“The judge’s ruling is significant not only for Georgia State University, but for all educational fair use in general,” said Georgia State University President Mark P. Becker. “While the broader implications of this case will be analyzed for weeks and months to come, Georgia State is pleased to have been a trailblazer in this increasingly complex digital copyright environment.”

The following message from Risa Palm, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, was sent to Georgia State University faculty and staff on Tuesday morning.

I am pleased to share with you that the long-awaited decision in the university’s copyright lawsuit was issued on Friday, May 11. The ruling found in favor of the university in almost all of the cases of alleged infringement.

In 2008, three publishers (Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and SAGE Publications) sued the university alleging that the university’s use of the electronic reserves system for making copyrighted material available to students violates copyright law. In 94 of the 99 instances of alleged infringement, the judge ruled that the university provided the materials in compliance with fair use.

As for the instances where the judge found that the university infringed the publishers’ copyright, the court will now allow the publishers to seek injunctive or declaratory relief, which they are being asked to submit within twenty days of the order. At that time, the university will be provided an opportunity to respond.

The 350-page decision issued by U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans provides additional guidance on the application of the four factor fair use analysis. The university is reviewing the decision and determining how it will affect our continuing practices.

Many GSU faculty and staff assisted in this lengthy and complicated case. I would like to thank all of the faculty and staff who were deposed or testified at trial. Your experience was important in helping to provide insight into the importance of sharing knowledge with our students. This landmark case will help set guidelines for colleges and universities around the country, and I am proud that our dynamic academic community has played a significant role.

Georgia State University’s Attorney and Dean of Libraries also commented on the ruling:

This case highlights the importance of fair use in providing academic faculty a cost effective, legal way to spread important knowledge to their students. We appreciate Judge Evans’ careful consideration of this complicated issue, and greatly value her understanding and appreciation of higher education. While the practicality of the ruling still needs to be determined, it will provide faculty across the country a clearer and more consistent roadmap on fair use.
– Kerry Heyward, Georgia State University Attorney

The university system’s policy on e-reserves was based on practices from the broader academic library community. I am pleased that Judge Evans has recognized that GSU was doing a good job implementing that policy. I commend our faculty and library personnel for all of their hard work.
– Nancy Seamans, GSU’s Dean of Libraries

ARTINFO.com

Here’s the list, together with our call numbers and locations. What do you think of this list? What books do you think should be included?

Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim
N70 .A693 1997 | Library North 4

Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye by Rudolf Arnheim
N71 .A67 1974 | Library North 4

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
TR642 .B3713 1981 | Library North 3

Ways of Seeing by John Berger
N7430.5 .W39 | Library North 4

The Continental Aesthetics Reader, 2nd Edition Edited by Clive Cazeaux
We have the 1st edition: BH201 .C59 2000 | Library North 5

Art History by Marilyn Stokstad and Michael W. Cothren
We have the 3rd edition: N5300 .S923 2008 | Library North 4

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
BF575.H27 C85 1990 | Library North 5

History of Beauty by Umberto Eco
BH81 .S7513 2010 | Library North 5

On Ugliness by Umberto Eco
BH301.U5 S7613 2007 | Library North 5

Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students by James Elkins
N346.A1 E44 2001 | Library North 4

Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation by E.H. Gombrich
N70 .G615 1969 | Library North 4

Art in Theory: 1900 – 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, 2nd Edition Edited by Charles Harrison and Dr. Paul J. Wood, Wiley
N6490 .A7167 2003 | Library North 4

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
PN37 .B4413 1986 | Library North 4

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926
PT2603.E455 A26 1996 | Library North 3

The Pink Glass Swan by Lucy Lippard
N72.F45 L56 1995 | Library North 4

Orientalism by Edward Said
DS12 .S24 1979 | Library North 5

Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists by Joseph Sheppard
NC760 .S53 1975 | Library South 5

Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
N8600 .T485 2008 | Library North 4

The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari
N6922 .V492 | Library North 4

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin by Lawrence Weschler
N6537.I64 W4 2008 | Library North 4

"Painter 11a" Craig Drennen, 2011 image courtesy of the Saltworks Gallery

Congrats to Drawing & Painting Professor Craig Drennen (Welch School of Art & Design), whose recent show, Dramatis Personæ, at the Saltworks Gallery received a very favorable exhibition review in the most recent issue of Art in America. In this series of works and performances, Professor Drennen explores the meanings and characters in Timon of Athens, a rather obscure Shakespeare play which was never performed during The Bard’s lifetime.

• To read the full Art in America review, just peruse the current issue, available in the Current Periodicals area on Library North 1.
• View some of the images from the Dramatis Personæ show via the Saltworks Gallery website.
• Want to find out more about Timon of Athens? The Library has some copies of the play available for checkout. There are also several digitized historical texts of the play within Eighteenth Century Collections Online. You can find all of these versions of the play, plus works about ”Timon,” in the Library Catalog.

The project is scheduled for the nights of Friday May 18th and Saturday May 19th.

Learn more about volunteering through the Library collection:

• The American way to change:  How national service & volunteers are transforming America
• Awakening Hippocrates:  A primer on health, poverty, and global service
• Doctors serving people:  Restoring humanism to medicine through student community service
• If it takes a village, build one:  How I found meaning through a life of service and 100+ ways you can too
• Landscapes of voluntarism:  New spaces of health, welfare and governance
• Service learning for health, physical education, and recreation:  A step-by-step guide
• Volunteers:  A social profile

For more information  contact Pam Buckmaster, MPH at 404-966-2375 or Dr. Sheryl Strasser at sstrasser@gsu.edu.

The resources at the University Library can help you to prepare to impress for trips and other professional activities like internships or field work. In the case of Coca Cola or another business, you can search the catalog for books, documentaries, and other publications on the company’s history, advertising, executives, or other topics. You can also use different databases, like Business & Company Resource Center, Business Source Complete or Hoover’s to find additional company and industry information that isn’t available through Google or other Internet search engines. Knowing how to conduct this type of research is a vital skill for any job seeker.

Thanks to the Honors College students who attended for writing up the experience!

From the Wikipedia article 'In the Night Kitchen'

Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of  numerous books including Where the Wild Things Are, died today. I remember when I was in library school in the early 1980′s being told that some libraries drew a diaper on the little boy in his book, In the Night Kitchen. This controversial book is 25th on the ALA list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Boooks, 1990-2000. In today’s Access Atlanta article, “Where Wild Things Are’ author Maurice Sendak dies”  the author is quoted as saying that our country is different today, but he would have never considered revising one of his works. Mr. Sendak had no children, but many think his inspiration for his characters came from his brothers and sisters. Most of the works written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak can be found in the Carl and Gretchen Patton Children’s collection on the first floor of Library North, but the library also has books about his illustrations such as The Art of Maurice Sendak shelved with the art books on Library North third floor. Maurice Sendak will be missed by many.

Image courtesy of nasa hq photo on Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

If you looked up at the sky on the morning of April 17, you might have spotted a once-in-a-lifetime sight: the Space Shuttle Discovery’s final flight. Discovery, hitching a ride on the back of NASA’s Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, flew from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. NASA’s Space Shuttle page details Discovery’s last flight, and Flickr’s Space Shuttle Discovery pool gathers pictures from NASA and spectators who caught Discovery flying overhead.

Interested in learning more? The GSU library has many relevant books, including these:

Take a look back in time with the American Astronautical Society’s Space Shuttle: Dawn of an Era: Proceedings of the 26th AAS Annual Conference. The conference, held two years before the Space Shuttle Columbia made its first orbital flight, captured the excitement and promise of NASA’s new program.

Colonel Mike Mullane’s Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut covers his three missions on Shuttles Discovery and Atlantis. As a member of the first group of Space Shuttle Astronauts, Mullane covers everything from bizarre fellow astronauts to the Challenger disaster.

For a look at the future after the Space Shuttle, try the National Research Council’s Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era. The era of the Space Shuttle may be over, but the era of space exploration is not.

Image courtesy National Institute of Health.

Now that finals are over, take a break and come see Dr. Phillip Sharp, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, give a talk at Georgia State on May 8th (10:30 AM in the Urban Life Auditorium). Dr. Sharp and Dr. Richard Roberts won the Nobel Prize in 1993 “for their discoveries of split genes“. Dr. Sharp, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studies small RNAs and their regulation of gene expression; his theories have had a huge influence in the fields of cell biology and biochemistry.

To learn more about Dr. Sharp’s work, check out one of the papers that led to his Nobel Prize or read his most recent work:

Sharp PA. Speculations on RNA splicing. Cell. Mar 1981;23(3):643-646.

Ebert MS, Sharp PA. Roles for MicroRNAs in Conferring Robustness to Biological Processes. Cell. Apr 27 2012;149(3):515-524.

Goldberg MS, Sharp PA. Pyruvate kinase M2-specific siRNA induces apoptosis and tumor regression. J Exp Med. Feb 13 2012;209(2):217-224.

You can also see the Nobel Prize Committee’s page on Dr. Sharp, including an interview and his Nobel Lecture.

Cheryl Case, Winner of the 2012 Sanford Bederman Award

Many Georgia State graduate students show considerable skill and creativity in their application of library and geographic information resources, creating everything from maps for social services in Atlanta to guides for environmental and agricultural decision making in Egypt. Georgia State University Library recognizes these students with the Sanford Bederman Research Award. While only one student won the 2012 award, the research of a second applicant was so impressive that the award committee granted him an Honorable Mention.

Cheryl Case is the first student to win the award. Case is a Graduate Research Assistant with Community Engagement Outreach Care through the Center for Excellence for Health Disparities Research at the Georgia State University Institute of Public Health. Originally, Case set out to create a community research guide for Atlantans looking for social service assistance, housing, financial aid or just a hot meal. Along with Jack Reed in the Department of Geosciences, Case created maps to show people where to access these services. She discovered gaps where such services weren’t available and decided to use the research data for her paper “Served or Unserved? A Site-Suitability Analysis of Social Services in Atlanta, Georgia Using Geographic Information Systems.” According to Case:

This paper communicates that while 8.5% of the population was underserved by social services as a whole, when examined more closely the range of access depending on the specific social service was between 11-14% of the population being unserved. The services that were least accessible leaving almost 14% of the population with limited access to shelters, food and clothing services, legal services, employment and training services, and prisoner reentry services.

Semir Sarajlic, Honorable Mention for the 2012 Sanford Bederman Award

Honorable Mention went to Semir Sarajlic, whose research goal was to discover the implications of introducing water into the Egyptian desert. His paper, “Land Cover Change and Mineral Composite Assessment of Tushka Depression, in Egypt, Using Remote Sensing and GIS” examined what water diverted from a Lake Nasser spillway would do to the mineral composition of the area.

Sarajlic primarily relied on research in the International Journal of Remote Sensing. “Everything’s at your fingertips,” he said, noting that in lieu of library budget cuts and journal cancellations he was still able to successfully complete his research. In addition Sarajlic used the Visualization Wall at the Petit Science Center to improve his analysis. Being able to view data on these large high-resolution screens actually allowed him to reduce the margin of error in his findings. Sarajlic’s article was published in the March/April 2012 issue of The Professional Geologist.

Congratulations to both Cheryl Case and Semir Sarajlic for their excellent research!

photo by Tori Thomas

And check out some of these GSU University Library resources about the Atlanta Underground:

• Hacker, J. F. (1989). Recapturing Main Street: A semiotic analysis of nostalgia in the Underground Atlanta project. 
• Monroe, D. (2006). What’s up with the Underground? Atlanta, 46(8), 60-68.
• Newman, H. K. (1999). Southern hospitality: Tourism and the growth of Atlanta. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. – Contains a chapter on Underground Atlanta
• Williams, R. 1. (2004). Underground Atlanta: Combating negative perceptions and getting suburbanites to frequent this “downtown anchor”. 
• Dan Sweat oral history interviews – Dan Sweat was involved in numerous high profile downtown projects, including the redevelopment of the Underground Atlanta.

Developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.

Georgia State University has access to the following subjects in Oxford Bibliographies Online:

• Atlantic History
• Buddhism
• Criminology
• Hinduism
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Military History
• Philosophy

How can Oxford Bibliographies help you?

For Researchers and Faculty: A Springboard for Research

• High-level overviews of scholarship authored by top scholars in the field to get you up to speed quickly on topics beyond your areas of expertise
• Expert recommendations on the best works available – with seamless linking to full-text print and online content – save time in syllabus and reading list preparation
• A first stop for new research, a source for texts to incorporate into a course, and an indispensable supplement to use alongside course texts

For Students: Authoritative Guidance from Top Scholars

• Scholarly articles provide narrative pathways through the key literature on a topic, offering a trustworthy research starting point
• Multiple peer reviews and Editorial Board vetting ensure that recommended resources are scholarly, accurate, and objective
• User-friendly interface and intuitive linking saves valuable research time by directing students to exactly the right chapter, book, Web site, archive, or data set they need for their research
• Promotes critical thinking about sources and give students the means to negotiate and identify quality scholarship

To access this database, click on the Discover tab on the Library homepage, then click on the letter “O” on the Databases by Name A-Z list and scroll down.

For more information about The Myth of American Religious Freedom, click here.

Prof. Sehat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History. In addition to The Myth of American Religious Freedom, he has also published:

• “Gender and Theatrical Realism: The Problem of Clyde Fitch,” Journal of the Gilded Age & Progressive Era (July 2008)
• “The Civilizing Mission of Booker T. Washington,” Journal of Southern History (May 2007)

Congratulations to Prof. Sehat!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81752595@N00/61706536

If you’re a Public Health or Social Work student or just interested in finding out what it’s like to serve your community please consider volunteering for these special up-coming opportunities.

