The Un-Cool Librarian

2011-03-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to learn to use EndNote? The WSU Libraries can help! Check out our line up of Spring Semester EndNote classes.

All classes are held in the Holland 105 computer lab. Please register ahead of time through HRS.

For instructions on how to register go to: http://hrs.wsu.edu/Library Instruction Page
or call 335-4521 or email: hrstraining@wsu.edu.

For more information on class content, contact scales@wsu.edu.

SCHEDULE
Tuesday: 3/29/2011 @ 10:00-12:00
EndNote: Beginners Class

Tuesday: 4/5/2011 @ 1:00-3:00
EndNote: Using Databases with EndNote

Tuesday: 4/12/2011 @ 10:00-12:00
EndNote: Cite While You Write

Tuesday: 4/19/2011 @ 1:00-3:00
EndNote: Open Workshop

On the Un-Cool Soapbox with Huckleberry Finn

2011-01-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

As everyone has no doubt heard by now, a new edition of Huckleberry Finn is eliminating the N word (and also an I word, though the replacement of "injun" with Indian hasn't been discussed nearly as much).

I could talk about the dangers of ignoring the past, of sweeping the uglier parts of U.S. history under the rug, or even of teaching certain "classics" to grade school students who may not be ready to explore the themes of those novels.

But I think that the heart of why I cringe at the bowdlerization of Twain's novel is that I was once faced, in my pre-librarian life, with a class of drama students, August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and a group of white students who were going to act out a scene from the play involving the N word. There were black students in my class, too, and a few of them approached me about feeling very (very) uncomfortable with this. The white students weren't swimming in comfort, either. I was a TA, and a novice; I was scared. But the days of discussion we had in that classroom before the scene was acted out probably comprised the best and most meaningful classroom experience I've ever had. We talked about language and power, about language appropriation and re-appropriation, about history and exploitation and music and about how Wilson brought these issues into focus in his play. Perhaps most importantly, we discussed what we all needed and wanted to do with that history and language now, in our own lives. And you know what? The answer wasn't to ignore the fact that all of this history had happened.

My students and I learned a lot that wasn't only valuable for understanding American theater. But it almost didn't happen. I almost didn't teach the play, almost avoided the scene, almost excused myself because of my inexperience and fear. It would have been much, much easier, and would have felt much safer. And that's why the "new" version of Huckleberry Finn makes me want to scream. It's just so easy to give into the fear of facing and discussing painful issues. It's just too damned easy to deny ourselves real and valuable learning, to try (and fail, incidentally) to whitewash history, and to let the looming issues of racism and language become more looming by feeding them with fear and avoidance. And we need novels like Huck Finn (and plays like August Wilson wrote) to remind us that it really isn't easy and that it's not supposed to be easy but that we need to have these discussions anyway.

Off my soapbox now, but, seriously, I thought we knew better than this.

New Books in Women's Studies

2010-12-30T12:01:00.000-08:00

Happy almost-New Year! Here are links to the most recent new books list for Women's Studies at the WSU Libraries.

From the Women's Studies LibGuide: http://libguides.wsulibs.wsu.edu/content.php?pid=87466&sid=838124
*Tip* You will also find older new book lists on this LibGuide page.

The list is also available from WSU WorldCat: http://washingtonstate.worldcat.org/profiles/eacarlson/lists/2187021

If you have Women's Studies titles to recommend, please let me know. I'm always glad to receive suggestions.

New Books in Anthropology and Archaeology

2010-12-30T11:53:00.000-08:00

Here are links to the last new books list of the calendar year for Anthropology and Archaeology at the WSU Libraries. Look for more new books lists in 2011!

From the Anthropology LibGuide: http://libguides.wsulibs.wsu.edu/content.php?pid=88408&sid=842267
*Tip* You will also find older new book lists on this LibGuides page.

The list is also available from WSU WorldCat: http://washingtonstate.worldcat.org/profiles/eacarlson/lists/2186400

If you have Anthropology or Archaeology titles to recommend, please let me know. I'm always happy to hear from you.

New Books in Communication

2010-12-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

Here are links to new books list for Communication. There are some very interesting new titles now available at WSU Libraries!

From the Communication Studies LibGuide: http://libguides.wsulibs.wsu.edu/content.php?pid=83396&sid=838182
*Tip* You will also find older new book lists on this LibGuides page.

The list is also available from WSU WorldCat: http://washingtonstate.worldcat.org/profiles/eacarlson/lists/2169380

If you have Communication titles to recommend, please let me know. I'm always happy to hear from you.

End of the semester tips for using the libraries

2010-11-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again, the time when you may be realizing that you have four papers due (and three exams to study for) and only a few more days in which to write them and get in your studying time.

As I sit at the reference desk in the Holland and Terrell Library, I can feel the tension mounting as the days go by. I remember my own experiences with end-of-the-semester stress (it was ugly - there was blatant abuse of caffeine, hysterical laughter, crying, and at one point a really unfortunate experiment with cigarettes that I don't want to get into), and I sympathize. But my sympathizing and witnessing your pain won't help you much, so here are six tips to make your library work, be it researching, writing, or studying, less stressful.

Recognize that stress makes research harder. When people are under stress, they are more likely to forget things, and also more likely to have a hard time following directions, reading signs, or doing normally easy things like typing passwords. If you find yourself panicking, remember to breathe and (I'll be saying this again) ask for help.
Back up your work. Please, please, please for the love of all that is good in the universe save any paper you're writing on a library computer and save it frequently. Then back it up by emailing it to yourself of putting a copy on Google Docs. The library computers don't automatically save your work, and the TempStore drives on our computers are wiped clean every night. If you lose your work, we will want to get it back for you, but we won't be able to.
Please remember to make sure you have everything you need when you leave the libraries. The last thing you want to do after sweating out a search for peer-reviewed journal articles is to have to hunt down the flash drive you've saved them to. Or to hunt for your cell phone. Or iPod. Or wallet. And while we do have a lost and found at the Circulation Desk, it's a sad truth that sometimes things are stolen in the libraries.
Ask for help. I know I've said this before, but it's really important. We have people at the Circulation Desk and Reference Desk whose job is to help you, who are glad to help you. If you get confused, stuck, or frustrated, let us know and we'll do our best to help you find what you need. Plus, most of us are friendly types, even if we look a little scary at first.
When you're under stress it's easy to take it out on those around you. Try not to. Your fellow students (who are all working with their own loads of stress) will appreciate this and it will get you better help. I try to do my best for every person who comes for help at the reference desk, but I'm much more likely to go the extra mile for those who are respectful and polite.
Okay, admittedly this one is partly to decrease my stress load, but please return things like staplers, scissors, or the three-hole punch to roughly the same places you found them. We like them to be available to anyone who needs them, and sometimes people get quite upset when they can't staple their papers. Also, the old and cranky staplers we sometimes have to resort to have wounded people who attempted to refill them. Seriously. There was blood. There were bandages.

