Satellite Radio Channel 128, and other affiliate radio stations. He also maintains the Redding News Review news web site. He has appeared on Fox News, NPR, and CSpan.

On February 1, he visited Temple University to discuss the presidential elections and his new book Where’s the Change?: Why Neither Obama, nor the GOP Can Solve America’s Problems. Before he spoke in Anderson Hall, he stopped by Paley Library for an interview.

—Fred Rowland

 

Out of Left Field: The Interview

Posted on by
Reply

[ensemblevideo contentid=_qw5-xtiSECQalwvdSkdMg captions=true height=90]

Audio Download Link (for later)

Professor Rebecca Alpert has had a longstanding interest in baseball since she began following the Brooklyn Dodgers in her youth. As a professor of religion, she has written on topics of modern Judaism and Jewish studies, and on the role of gender and sexuality in religion. When she learned of prominent Jewish booking agents in the Negro Leagues of the 1930s and 1940s, she was able to combine her interests in Jewish studies and baseball. The result is her new book Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball, published in 2011 by Oxford University Press. On February 15, I had the privilege of interviewing Professor Alpert on her new book.

—Fred Rowland

 

Jeffrey Kahn on Chimpanzees in Research

Posted on by
Reply

On Tuesday, February 28, Professor Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins University gave a talk in Gladfelter Hall entitled “Chimpanzees in Research: Ethics, Necessity & Why It Matters”. The context for his talk was a recently released report by an ad hoc committee which he chaired, entitled Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, available for free on the National Academies Press web site. The committee was formed by the Institute of Medicine at the request of the National Institutes of Health and a congressional inquiry, with the charge of determining the necessity of using chimpanzees in NIH-funded research and making recommendations for future use. The report’s recommendations were immediately accepted by the NIH (see press release).

Before his talk, he graciously agreed to stop by Paley Library for an interview.

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=vD6OprYL-kSFo414t36PgA captions=true height=90]

iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series

 

—Fred Rowland

Easier Access to the Chronicle of Higher Ed – on iPads Too

Posted on by
Reply

The Chronicle of Higher Education is the primary industry newspaper for the field of higher education. It is regular reading for both faculty and administrators – and graduate students. The Temple University Libraries purchases an annual site license to the Chronicle of Higher Education. That means any member of the Temple University community may access the full-text of every Chronicle article – and has access to the full-text of every archived article. Getting access from remote locations is now even easier. The Chronicle will recognize your Temple University email account and allow full-text access to all the content. In order for this to work you simply need to register as a Chronicle user with your Temple University email account. Once you have an account you should consider registering for the Academe Today daily newsletter that will give you access to the latest Chronicle articles. Please know that if you already have a Chronicle account you can simply add your Temple email to the existing account by editing your profile. Establishing a completely new one is not necessary. If you own an iPad and prefer reading your newspapers and magazines on it, you can now download an app for reading the Chronicle. The app is free to all Temple University community members. If you have any questions about obtaining access to the Chronicle of Higher Education as a member of the Temple University community contact Steven Bell for assistance.

It’s Career Week and Temple Libraries Are Here To Help

Posted on by
Reply

Career Week is a series of events that lead up to the Career Fair. It’s an opportunity for juniors, seniors and graduate students to connect with potential employers. This year the Career Fair takes place on Thursday, February 23 at the Student Center. Students should take advantage of every opportunity to prepare themselves so they’ll be ready to impress the employers. A well-designed resume and the right clothes help, but it’s also critical to prepare by gathering the best information available about the company and the industry in which it operates. That’s where the Temple Univesity Libraries can help. We offer dozens of specialized information databases that can make gathering information about companies and industries easier and less time consuming to conduct. For example, Business and Company Resource Center is a great starting point for both public and private companies. You can use Lexis/Nexis to get the latest news about a company by tapping into thousands of newspapers from around the globe. Stop by the Paley Library on Tuesday, February 21 at 2:00 pm to get on-the-spot help with your company research from Adam Shambaugh, our business research specialist. Help is always available at the Paley “Ask Here” Desk or stop by the Science & Engineering Library (SEL) if you are researching companies in the sciences or engineering. Whether it’s Career Week or any week of the year, the information experts at the Temple University Libraries are availalble to help all Temple students be better prepared for a job interview.

