Tag Archives: Top News

John Raines, Freedom Rider

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From May to December 1961, the Freedom Riders fanned out on buses and trains across the deep south in order to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia which determined that segregated vehicles and facilities in interstate travel were illegal. Organized by CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), Freedom Riders consisted of groups of blacks and whites traveling together and refusing to recognize any barriers placed between blacks and whites. They would sit together on buses and trains, wait together in terminals, and eat together in restaurants. They met with resistance, often extremely violent, but were committed to responding nonviolently.

Temple religion professor John Raines, who will be retiring on June 30, 2011, was a Freedom Rider. From July 8-15, 1961 he traveled by bus with black and white companions from St. Louis, Missouri to Little Rock, Arkansas to Shreveport, Louisiana and finally to New Orleans, Louisiana.

Recently, in his office in Anderson Hall, he told me the story of his freedom ride.

A Million e-Books Added to Summon, Our New Search Engine

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Summon, our new search engine, is now being previewed in its Beta version on the Libraries homepage. We are very pleased to announce that the Summon search now includes the public domain books offered by the Hathi Trust in full-text online format. These are books digitized by Google and numerous research library partners.

Hathi Trust, a non-profit cooperative centered at the University of Michigan, claims more than 2.3 million volumes are being served. That works out to about 910,000 titles at the moment, give or take. By the end of the year, we expect that total could reach 1 million titles all available 24/.7 in full-text online.

These Hathi Trust titles are for the most part in addition to the over 517,000 full-text online e-books which the Temple University Libraries already offered within the online catalog and Summon.

Amazing.

A great many of the Hathi Trust works date from 1923 or before. All books published prior to 1923 are now in the public domain and no longer prohibited from free reproduction by original copyright. However, there are tens of thousands of later works included because they are government documents or were found to be in public domain. Most are in English, but over 200,000 foreign language titles are included as well.

At present, Hathi Trust titles can be retrieved through Summon by author or title. For example, search Summon using the keywords Russell Conwell and limit the content type to ebook. Now you can read original works by Dr. Conwell, the founder of Temple University, or early biographies of the man.

Later this year Hathi and Summon promise to add full-text keyword searching to deliver a Google-like experience.

Please try Summon and let us know how it works for you.

– Jonathan LeBreton, Senior Associate University Librarian

West African Muslims of Harlem

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Zain Abdullah is a professor of Religion at Temple University who recently published Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem(Oxford University Press, 2010). It is an ethnographic study of francophone Africans from Guinea, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire who have made a home in Harlem, radically transforming this section of New York City. On Monday, February 28, 2011 he stopped by my office to discuss his new book.

The Interview is in two parts.

Black Mecca Interview with Zain Abdullah, Part 1

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Black Mecca Interview with Zain Abdullah, Part 2

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series

—Fred Rowland

 

Foundations Department, General Activities Fund and Temple University Libraries Annual Book Giveaway

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Foundations Department, General Activities Fund and Temple University Libraries Annual Book Giveaway Stop by the Paley Library Circulation desk between March 30 and April 6 and ask for your free copy of Trevor Paglen’s I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me. The first twenty people to ask for the book at the circulation desk will receive one—FREE. But only while that day’s supply lasts. Paglen will also speak in Gladfelter Hall on April 6 at 6PM. Paglen is a social scientist, artist, writer and provocateur. I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me shows patches that reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon, where classified projects are known by peculiar names and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. Although the actual projects represented (such as the notorious Area 51) are classified, these patches-which are worn by military units working on classified missions-are precisely photographed, strangely hinting at a world about which little is known. The April 6 program is presented by the Foundations Department at Tyler School of Art and the General Activities Fund at Temple. Temple University Libraries, the Departments of Architecture and of Geography and Urban Studies have provided additional support.