The first is a chance to learn what it’s like to be a person living in poverty and navigating the public health system.  The second is a late-night air-sampling project sponsored by the Fulton County Smoke Free Initiative.

“The State of Poverty and Public Health”; A Poverty Simulation Experience
The poverty simulation work-shop is designed to help participants understand what it might be like to live in a typical low income family trying to survive month to month and navigate the public health system.  This sensitivity training workshop focuses on meeting challenges of daily life when living in poverty (e.g. bureaucracy, low income, high financial demands, public transportation, poor customer service in social service/public health settings).  The event takes place at the GSU Student Center Ballroom and will be facilitated by the Georgia Public Health Training Center.  Register online at http://www.gphtc.org or contact Sarah Boos at sboos1@gsu.edu with questions.  Volunteers are also needed to staff the event.

Two sessions are being offered:
Monday, April 30th 2012, 5 PM to 8 PM
and
Tuesday, May 1st 2012, 1 PM to 4 PM

Air-Sampling Project, aka “Bar-Hopping for Science”
This project involves strapping on a portable air-sampling machine and going to different bars and restaurants in Fulton County establishments that allow smoking. Participants will be trained with the equipment and then sent out in teams of four and asked to go to approximately five venues throughout the night from about 8 pm to 1 am.  This project is tentatively scheduled for May 18th.

Learn more about volunteering through the Library collection:

• The American way to change:  How national service & volunteers are transforming America
• Awakening Hippocrates:  A primer on health, poverty, and global service
• Doctors serving people:  Restoring humanism to medicine through student community service
• If it takes a village, build one:  How I found meaning through a life of service and 100+ ways you can too
• Landscapes of voluntarism:  New spaces of health, welfare and governance
• Service learning for health, physical education, and recreation:  A step-by-step guide
• Volunteers:  A social profile

For more information about either of these projects contact Pam Buckmaster, MPH at 404-966-2375.

*“Volunteer:  A person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking” (i.e. no pay).

Candace Kemp, GSU Professor of Gerontoloty and Sociology

Take a look at GSU Gerontology and Sociology Professor Candace Kemp’s recently-published research:

Kemp, C. L. (2012). Married couples in assisted living: Adult children’s experiences providing support. Journal Of Family Issues, 33(5), 639-661.

From article abstract:

Little is known about children’s experiences providing support in care settings when both parents are involved. This article presents an analysis of qualitative data from a study involving 20 married couples living together in assisted living (AL) and 10 adult children. It asks the following: (a) What are children’s support experiences when parents relocate to and live together in AL? (b) To what extent does the AL context influence their experiences? Despite having a “heavy burden” from “double the work,” children were relieved to have both parents in one place. Children expressed concern over privacy, “tight quarters,” spousal caregiving, and keeping their parents together. Findings have implications for future research and policy and practice.

Also explore Professor Kemp’s previous research in this area:

• Kemp, C. L. (2008). Negotiating transitions in later life: Married couples in assisted living. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 27 (3), 231-251.

• Connidis, I. A., & Kemp, C. L. (2008). Negotiating actual and anticipated parental support: Multiple sibling voices in three-generation families. Journal of Aging Studies, 22, 229-238.

• Kemp, C. L. (2007). Grandparent-grandchild ties: Reflections on continuity and change across three generations. Journal of Family Issues 23, 855-881.

Dick Clark and Mary Staton promoting The March of Dimes, Atlanta, Georgia, October 11, 1958.

In October 1958, Dick Clark promoted the March of Dimes’ newly redirected focus on eliminating birth defects.  At that time The March of Dimes was the fundraising arm of the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis, which was established in Georgia initially as an expansion of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Warm Springs Foundation.  By 1958 polio was largely under control in the U.S., allowing the Foundation to adopt its new mission.

Clark’s “star” power for charity events was derived from his popularity as a television and radio personality.  He was in Atlanta at the same time to televise The Dick Clark Show featuring rhythm and blues musician Sam Cooke.  The KKK threatened to disrupt the show because of its integrated lineup and audience, and the National Guard was called in, although it was believed that many were themselves Klan members.   In American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘n’ roll Empire, John Jackson discusses the degree to which American Bandstand was integrated as well as its legacy of societal change.

Poster at rally on University of Georgia's campus - Photo by Debby Yoder

One of several controversies involved in this case is the question of racial profiling in law enforcement practices.  Explore some of the GSU University Library’s resources addressing this issue.

Online films via Films on Demand database:

• ABC News Productions, Films for the Humanities & Sciences, & Films Media Group. (2006). Racial profiling and law enforcement: America in black and white. New York: Films Media Group.

• ABC News Productions, Films for the Humanities & Sciences, & Films Media Group. (2006). Protect and serve?: De-policing in urban neighborhoods. New York: Films Media Group.

Several books discussing racial profiling in law enforcement, including:

• Free, M. D. (2003). Racial issues in criminal justice: The case of African Americans. Westport, CT: Praeger. *Individual chapters of relevance: “Picasso as a Criminologist: The Abstract Art of Racial Profiling,” by Michael J. Lynch and Amie M. Schuck, and “Driving While Black: Corollary Phenomena and Collateral Consequences,” by Katheryn M. Russell.

• Gumbhir, V. K. (2007). But is it racial profiling? Policing, pretext stops, and the color of suspicion. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub.

• Moody, M. N. (2008). Black and mainstream press’ framing of racial profiling: A historical perspective. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Some scholarly research articles:

• Peruche, B., & Plant, E. (2006). The correlates of law enforcement officers’ automatic and controlled race-based responses to criminal suspects. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 28(2), 193-199.

• Alpert, G. P., Dunham, R. G., & Smith, M. R. (2007). Investigating racial profiling by the Miami-Dade police department: A multimethod approach. Criminology & Public Policy, 6, 25–55.

• Skolnick, J. H. (2007). Racial profiling – then and now. Criminology & Public Policy, 6, 65–70.

• Brunson, R. K. (2007). “Police don’t like black people”: African-American young men’s accumulated police experiences. Criminology & Public Policy, 6, 71–101.

ReferenceUSA provides online access to data on 15.5 million businesses and 222 million consumers.  With more than 100 fields of data ranging from sales revenue to competitor lists, from credit ratings to GIS data, this database is a valuable resource with lots of practical business applications.  Users can research business and industry data for class assignments or business plans.  It can be used to develop marketing plans, conduct competitive analysis, raise funds and locate people.   It’s also a great tool for job hunting. 

ReferenceUSA is accessible through the Georgia State University Library web site with your Campus ID and Password.  If you have any questions about ReferenceUSA, or any other business-related databases, be sure to contact a GSU Library Business Librarian:  Laura Carscaddon (lcarscaddon1@gsu.edu), Joel Glogowski (jglogowski@gsu.edu) or Karen MacDonald (kimacdonald@gsu.edu).

But over 70% of Georgia State students own mobile devices, from tablets to smart phones. That means 25% of you (about 7,600 people) aren’t taking advantage of our mobile service.

The library recognizes that mobile access to our resources and services is in high demand. We want to make sure that we’re providing a mobile site that meets your research and learning needs.

To help us achieve that goal, please fill out our new survey so we can optimize your experience and prioritize which new features we add to the site!

Wednesday, April 18, 2012
11:30 am to 12:45 pm
Speaker’s Auditorium, GSU Student Center

“Dr. Galea is widely published on many subjects related to urban health.  He has conducted research on mental disorders, health disparities, and the effects of large-scale traumatic events.  His research following 9/11 has become an important source for understanding the health  of people who have been exposed to traumatic stressors.”

You may find his books here at the Georgia State University Library:

• Macrosocial determinants of population health
• Handbook of urban health:  Populations, methods, and practice
• Population mental health:  Evidence, policy, and public health practice
• Mental health and disasters

Follow the links below to read some of his articles.

• Galea S, Uddin M, Koenen K.  The urban environment and mental disorders: Epigenetic links.  Epigenetics. 2011 Apr;6(4):400-4.
• Galea S, Riddle M, Kaplan GA.  Causal thinking and complex system approaches in epidemiology. Int J Epidemiol. 2010 Feb;39(1):97-106.
• Fagan J, Galea S, Ahern J, Bonner S, Vlahov D.    Relationship of self-reported asthma severity and urgent health care utilization to psychological sequelae of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center among New York City area residents. Psychosom Med. 2003 Nov-Dec;65(6):993-6.
• Galea S, Ahern J, Resnick H, Kilpatrick D, Bucuvalas M, Gold J, Vlahov D.    Psychological sequelae of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. N Engl J Med. 2002 Mar 28;346(13):982-7.

Learn more about Urban Health through the Institute for Public Health’s Partnership for Urban Health Research website and through the Library’s Research Guide.

If you’d like to read some of the recent publications by these faculty members, the University Library can provide you with access.

• Elizabeth Beck, Nancy P. Kropf, Pamela Blume Leonard (book). Social Work and Restorative Justice: Skills for Dialogue, Peacemaking, and Reconciliation. 2011.
• Elizabeth Beck, Sarah Britto, and Arlene Bowers Andrews (book). In the Shadow of Death: Restorative Justice and Death Row Families. 2007.
• Dadhna Diwan and Mindy R. Wertheimer (article). “Aging Services or Services to the Aging?Focus of a University-Community Curriculum Development Partnership to Increase Awareness of Aging Issues in Social Work Practice.” 2007.
• Fred Brooks, Mindy R. Wertheimer, Elizabeth L. Beck, and James. L. Wolk (article). “Community Partnerships: An Innovative Model of Social Work Education and Practice.” 2004.

Time & Location: Troy Moore Library, 9th Floor of the GCB on Wednesday, April 18th@12:00-1:00pm

Summary: This workshop will focus on working with cover letters for job applications, as well as working with scholarship applications. Some library and university resources include The Guide to Basic Cover Letter Writing, Gallery of Best Cover Letters; Scholarships, Grants and Prizes; The Occupational Outlook Handbook (free government resource); and the Georgia State University Career Services department. As always this workshop is free for Georgia State University faculty, staff, and students.

Biography: Shana Latimer has a B.A. in Communication and Media Studies from Clayton State University. She is currently working on completing her M.A. in Literary Studies from Georgia State University. Her research interests include the ways in which media and literary mediums influence women in the areas of self, worldview, religion, and politics. Her writing strengths and interests include but are not limited to revision, organization, journalism, creative fiction, and poetry. Shana plans to pursue her Ph.D. in Literary Studies or Creative Writing upon completion of her M.A. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, traveling, attending theatre, knitting scarves, and working on creative writing projects.

National Library Week is an annual celebration of libraries which began in 1958.  The American Library Association (ALA) in concert with libraries across the nation have designated this week as time to celebrate the contributions of libraries and their dedicated staff.

Libraries have historically served as our nation’s great equalizers of knowledge, providing access to information; leveling the playing field by making both print and digital information affordable, available and accessible to all people.

What if you don’t have your PantherCard? Maybe you lost it. Maybe it’s at home or in your car. Or maybe you just never picked one up. The solution’s easy: walk 250 feet from the library to Auxiliary Services, where you can get a new card. It takes only a few minutes!

If you’re a Georgia State student, staff or faculty member without a PantherCard, now’s the time to get one so you can enter the library securely. From April 16, 2012 – May 1, 2012 we will have restricted access during extended final exam hours. We do this for the benefit of the scholarly community, serving their teaching and research needs. That’s why our Access Policy says:

During the week prior to final examinations, and during the final examination period, only currently enrolled students; faculty and staff from Georgia State University, the University System of Georgia, or ARCHE schools, with a valid institutional ID card, will be granted access to the University Library. Written permission for access during this time for other researchers must be arranged in advance.

Please check our calendar at library.gsu.edu for our extended hours. Remember — no exceptions — you’re required to have your PantherCard for access during this period.

The extended hours from 4/16 – 5/1 are:

• Monday – Thursday: 7:30 am – 2:00 am
• Friday: 7:30 am – 8:00 pm
• Saturday: 9:00 am – 7:00 pm
• Sunday: 12:00 pm – 12:00 am

An Atlanta public school - photo by GSU student Nicolas Sakka

Further explore impacts of the “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001″ in these library resources:

• Hollingworth, L. (2009). Unintended educational and social consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act. Journal Of Gender, Race & Justice, 12(2), 311-327.
• Krieg, J. M. (2011). Which students are left behind? The racial impacts of the No Child Left Behind Act. Economics Of Education Review, 30(4), 654-664.
• Meier, D., & Wood, G. H. (2004). Many children left behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act is damaging our children and our schools. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Rowley, R., & Wright, D. (2011). No “white” child left behind: The academic achievement gap between black and white students. Journal Of Negro Education, 80(2), 93-107.
• Wilson, E. K. (2011). Leveling localism and racial inequality in education through the No Child Left Behind Act public choice provision. University Of Michigan Journal Of Law Reform, 44(3), 625-665.

The Journal welcomes submissions of individual and collaborative research work in all disciplines. Keep in mind the following requirements:

• The work must be completed while the author is enrolled as an undergraduate student at one of the Alliance institutions: The University of Delaware, Drexel University, George Mason University, Georgia State University, Hofstra University, James Madison University, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Northeastern University, Old Dominion University, Towson University, Virginia Commonwealth University, or The College of William and Mary.
• Faculty-mentored research papers and theses from all disciplines will be considered.
• Submitters to the journal must own the copyright to the work being submitted.