Good luck, and hang in there. May your computer never crash, especially while you're writing. May your research be as painless as possible, and may your study sessions never be so exhausting as to make you sleep through your exams. May your holiday travel be smooth and uneventful. And may you learn enough that is useful and true and important to make all of this work worthwhile.

Oscar in the Library

2010-10-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

Some vintage Sesame Street.

Oscar finds his books in the end, but in many ways this seems to be an object lesson on how not to conduct a reference interaction.

On piecing together new clothes from old, or, purchasing databases in this economy

2010-07-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

There's a part of Louisa May Alcott's An Old Fashioned Girl, where the heroine, Polly, helps her friend Fanny, who has recently fallen on hard times, to remake a dress by turning it inside out so the unfaded fabric on the inside can be reused. Sometimes I feel like this is a good metaphor of what we try to do with library resources - find the undersides of things we already have and try to make them useful in new ways. Sometimes this works well and sometimes it doesn't; sometimes we don't have much choice.

A researcher doing very interesting and valuable work recently asked me about purchasing a very specialized (and very useful) database to help with this work. I'm looking into it, but with our current budget, it's not easy to make substantial purchases like database subscriptions, especially if they may only be used by a few people. This isn't surprising; it's the case in academic libraries across the country right now as we compete for funding in our still struggling economy.

"You are there to help the researchers," my researcher tells me. "Otherwise we can't go on." He is right of course, but part of me resents being told this, because I know he is right. The Libraries know he is right. We are trying to stretch our limited budget to help as many of our researchers as we can, as well as we can. I understand that he feels as though we aren't serving him as well as we could, but I get frustrated because I haven't been able to convey to him how hard we are trying. I am looking to see if I can drum up more interest in this database, if I can make a good case for getting it in the face of our current budget.

If not, I end up trying to help him track down the information he wants the hard way, through databases not designed to give us information or access to the particular type of information he wants. He's already good at this, but it's labor-intensive, takes time away from what he really wants to be doing, and it would be nice if we could give him better tools.

It seems like it may become harder and harder for institutions like mine to provide these tools, even as more and better become available. This is depressing. How much time can we really spend piecing together new dresses out of our old silks? Am I looking at a future in which we have to cut something every time we get something new? It can be tiring, having to explain that our budget can't keep up with inflation, that we're trapped in a failing model of scholarly communication which means that we keep cutting resources and vendors keep raising prices to make up for money they lose (or just for new money they aren't getting) when libraries cut resources.

To drum up an old sentiment I've heard often since I started work as an academic librarian, it would be very nice if universities seriously considered library funding when proposing new programs, colleges, departments, or centers. New areas of research and teaching focus almost always mean that there will be new needs and desires for information resources. If this were recognized and funded at the university level, it would make for happier researchers and librarians.

I don't have much influence at the university level just now, however, so I'm thinking of ways that we could get more funding for the kinds of tools that may be much more useful to select groups of researchers than to our larger student body, or the bulk of our teaching faculty and staff.

Aside from continuing pushing for support of Open Access so that some day we may have a sustainable and viable system for database subscriptions, I wonder if libraries could partner with researchers as they apply for grants, building access to tools and databases into the grant funding so that the researchers, the larger institution, and the libraries all benefit. Has anyone done this before? I'd love to see examples.

In the meantime, we work with what we have, hoping we can turn it to new uses.

Poor Blog

2010-06-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog, I've been neglecting you of late and I apologize. I haven't posted here for some time for a number of reasons.

Reason 1: I've been posting new book lists on my library subject guides pages. Here are the links: New books in Communication, New Books in Anthropology and Archaeology, and New books in Women's Studies.

Reason 2: I am sometimes disorganized. Please don't tell anyone. This is a terrible sin if you're a librarian.

Reason 3: The WSU Libraries have implemented LibGuides for subject pages, have changed the way we take our reference statistics (we used to fill out a spreadsheet & now we use a SurveyMonkey form), and the Research Services parts of the Libraries here at Pullman are undergoing reorganization. We've been having a busy year!

Reason 4: In spite of the activities listed in Reason 3, my life is often boring. Truly. It's part and par of the whole uncool vibe.

Reason 5: After a month of bed rest in January (ugh) and an early, but not scary-early delivery on the first of February, I'm now spending a lot of time worrying over how to protect the world's ducks from my cute baby monster.

Being responsible for the fate of all ducks weighs heavy on a person.

But I'll try to write more faithfully here. The WSU Libraries are going to be doing some great things this year, and I'm looking forward to being a part of them and to posting about them.

Almost there

2009-05-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Latest (and close to final) iteration of new noise signage:

I need to crisp up the tag cloud image and give the text another good hard look.

PSA Widget

2009-04-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

From The White House Blog:

I know that flu epidemics can be serious and scary things, but I'm tickled that our administration is using blogs and widgets to communicate.

The "Things You Can Do" list is full of good common-sense type advice, and I recommend looking at it. Sometimes we really do need to be encouraged to stay home when we're sick.

Sign mock-up #1

2009-04-22T15:53:00.001-07:00

Here's the text:

While in the Libraries, remember that others are

chatting collaborating copying cramming emailing focusing learning meeting napping panicking printing researching snacking studying talking texting tutoring working writing

created at TagCrowd.com

Please show consideration to those around you by keeping your conversations reasonably quiet.

Thanks!

Seems full of words to me, still, but I like the tag cloud image.

Signage ideas and examples?

2009-04-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

Last year, after quite a bit of conversation, we decided to take down our "No Cell Phones in the Libraries" signs. Huzzah!

However, with no signs up about noise levels, there's been some confusion over whether or not phones are allowed and about noise in general. Now that Holland & Terrell Libraries are cell phone friendly, we need some signage to let people know that all conversations (IRL or on phones) need to be conducted with respect for surrounding students. I'd like to avoid going into specific noise levels in a way that might imply we're policing for noise, and I'd especially like something that promoted the idea that our library space is our patrons' space and that we trust them to make good choices.

I've been scanning the web and have found a few jumping off points (Many thanks to Aaron at Walking Paper for collecting so many great images of signs!), but any suggestions or examples would be greatly appreciated.

Ideally, the language should be clear and brief. Bonus points for humor and helpful images!

Belated Valentine's Day post

2009-02-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

So, Valentine's Day has come and gone, but today I saw that John Green, who has written some darned good YA novels (An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns, among others) has some fine answers the age-old question, "How do I get boys to like me?" And it seemed like the sort of thing that I would have liked to hear on Valentine's Day when I was fifteen.

So here it is, all funny and sweet and stuff.

Good customer service

2009-02-02T14:53:00.001-08:00

My trip to the ALA Midwinter conference wasn't exactly fraught with peril, but winter travel is always time consuming and never predictable. After arriving in your hotel lobby an hour before midnight, after spending 15+ hours in airports and on planes, the last thing you want to hear is that the hotel is overbooked and you have to go somewhere else.