Paley’s Vending Machine Offers Basic Office Supplies

Posted on by
Reply

On any given day many students will stop at one of the service desks in Paley Library and ask for any of the following: * a pen * a flash drive * a highlighter Unfortunately, we are unable to provide such supplies to all the students who ask for them each day. Fortunately, students in need of these supplies can now conveniently purchase them in Paley Library. Vending machine stocked with office supplies. We have just added an office supplies vending machine that features all of the above items, plus notebooks, headphones, CD-ROM disks, and more – and we’ll be adding some personal items too, such as tissues and aspirin. Since Paley is open most nights until 2 am, there’s a new options for acquiring these supplies when you need them. You will find the vending machine in the corridor between Paley Library and the Tuttleman Center on the main level of Paley Library. If you have any suggestions for items you’d like to see us offering in the vending machine, let us know with a comment.

Do You Know the Top Two Complaints About Paley?

Posted on by
35

As the library staff member who receives all the suggestions and complaints that come from members of the Temple University community I can answer this question. Perhaps you already knew the answer: 1) Noise 2) Food Despite the efforts of the library staff to create an environment that is welcoming to all students, we are occasionally challenged to meet everyone’s needs. Whether it’s two students talking in one of the quiet zones, students getting a little too loud in the noise-tolerant zones, students talking on cellphones, a food mess left on a study table or a student eating a food truck meal that for one reason or another is distracting to other students, we continue to experience situations that leave someone dissatisfied with their Paley Library experience. In recent months we’ve been asked to create very strict, zero tolerance rules about both noise and food. One student even asked us to hire a security guard to force students to be quiet. We believe that strict rules about food and noise are difficult if not impossible to enforce in a building of Paley’s size, and we want to treat students as responsible adults. Sign stating top two library complaints are noise and food odors, to be respectful of others, and keep the library clean, (linked to larger version).
 All that said, we do need to create a better environment in Paley Library, and to do so we need the help of everyone who uses this great community resource. In an effort to remind all those who use Paley Library about the top two complaints we have designed a small card with this information, and have placed these cards throughout the Paley Library. You will see them on desks, carrels and computer workstations. It’s just a reminder. We know the vast majority of those who use the Library are considerate of their fellow library users. Sometimes we could all use a reminder that this is Your Library and together it is Our library. Paley belongs to all of us. Let’s make it the best Library possible so that everyone has a great experience each and every time they are here. If you have any ideas to share about improving Paley Library, be it noise and food issues or any other situation, please leave a comment.

Passing: What is it?

Posted on by
Reply

Robin Washington.           Lewis Gordon

[ensemblevideo contentid=l97R1rQTwUiME7caE8pW4Q captions=true height=90]

iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series

On November 14, 2011, The Center for Afro-Jewish Studies held its 6th Annual Symposium on “Passing”: Religion, Politics & Peoplehood, a topic inspired by the 50th anniversary of the publication of John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.

“Both Griffin and Fanon, though primarily concerned with racism and colonialism, were in dialogue with Jewish history and experience. “Passing”: Religion, Politics & Peoplehood will explore both the impact of their works at their time of publication and the after-effects of the texts’ publication in Jewish and African-American communities in America and Israel.” —from Pre-symposium press release

Press Release      Symposium Program

Before the symposium began, I spoke with two of the day’s participants, Robin Washington, editor of the Duluth News Tribune, and Lewis Gordon, Temple professor of religion and philosophy and director of the Center for Afro-Judaic Studies.

—Fred Rowland