We look forward to reviewing your work.  To submit please go to http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/caaurj/ and click on “Submit Article.”

Submission deadline: June 1, 2012

Format: Gelatin silver photographic print. Notes: Exhibition of war photographs / taken by Capt. F. Hurley, August 1917- August 1918 (no.51) From the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

2014 will mark the centennial of the “Great War,” later known as World War I. Originally often alled “the war to end all wars” because of the unprecedented scale of destruction it saw, World War I continues to intrigue us. In anticipation of this anniversary, the Association of Historians at Georgia State University is pleased to sponsor a roundtable titled “The First World War: A Centennial Appraisal of Global Origins and Legacies,” on Friday April 13 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.in the Troy Moore Library, 9th Floor, General Classroom Building.

Roundtable participants include:

• Dr. John W. Steinberg, Georgia Southern University
• Dr. Ian C. Fletcher, Georgia State University
• Dr. Pamela Sezgin, Gainesville State College
• Dr. Steve Sabol, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

This event is free and open to the public. For further information, please contact mclegg1@gsu.edu.

To learn more about the global origins and implications of the Great War, see these new resources available at the GSU Library (among our many other resources on World War I!):

• Frank C. Zagare, The Games of July: Explaining the Great War (2011)
• Jeremy Black, The Great War and the Making of the Modern World (2011)
• Karen Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory (2011)
• Neiberg, Michael S., Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I (2011)
• Heike Liebau, ed., The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia (2010)

Additionally, Haus Publishing’s Makers of the Modern World series focuses on the impact of World War I and the Versailles settlement worldwide, with emphasis on national leaders. Titles include:

• Alan Sharp, Consequences of Peace: The Versailles Settlement: Aftermath and Legacy 1919-2010 (2010)
• Hugh Purcell, Maharajah of Bikaner: India (2010)
• Andrew Dalby, South East Asia: Prince Charoon and Others (2010)
• Michael Streeter, Central America and the Caribbean (2010)

Click here for a list of our holdings in this series.

What is art?

To help answer these questions, the Art History  Graduate Forum has invited Professor Jessica Berry of
the philosophy department to host its third Interdisciplinary Round Table to be held on Wednesday, April 11, from 2:00-3:00 PM in Room 339 of the Arts & Humanities building.

The discussion will focus on Arthur C. Danto’s famous article, “The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense.”

Dr. Berry’s research focuses on late 18th- to early 20th-century German philosophy (especially issues in epistemology and value theory in the work of Marx and Nietzsche) and in ancient Greek philosophy (especially the pre-Socratic and Hellenistic philosophers). She has taught courses on Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, Kant, Heidegger, and Aristotle, and on the philosophy of art. Recent works by Dr. Berry include:

• Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• “Perspectivism as ‘Ephexis’ in Interpretation.” Philosophical Topics 33.2 (2005): 19-44.
• “The Pyrrhonian Revival in Montaigne and Nietzsche.” Journal of the History of Ideas 65.3 (2004): 497-514.
• “Skepticism in Nietzsche’s Earliest Work: Another Look at Nietzsche’s ‘On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense.’” International Studies in Philosophy 38.3. (2006): 33-48

CC BY-SA 2.0 By Groume

The Georgia State University College of Education is hosting Blurring Boundaries: An International Educational Development Conference, on April 10-11, 2012. The conference will be held at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel.

Opening speakers include COE Dean Randy Kamphaus and Ramu Damodaran, deputy director for partnerships and public engagement in the United Nations Department of Public Information

Ela Gandhi, past-chancellor of the Durban University of Technology and former member of the South African Parliament, will be speaking on peace education at the plenary session.

Sessions include:

• Colleges and Schools of Education as Levers of Change for Educational Development
• Ethnic, Cross-National, and Comparative Research and Educational Development
• The Impact of Mental Health Issues and Trauma on Education
• Neuroscience and Education
• Physical Health and Educational Development

There will also be a poster session presented by graduate students involved in international research.

For more information, e-mail iedc@gsu.edu or visit http://education.gsu.edu/main/6791.html.

Want to learn more about international perspectives in education? The following are just a few of the books available in the University Library:

Bourn, D., University of London. Institute of Education., & Development Education Association. (2008). Development education: Debates and dialogues. London: Institute of Education, University of London.

Cohen, J. E., Malin, M. B., & American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (2010). International perspectives on the goals of universal basic and secondary education. New York : [Cambridge, Mass.]: Routledge.

Grant, C. A., & Portera, A. (2011). Intercultural and multicultural education: Enhancing global interconnectedness. New York: Routledge.

Kooy, M., & Veen, K. v. (2012). Teacher learning that matters: International perspectives. New York: Routledge.

Savicki, V. (2008). Developing intercultural competence and transformation: Theory, research, and application in international education. Sterling, Va.: Stylus Pub.

What Really Happened:  Lessons Learned from the Egyptian Revolution

The presentation will be held Thursday, April 5 at 3:00 P.M. in Room 220 of the Urban Life Building.  Presenters include:

Ahmed Salah,  co-founder, strategist and foreign affairs representative of the April 6 Youth  Movement who devised and implemented the plan that led to the first day of the Egyptian Revolution on January 25, 2011. Salah is one of the co-founders of the Egyptian Movement for Change, Kifaya (Enough!), and leads The Coalition of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

Mahitab Elgilani, a prominent Egyptian democracy activist and member of the Coalition of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

Want to learn more about the Egyptian Revolution? The following are just a few of the books available in the University Library:

Aswānī, ʻAlāʾ. On the state of Egypt: A Novelist’s Provocative Reflections. New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2011.

Attia, Omar. The Road to Tahrir: Front Line Images by Six Young Egyptian Photographers. New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011.

Gröndahl, Mia. Tahrir Square: The Heart of the Egyptian Revolution. New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2011.

Khalil, Ashraf. Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation. New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2012.

Khalil, Karima, ed. Messages from Tahrir: Signs from Egypt’s Revolution. New York : The American University in Cairo Press, 2011.

Nunns, Alex, and Nadia Idle. Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as it Unfolded, In the Words of the People Who Made It. New York: OR Books, 2011.

Rushdy, Hatem. 18 days in Tahrir: Stories from Egypt’s Revolution. Hong Kong: Haven Books, 2011.

"Cappuccino Loves Italy" by roevin | Urban Capture cc licensed

The 6th Annual Italian Film Festival, sponsored by GSU’s CENCIA initiative, runs April 5-7. All the films are free to attend, and will be screened at the Rialto Center for the Arts.
View the full schedule of films here.

Should the Festival make you hunger for even more Italian cinema, never fear! The Library has a sizable collection of Italian films on DVD. Click here for a list of our holdings.

And of course we also have research materials should you wish to learn more. Here are some recent books on various aspects of Italian film:

Filming the Nation: Jung, Film, Neo-Realism and Italian National Identity
Call Number: PN1993.5.I88 S65 2011 | Location: Library North 4

The New Neapolitan Cinema
Call Number: PN1993.5.I88 M37 2011 | Location: Library North 4

Popular Italian Cinema: Culture and Politics in a Postwar Society
Call Number: PN1993.5.I88 P66 2011  | Location: Library North 4

Metronome | Todd Ehlers cc licensed

Georgia State’s CENCIA initiative is hosting the Symbols for Sound: Exploring Mathematical Music Theory this week, an interdisciplinary event which looks at the intersection between music and mathematics. The 2-day program contains a variety of activities, including speakers and live performances. It all kicks off today, April 4, at 1pm, with a symposium in the Rialto Center. See a full list of activities on CENCIA’s website.

Interested in learning more about how math and music work together? Here are some recent books on the subject. You can also search for scholarly articles on music theory in RILM, a music research database.

Musimathics: The Mathematical Foundations of Music
Call Number: ML3805 .L78 2006 | Location: Library North 4

Music Emotion Recognition
Call Number: ML74 .Y36 2011 | Location: Library North 4

Music Data Mining
Call Number: ML74 .M88 2012 | Location: Library North 4

Time & Location: Troy Moore Library, 9th Floor of the GCB on Monday, April 9th @12:00-1:00pm

Summary: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a curriculum vitae or “CV”  is “a brief account of one’s career.”  This workshop will focus on constructing your CV, both to be sent on the job market and for professional purposes. Some library resources that may also help you get started are The Guide to Basic Resume Writing, Get the Interview Every time: Fortune 500 Hiring Professionals’ Tips for Writing Winning Resumes and Cover Letters, Winning Resumes, and  The Resume Kit.

Biography: Dr.Lynée Lewis Gaillet is Professor of English at Georgia State University, where she teaches  a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in writing theory and practice, archival research methods, and the history of rhetoric. She is author of numerous articles and book chapters addressing writing program administration and the history of composition/rhetoric pedagogy, and she is a recipient of an NEH Summer Research Award. She is past Writing Program Director at Georgia State University, the former Executive Director of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and Past-President of the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. She currently serves as the Director of the Writing Studio and Lower Division Studies.

Lakes, R.D., McLennan, P., Sauer, J., & Smith, M.A. (2011).  Exposing the Myths of the Corporate City: Popular Education and Political Activism in Atlanta.  In R. Ahlquist, P.C. Gorski, and T. Montano (Eds.).  Assault on Kids: How hyper-accountability, corporatization, deficit ideologies, and Ruby Payne are destroying our schools, pp. 91-110. New York: Peter Lang.

In this chapter, Lakes and other authors describe how economic and political influences surrounding corporatization create inequalities in the Atlanta public school system.  The authors focus on how hyper-accountability, privatization, and charter schools are widening the gap between quality education, race, and class. The chapter introduces groups such as MAPS (Metro Atlantans for Public Schools) who fight for equality and ensure that the educational needs of everyone in the community are met. The chapter concludes with ideas about what individuals can do to make a difference in the public school system.

Read this chapter and more on similar topics in the book , Assault on Kids: How Hyper-Accountability, Corporatization, Deficit Ideologies, and Ruby Payne are Destroying our Schools located on Library North 4: LC191.4 .A765 2011.

A few other works by Richard Lakes available in the library:

Lakes, R. D., & Cater, P. A. (2011). Neoliberalism and Education: An Introduction. Educational Studies (American Educational Studies Association), 47(2), 107-110.

Lakes, R. (2011). Work-Ready Testing: Education and Employability in Neoliberal Times. Journal For Critical Education Policy Studies, 9(1), 317-340.

Lakes, R.D. (2010). “Work and Learning: From Schools to Workplaces.”  In M. Malloch, L. Cairns, K. Evans, & B. O’Connor, Eds. The SAGE Handbook of Workplace Learning, pp. 268-278.  London: Sage Publications.

Lakes, R. D., & Carter, P. A. (2004). Globalizing education for work: Comparative perspectives on gender and the new economy. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

From the Reuther Library: In 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, the labor movement and the civil rights movement came together in a monumental struggle for human and public employee rights. On February 11, over 1,300 sanitation workers — nearly all were African-American — went on strike demanding their basic rights to organize a union, to gain a living wage and to receive the respect and dignity due all working men and women. During the strike Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to support the workers but was tragically assassinated. This exhibit explores the drama of this historic strike where marchers wore signs simply stating: I AM a Man.

If you are interested in this topic, GSU Library offers one-of-a-kind resources related to both the Memphis and Atlanta sanitation worker’s strikes:

• Records of AFSCME Local 1644 (Atlanta, Ga.)
• Oral History Interview with Reverend James Orange
• Tom Coffin Photographs of the Atlanta Sanitation Workers Strike
• Issues of the Great Speckled Bird commemorating MLK and covering the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike

Additionally, the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center houses the Morehouse King Collection and Boston University houses the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Archive.

For more information about the collections held at GSU Library, please contact the Special Collection and Archives department (404.413.2880 or archives@gsu.edu).

The first event will be Prof. Trystan Cotten, Associate Professor of Gender and Ethnic Studies at California State University Stanislaus, speaking on “Middle Passages: Race, Space, and Migration in the African Diaspora.” This talk will take place on Tuesday, April 3, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., in the Troy Moore Library, General Classroom Building, 9th Floor.

Prof. Cotten is the editor of Transgender Migrations: The Bodies, Borders, and Politics of Transition (2012), Stories of Oprah: The Oprahfication of American Culture (2010), and editor of the forthcoming collection Hung Jury: Testimonies of Genital Surgery by Transsexual Men (forthcoming June 2012). Prof. Cotten is founder and CEO of Transgress Press, a new social entrepreneurial model of publishing that promotes transgressive thinking.

The second event will be Caitlin Petrakis Childs, Atlanta-based intersex activist and organizer, speaking on “Intersex 101,” which will provide an overview of what intersex is, share her personal story, and offer ways to get involved in supporting the intersex movement. Ajae Clearway’s short documentary film One in 2000 will also be shown. Childs’ website is available here. This talk will take place on Thursday, April 5, 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. in the Troy Moore Library, General Classroom Building, 9th Floor.

These events are free and open to the public. For additional information, please contact Dylan McCarthy Blackston (dblackston1@student.gsu.edu).

[Adrienne Rich reads her poem "What Kind of Times Are These." Part of the Poetry Everywhere project airing on public television. Produced by David Grubin Productions and WGBH Boston, in association with the Poetry Foundation. Filmed at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.]