I was very cranky with the Hyatt Regency, and with traveling, and with the conference, which I wouldn't have attended this year if my life had worked out in happier ways, more than five months ago. I was tired, self-pitying, and disappointed (but hopefully polite) as I took myself off to the room at the Comfort Inn that the Hyatt arranged for me that Friday night.

The next morning, as I returned to the Hyatt, it became clear to me that this place does customer service right. First, their manager admitted to making a mistake, then he apologized for it, sincerely and thoughtfully, letting me know that they new it wasn't pleasant for a customer arriving late in the day to encounter an overbooked hotel. They gave me access to the Regency Lounge (free breakfasts!), sent another note of apology with fruit later Saturday evening, and didn't charge me anything for Friday night's reservation. All nice things, but what still sticks with me is the sincerity of the apology I received. No one at the Hyatt knew how ambivalent I was about attending Midwinter this year, or that I haven't been the happiest of campers lately. But they recognized me as a human being and valuable customer; they took responsibility and made amends. They not only did the right thing, they made me feel better.

How often, in Libraries, do we make mistakes, admit to them, and make things right for our patrons? How often do we do this graciously and thoughtfully? It takes a lot of bravery to do this. To do this right, I think it takes a sincere desire to serve people well. I am now looking to serve my patrons better and more thoughtfully.

Thank you, Hyatt. I'll be back.

What bloggers can learn from journalists

2008-12-16T12:29:00.000-08:00

I listened to the commencement speech given at WSU on Saturday by Frank Blethen, publisher and CEO of the Seattle Times. I admire Blethen's defense of journalism, but I think that, by attributing so much of the blame for the newspaper industry's current dilemmas on the internet, (Google and Craigslist, particularly) he missed a chance to talk about how newspapers, online news sites, blogs, and search engines can work together.

Also, it seems clear to me that newspapers, while they have provided and do provide invaluable services to the public, need to think innovatively and creatively if they're going to survive. We're trying to ask our auto industry to do this, the faculty and administration at my university and universities around the country are being asked to do this, and it seems reasonable to expect new ideas and business plans in other industries as well. Blaming Google seems like a real avoidance of the kind of creative thinking that could lead to survival.

Blethen was very dismissive about blogging, and this is understandable. There are plenty of tensions between professional journalism and blogging, and how these tensions play out in the next several years is going to be fascinating. But bloggers, many of whom are interested in driving traffic to their blogs and in cultivating audiences, and some of whom consider themselves citizen journalists, can learn a lot from journalists. Anita Bruzzese, writing a guest post on Chris Brogan's Community and Social Media blog, has a brief and sensible post about this: What Bloggers Can Learn from Journalists.

Journalists may already be learning from bloggers as well - that would make an interesting post, too.

And, if you want to watch the commencement and hear Blethen's speech for yourself, you can take a look at the streaming video.

Edited to add: Stephen Abram lists some good additions to ways bloggers can learn from journalists: Bloggers as Journalists.

Current economics, and many reasons why Libraries are especially important now

2008-12-11T12:33:00.001-08:00

Just a nice clip showing how valuable libraries are to their communities when things get tough economically:

Meryl Streep

2008-11-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

is going to play a librarian:

http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2008/November2008/streepheartsdewey.cfm

New Summit catalog for WSU

2008-11-14T13:01:00.001-08:00

From our Library News feed (http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/general/News-Events.htm), here's some information on the upcoming new iteration of the Summit catalog used by WSU Libraries and by cooperating Washington and Oregon Libraries. We keep trying to make interlibrary loan easier and better, and hopefully this new version of Summit will help us in doing that.

New Summit Catalog Coming Dec 1
Post Time: 11/12/2008 1:02:11 PM
Posted By: coreyj@wsu.edu (Corey Johnson)
Category: News

Summary
WSU Libraries, in cooperation with the 35 other WA/OR academic libraries of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, will be launching a new version of the Summit Catalog on December 1. We will be offering enhancements to the catalog while supporting Summit borrowing without interruption. New features include:

The addition of the 110 million book/media records from OCLCs WorldCat to those discoverable through Summit.

Access to about 50 million articles from OCLC databases such as ArticleFirst, British Library Serials, PubMed, and ERIC, through Summit.

An improved user interface with spelling assistance; book covers; post-search filters such as author, format, date, audience, language and topic; improved relevance ranking, syndication/tagging with online services like Google, Amazon and Facebook; citation creation tools and book reviews.

You can learn more about the new version of Summit at: http://orbiscascade.org/index/communication-kit

You can test a beta version of the new catalog at:
http://www.summit.worldcat.org/
(You cannot order materials through this test instance of the new catalog.)

When librarians build a search engine...

2008-11-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

I'm very curious to see what will come of Reference Extract, a web search engine "built for maximum credibility" that will weight results toward sites used heavily by libraries.

According to the article on Reference Extract in the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus, "The idea is to cull and promote recommendations from tens of thousands of librarians around the world."

I think this could be phenomenally cool, or a complete disaster. It would be nice to see a good marriage of search engine algorithms and librarian knowledge, something that would leverage the abilities librarians have developed as we evaluate information and attempt to teach others to do the same. It would be nice to have access to a search engine that was not so easily leveraged to bring up results corporations want us to see.

On the other hand, it often seems to me that librarians are really excellent at gathering and organizing information but not always so good at making it easily accessible to non-librarians.

Good luck, Research Exchange. I hope you do very, very well.

I'd like to think this is true

2008-10-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

News about Google's $125 million settlement over Google Book Search can be found here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10076948-2.html

The money information is interesting, but what I really loved was the last paragraph of the article:

"All public libraries in the United States will be offered a free online portal to Google's digitized collection, said Aiken, and patrons will be able to print an unlimited number of pages for a per page fee. Google will also be offering institutional subscriptions to colleges and universities. Google Book Search services available outside the United States will remain the same, Drummond said."

I hope it's true.

And I wonder if land grant institutions like mine couldn't get in there with the public libraries somehow...

CFP for graduate students

2008-10-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

This call for papers was sent to one of my many library listservs today, and I thought it might be of interest to graduate students in Anthropology.

October 16, 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS

Public Writing: A Cultural Studies Journal for Undergraduate Writers provides a lively and provocative online forum for undergraduate writers who are engaged in critique of contemporary, historical, public ideas.

Student writers from across the humanities and social sciences and around the world are invited to submit to Public Writing. A Public Writing submission may combine any of the following fields in an interdisciplinary manner: cultural theory, social theory, literary theory, cultural anthropology, linguistics, rhetoric studies, historical analysis, sociology, queer studies, disability studies, gender studies, philosophy or any other applicable field.

Public Writing’s open-access format allows writers to be exposed to a larger readership. The open-access movement in scholarly publishing provides a model whose essence is unlimited availability and use. As such, authors themselves—not publishers—retain copyright. Work published in Public Writing will be freely available on the Internet.