Look for New EZ Borrow Interface

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On Monday March 28th we anticipate launching a new version of EZBorrow. This new version is intended to improve and simplify the system, improve the quality of the search engine, and streamline the results and request process. Although the new system has undergone development and testing over the past few months, this will be the first large-scale use of the new interface. While we hope it will go well, we wanted the Temple University community to be aware of the migration to the new interface and the possibility of bugs that might require our attention. We believe you will find this new version of EZBorrow a nice improvement, but please let us know if you encounter any difficulties or problems. Please contact Penelope Myers at pmyers@temple.edu, or call the Circulation Services Desk at 215-204-0744.

Celebrate Digital Day At Paley – March 23

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Temple University Libraries will celebrate Digital Day — a celebration of our fantastic e-resources — on Wednesday, March 23, from 11:00am to 2:00pm with an e-resource fair held in Paley Library. Vendors and library staff will be on hand to familiarize you with the wide range of library resources and services available for research. Vendors include:

  • Adam Matthew
  • Alexander Street Press
  • Films Media Group
  • Gale
  • ProQuest
  • Sage
  • SimplyMap
  • Thomson Reuters

There will be food and drink, prizes, and a raffle too! Enter the raffle to win great prizes including: Kindles, a nook, an iPod shuffle, plus gift cards to Amazon, iTunes, and more!

We hope you’ll stop by and enjoy the fair — this is a fabulous way to learn how the library’s e-resources can help you with your research! Please know that owing to the fair you can expect a higher noise level on the first floor of the Paley Library, particularly on the east side of the building (normally a quiet zone). In addition, there will be fewer computers available on the east side of the first floor of Paley Library, but there will still be many computers available in the Library. Hope to see you there!

Library Prize Info Sessions

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2011 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research 2011 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability and the Environment Would you like to win $1,000 and a prestigious award from Temple Libraries? The deadline for submitting your work to our two library prizes is Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Learn more at two upcoming info sessions: 1) Friday, March 18 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Paley Library, Information Commons (1st Floor) 2) Tuesday, March 22 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Paley Library, Information Commons (1st Floor) These sessions are your opportunity to ask questions and get a leg up on the competition!

***Coffee and Cookies provided while they last***

Who’s Harry Gold?

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Allen Hornblum has written The Invisible Harry Gold: The man who gave the Soviets the atom bomb, published by Yale University Press in 2010. Surprisingly, this is the first biography of Harry Gold. In this interview, Mr. Hornblum talks about Harry Gold’s South Philly roots, his entry into spying, and his eventual arrest and conviction. He also talks about his sources for this work, including the papers of Joseph Gold, Harry’s brother, which are housed in the Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections.

The interview is in two parts.

Harry Gold: the early years
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Audio Download Link (for later)

Harry Gold becomes a spy
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Audio Download Link (for later)

 

—Fred Rowland

Take Our Survey

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You may notice something different on our Temple Libraries homepage today. There – in the upper right hand corner of the page. Now you see it. Place your mouse pointer there and you’ll be invited to take our satisfaction survey. We’ll be offering this survey through the end of the semester. It’s a totally opt-in survey. You won’t receive an email asking you to take the survey. If you want to complete the survey – it’s there. There are two versions of the survey: short and long. The short version takes approximately 7 minutes to complete, while the longer version takes about 15 minutes. We hope you will take time -either less or more – to complete the survey. We are always looking for ways to improve Temple University Libraries and the services it offers. Your feedback will help us to do a better job of serving you and the Temple University community. If you have any questions or feedback about the survey, please contact Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian.

n+1 Interview: Gessen & Roth

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On October 27, Keith Gessen and Marco Roth spoke in the Paley Lecture Hall about starting n+1 in the midst of the online transformation of the early 2000s.  n+1 is a print literary journal which released its first issue in 2004.  Before the lecture, we had a long discussion about their journal, the literary and competitive pressures of publishing, the death and life of the author, the life of print after the Internet, and just how n+1 got its name.

Gessen and Roth – Part I

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Gessen and Roth – Part II

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series

(More on Gessen and Roth)

 

—Fred Rowland