Poet, essayist, and feminist activist Adrienne Rich passed away last week at the age of 82. The author of two dozen volumes of poetry and several volumes of prose, Rich was a prolific and gifted poet, feminist thinker, and public intellectual. The New York Times reports in their obituary of Rich that her publisher, W. W. Norton, estimates that her poetry alone has sold almost 800,000 copies.

Following an unhappy marriage which resulted in three children (and her powerful prose analysis of motherhood, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), Rich effectively came out as a lesbian in 1976 with the publication of Twenty-One Love Poems (included in the collection The Dream of a Common Language [1978]); her writings were strongly shaped by her strong commitments to feminism, civil rights, and her identity as a Jewish woman. Her influential essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” first published as a small stand-alone volume (available in our Special Collections here; library use only) and later anthologized elsewhere, including her 1986 collection of prose writings, Blood, Breath, and Poetry.

Rich won many awards throughout her career, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1994, two Guggenheim fellowships, a National Book Foundation medal for distinguished contribution to American letters (in 2006), and a National Book Award for poetry in 1974 for Diving into the Wreck (1973), often considered to be her masterwork (she accepted the award on behalf of all women, accompanied on stage by two other finalists, Audre Lorde and Alice Walker). She was also awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She declined the National Medal of Arts, the US government’s highest award for artists, in 1997, out of concern about rampant racial and economic injustice nationwide, resisting the honor awarded to “a few token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.” Art, she noted at the time, “means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.” (letter to Jane Alexander, chairwoman, National Endowment for the Arts, quoted in New York Times obituary of Rich, March 29, 2012). Click here to hear a 1997 interview with Rich about this event, including Rich reading her letter to Alexander.) Over the course of her life, she taught widely, at schools including Columbia, Brandeis, Rutgers, Cornell and Stanford Universities.

The GSU Library has many of Rich’s publications, including:

• The Fact of a Doorframe (1984; poetry)
• Your Native Land, Your Life (1986; poetry)
• What Is Found There (1993; prose)
• Dark Fields of the Republic (1995; poetry)
• Midnight Salvage (1999; poetry)
• Arts of the Possible (2001; prose)
• The School among the Ruins (2004; poetry)
• Poetry and Commitment (2007; prose)
• Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (2007; poetry)
• Tonight No Poetry Will Serve (2011; poetry)

The GSU Library also has several audiovisual resources of and about Rich:

• Adrienne Rich [videorecording] (1992)
• Adrienne Rich, vol. II [videorecording] (1998)
• Adrienne Rich, vol. III [videorecording] (2001)
• Dark Fields of the Republic [sound recording] (1995)

This year the Department is pleased to announce the following undergraduate award recipients, pictured from left to right, along with Dr. Jon Herman, Director of Undergraduate Studies:

• Jason Baumunk, recipient, Robert Arrington Undergraduate Award in Religious Studies
•  Alex Johnson, graduating with distinction in Religious Studies
•  Jessie Sparrow, graduating with distinction in Religious Studies
•  Leslie Andrews, recipient, Robert Arrington Undergraduate Award in Religious Studies

And the following graduate recipients, pictured with Molly Bassett, Director of Graduate Studies (middle):

• Sarah Levine, recipient, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award (left)
• Cathye Schmidt, recipient, Timothy Renick Graduate Award in Religious Studies (right)

Recipients were honored at the the Religious Studies Student Symposium, held on Thursday, March 29 in the Troy Moore Library. The Student Symposium is an event at which undergraduate and graduate Religious Studies students present papers on their latest research. Congratulations to this year’s Department award recipients!

Want to learn more?  Below are just a few of the books available in the University Library on the study of religion. For additional titles, search GIL-Find, the Library’s online catalog.

Corrywright, Dominic. Get Set for Religious Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Dempsey, Corinne G. Bringing the Sacred Down to Earth: Adventures in Comparative Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Flood, Gavin D. The Importance of Religion: Meaning and Action in Our Strange World. Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2012

Olson, Carl. Religious Studies: The Key Concepts. New York : Routledge, 2011.
New York : Routledge, 2011.

Orsi, Robert A. The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

On March 13, all sophomores and juniors received an email invitation to complete a brief  survey about the library. The survey will close on April 3—next Tuesday—so please take a few minutes to fill out the survey.

We last surveyed undergraduates in 2007, so now is a great opportunity to share your opinions about what we can do to better support your research and learning at Georgia State.

Thank you for providing this important service to the library!

David Wilson is the author and co-author of many books, several of which are available at the University Library:

• Cities and Race: America’s New Black Ghetto
• Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America’s Built Environment
• Marginalized Places and Populations: A Structurationist Agenda
• The Urban Growth Machine: Critical Perspectives, Two Decades Later

What’s Next for the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and the Gulf

The discussion will be held on Wednesday, March 28, from 1:00-2:30 PM, in the Troy Moore Library on the 9th floor of the General Classroom Building. Panel participants and topics include:

The Arab Spring and Sectarianism: The Gulf and Syria
Dr. Michael Herb, Director, Middle East Institute

The Geopolitics of Tunisia’s Transition
Dr. Shawn Powers, Department of Communication, Georgia State University

Pushed Toward Pragmatism: The Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution
Dr. Carrie Wickham, Department of Political Science, Emory University

Want to learn more? The following are just a few of the books available in the University Library:

Bradley, John R. After the Arab spring: How the Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Gardner, Lloyd C. The Road to Tahrir Square: Egypt and the United States from the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak. New York: New Press, 2011.

Hibou, Béatrice. The Force of Obedience: The Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011.

Khalil, Karima, ed. Messages from Tahrir: Signs from Egypt’s Revolution. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011.

Pollack, Kenneth, et al. The Arab Awakening: America and the Transformation of the Middle East. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2011.

Rushdy, Hatem, ed. 18 days in Tahrir: Stories from Egypt’s Revolution. Hong Kong: Haven Books, 2011.

Today the U.S.  Supreme Court will begin 3 days of oral arguments in which issues connected to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. the Health Reform Law) will be presented.  A ruling is expected by Summer.

Track the progress of the 3 days some are calling “the trial of the century” at PBS.org, which has guides for each of the 3 days; public polling information; a health care scorecard; and more.

To read the Supreme Court’s documentation on argument 11-398, Department of Health and Human Services, et al. vs Florida, here it is.

For a very good pro/con examination of the Health Reform Law the Library has the database: Issues & Controversies. In addition the Library has several Research Guides, including:  U.S. Constitution and Health Care Reform, which will direct you to popular and scholarly resources for your research.

VanHook’s winning paper was titled “Racial Disparity in the Diagnosis of Conduct Disorder.” According to the award committee, the paper was chosen for its “demonstration of fluency with concepts and debates within the literature of multiple disciplines, and the timely, relevant, and balanced use of the most current research materials.”

VanHook says that epidemiological research has found that white youth have higher rates of conduct disorder, a youth diagnosis of anti-social personality disorder, than black youth. From his personal experience VanHook often saw his black youth peers display comparably more aggressive behaviors and wondered if conduct disorder research was skewed. His paper argues that black youth are at greater risk of conduct disorder than white youth because of the myriad of environmental risk factors that they are exposed to. The psychological diagnostic manual currently discourages diagnoses of environmentally based behaviors, regardless of harm. Further, most conduct disorder research has focused on participants in some form of institutionalization. Ideally, VanHook would like to bring this research to K–12 schools to pursue it further.

In writing his paper, VanHook made use of several library resources, including the PsycINFO database. He also made use of our Interlibrary Loan service to quickly get access to other necessary documents. The library was crucial to his work and VanHook says that he couldn’t get by as a psychology major (especially one looking toward graduate school) without using the library. In particular, Psychology Librarian Ida Martinez provided instrumental assistance.

VanHook’s paper is preserved within the Digital Archive @ Georgia State University. There you can read the work of this bright, hard-working student.

Want to learn more about sociological research on secularism, atheism, agnosticism, and nonbelief in the U.S.?  Explore some of these resources:

"First Amendment" on Newseum on Constitution Avenue, Washington, D.C. - cc mr_mayer (flickr)

Jelen, T. G., & Wilcox, C. (1997). Conscientious objectors in the culture war?: A typology of attitudes toward church-state relations. Sociology of Religion, 58(3), 277-287.

Hout, M., & Fischer, C. S. (2002). Why more Americans have no religious preference: Politics and generations. American Sociological Review, 67(2), 165-190.

Edgell, P., Gerteis, J., & Hartmann, D. (2006). Atheists as “other”: Moral boundaries and cultural membership in society. American Sociological Review, 71(2), 211-234.

Baker, J. O., & Smith, B. (2009). None too simple: Examining issues of religious nonbelief and nonbelonging in the United States. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48(4), 719-733.

Schafer, C. E., & Shaw, G. M. (2009). Trends – tolerance in the United States. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73(2), 404-431.

Smith, J. M. (2011). Becoming an atheist in America: Constructing identity and meaning from the rejection of theism. Sociology Of Religion, 72(2), 215-237.

GSU’s PDS network is currently operating under a $13 million Teacher Quality Partnership grant. Unlike many other PDS programs, this PDS network is quite extensive. The program began with four Atlanta area counties with student populations ranging from 50,000 to 150,000. Recently, the program expanded to include two more counties and sites in Mexico and China.

The purpose of the PDS network is to offer experience for pre-service teachers, professional development, and improved student achievement. Clinical Teacher Education offers nine chapters detailing the successes and challenges of the program. The authors include topics such as implementation, field-based perspectives, NCATE standards, inquiry, and much more.

Chapter authors include Joyce E. Many, Chara Haeussler Bohan, Gwen Benson, William L. Curlette, Susan Ogletree, Mary Deming, Teresa Fisher, Dee Taylor, Mary Ariail, Caitlin McMunn Dooley, Susan Swars, Laura Smith, Donna Adair Breault, August Ogletree, Joseph R. Feinberg, Brian Williams, Dee Taylor, Kezia McNeal Curry, Lou Matthews, Lin Black, and Julie Rainer Dangle.

Congratulations to the authors and all those involved in the PDS network!

For more information visit: http://education.gsu.edu/main/6167.html

Darby Proctor, GSU PhD candidate, Psychology

In her “casino” in the Cebus Lab, Proctor has set up gambling tasks for the chimpanzees and monkeys.  Interestingly, she is setting up similar tasks for human children and undergraduates — and plans to compare the behavior between the different species.

Proctor is the recipient of an American Psychological Association dissertation research grant.  Read more about her research here.

To learn more about the evolution of decision-making and economic behaviors across the primate order, see the publications that the Cebus Lab, under the direction of Dr. Sarah Brosnan, has produced in recent years.

The GSU library also offers some resources on the topic:

Maldonado, M. (2010). Decision making: Towards an evolutionary psychology of rationality. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press.

Dhami, M. K., Schlottmann, A., & Waldmann, M. (2011). Judgment and decision making as a skill: Learning, development, and evolution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

GSU Gerontology Institute Professor Mary M. Ball

Perkins, M., Ball, M. M., Whittington, F. J., & Hollingsworth, C. (2012). Relational autonomy in assisted living: A focus on diverse care settings for older adults. Journal Of Aging Studies, 26(2), 214-225.

Ball and her colleagues “present a conceptual model of autonomy in AL [assisted living] based on over a decade of research conducted in diverse facility settings. This relational model provides an important conceptual lens for understanding the dynamic linkages between varieties of factors at multiple levels of social structure that shape residents’ ability to maintain a sense of autonomy in this often socially challenging care environment. Social and institutional change, which is ongoing, as well as the multiple and ever-changing cultural contexts within which residents are embedded, are important factors that shape residents’ experiences over time and impact resident–facility fit and residents’ ability to age in place.” (from Abstract)

"Hands of 87 years" - cc gaspi*yg (flickr)

See also Professor Ball’s previous publications on assisted living:

• Ball, M. M., Perkins, M. M., Hollingsworth, C., & Kemp, C. (2010). Frontline workers in assisted living. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Ball, M. M., Lepore, M. L., Perkins, M. M., Hollingsworth, C., & Sweatman, M. (2009). ‘They are the reason I come to work’: The meaning of resident-staff relationships in assisted living. Journal Of Aging Studies, 23(1), 37-47.
• Ball, M. M., Perkins, M. M., Whittington, F. J., Hollingsworth, C., King, S. V., & Combs, B. L. (2005). Communities of care: Assisted living for African American elders. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Ball, M. M., Perkins, M. M., Whittington, F. J., Hollingsworth, C., King, S. V., & Combs, B. L. (2004). Independence in assisted living. Journal Of Aging Studies, 18(4), 467-483.
• Ball, M. M., & Whittington, F. J. (1995). Surviving dependence: Voices of African American elders. Amityville, NY: Baywood Pub. Co.

Nanjunda, R., Munde, M., Liu, Y., and Wilson, W. D. 2012. Real-time monitoring of nucleic acid interactions with biosensor-surface plasmon resonance. In Methods for studying nucleic acid/drug interactions, eds. Wanunu, M., and Tor, Y., pp. 91-122. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

The book collects essays on the development of drugs that interact with DNA (specifically, the interaction of ligands and nucleic acids); the essays are aimed towards established scientists looking for emerging techniques as well as students and new scientists considering entering the field.

To learn more about Dr. Wilson’s research on biosensor surfaces and nucleic acids, take a look at the book chapter or some of his earlier work:

Davis, R. M. and Wilson, W. D. Determination of the refractive index increments of small molecules for correction of surface plasmon resonance data. Anal. Biochem. 284, 348-353, 2000.