Submissions to this journal should be approximately 15-25 double-spaced pages in length. Please use MLA format only.

Please submit an electronic copy at http://scholarlyexchange.org/ojs/index.php/PW/index, or e-mail to public.writing@gmail.com. E-mailed submissions should also contain a separate document containing:

Author’s name
Title of manuscript
Mailing address
Affiliated institution
E-mail address
Phone number

All manuscripts that wish to be considered for Volume 1 must be submitted no later than January 1, 2009. Any manuscript received after this date will be considered for later volumes.

Public Writing is being published with the support of both the George Washington University and Gelman Library. The editorial group consists of students, faculty, and librarians from a number of universities and colleges. It is lead by Andrew Noel, junior major in American Studies from GWU, and Rachel Riedner, Assistant Professor of University Writing at GWU with the assistance of Cathy Eisenhower and Dolsy Smith from GW’s Gelman Library.

If Peeps can do it, so can we.

2008-10-16T10:42:00.001-07:00

You've seen them use the library, now see them vote!

Go look at Real Peeps Vote. You have to scroll down a bit to get to the images, but it's brilliant.

I am thinking of setting up tiny little Peeps polling places on my kitchen table this November and wondering about issues important to Peeps (anti-torture laws that include the prohibition of microwaving?). Also, who handles Peep voter registration...

And if Peeps can vote, you can, too.

A bit of Colbert for you

2008-10-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

Blatantly stolen from The Shifted Librarian because it is very funny.

Spin doctors

2008-10-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

As we approach November, politics are everywhere. I try not to use this site to espouse my own political views, but I believe strongly that voting is important, and informed voting is very important. So here is a brief post on some sites and resources that I use to keep informed during this season of spin.

LexisNexis Congressional: available to WSU students, staff, and faculty. This is a fantastically useful database for finding information on government information of all kinds. It will let you look up the history of bills and check voting records of individual members of congress.

FactCheck.org: A nonpartisan group that keeps an eye on what the major political figures are saying. They point out when candidates (Democrats and Republicans) provide inaccurate or misleading information. A handy resource if you are trying to process and understand candidate debates or if you're wondering about the truthfulness of a campaign ad.

Project Vote Smart: A group devoted to providing impartial information to voters. They provide a plethora of information on issues and candidates including voting records, interest group ratings, campaign finance information, and "political courage tests" where candidates share (or decide not to share) their positions on important issues. Also available is information by state.

Smart Voter: Provided by the League of Women Voters, this site offers nonpartisan information on federal, state, and local elections and contests. The site allows you to find information relevant to you by zip code or state, can help you find your polling place and provides information on how to register to vote. And it's not just for women, though more women should vote. Seriously.

Loss

2008-10-02T13:32:00.001-07:00

Since I wrote here about the beginning, I'll write a bit about the end, too. Our little boy was born on Friday, August 15th and died on Saturday, August 16th. We've never seen anything so beautiful. He had my nose and his father's chin, and will be missed to the end of our days.

June on the Palouse

2008-06-10T10:27:00.001-07:00

Here are some photos of today's surprising weather in Pullman, WA. Keep in mind that it is June 10.

Northwest Public Radio was playing "White Christmas" on my way to work this morning, which is a better commentary on this weather than any I could make.

Side Project

2008-05-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

You may (or may not) know that librarians engage in several projects besides answering reference questions, ordering books, evaluating collections, and trying to stay on top of the scholarly communication crisis (which really does feel like a crisis when you find yourself having to cancel journals for the second year in a row). My side projects include research on information anxiety and on library employees' attitudes toward technology. And, for the past few months, I've been working on a very special and exciting side project, due in the beginning of September. Here's a sneak preview:

Yep, it's a future bibliophile. Or perhaps a future demolitions expert. It's kind of hard to tell from the profile.

New Books in Women's Studies

2008-05-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of the new books in Women's Studies that arrived in the WSU Libraries between January and May of 2008. If you are curious about a title, click on the link to see more details about the book.

Agosín, Marjorie. Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love The Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974-1994. Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Bell, Rudolph M., and Virginia Yans-McLaughlin. Women on Their Own: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Being Single. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008.
Bender, Karen E., and Nina de Gramont. CHOICE: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, & Abortion. San Francisco,CA: MacAdam/Cage, 2007.
Bennett, James T. The Politics of American Feminism: Gender Conflict in Contemporary Society. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007.
Bernau, Anke. Virgins: A Cultural History. London: Granta, 2007.
Bourke, Joanna. Rape: Sex, Violence, History. [Emeryville, CA]: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.
Browne, Kingsley. Co-Ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars. New York: Sentinel, 2007.
Chambers, Clare. Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008.
Cheu, Hoi F. Cinematic howling: women's films, women's film theories. Vancouver, Toronto: UBC Press, 2007.
Chirwa, Vera Mlangazuwa. Fearless Fighter: An Autobiography. London: Zed Books, 2007.
Clements, Jonathan. Wu: The Chinese Empress Who Schemed, Seduced and Murdered Her Way to Become a Living God. Stroud: Sutton, 2007.
Davis, Kathy. The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders. Next wave. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
Ettorre, Elizabeth. Revisioning Women and Drug Use: Gender, Power and the Body. Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave, 2007.
Ferguson, Michaele L., and Lori Jo Marso. W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
Hyman, Paula, and Dalia Ofer. Jewish Women A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jerusalem: Shalvi Pub, 2006.
Kremer, Monique. How Welfare States Care: Culture, Gender and Parenting in Europe. Changing welfare states. [Amsterdam]: Amsterdam University Press, 2007.
Lewis, Patricia, and Ruth Simpson. Gendering Emotions in Organizations. Management, work and organisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Lloyd, Moya. Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics. Cambridge: Polity, 2007.
Mamo, Laura. Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007.
McCloskey, Joanne. Living Through the Generations: Continuity and Change in Navajo Women's Lives. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007.
Moon, Seungsook. Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea. Politics, history, and culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Oliver, Kelly. Women As Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex, and the Media. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Pillay, Venitha. Academic Mothers. Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, U.K.: Trentham Books, 2007.
Pinker, Susan. The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap. New York: Scribner, 2008.
Schöpp-Schilling, Hanna-Beate, and C. Flinterman. The Circle of Empowerment: Twenty-Five Years of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Mariam K. Chamberlain series on social and economic justice. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2007.
Song, Sarah. Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism. Contemporary political theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Squires, Judith. The New Politics of Gender Equality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Tasker, Yvonne, and Diane Negra. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Console-ing passions. Durham, [N.C.]: Duke University Press, 2007.
West, Robin. Marriage, Sexuality, and Gender. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

New Books in Communication

2008-05-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of new books in Communication that arrived at the WSU Libraries between March and May 2008. If you are interested in any particular title, clicking on the link will take you to further details about the book.