Davis, T.M. and Wilson, W.D. 2001. Surface plasmon resonance biosensor analysis of RNA-small molecule interactions. In Methods Enzymol, eds. J. B. Chaires and M. J. Waring, Vol. 240, pp. 22-51. San Diego: Academic Press.

Liu, Y. and Wilson, W. D. 2010. Quantitative analysis of small molecule-nucleic acid interactions with a biosensor surface and surface plasmon resonance detection. In Drug-DNA Interactions Protocols, ed. K. R. Fox, Vol. 613, pp. 1-23. New Jersey: Humana Press.

Image courtesy of Caramdir on Flickr. (CC BY -NC 2.0)

Like problem solving and creative math problems? The Mathematics and Statistics Department is holding its Eighth Annual Undergraduate Mathematics Competition, open to anyone currently enrolled in a GSU undergraduate mathematics course, on March 23rd. More details from the department are here, but do you want practice solving math problems before the competition? The library can help!

After you’ve looked at last year’s problems, check out some of our books on mathematics competitions and interesting problem sets:

Andreescu, Titu, and Rǎzvan Gelca. Mathematical Olympiad Challenges. Boston: Birkhäuser, 2000.

Hardy, Kenneth, and Kenneth S Williams. The Green Book: 100 Practice Problems for Undergraduate Mathematics Competitions. Ottawa: Integer Press, 1985.

Honsberger, Ross. From Erdös to Kiev: Problems of Olympiad Caliber. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1996.

Erickson, Martin J. Aha! Solutions. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 2009.

Trigg, Charles W. Mathematical Quickies: 270 Stimulating Problems with Solutions. New York: Dover Publications, 1985.

Join Georgia State’s own noteworthy Criminal Justice faculty in welcoming:

Mona J.E. Danner is the recipient of the 1997 New Scholar Award from the Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology.  She has authored over 25 book chapters and journal articles including:

Danner, J.E. Mona and Dianne Cyr Carmody (2001). Missing gender in cases of infamous school violence: Investigating research and media explanations. Justice Quarterly : JQ. [in the Library Database: Criminal Justice Periodicals]

Christine S. Sellers is associate chair of criminology at the University of South Florida, where she served as director of the Graduate Program for 11 years. Recently she co-authored:

Pratt, T. C., Cullen, F. T., Sellers, C. S., Thomas Winfree, et al (2010). The Empirical Status of Social Learning Theory: A Meta-Analysis. JQ: Justice Quarterly [in the Library Database: Criminal Justice Abstracts]

Margaret A. Zhan directed the Violence and Victimization Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and published a 2010 Choice Award winner:

Zahn, M. A. (2009). The delinquent girl. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Dr. Ann Pearman, GSU Gerontology Professor

Pearman, A., & Batra, A. (2012). Late-onset schizophrenia: A review for clinicians. Clinical Gerontologist, 35, 126-147.

The article includes a discussion of the relatively recent recognition of Late-Onset Schizophrenia (LOS) as a condition affecting the 40-60 year-old age group, and an overview of its identifying features to aid clinicians in its diagnosis and treatment.  You might also check out these books in the Georgia State University Library on the subject:

Harvey, P. D. (2005). Schizophrenia in late life: Aging effects on symptoms and course of illness. Washington, DC : American Psychological Association.

Howard, R., Rabins, P. V., & Castle, D. J. (1999). Late onset schizophrenia. Philadelphia, PA: Wrightson Biomedical Pub.

Dr. Brenda Pitts, Professor of Kinesiology and Health, was a keynote speaker at the 3rd International Conference on Sports and Exercise Science.  In her speech, “Thriving in a globalized sport marketplace:  Challenges, opportunities, and strategic management”, Dr. Pitts spoke about sports management and marketing and the vast economic impact sports have on the hospitality industry, merchandising, transportation, sporting venues, and the local communities.  The conference was held in Bangkok, Thailand, February 7th -10th, 2012 at Chulalongkorn University.  She noted,

“The economic impact of sport can be felt in the areas of media, corporate sponsorship, branding and celebrity culture, and the general sense of commercialization of sport.”

Learn more about the field through the Library’s access to the Journal of Sport Management and these books:

• Global sports:  Cultures, markets and organizations
• The Olympic Games effect:  How sports marketing builds strong brands
• Sporting events and event tourism:  Impacts, plans and opportunities
• Branded: branding in sport business
• Facility management for physical activity and sport
• Contemporary sport management
• The economics of intercollegiate sports

And if you’re REALLY interested, check out the M.S. in Sports Administration program from the Department of Kinesiology and Health.

EndNote is a bibliographic management software program that allows students and researchers to collect, manage, insert and format citations and bibliographies for research papers.  EndNote X5 includes enhanced features such as the ability to add and transfer attachments to EndNote Web, options to preview and annotate attached PDF files, and new Cite While You Write functionality.  Visit EndNote’s website to see all of the new features.

If you have any questions or if you would like help learning how to use EndNote please contact your subject librarian or Joel Glogowski.

From Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

E-Books

• (1685). The Delightful history of the life & death of that renowned & famous St. Patrick, champion of Ireland: Containing his heroick actions, and valorous atchievments in Europe, Asia, and Affrick : with other remarkable passages, from his cradle to his grave. London: Printed for Dorman Newman ….
• Thompson, E. A. (1999). Who was Saint Patrick? Rochester, NY: Boydell Press.

Scholarly Articles

• Nagle, J. (2005). “Everybody is Irish on St. Paddy’s”: Ambivalence and alterity at London’s St. Patrick’s Day 2002. Identities : Global Studies in Culture and Power,  12(4), 563-583
• Moss, K. (1995). St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and the formation of Irish-American identity, 1845-1875. Journal of Social History, 29(1), 125.
• Moloney, D. (2009). Who’s Irish? Ethnic Identity and Recent Trends in Irish American History. Journal of American Ethnic History, 28(4), 100-109.
• Hout, M., & Goldstein, J. R. (1994). How 4.5 million Irish immigrants became 40 million Irish Americans: Demographic and subjective aspects  of the ethnic composition of white Americans. American Sociological Review, 59(1), 64-82.

Online Films

• Films Media Group. (1997). Catholicism and Celtic Folklore [1:51 minutes]. Segment from In Search of History: The Celts. From Films On Demand database.
• Films Media Group. (1997). A&E Special: Irish In America [90 minutes].  From Films On Demand database.

President Obama accepts shamrocks at the signing of the "Irish-American Heritage Month" Proclamation

Music – for Listening and Playing

• (1991). An Ireland of treasures. Hollywood, Calif.: EMI.
• (1999). The rough guide to Irish folk. London, England: World Music Network.
• Healy, J. N., Scully, L., & O’Donoghue, R. (1993). Ballads from the pubs of Ireland. Cork: Mercier Press.
• Petrie, G., & Stanford, C. V. (2003). Petrie’s complete Irish music: 1,582 traditional melodies. Mineola, NY: Dover.

Books

• Gleeson, D. T. (2001). The Irish in the South, 1815-1877. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Quinlan, K. (2005). Strange kin: Ireland and the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
• Negra, D. (2006). The Irish in us: Irishness, performativity, and popular culture. Durham: Duke University Press.

Children’s and Teen Books

• Barth, E., & Arndt, U. (1977). Shamrocks, harps, and shillelaghs: The story of the St. Patrick’s Day symbols. New York: Seabury Press.
• MacGill-Callahan, S., & Hillenbrand, W. (1999). The last snake in Ireland: A story about St. Patrick. New York: Holiday House.
• Dunlop, E. (1996). Tales of St. Patrick. New York: Holiday House.

And don’t forget about the Atlanta’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade this Saturday at Noon!

Georgia State University President Mark Becker at the faculty author event

Did you know that over 25% of Georgia State University’s faculty published something in 2011? That’s almost 300 people writing books and articles, composing music, making art and even creating apps in iTunes!

Since this remarkable number of faculty deserves recognition for their hard work, the Georgia State University Library celebrated their accomplishments on Thursday, March 15, 2012. Both President Mark Becker and Provost Risa Palm were on hand to congratulate the faculty at this event.

The 2011 faculty publications are hosted within the Digital Archive @ Georgia State University, the university’s institutional repository. The celebration highlighted the 2011 faculty publications using a combination of iPads and projected displays to showcase the magnitude of research. Here are some interesting facts about these faculty publications:

• 379 articles were published in 266 different journals.
• 25 of these articles were published in open access journals.*
• Monica Swahn, Associate Vice President of Research and professor in the Institute of Public Health, is the author with the most open access publications at Georgia State University.

Georgia State University Library intends to continue hosting publications by Georgia State’s researchers within the repository, both documenting and improving access to the material. Each monograph’s entry includes citation data, links to the library catalog, links to purchase the publications, and even samples of the text when available.

If you are a member of the Georgia State community and published in 2011, or are currently publishing in 2012, please contact our Digital Repository Services Librarian, Amy Elliott, about including your work.

Georgia State University faculty authors event

* These numbers are based on Gold Open Access (fully accessible open online journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals) only. Submissions were voluntary and self-reported by faculty in response to a call put out at the end of 2011.

WSB control room

March 15th marks the 90th anniversary of the first broadcast by WSB Radio in 1922.  In recognition of this milestone, WSB has created a timeline webpage that includes galleries of photographs and broadcast excerpts from programing throughout the years.  A portion of these images and audio were taken from the WSB Radio Records within the Popular Music and Culture Collection.

Questions about the WSB Radio Records and other broadcasting collections should be directed to Kevin Fleming, archivist, Popular Music and Culture Collection, at 404-413-2880 or archives@gsu.edu.

On Tuesday, March 13, all sophomores and juniors received an email invitation to complete a brief survey about the library. We last surveyed undergraduates in 2007, so now is a great opportunity to share your opinions about what we can do to better support your research and learning at Georgia State.

The survey will be open for 3 weeks, closing on April 3. Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey, and thank you for providing this important service to the library!

In Jews and Booze, Prof. Davis examines American Jews’ long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the years of the national prohibition movement’s rise and fall. At the turn of the century, American Jews and prohibitionists viewed one another with growing suspicion. Jews believed that all Americans had the right to sell and consume alcohol, while prohibitionists insisted that alcohol commerce and consumption posed a threat to the nation’s morality and security. The two groups possessed incompatible visions of what it meant to be a productive and patriotic American—and in 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution made alcohol commerce illegal, Jews discovered that anti-Semitic sentiments had mixed with anti-alcohol ideology, threatening their reputation and their standing in American society. Bringing to bear an extensive range of archival materials, Davis offers a novel perspective on a previously unstudied area of American Jewish economic activity—the making and selling of liquor, wine, and beer—and reveals that alcohol commerce played a crucial role in Jewish immigrant acculturation and the growth of Jewish communities in the United States. But prohibition’s triumph cast a pall on American Jews’ history in the alcohol trade, forcing them to revise, clarify, and defend their communal and civic identities, both to their fellow Americans and to themselves. (from publisher’s information).

Prof. Davis is also the author of “No Whisky Amazons in the Tents of Israel,” American Jewish History (September 2008) and has an essay forthcoming on an anti-Semitic strain in the US prohibition movement, to be included in a collection on the historical encounter between Jews and American capitalism.

Congratulations to Prof. Davis!

To learn more about the importance of gaining leadership experience, check out these books.

• Leadership : enhancing the lessons of experience / by Hughes, Richard L.
• Crucibles of leadership : how to learn from experience to become a great leader / by Thomas, Robert J.
• Total leadership : be a better leader, have a richer life / by Friedman, Stewart D.

Akwantu: The Journey is a film which chronicles the history of the legendary Jamaican Maroons, rebel slaves of West African origin who defeated the British and formed autonomous communities in the rugged and remote interiors of Jamaica. The descendants of these communities still maintain their proud heritage today. (from press release)

Please RSVP to history@gsu.edu. This event is free and open to the public.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Anthropology Club, Center for Latin American and Latino/a Studies, Association of Historians at Georgia State University, and Phi Alpha Theta.

If you’d like to learn more about the Maroons, check out these resources, available at the GSU Library:

• Werner Zips, Nanny’s Asafo Warriors: The Jamaican Maroons’ African Experience (2011)
• Kenneth M. Bilby, True-Born Maroons (2005)
• Werner Zips, Black Rebels: African-Caribbean Freedom Fighters in Jamaica (1999)
• Mavis Christine Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration, and Betrayal (1988)
• Richard Hart, Slaves Who Abolished Slavery (1985)
• Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice, a database of primary sources (accessible offsite using your Campus ID and password)

Adia Harvey Wingfield, GSU Associate Professor of Sociology

Congratulations to GSU Sociology Professor Adia Harvey Wingfield for her recent promotion to Associate Professor in the GSU Sociology Department!  Dr. Wingfield has been very busy with her research on Black professionals/entrepreneurs – as the following accomplishments illustrate:

•  $25,000 in funding from the Kauffman Foundation to study racial differences in motivations for entrepreneurship [see previous blog post].
• 2008 book, Doing Business with Beauty: Black Women, Hair Salons, and the Racial Enclave Economy.
• 2010 book, Yes We Can?: White Racial Framing and the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
• 2011 book, Changing Times for Black Professionals.
• Durr, Marlese and Adia Harvey Wingfield. 2011. “’Keep Your ‘N’ in Check!’ African American Women and the Interactive Effects of Etiquette and Emotional Labor.” Critical Sociology 37: 557-571.
• Wingfield, Adia Harvey. 2010. “Are Some Emotions Marked “Whites Only”? Racialized Feeling Rules in Professional Workplaces.” Social Problems 57:251-268.
• Wingfield, Adia Harvey. 2010. “Caring, Curing, and the Community: Black Masculinity in a Feminized Profession.” Pp. 15-37 in Research in the Sociology of Work: Gender & Sexuality in the Workplace, edited by C. L. Williams and Kirsten Dellinger. Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
11:00am
Senate Salon, Student Center, GSU

 According to the WHO,

“The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels, which are themselves influenced by policy choices. The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities – the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries.”