Ardizzoni, Michela. North/South, East/West: Mapping Italianness on Television. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.
Auster, Albert, and Leonard Quart. Thirtysomething: Television, Women, Men, and Work. Critical studies in television. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.
Broderick, James F., and Darren W. Miller. Consider the Source: A Critical Guide to 100 Prominent News and Information Sites on the Web. Medford, N.J.: CyberAge Books/Information Today, 2007.
Buonanno, Milly. The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories. Chicago, IL, USA: Intellect, 2007.
Butsch, Richard. The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Carballo de Cilley, Marita, and Ulf Hjelmar. Public Opinion Polling in a Globalized World. Berlin: Springer, 2008.
Churchill, Suzanne W., and Adam McKible. Little Magazines & Modernism: New Approaches. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Pub, 2007.
Cortese, Anthony Joseph Paul. Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.
Demers, David. History and Future of Mass Media: An Integrated Perspective. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2007.
Fletcher, Martin. Breaking News: A Stunning and Memorable Account of Reporting from Some of the Most Dangerous Places in the World. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2008.
Forgacs, David, and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
Graber, Doris A., Denis McQuail, and Pippa Norris. The Politics of News: The News of Politics. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2008.
Guerin, Frances, and Roger Hallas. The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture. Nonfictions. New York: Wallflower Press, 2007.
Hamilton, James Frederick. Democratic Communications: Formations, Projects, Possibilities. Critical media studies. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.
Hammond, Phil. Media, War and Postmodernity. London: Routledge, 2007.
Haran, Joan. Human Cloning in the Media: From Science Fiction to Science Practice. Genetics and society. London: Routledge, 2008.
Hartley, John. Television Truths. Malden, MA: Blackwell, Pub, 2008.
Hobson, Dorothy. Channel 4: The Early Years and the Jeremy Isaacs Legacy. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008.
Holmes, Tim. Mapping the Magazine: Comparative Studies in Magazine Journalism. London: Routledge, 2008.
Johnson, Fern L. Imaging in Advertising: Verbal and Visual Codes of Commerce. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Johnson, Victoria E. Heartland TV: Prime Time Television and the Struggle for U.S. Identity. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Koontz, K. Dale. Faith and Choice in the Works of Joss Whedon. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008.
Kosnick, Kira. Migrant Media: Turkish Broadcasting and Multicultural Politics in Berlin. New anthropologies of Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007.
McDowell, Stephen D., Philip E. Steinberg, and Tami K. Tomasello. Managing the Infosphere: Governance, Technology, and Cultural Practice in Motion. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008.
Montgomery, Martin. The Discourse of Broadcast News: A Linguistic Approach. London: Routledge, 2007.
Mulvey, Laura, and Jamie Sexton. Experimental British Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.
Parkinson, Michael G., and L. Marie Parkinson. Public Relations Law: A Supplemental Text. LEA's communication series. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Parsons, Patrick. Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008.
Pearce, W. Barnett. Making Social Worlds: A Communication Perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007.
Poindexter, Paula Maurie, Sharon Meraz, and Amy Schmitz Weiss. Women, Men, and News: Divided and Disconnected in the News Media Landscape. LEA's communication series. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Pollock, John Crothers. Tilted Mirrors: Media Alignment with Political and Social Change : a Community Structure Approach. The Hampton Press communication series. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2007.
Reinehr, Robert C., and Jon David Swartz. Historical Dictionary of Old-Time Radio. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2008.
Rice, Ronald E. Media Ownership: Research and Regulation. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2008.
Sakr, Naomi. Arab Television Today. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007.
Samuels, David. Only Love Can Break Your Heart. New York: New Press, 2008.
Sen, Krishna, and Terence Lee. Political Regimes and the Media in Asia. London: Routledge, 2008.
Streitmatter, Rodger. Mightier Than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008.
Talbot, Mary. Media Discourse: Representation and Interaction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
Tannen, Deborah. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Studies in interactional sociolinguistics, 6. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Tellis, Gerard J., and Tim Ambler. The Sage Handbook of Advertising. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2007.
Tizzano, Carol. PicturePerfect. Boston, Mass: Fanlight Productions, 2007.
White, Rosie. Violent Femmes: Women As Spies in Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 2007.
Wyver, John. Vision on: Film, Television and the Arts in Britain. London: Wallflower, 2007.
Zhang, Xiantao. The Origins of the Modern Chinese Press: The Influence of the Protestant Missionary Press in Late Qing China. London: Routledge, 2007.

New Books in Anthropology and Archaeology

2008-05-20T14:45:00.001-07:00

Here is a list of the new books in Anthropology and Archaeology that arrived in the WSU Libraries between March and May of 2008. If you are curious about a title, click on the link to see more details about the book.

Antell, R., & Eck, D. L. (2005). Acting on faith women's new religious activism in America. [Cambridge, Mass.?]: The Pluralism Project.
Atkinson, P., Delamont, S., & Housley, W. (2008). Contours of culture: complex ethnography and the ethnography of complexity. Walnut Creek, [CA]: AltaMira Press.
Campbell, B. (2008). Painting for the gods: art and aesthetics of Yoruba religious murals. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.
Candelario, G. E. B. (2007). Black behind the ears: Dominican racial identity from museums to beauty shops. Durham: Duke University Press.
Carsten, J. (2007). Ghosts of memory: essays on remembrance and relatedness. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
Edgecomb, D., Ahmed, M. M. A., & Özel, C. (2007). A fire in my heart: Kurdish tales. World folklore series. Westport CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Emberley, J. (2007). Defamiliarizing the aboriginal: cultural practices and decolonization in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Fabian, J. (2007). Memory against culture: arguments and reminders. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fagan, B. M. (2007). Discovery!: unearthing the new treasures of archaeology. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Gardner, A. (2007). An archaeology of identity: soldiers and society in late Roman Britain. Publications of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press.
Haase, D. (2008). The Greenwood encyclopedia of folktales and fairy tales. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.
Hayase, S. (2007). Mindanao ethnohistory beyond nations: Maguindanao, Sangir, and Bagobo societies in east maritime Southeast Asia. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Hewlett, B. S., & Hewlett, B. L. (2007). Ebola, culture, and politics: the anthropology of an emerging disease. Case studies on contemporary social issues. Belmont, CA: Thomson Higher Education.
Hurcombe, L. (2007). Archaeological artefacts as material culture. London: Routledge.
Ikeuchi, K., & Miyazaki, D. (2008). Digitally archiving cultural objects. New York: Springer.
Kirch, P. V., Rallu, J.-L., & Mieth, A. (2007). The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives. The Journal of the Polynesian Society. 116 (4), 466.
MacGonagle, E. (2007). Crafting identity in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora, v. 30. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Meyers, E. M., Edwards, D. R., & McCollough, C. T. (2007). The archaeology of difference: gender, ethnicity, class and the "other" in antiquity : studies in honor of Eric M. Meyers. The annual of the American schools of oriental research, v. 60/61. Boston, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research.
Molloy, M. (2008). On creating a usable culture: Margaret Mead and the emergence of American cosmopolitanism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Pearsall, D. M. (2008). Encyclopedia of archaeology. San Diego, Calif: Elsevier/Academic Press.
Price, S. (2007). Paris primitive: Jacques Chirac's museum on the Quai Branly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rabinow, P. (2008). Marking time: on the anthropology of the contemporary. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Reitz, E. J., Newsom, L. A., & Scudder, S. J. (1996). Case studies in environmental archaeology. Interdisciplinary contributions to archaeology. New York: Plenum Press.
Rivière, P. (2007). A history of Oxford anthropology. Methodology and history in anthropology, v. 15. New York: Berghahn Books.
Rothstein, F. (2007). Globalization in rural Mexico: three decades of change. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Saidel, B. A., & Steen, E. J. v. d. (2007). On the fringe of society: archaeological and ethnoarchaeological perspectives on pastoral and agricultural societies. BAR international series, 1657. Oxford, England: Archaeopress.
Salter, F. K. (2008). Emotions in command: biology, bureaucracy, and cultural evolution. New Brunswick: Transaction.
Shukla, P. (2008). The grace of four moons: dress, adornment, and the art of the body in modern India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Stewart, P. J., & Strathern, A. (2008). Exchange and sacrifice. Carolina Academic Press ritual studies monographs. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press.
Tattersall, I. (2008). The world from beginnings to 4000 BCE. The new Oxford world history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thornton, T. F. (2008). Being and place among the Tlingit. Culture, place, and nature. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Trawick, M. (2007). Enemy lines: childhood, warfare, and play in Batticaloa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wilkinson, R. H. (2008). Egyptology today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winland, D. N. (2007). We are now a nation: Croats between 'home' and 'homeland'. Anthropological horizons. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Wiseman, B. (2007). Lévi-Strauss, anthropology and aesthetics. Ideas in context, 85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Woodworth, P. (2008). The Basque country: a cultural history. Landscapes of the imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