Find out more with Sir Dr. Marmot’s seminal research study, Fair Society, Healthy Lives, and read up so you can ask him smart questions by checking out the library’s copies of his books:

• Social determinants of health
• The status syndrome:  How social standing affects our health and longevity
• Social inequalities in health:  New evidence and policy implications

Click here for a PubMed search for citations to the HUNDREDS of articles he’s written.

In addition to supporting faculty research, the library offers support in collecting this evidence via databases & software tools, and a subject librarian for each academic department.

On Tuesday, March 13, librarian Brenna Helmstutler will present a workshop on “Library Support for Promotion and Tenure.” It will be held from noon to 1:00 p.m. in Classroom One on the first floor of Library North. This workshop is co-sponsored by the Center for Instructional Innovation, where Helmstutler has previously presented on this topic with positive results. This is the perfect opportunity for faculty looking to show more comprehensive evidence of their scholarly impact on their tenure application

Using the tools available within the library’s subscription databases, resources, and free software tools & applications can yield the following benefits for faculty:

• More substantial evidence of scholarly impact than mere citation counts, which offers a stronger promotion & tenure narrative statement.
• The tools are user-friendly; most are accessible 24/7 online. For example, Helmstutler has created a Promotion & Tenure Research Guide.
• Subject librarians for each department are trained and available to assist in using the tools.
• This emerging service addresses the library’s overall mission to support GSU research and more specifically, one of its strategic initiatives: to use new, emerging, and established technologies to support the research, teaching, and learning of faculty and students.

• Series I: President’s Files
• Series II: Vice President’s Files
• Series III: Regional Vice President’s Files
• Series V: Strike Files

Four more series are currently being digitized from the collection as part of this NHPRC funded project.  All other series are linked to their respective finding aids.  Stay tuned for the remaining series!

Researchers of biology, public health, nursing, nutrition, life sciences and health administration are all likely to use PubMed. They use it not just in their time at Georgia State, but also in their careers afterward, especially if they become faculty in their disciplines.

Because of the importance of this resource and the amount of information within it, our librarians for health and the sciences are now presenting workshops on PubMed several times each semester. From the basics to advanced research, they’ll address anything you need. Each session is designed with enough time for questions and the librarians will also demonstrate approaches to sample research questions.

This semester we’ll be hosting three workshops in Classroom Two on the second floor of Library North. Anyone is welcome to these sessions though different subject experts will host each one.

• March 12, 2:00 p.m. with Sharon Leslie (Kinesiology & Health Education, Nutrition, Physical Therapy, Public Health, Respiratory Therapy, Health & Human Sciences)
• March 20, 9:00 a.m., with Todd Prusin (Nursing, Health and Human Sciences)
• March 21, noon, with Jackie Werner (Chemistry, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy)

If you want to look at what is happening now in 2012, take a look at the Washington Post’s website.  The Post has a nice chart that will keep track of delegate totals until the end of the primary season in June.  Yep! I did say June!

Also, if you are researching elections, take a look at: Election Research. This guide will direct you to resources and information on U.S. elections.

* Warren, K. F. (2008). Encyclopedia of U.S. campaigns, elections, and electoral behavior. Los Angeles: Sage.

(image: by Farlane, via Flickr)

Williams, F., & Holmes, N. A. (2011). Evidence of terrestrial diets in Pliocene eurasian papionins (Mammalia, Primates) inferred from low-magnification stereomicroscopy of molar enamel use-wear scars. Palaios, 26(11), 720-729.

Reconstruction of Paradolichopithecus. Drawing by A. Vlachos

If you find this research fascinating, you might also be interested to know that the Department of Anthropology at Georgia State University currently houses an important and unique collection of primate dental impression specimens, and that “low-magnification stereomicroscopy, statistical tools and a digital library of occlusal surfaces are available for students and researchers to address the biochronology and paleoecology of Plio-Pleistocene southern Africa.”

The exhibit contains posters from 1950 through the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960-1970′s.  Details from the exhibit state:

 As one of the most populous countries in the world, China saw the need to have a strong family planning policy. The country launched 3 family planning campaigns: in 1956-1957, 1962-1966, and 1971 to the present, in order to control population growth. These campaigns—especially the third one—were remarkably successful. China’s population was 22 percent of the world in 1949 with 541.7 million people, and 20 percent in 1999 with 1.26 billion.

Learn more at the GSU Library. This interdisciplinary Research Guide on Chinese Studies contains many of the library’s online resources available to students and faculty.  We also have many books about China’s population policies including the following:

• Governing China’s population:  From Leninist to neoliberal biopolitics
• Just one child:  Science and policy in Deng’s China
• China’s longest campaign:  Birth planning in the People’s Republic, 1949-2005
• Transition and challenge:  China’s population at the beginning of the 21st century
• Accepting population control:  Urban Chinese women and the one-child family policy
• Demographic transition:  Fertility trends in China since the 1950′s

The GSU Library has recently acquired the volume Georgia Civil War Manuscript Collections: An Annotated Bibliography, which provides an overview of Civil War manuscript collections in the state of Georgia, ranging from university and college libraries (including, but not limited to, Emory University and the University of Georgia), to state and local historical societies and sites, to the state archives in Morrow.

For other primary sources relating to Georgia during the Civil War, also check out these resources:

• Digital Library of Georgia
• Georgia. Dept. of Archives and History; Charlotte Ray, compiler, Civil War sources at the Georgia Department of Archives and History
• Emory University. General Libraries. Special Collections Dept.; Kathy Shoemaker, compiler, Manuscript sources for Civil War history : a descriptive list of holdings in the Special Collections Department
• Georgia. General Assembly. The Confederate Records of the State of Georgia

Neuroethicists consider how ethical theories inform neuroscientific practice and how neuroscientific discoveries inform ethical theorizing. Some researchers in neuroethics address the implications of brain scanning technologies now being used for lie detection, marketing, and predicting future behavior. Others focus on questions regarding brain science and the law, e.g., whether brain scans violate the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. Still others study the neuropsychological processes that underlie moral cognition and behavior, e.g., the role of emotion in moral reasoning and the role of neurobiological deficits in criminal behavior. Neuroethicists also consider the impact of neuroscientific discoveries on debates about ethics and moral psychology. For instance, does modern neuroscience threaten our conceptions of self, free will, or moral responsibility? 

While the field is relatively new, the University Library has a number of books on this topic, including:

Glannon, Walter. Brain, Body, and Mind: Neuroethics with a Human Face. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Illes, Judy, and B. J. Sahakian. The Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Giordano, James J., and Bert Gordijn. Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives in Neuroethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Racine, Eric. Pragmatic Neuroethics: Improving Treatment and Understanding of the Mind-brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.

Glannon, Walter. Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science: Essential Readings in Neuroethics. New York: Dana Press, 2007.

This year’s Fellow, Dan Gilgoff, Religion Editor for CNN.com, will be delivering the talk: “What Media and Academia Can Teach Each Other About Religion” on Tuesday, March 13, 2012, at 6:00 pm at the Rialto Theater.

Gilgoff is the author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War (St. Martin’s Press, March 2007). His writing has also been published in USA Today, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Congressional Quarterly, Washington City Paper, and Wine Enthusiast. He was recently awarded one of three American Academy of Religion Awards for Best In-Depth Newswriting on Religion.  Gilgoff has appeared on CNN, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, CNN Headline News, and Court TV.

Interested in learning more? The following are just a few of the books in the University Library on the topic of religion and the media:

Stout, Daniel A. Media and Religion: Foundations of an Emerging Field.  New York: Routledge, 2012.

Vecsey, Christopher. Following 9/11: Religion Coverage in the New York Times. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011.

Arweck, Elisabether, Christopher Deacy, and Elizabeth Arweck. Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.

Ryan, Michael. God in the Corridors of Power: Christian Conservatives, the Media, and Politics in America.  Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009.

Marsden, Lee, and HeatherSavigny. Media, Religion and Conflict. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.

Badaracco, Claire. Quoting God: How Media Shape Ideas About Religion and Culture. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2005.

Photo of Piping Industry Program (workers in shop). Courtesy of the Tracy O'Neal Photographic Collection.

Most studies of the Progressive Era anti-labor union open-shop movement focus chiefly on the activities of organized employers in northeastern and Midwestern cities, but  between 1895 and 1910 Southern “open-shoppers” were uniquely qualified to use racism and state assistance to conduct anti-union crusades throughout the region.

On Wednesday, March 14 at 3:00 p.m. Chad Pearson will present “The South and the First-Wave Open-Shop Movement, 1895-1910” on the 8th floor of Library South. Pearson will examine these participants within the Southern anti-union movement and discuss the development of a distinctively southern open-shop identity at a time when employers’ throughout the nation joined the national movement against unions. Students and faculty interested in history, labor, economics, business, public policy, protest movements and sociology may be interested in attending this presentation.

Pearson is the 2011 recipient of the Reed Fink Award in Southern Labor History, administered by the Southern Labor Archives, part of the Georgia State University Library Special Collections and Archives department. The award honors the contributions of professors Merl E. Reed and Gary Fink, both of whom were instrumental in the establishment, development, and use of the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University from the early 1970s.

Pearson teaches history at Collin College in Plano, Texas.  He received his Ph. D in history in 2008 from the State University of New York, Albany, and has published articles in Labor History, Ohio History, and Labour/Le Travail.  He is currently writing a book about the relationship between progressivism and the open-shop movement.

cc Mark Sardella (flickr)

The Monkees. [DVD of four episodes from "The Monkees" television comedy]

Head. [DVD - "a psychedelic look at the pop phenomenon called the Monkees as they shatter their pre-fab image."]

Goostree, L. (1988). The Monkees and the deconstruction of television realism. Journal Of Popular Film & Television, 16(2), 50-58.

Stahl, M. (2002). Authentic boy bands on TV?: Performers and impresarios in “The Monkees” and “Making the Band”. Popular Music, 21(3), 307-329. 

Bodroghkozy, A. (1991). ‘We’re the young generation and we’ve got something to say’: A Gramscian analysis of entertainment television and the youth rebellion of the 1960s. Critical Studies In Mass Communication, 8(2), 217.

And, some Monkees trivia: Did you know that both Neil Diamond and Carole King wrote songs for the group?

Photo by maryatexitzero, Creative Commons licensed

If you’re looking for ideas for your own thesis or research project, these theses and the others in the GSU repository, the Digital Archive, can provide endless sources of topical and structural inspiration. Students in chemistry, literature, economics, education, and every other discipline at Georgia State University will find studies relevant to their subject areas.

Happy hunting!

Call number: RT86.7 .M65 1992

LaShawnDa Pittman-Gay, GSU Department of Sociology’s First National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Minority Research Fellow

LaShawnDa Pittman-Gay, recent doctoral graduate from Northwestern University, has returned to GSU to further her research on the challenges and rewards of African-American grandmothers who care for their grandchildren as the GSU Department of Sociology’s First National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Minority Research Fellow.  In her dissertation, entitled “Standing in the Gap: African American Caregiving Grandmothers,” Pittman-Gay:

“Examines how low-income, urban African American caretaking grandmothers’ coping strategies are affected by what these grandparents perceive and define as stressful, their individual and child-rearing goals and objectives, the formal and informal institutionalized resources they have available, how they make use of resources, and laws and policies that influence their care giving experience.”

Learn more about Pittman-Gay from this GSU press release, and explore these other resources related to her research:

• GSU’s Project Healthy Grandparents and National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.
• Kelley, S. J., & Whitley, D. (2003). Psychological distress and physical health problems in grandparents raising grandchildren: Development of an empirically based intervention model. In B. Hayslip & J. H. Patrick (Eds.), Working with custodial grandparents (pp. 127-144). New York: Springer Publishing Company.
• Ruiz, D. S. (2004). Amazing grace: African American grandmothers as caregivers and conveyers of traditional values. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
• Stevenson, M. L., Hendersdon, R. L., & Baugh, E. (2007). Vital defenses: Social support appraisals of black grandmothers parenting grandchildren. Journal Of Family Issues, 28(2), 182-211.

“Following on the heels of The Womanist Reader [edited by Maparyan], The Womanist Idea offers a comprehensive, systematic analysis of womanism, including a detailed discussion of the womanist worldview (cosmology, ontology, epistemology, logic, axiology, and methodology) and its implications for activism. From a womanist perspective, social and ecological change is necessarily undergirded by spirituality – as distinct from religion per se – which invokes a metaphysically informed approach to activism.” (from publisher’s information)

Prof. Maparyan is an associate professor in the Women’s Studies Institute and the Women’s Studies graduate director; she was recently awarded the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award. She is the editor of the collection The Womanist Reader, and the co-author of chapters in the Handbook of Feminist Family Studies and The Human Tradition and the Civil Rights Movement, 1865-1980 and author of a chapter in Defining Difference: Race and Racism in the History of Psychology, in addition to articles in the Journal of African American Studies, the Journal of African American History, and the Journal of Homosexuality.