There goes that theory

2008-04-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years I've harbored the sneaking suspicion that Canadian librarians are cooler than most of us in the U. S. Stephen Abram, no doubt, is at least partially to blame.

It's nice to be proven wrong:

Thanks to students of the University of Alberta School of Library and Info Studies, who are very brave.

Hurray for Librarians

2008-04-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

I like being a librarian, I especially like being one when I read stories like this - Health Database Blocked Searches on 'Abortion' - and see that librarians have improved information access for researchers using the database POPLINE, a database of reproductive health literature from around the world.

For reasons that remain somewhat unclear to me, though it looks like someone was scared, the medical database POPLINE made the decision to set 'abortion' as a stop word sometime in February. A stop word is a term, like 'the,' 'of,' or 'a' that a search engine can be asked to ignore in order (usually) to increase the efficiency of a database search. Librarians took notice of the situation when searching the database and finding that searches on abortion topics brought up few or no results. After finding out about the move to make 'abortion' a stop word, they rallied fellow librarians and the media, and POPLINE subsequently made the decision to reinstate 'abortion' as a search term.

And shouldn't all of this mean that now, more than ever, Grey's Anatomy needs a medical librarian?

Just for fun

2008-04-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

Partly to make sure that I still know how to use a scanner, and partly just for fun, I scanned this old painting of mine. I painted it while studying medieval literature, at a time when I was just beginning to be fascinated by hagiography and virgin martyrs. The subject of the painting turned into a cross between a martyr and a fairy - perhaps confusing, but I like the colors.

Museum Anthropology Review goes open access

2008-02-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

Museum Anthropology Review, edited by Jason Baird Jackson (who is also the editor of the print journal Museum Anthropology) is now available online and through open access. Museum Anthropology Review is not the first scholarly journal to go open access, but because of it's strong peer-review process and experienced editor, its open access launch is the start of an important experiment. Will it turn out that there is a viable publishing model for open access, peer reviewed scholarship? It is probably to early to tell, but Libraries struggling to pay increasingly high subscription fees will be paying attention to this one with fingers crossed. You can read more about the journal's open access move here.

The open access journal looks great so far, with a very clean and attractive WordPress layout. The entire contents of volume 1, issues 1 and 2 are available in both html and pdf formats. Take a look at the journal online and, if you like what you see, consider registering as a reader so that Museum Anthropology Review can count you among its supporters.

Everyzing's coming up roses!

2008-01-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

While at the ALA Midwinter conference in Philadelphia a couple weeks ago, a colleague recommended EveryZing (http://www.everyzing.com) as a useful tool for finding online media. Now that I've finally had some time to look at it (and now that I've heard some happy ravings from other librarians who work with communication studies), I'm very excited to share it with students and faculty. Need to find examples of news coverage on presidential candidates' environmental policies? EveryZing will hook you up. EveryZing can show you clips from major as well as local news channels on hundreds of topics, and it allows you some nice facets - News and Politics, Business, Technology, 2008 Presidential Election, Entertainment, etc. - to help narrow your searches.

Go play with it now. It's fun, useful, and free.

And thanks to Catherine Michael of Ithaca College and to Ken Liss of Boston College for inspiring me to start zinging!

It's Alive!

2007-12-31T13:23:00.000-08:00

The Libraries have moved the home page to the new WSU template. Click on the image below to visit the home page and check it out!

Dear Santa

2007-12-21T14:49:00.001-08:00

I have been a very good girl, and my colleagues in the libraries have been very good as well. We've all been so good, in fact, that I thought I'd send a rather substantial list this year.

We would like,

More opportunities to teach information literacy
More requests for books from students and faculty
Even more new computers
Even more encounters with the exceptionally bright and friendly WSU students and faculty
A stronger connection to the community of Pullman and of Washington State
Some time to read some of the fabulous books and journals we order
A coffee shop in the library buildings
No more journal cancellations, ever
Free printing for all WSU students
The uncanny ability to design usable, easily navigable web pages
An X-server for our metasearch engine
28 hour days
Health and happiness for 2008
and a pony

Thanks very much. Enjoy the milk and cookies.

Almost like Christmas

2007-12-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a mystery package showed up at my doorstep - the best kind of mystery package, since it had a book inside. After wondering briefly who would have sent me such a nice advanced readers' copy of There's No Place Like Here, by Cecilia Ahern, I realized that I have managed to snag on of LibraryThing's early reviewers books. Huzzah! I get to review fiction! I'll post the review here as soon as I've finished it for LibraryThing. Incidentally, Ahern has a degree in journalism, so this is very nearly work-related.

New look for the Libraries' home page

2007-12-10T10:35:00.001-08:00

It's taken us a while to get there, but WSU Libraries are moving our home page into WSU's new web template. The new look will go live in early January, and will look pretty much like this:

As you can see, the move to the new template pretty much mimics what's on our current home page. The Libraries' Web Working Group is also currently working on an in-depth redesign of the web site that will involve more content and organizational changes. We want to make sure to get that redesign right, so we're taking it slow, but there should be more positive changes in our web site's future.