Additionally, Maparyan co-hosted a 10-part TV series called “Faith and Feminism” for Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasters (AIB-TV). She currently co-hosts a new spirituality-focused current affairs talk show, “The Circle,” airing monthly on AIB-TV (weekly schedule available here). Prof. Maparyan is also co-founder of the Liberia Working Group of Metro Atlanta, first established in 2008.

Congratulations to Prof. Maparyan for her outstanding work!

Professor Hudson specializes in the history of both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union with special attention to the role of marginal social groups in shaping the culture and economic structure of the country.

“This book combines social and institutional histories of Russia, focusing on the secret police and their evolving relationship with the peasantry in the period leading up to collectivization. Based on an analysis of Cheka/OGPU reports, the book argues that the police did not initially respond to peasant resistance to Bolshevik demands simply with the gun – rather, they listened to peasant voices. The police argued that compromise was possible, and that the peasants could be convinced to work within the Bolshevik construct of state and society. As time went on, however, local police agents increasingly saw themselves engaged in a war with the peasantry over control of grain and domination of local organs of power. As the focus shifted from objective economic factors to the putative influence of the kulaks, the only solution became to break the peasantry.” (from publisher’s information).

His recent publications include Modernization Through Resistance: War, Mir, Tsar, and Law in the World of the Pre-reform Russian Peasantry (2004); Blueprints and Blood: The Stalinization of Soviet Architecture, 1917-1937 (1994); The Rise of the Demidov Family and the Russian Iron Industry in the Eighteenth Century (1986) translated as Pervye Demidovy i razvitie chernoi metallurgii Rossii v XVIII veke (2011); “The Kulakization of the Peasantry: The OGPU and the End of Faith in Peasant Reconciliation, 1924-1927,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (2012; forthcoming); “Peasant-State Relations During the Formative Years of the New Economic Policy,” Canadian Slavonic Papers (2008); “Shaping Peasant Political Discourse during the New Economic Policy: The Newspaper Krest’ianskaia gazeta and the Case of ‘Vladimir Ia.’,” Journal of Social History (2002); “Religious Persecution and Industrial Policy in the Reign of Anna I: V. N. Tatishchev and the Old Believers Reconsidered,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (2002; print); “A Rhetorical War of Fire: The Middle Volga Arson Panic of 1839 as Contested Legitimacy in Prereform Russia,” Canadian Slavonic Papers (2001; print); “‘Even if You Cut Off Our Heads’: Russian Peasant Legal Consciousness in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies (2001; print); “An Unimaginable Community: The Failure of Nationalism in Russia During the Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries,” Russian History (2000); “Proletarians by Fiat: The Compulsory Ural Metallurgical Work Force, 1630-1861,” International Labor and Working-Class History (1995; with Bruce J. DeHart and David M. Griffiths); “Terror in Architecture: The Murder of Mikhail Okhitovich,” Slavic Review (1992); “‘The Social Condenser of Our Epoch’: The Association of Contemporary Architects and the Creation of a New Way of Life in Revolutionary Russia.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (1986; print).

Congratulations to Prof. Hudson!

In addition to supporting faculty research, the library offers support in collecting this evidence via databases & software tools, and a subject librarian for each academic department.

On Tuesday, March 13, librarian Brenna Helmstutler will present a workshop on “Library Support for Promotion and Tenure.” It will be held from noon to 1:00 p.m. in Classroom One on the first floor of Library North. This workshop is co-sponsored by the Center for Instructional Innovation, where Helmstutler has previously presented on this topic with positive results. This is the perfect opportunity for faculty looking to show more comprehensive evidence of their scholarly impact on their tenure application

Using the tools available within the library’s subscription databases, resources, and free software tools & applications can yield the following benefits for faculty:

• More substantial evidence of scholarly impact than mere citation counts, which offers a stronger promotion & tenure narrative statement.
• The tools are user-friendly; most are accessible 24/7 online. For example, Helmstutler has created a Promotion & Tenure Research Guide.
• Subject librarians for each department are trained and available to assist in using the tools.
• This emerging service addresses the library’s overall mission to support GSU research and more specifically, one of its strategic initiatives: to use new, emerging, and established technologies to support the research, teaching, and learning of faculty and students.

Researchers of biology, public health, nursing, nutrition, life sciences and health administration are all likely to use PubMed. They use it not just in their time at Georgia State, but also in their careers afterward, especially if they become faculty in their disciplines.

Because of the importance of this resource and the amount of information within it, our librarians for health and the sciences are now presenting workshops on PubMed several times each semester. From the basics to advanced research, they’ll address anything you need. Each session is designed with enough time for questions and the librarians will also demonstrate approaches to sample research questions.

This semester we’ll be hosting three workshops in Classroom Two on the second floor of Library North. Anyone is welcome to these sessions though different subject experts will host each one.

• March 12, 2:00 p.m. with Sharon Leslie (Kinesiology & Health Education, Nutrition, Physical Therapy, Public Health, Respiratory Therapy, Health & Human Sciences)
• March 20, 9:00 a.m., with Todd Prusin (Nursing, Health and Human Sciences)
• March 21, noon, with Jackie Werner (Chemistry, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy)

Enter the supporters of The Research Works Act (HR 3699).  This proposed bill would repeal the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) currently in place, and bar other federal agencies from enacting a similar policy.  As a result, the public’s access to scientific research that was funded by taxpayer money would be seriously restricted; in effect, accessible to those who have the means, financial and otherwise, to obtain this information from subscription journals.  Not surprisingly, commercial publishers, such as Elsevier, who make profits from selling subscriptions to scholarly journals, have come out in support of this bill.

What did we, as scholars and researchers, do about it? 

• The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), along with individual academic institutions, organizations such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) have written letters and statements in opposition to HR 3699 and submitted them to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  Georgia State University is a signatory on one such letter dated February 24, 2012.
• Elsevier journal authors, editors and reviewers signed a pledge to refrain from publishing, refereeing or doing editorial work in any Elsevier journal until the publisher changes its business practices.  A few GSU faculty signed the pledge.  One of the business practices listed was the publisher’s support of HR 3699.

There are other ways that individuals can promote the sharing and distribution of their work.  At a minimum, authors should retain the intellectual property rights to their own work so they can share it and distribute it freely.  The Digital Archive @ GSU is one open access repository where GSU authors can place their work for worldwide visibility.  More about that in a future blog post.

Did our efforts work?

Yes.  On February 27, Elsevier withdrew its support for The Research Works Act.  The press release mentioned hearing from their authors, editors and reviewers about their displeasure with the publisher’s support of this legislation.  The same day, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education report, “the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican of California, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat of New York, issued a statement of their own saying that they would not push for action on the bill after all.”

Image courtesy of _longpham on Flickr. (CC BY -NC 2.0)

Check out this new publication by current and former GSU graduate students Xueliang Gao, Haizhen Wang, and Xiaowei Liu; Chemistry professor Jenny J. Yang; and Biology professor Zhi-Ren Liu:

Gao et al., Pyruvate Kinase M2 Regulates Gene Transcription by Acting as a Protein Kinase, Molecular Cell (2012), doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2012.01.001

Their research examines the enzyme pyruvate kinase isoform M2 (PMK2) and its role in tumor development. The reported experiments suggest that PMK2 may be behind the activation of transcription activator stat3, seen in almost all types of cancer; the question of how cancer cells continuously activate stat3 has been a long-standing question in cancer research, and PMK2 may be the answer.

To read more on PMK2, take a look at articles in our Discover service.

Image © CERN 2005. Used for educational purposes.

You might have heard news of the OPERA collaboration’s CERN experiment recording neutrinos traveling faster than light, a finding that would call Einstein’s theory of relativity into question. However, a new update from ScienceInsider (a news blog by Science magazine) identifies a technical error that appears to negate the results. CERN, in a press release, announced yesterday that it has “identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement.”

Were the results a fluke? We won’t know for sure until CERN repeats the experiment while controlling for these effects, which is scheduled to happen in May. Until then, we can read up on the original experiment and its implications.

Read the original paper here: The OPERA, C., Adam, T. T., Agafonova, N. N., Aleksandrov, A. A., Altinok, O. O., Sanchez, P., & … Zghiche, A. A. (2011). Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam.

Check out some commentary on the paper in our Discover search.

Or read these books for some background on special relativity, the speed of light, and the consequences of exceeding it:

Carmeli, M. (2008). Relativity: Modern large-scale spacetime structure of the cosmos. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific.

Gott, J. R., III. (2001). Time travel in Einstein’s universe: The physical possibilities of travel through time. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Grandy, D. (2009). The speed of light: Constancy + cosmos. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hawking, S. W. (1996). The illustrated A brief history of time (Updated and expanded ed.). New York: Bantam Books.

Modibo Kadalie, professor of political science and history at Fayetteville State University, was raised with an emphasis on the importance of education and community involvement from his parents.  In the interview, Kadalie elaborates on his personal philosophies and involvement with various activist groups, including the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the African Liberation Support Committee, the Sixth Pan-African Congress, and the Black Issues Community Forum. He describes his role in organizing against the brutality led by police chief John Inman, organizing the armed self-defense in the Techwood Housing Projects during the Atlanta Child Murders, supporting the strikes of the Atlanta sanitation workers, housing authority workers, and Atlanta Junior College students, organizing an independent union of taxi drivers, organizing a march from Savannah to Reidsville in response to a prison lockdown and against the death penalty, and many other events.  He also describes his influences, including C.L.R. James, Charles Simmons, Kimathi Mohammed, Hosea Williams, and many many others.

At age 17, in 1960, Ken Lawrence traveled to Atlanta to attend the conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and witnessed the emerging civil rights movement at first hand. The following spring, after his second year of college, Lawrence left school to become a full-time activist. In this interview, Lawrence briefly discusses his origins with the civil rights and labor movements, including his membership in the Young People’s Socialist League, the Socialist Party, and the Facing Reality organization.  He describes his participation in activism as a young man and interest in various political philosophies and enumerates the writings and people who influenced him politically and inspired his support of and devotion to the labor and civil rights movements.  Lawrence also elaborates on many of his published articles for the Southern Patriot and his experiences in researching and writing them, including the citrus and sugar workers in Florida, the pulpwood workers in Mississippi, the Farrah strike in Texas, the poultry plant workers, and many other wildcat strikes throughout the south.  He also discusses, in a broader context, the changes and progression of the labor and civil rights movements over the course of life. Today, Lawrence is a free-lance writer, researcher, editor, lecturer, historian, and media consultant living in rural Pennsylvania.

Many thanks to Dr. Matthew Quest, former visiting lecturer at Georgia State University, who interviewed Kadalie and Lawrence on behalf of the Southern Labor Archives. Quest’s upcoming book, In the Shadow of State Power: CLR James, Direct Democracy, & National Liberation Struggles (AKPress), will be available in March 2012.

For more information about these oral histories, or the Voices of Labor Oral History Project, please contact Special Collections and Archives at archives@gsu.edu.

If you’re interested in the future of academia, you’ll want to hear Courant’s ideas. As Provost at the University of Michigan, Courant was crucial to negotiating a contract with Google, allowing them to digitize the contents of the university’s library for what is now known as Google Books. Courant is currently the University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan, as well as an expert on the economics of universities, libraries and archives and a prolific scholar in economics and public policy.

Continuing a series of talks from provocative intellectuals like Arizona State’s Michael Crow, Courant spoke with President Becker about the future of academic libraries and information. Video of the event is available. Courant and Becker discussed such topics as:

• The big implications that stem from fundamental changes in libraries and technology.
• The digital availability of information content.
• The changing economics of text books as tablets become more ubiquitous.
• The importance of special collections in academic libraries.
• The future of university presses.
• How information will be more accessible, despite the “death of the book.”
• The closed system of Apple’s publishing model.
• “Scholarly literacy” – or, the awareness of standards of sources and research methods so one can make a critical judgment about the validity of information.
• Print-on-demand services in academic libraries.

Beyond his role at the University of Michigan’s library, Courant is also Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Economics, Professor of Information, and Faculty Associate in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. From 2002-2005 he served as Provost and Executive Vice-President for Academic Affairs, the chief academic officer and the chief budget officer of the University. He has also served as the Associate Provost for Academic and Budgetary Affairs, Chair of the Department of Economics and Director of the Institute of Public Policy Studies (which is now the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy).

We have a number of new biographies which will introduce you to a wide range of black women who have made a difference in American history, including:

• Virginia Lynn Moylan, Zora Neale Hurston’s Final Decade (2011)
• Sarah Azaransky, The Dream Is Freedom: Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith (2011)
• Gregg Andrews, Thyra J. Edwards, Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle (2011)
• Judy A. Alston and Patrice A. McClellan, eds. Herstories: Leading with the Lessons of the Lives of the Lives of Black Women Activists (2011)
• Earnest N. Bracey, Fannie Lou Hamer: The Life of a Civil Rights Icon (2011)
• James A. McGowan and William C. Kashatus, Harriet Tubman: A Biography (2011)
• Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011)
• Jeannette E. Brown, African American Women Chemists (2012)
• Anne B. Onyekwuluje, Historical Influence: Reading Georgia Powers as a Grassroots Civil Rights Leader in the Rough Business of Kentucky Politics (2011)
• Joyce Ann Hanson, Rosa Parks: A Biography (2011)
• Verner D. Mitchell and Cynthia Davis, Literary Sisters: Dorothy West and Her Circle: A Biography of the Harlem Renaissance (2012)

Want to find more biographies and autobiographies? Try searching our catalog using the keywords “African American Women” and “biography.” March is Women’s History Month, so keep reading!

Please remember that:

•  Study groups must consist of two or more persons.

• The time limit for group study rooms is three (3) hours per day per campus ID.

• Reservations can be made up to three weeks in advance of the reservation date.

Please be sure to read the full Group Study Room Policy. If you have internet connection, you can reserve a room online as well as on your mobile devices.

Dr. Thompson is the only U.S. member of the Sports Science Committee of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the global governing body of the Paralympic Movement.  The London 2012 Paralympic Games will take place between 29 August and 9 September 2012 after the Olympic Games.  According to the IPC website,

They will be the biggest Paralympic Games ever.  More than 500 gold medals will be up for grabs during 11 days of competition, as nearly 4,200 athletes from 150 countries will compete in 20 different sports.  Events include judo, track, archery, rowing, and cycling.

At a recent American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting Dr. Thompson chaired a special symposium on behalf of the IPC entitled, “Technological Advances in Olympic and Paralympic Sport”.

The speaker will be Andrea Smith, of the Department of Media & Cultural Studies, University of California – Riverside; Smith will speak on “Decolonizing the Anti-Violence Movement: Incorporating Anti-Racist Strategies in the Movements against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.” The lecture will begin at 5 p.m., following a reception at 4:30.

Andrea Smith is the co-founder of Incite! Women of Color against Violence, a national activist organization. Smith has written about the impact of sexual violence on Native Americans and about activism outside of the limits of registered nonprofits. She is also the co-editor of Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology.

Incite! has also published The revolution will not be funded: beyond the non-profit industrial complex, also available in the GSU Library. The GSU Library also has Color of violence: violence against women of color: UC Santa Cruz, April 28-29, 2000, the published summary of the conference which inspired the creation of Incite!.

For further information about this event, please contact Andrew Reisinger of the Women’s Studies Institute, at 404-413-7582 or areisinger1@gsu.edu.

In this book, Prof. Reid-Vazquez reveals the untold story of the strategies of negotia­tion used by free blacks in the aftermath of the “Year of the Lash”—a wave of repression in Cuba that had great implications for the Atlantic World in the next two decades, beginning with an infamous execution in June 1844.

At dawn on June 29, 1844, a firing squad in Havana executed ten accused ringleaders of the Conspiracy of La Escalera, an alleged plot to abolish slavery and colonial rule in Cuba. The condemned men represented prominent members of Cuba’s free community of African descent, including the acclaimed poet Plácido (Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés). In an effort to foster a white majority and curtail black rebellion, Spanish colonial authorities also banished, imprisoned, and exiled hundreds of free blacks, dismantled the militia of color, and accelerated white immigration projects.

Scholars have debated the existence of the Conspiracy of La Escalera for over a century, yet little is known about how those targeted by the violence responded. Drawing on archival material from Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and the United States, Reid-Vazquez provides a critical window into under­standing how free people of color challenged colonial policies of terror and pursued justice on their own terms using formal and extralegal methods. Whether rooted in Cuba or cast into the Atlantic World, free men and women of African descent stretched and broke colonial expectations of their codes of conduct locally and in exile. Their actions underscored how black agency, albeit fragmented, worked to destabilize repression’s impact. (From publisher’s information).

Prof. Reid-Vazquez has also published “Protesting Service: Free Black Response to Cuba’s Reestablished Militia of Color” in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, articles and reviews in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, as well as essays and chapters in The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, Toyin Falola and Matt Childs, editors; Documenting Latin America: Gender and Race, Empire and Nation, Vol. 1, Erin O’Connor and Leo Garofalo, editors; Africans to Colonial Spanish America, Sherwin Bryant and Ben Vinson, III, editors (forthcoming 2012); the Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History; and the Encyclopedia of Free Blacks and Free People of Color in the Americas.

Congratulations to Prof. Reid-Vazquez!

The University Library is looking for a few good students to help  improve existing services and/or launch new services.  If you are looking for an opportunity to gain leadership experience while improving your library, please volunteer here.

To learn more about the importance of gaining leadership experience, check out these books.

Leadership : enhancing the lessons of experience / by Hughes, Richard L.

Crucibles of leadership : how to learn from experience to become a great leader / by Thomas, Robert J.

Total leadership : be a better leader, have a richer life / by Friedman, Stewart D.

Now with the Map Your Campus competition from Google, you have a chance to help others get a better understanding of the GSU campus.  And in doing so, you can win some cool prices such as Android tablets and messenger bags.

More information can be found on the Google Lat Long Blog.

“From February 13th until March 9th, 2012, Google invites students studying in the United States and Canada to become local experts by updating and adding detail to their campus maps for viewing in Google Maps and Google Earth. Adding everything from walking paths to university buildings to local businesses will help students and visitors alike when trekking across your college grounds. Winning teams will be selected based on the thoroughness and accuracy of mapping in and around campus, and a brief personal statement. Fabulous prizes include Android tablets and phones, GPS devices, Google Map Maker messenger bags, t-shirts, and more!”

Learn more about Google Maps and Google Earth from these books available at the University Library:

• Beginning Google Maps API 3, by Gabriel Svennerberg (2010).
• Beginning Google Maps Mashups with Mapplets, KML, and GeoRSS: From Novice to Professional, by Sterling Udell (2009).
• The KML Handbook: Geographic Visualization for the Web, by Josie Wernecke (2009)

And you can become a map and GIS expert by enrolling in digital cartography and GIS classes offered from the Department of Geosciences.

This story reveals lessons about cancer related hair loss, friendship, generosity, patience, and much more. A wonderful and moving addition to children’s literature, this children’s tale is as helpful for adults as it is for children. At the end of the story, a list of concepts with corresponding page numbers is provided as a guide to encourage communication between adults and children.  Activities for children are also included.

Find out more about the book in this video featuring the authors.

Dr. Barbara Meyers and Dr. Lydia Mays have contributed many other publications available in the library.  A few of their scholarly endeavors are highlighted below:

Mays, L. (2008). The Cultural Divide of Discourse: Understanding How English-Language Learners’ Primary Discourse Influences Acquisition of Literacy. The Reading Teacher, 61 (5), 415-418.

Mays, L. “Linking Theory to Practice: Understanding How Two Reading Recovery Teachers’ Reflections Inform their Teaching Practices” (2009). Early Childhood Education Dissertations. Paper 9.

Meyers, J., Roach, A.T. & Meyers, B. (2009). Engaging in the Debate: A Critique of Blueprint III. Journal Of Educational & Psychological Consultation, 19(3), 197-223. doi:10.1080/10474410903117239

Swars, S. L., Meyers, B., Mays, L.C., & Lack, B. (2009). A two-dimensional model of teacher retention and mobility: classroom teachers and their university partners take a closer at a vexing problem. Journal of Teacher Education, 60, 168-182.

Varjas, K., Meyers, J., Meyers, B., Kim, S., Henrich, C. C., & Subbiah, L. (2009). Positive Psychology and the prevention of school-based victimization. In The Handbook of Positive Psychology. R. Gilman, E. S. Huebner, & M. J. Furlong (Eds.). NY: Routledge. Chapter 24 (pp. 323-338).

Atlanta’s own Shirley Franklin, with her breadth of experiences – from college instructor to Atlanta’s Chief Administrative Officer to Mayor of Atlanta in 2002, coupled with her commitment to public service, is a remarkable women.  Read what her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, wrote about Ms. Franklin and her life.

Of course there have been many extraordinary African-American women politicians, discover more about their contributions by exploring some of the terrific exhibits and resources that are available, such as:

The Library’s own Georgia Government Documents Collection, which includes a series on Women in the Legislature. Here you can find information on, among others, Betty Jean Clark who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1973 to 1991. For other resources on Atlanta Government, there is a research guide.

New to the Library collection is: Remembering the power of words: the life of an Oregon activist, legislator, and community leader by Avel Louise Gordly. Ms. Gordly was the first African-American women elected to the Oregon State Senate.

And the Library also has: Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007, which profiles African Americans who have served in the United States Congress. This includes notable women such as Shirley Chisholm and Cardiss Collins.

Just down the street is the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American culture and History.  And not to be overlooked, an impressive website sponsored by several agencies including the Library of Congress and the National Archives which pays tribute to African Americans.

In a 2008 presentation, Paul N. Courant said, “Once upon a time, printing was expensive, and publishers, librarians and tenure committees were happy. Now it is essentially costless and everyone is miserable.”

Anyone who cares about the future of scholarly information should be interested to hear Courant’s ideas. He is the University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan, an expert on the economics of universities, libraries and archives and a prolific scholar in economics and public policy. As Provost at the University of Michigan, Courant was crucial to negotiating a contract with Google, allowing them to digitize the contents of the university’s library for what is now known as Google Books.

Continuing a series of talks from provocative intellectuals like Arizona State’s Michael Crow, Paul Courant will participate in a conversation with President Becker on the future of scholarly information on February 22, 2012. Beginning at 2:00 p.m., the event will be located in the Speaker’s Auditorium at 150 Student Center, Georgia State University.

Beyond his role at the University of Michigan’s library, Courant is also Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Economics, Professor of Information, and Faculty Associate in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. From 2002-2005 he served as Provost and Executive Vice-President for Academic Affairs, the chief academic officer and the chief budget officer of the University. He has also served as the Associate Provost for Academic and Budgetary Affairs, Chair of the Department of Economics and Director of the Institute of Public Policy Studies (which is now the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy).

Courant has authored half a dozen books, and over seventy papers covering a broad range of topics in economics and public policy, including tax policy, state and local economic development, gender differences in pay, housing, radon and public health, relationships between economic growth and environmental policy, and university budgeting systems. More recently, he is studying the economics of universities, the economics of libraries and archives, and the changes in the system of scholarly communication that derive from new information technologies.

Paul Courant holds a BA in History from Swarthmore College (1968); an MA in Economics from Princeton University (1973); and a PhD in Economics from Princeton University (1974). He rides a BMW R1150R motorcycle.

Stephan, who is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, has published numerous books and articles on topics such as the economics of science and the role of university scientists.  You can find some of her other books in the University Library:

• Striking the Mother Lode in Science: The Importance of Age, Place and Time [1992]
• The Economics of Science and Innovation [2000]
• Science and the University [2007]

The editorial team seeks submissions from undergraduates for the new Undergraduate Journal of Service Learning and Community-Based Research. Undergraduate Journal of Service Learning and Community-Based Research is a refereed, multi-disciplinary, online undergraduate journal open to all undergraduate students in the U.S. and across the globe. The journal is dedicated to publishing the intellectual and reflective work by undergraduates on service learning, community-based research, and all related curriculum- and/or research-based public community engagement activities. These go by many additional names, such as community-based learning, public scholarship, publicly-engaged learning/teaching, etc. The editorial team of Undergraduate Journal of Service Learning and Community-Based Research encourages undergraduates to pursue their own intellectual projects and to join the academic conversation.

The journal invites submissions in five categories:

• Reflective Essays

• Analytical Essays

• Research done for a community organization in the form given to that organization, accompanied by a short, reflective essay

• Research Articles

• Open Category

Submissions will be accepted from now through June 30, 2012. For detailed information about the journal’s content and submission guidelines, please see our website at http://www.bk.psu.edu/Academics/33679.htm. Please direct all inquiries and questions to the editor, Dr. Laurie Grobman, at leg8psu.edu.

A prolific writer and commenter on social reform, his books have never been out of print. Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield…his literary characters are instantly recognizable.

The library has an extensive collection of his works, including the popular A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities.

 Rischgitz/Getty Images

For more information about Dickens and literary criticism of his works, the library recommends using databases like the MLA International Bibliography, Literature Online Reference Edition, and Literature Criticism Online.

NPR has a nice write up on the 200th anniversary. And check out Google’s homepage!

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth explores the social, economic and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which they were built, while tracing the personal and poignant narratives of several of the residents of the notorious Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex in St. Louis.

Playing through Sunday, February 12; check the Cinefest website for showtimes.

To learn more about urban environments, check out the following books at the GSU University Library:

• Urban, Florian.  Tower and slab: Histories of global mass housing.
• Satter, Beryl.  Family properties: Race, real estate, and the exploitation of Black urban America.
• Gruen, Claude. New urban development: Looking back to see forward.
• Cisneros, Henry. From despair to hope:  HOPE VI and the new promise of public housing in America’s cities.
• Gilderbloom, John.  Invisible city: Poverty, housing, and new urbanism.
• Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi.  American project: The rise and fall of a modern ghetto.
• Jackson, Richard.  Designing healthy communities.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is a leader in country research.  Country information is collected and forecasting models are created by a network of Country Analysts and Economists who are monitoring global events.  

Each EIU database focuses on some aspect of country research, for example for economic data there is the database: Country Data; for operating conditions use Country Commerce; and for updates on the latest developments take a look at ViewsWire!  

The University Library provides access to these three essential EIU databases:

Country Data:  Economic indicators are, at their most basic, a statistic that is used to gauge economic health.  The EIU database Country Data is a source for global economic indicators and forecasts for over 150 countries.  The “database contains more than a million individual data points-covering over 280 series and running from 1980 to 2008” (vendor). It is updated monthly.

Country Commerce:  is a portal to commercial laws and business regulations, the content is useful in determining investing and trading conditions.

ViewsWire:  is terrific for event-driven reports. Content includes the latest in worldwide developments.

Consider using these terrific databases for your research!