I hope you like the new look. We think it's a big improvement.

Cat in the morning, a new role model

2007-11-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, you've already seen this. If not, here is a really charming illustration of how cat owners all over the world wake up in the morning. And many thanks to Karen Swanson for sharing this with me!

I know - cute, but what has it got to do with libraries, right? Well, librarians, and perhaps especially academic ones, are not unlike a cat in the morning. We want things. We want to integrate library instruction into our university's curricula so that our graduating students really are information literate, we want to expand our services, get funding for new programs and databases, collaborate with our colleagues in other departments, or we just want to remind the communities we serve that we exist, that we can help, that we are valuable.

But with one thing and another, it can be all too easy to stop meowing sometimes. And while I'd never openly advocate for the baseball bat approach (every analogy breaks down at some point), I'd like to think that I could learn from my own cat's approach to mornings, and become a bit more persistent and persuasive. Harriet always gets her breakfast, after all.

History of LOLCats

2007-11-06T11:30:00.000-08:00

The fact that there are some library uses for LOLCats is my excuse for posting this here. Enjoy!

Have you read a banned book today?

2007-10-02T12:15:00.000-07:00

In addition to Read What You Want Week, I am also celebrating Banned Books Week. Banned Books Week runs from September 29 to October 6, and is near and dear to the heart of many a librarian. I should at this point speak eloquently and passionately to the importance of intellectual freedom, but others have covered this topic better than I can. Instead, I present to you the lighter side of book banning, brought to you from The Onion:

Nation's Teens Disappointed by Banned Books

If you want a more serious take on book banning, I recommend the following
ALA Banned Books Week - a feast of banned books information and ideas.
The Forbidden Library - a long list of banned and challenged books.
And Tango Makes Three - This was the most challenged book of 2006.

Read What You Want Week

2007-10-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

I am making up "Read What You Want Week" to help keep myself sane and happy. With work, and the reading that I do for work, I sometimes feel guilty about 'frivolous' reading (defined loosely as anything with a plot not involving librarians) . So I'm reading what I want this week - YA and children's literature, fantasy, science fiction, mysteries, non-work-related blogs - the Pullman libraries and the web are my oysters. Though since I'm reading what I want, perhaps I'll say that the libraries are my dark chocolate truffles, instead.

While working with classes or with students at the reference desk, I find myself talking quite a lot about finding quality information and taking time to evaluate what's good and worthwhile and what isn't. So this essay serves as a refreshing reminder to me that another duty of someone who loves books is to encourage people to read anything they want.

So, I present to you Peter Dickinson's In Defense of Rubbish.

Ahoy, avast, and shiver me timbers

2007-09-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you, like me, wish there were more appropriate times to say things like "Arrrr!" and "Avast, me hearties," now is your chance to release your inner pirate.

If you would like some help talking like a pirate, you can try this handy guide from Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket on YouTube. There's also a longer video tutorial, How to Talk Like a Pirate, by Graham Stark and Paul Saunders.

What does a librarian pirate sound like? In my case, it sounds something like this:

"Ahoy! I see ye be lookin' downcast searchin' for articles. Have ye tried ProQuest?"
"Avast, me hearties! This be how ye find databases t'use for yer research."
"Ye be looking fer microfilm? Arrrr! It be in that direction."

Now, if ye be lookin' for some pirate literature, here be some books ye can read online that won't cost ye a single piece of eight, thanks t' Project Gutenberg.

What if your library looked like this?

2007-09-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

This is the winning design for the soon-to-be built National Library in Prague. According to this Building Design article, the building is to be a symbol of democracy in the Czech Republic, and also to serve as a sign that modern architecture is happening in Eastern Europe, too. I find it oddly adorable, in a polka-dotted slug type of way, but if I lived in Prague, which is architecturally rich and bears the impressive nickname, "Golden City of Spires," I might be worried.

More images can be found here.

Check out a laptop!

2007-09-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

Working at the Holland & Terrell Library is great, but right now I'm extremely jealous of the Owen Science Library because they've started something fabulous. Have you ever been in a library and wished that you had a laptop to work on? Wouldn't it be great if a laptop was something you could check out? Well, now you can. The Owen Science Library has six laptops available to check out for in-building use.

The laptops come stacked with all kinds of goodies. Here is a list of what's on the laptops (from the laptop FAQ page): Microsoft Office 2007, Adobe Reader, RealPlayer, selected IM packages, SciFinderScholar, and Pharos (to enable printing at the Owen Library’s public printers).

They've done a great job putting together useful information about the pilot project (including maps of wireless access points in the building), which you can find here: http://wiki.wsu.edu/wsuwiki/Owen_laptop_pilot

Not really about the library

2007-08-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Heineken's latest commercial, the one with the robotic women with beer kegs coming out of their torsos, has little to do with libraries, but it nicely combines interests in Advertising and in Women's Studies. I'm not posting a video of the commercial here because in all honesty it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I don't really want to give it any more play than it has already, but some of the discussion going on about it is very interesting stuff:

Bob Garfield, of Advertising Age, has this to say.

And you can find Women are Good for Providing Men with Beer over at Agency Spy

Library Update

2007-08-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

For those of you who haven't heard yet, the WSU Libraries are embarking on some substantial journal cuts and cancellations. Your librarians are already hard at work looking at use statistics, re-evaluating the cost and importance of preserving and archiving information, discussing whether or not we can cancel a "big ticket" database or two to make the journal cuts less severe, and doing our darnedest to make the best decisions possible.

Making smart cancellation decisions is important, but getting rid of parts of this collection (a collection we've all worked hard to build in support of WSU's research and education missions) runs counter to librarian values and instincts - most of us got into this profession because we want to increase access to and use of good information. Cutting off access to information is, in times like these, necessary, but highly painful.

However, one very heartening thing that I can do here is to highlight some other access options. Here are two very good ones for journal articles:

ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service, allows you to request articles and papers that aren't available in the WSU collections. You can use ILLiad either by using the Illiad web page or through the "Find it@WSU" button that you see next to the articles listed in most of our library databases.
Also, this year we are piloting a new service called ArticleReach that will allow you to get articles for no fee if they are available from one of our ArticleReach partners. More information about this is available here.

Beautiful new computers!

2007-07-19T12:59:00.000-07:00

I told you they were beautiful! Al Cornish has also posted Before and After pictures on his blog, Library Technology Issues.

O frabjous day!

2007-07-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

What could make a librarian wax Carroll-ian? Well, in my case it doesn't always take much as I find many practical applications for a good Jabberwocky quote. However, this week I really do have amazingly happy news.

Because of a good deal of hard work and good decision-making on the part of many of my library colleagues, we have new computers available for public use in the libraries. They arrived last week, and I nearly did a dance of joy when I saw the flat panel monitors. I promise to post a picture tomorrow, though I'm kicking myself that I didn't do before and after photos.

Callooh! Callay!

Second Life possibility

2007-06-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

I think that the idea of Second Lifers talking using their own voices is pretty darned cool, especially when you think of the possibilities for distance education and outreach.

Congratulations to David Demers!

2007-06-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

David Demers, of WSU's own Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, has authored a fantastic reference book, the Dictionary of Mass Communication & Media Research, which has been getting all kinds of positive reviews and press. This is an excellent book for anyone working with media research - I include librarians in this group, for example, as well as Communication faculty and scholars. If you're on the Pullman campus of WSU and would like to see the book for yourself, you'll find it in our reference section.

One thing I did today...

2007-05-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

Librarianship is sometimes looked at as a sedentary profession. Picture a librarian in your head for a moment. Is s/he sitting at a computer, or calmly walking to a shelf to pull a book? Perhaps when you think of a librarian you picture someone who is standing by a patron's computer, offering help with a question.

If you were me, today, you'd be thinking of a librarian who is sweaty and bedraggled (but triumphant), the sort of person who'd just finished hauling donated books (seriously cool donated books, by the way) down four flights of stairs in small but heavy installments, because the building where the books were previously housed has an out-of-order elevator. After 22 times (yes, I counted) running up and down those stairs, I can feel my muscles growing as I type.

"News" and news

2007-04-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

I''ve been in several conversations this year about the state of the news media in the US. Do we really have news now, or has our idea of the news evolved so much that what we really have is just another arm of the entertainment industry? What does news mean to you, and where do you find it?

Here's an especially cynical, but amusing look at the news (which I blatantly lifted from CommTopics, a blog by Ken Liss.

What We Call the News | Funny Animations at JibJab

In contrast, this week WSU & the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication honored Frontline & its producer David Fanning with Distinguished Achievement Awards, during the Edward R. Murrow Symposium. While I'm not sure that Murrow would approve of the current state of "the news," I think he'd be pleased to see Frontline rewarded for outstanding investigative work.

Library Celebration - come, and we'll give you cake!

2007-04-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

The WSU Libraries’ are celebrating their 100th Depository Anniversary Celebration, marking the 100th year that we have been a Federal Depository Library. If you're wondering why being a depository library is such a big deal, or if you'd like to know more about what government documents can do for you, please join the party this Wednesday and Friday, and learn what all of the buzz is about.

April 11, 2007
Celebration of WSU Libraries 100th Depository Anniversary
10:30am Terrell Library Atrium

Welcome and Introductions - Marilyn Von Seggern, Government Information Librarian

“100 Years of Depository Service” - Cindy Kaag, Interim Director of Libraries
Remarks from Senator Patty Murray - Judy Olson

Anniversary Cake and Viewing of the 100th Depository Anniversary Exhibit—-documents from 1907 and the past 100 years

April 13, 2007
Joint Anniversary Celebration, University of Idaho Library and Washington State University Libraries

10:00 – 11:00 Government Documents Department Open House and Tours (Rm. 104 – All rooms located at UI Library)

11:15 – 12:15 “Crown Jewel or Freebies? 100 Years of Federal Government Information Resources at the UI Library” - Lily Wai, Professor Emeritus, Former Head, UI Government Documents Dept. (Rm. 212A)

2:00 – 2:15 Welcome by Lynn Baird, UI Library Dean (Rm. 212A

2:15 – 2:30 Announcement of Poster Contest Winner and Introduction of Special Guests - Maria A. Jankowska, Head UI Government Documents Dept.

2:30 – 3:15 “Connecting People with Government Information for 100 Years: Looking Back, Looking Forward” - Barbie Selby, Regional Depository Librarian, University of Virginia

3:15 Refreshments and Conversation

Podcasts in the libraries

2007-04-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

Some of the WSU Librarians are beginning to play with podcasts as a way to connect with our community and work with some different approaches to library instruction. I just returned from a short learning break, courtesy of Betty Galbraith and Mark O'English, where they set a few of us up and had us recording test podcasts with ease. Hopefully, now that more of us library folks have our feet wet, we'll be doing more with podcasting, but till then, there are already a few available Podcasts from the WSU Libraries

My Librarian Avatar

2007-04-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

Most days I feel like this -

But there are days when I feel like this -

I'm just a Buffy wannabe, really.

Avatar courtesy of Meez.com

How much do you love your reference desk

2007-04-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice post by Steven Bell and Sarah Watstein about their debate over the future of the reference desk. I'm pro reference desk, myself, but I feel I should own up to my decided traditionalist tendencies so that it's clear where I'm coming from on this. I am rather stuck on the idea of a place where you can reliably find help if you need it, that keeps regular hours and is staffed by helpful and (usually) friendly people. I wouldn't say that the traditional reference desk isn't problematic - I sit on one side and my patron on the other, a physical embodiment and emphasis of the librarian ("expert") - patron ("non-expert") relationship that I'm not entirely comfortable with. I worry that some of our more imposing desks may project an "I know what I'm talking about and you don't" aura that could scare people off.

Still, one of the things that IMing is teaching me is that very few of my days follow any standard schedule, and that if people want to find me at work, the reference desk, where I work regularly from 11-1:00 on Tuesdays and 5-8 on Thursdays, is usually their best bet unless they call ahead.

2007-03-13T15:20:00.001-07:00

One of the blogs I read most often in my attempts to keep up with useful tech in libraries is The Shifted Librarian, written by Jenny Levine. Thanks to her, and to the articles by Stephen Abram she links to in 23 Library 2.0 Things in 15 Minutes a Day I've been happily playing with 43 Things, a social networking site for keeping track of goals. I have 23 things so far, and am a bit worried that more of them have to do with work than anything else. Perhaps goal 24 should be about balance.

Conservapedia.

2007-03-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

In response to perceived liberal bias in Wikipedia, Andrew Schlafly started Conservapedia. The New York Times article, Conservapedia: The Word Says It All, has more information on this "answer" to Wikipedia.

Conservapedia has a long list of Examples of Bias in Wikipedia, and the list has started me thinking. What is considered "liberal bias," really? And what do we do when the term is thrown as an accusation at people and places (like librarians and libraries) that try hard to remain neutral, especially in terms of what information we make available to the public? I'm doubtful that the average library would be considered less biased, according to Schlafly, than Wikipedia, and think it will be a sad day when we have liberal and conservative libraries (one for Al Franken and one for Ann Coulter?) rather than places where opposing viewpoints can be found side by side.

I spend considerable effort identifying my own biases so that they don't affect my collections or patron interactions, and I try very hard not to privilege one point of view over another in my work. I know this doesn't make me conservative. I worry that, in a world where anything that isn't conservative is liberal, my attempts at objectivity make me and the library where I work liberal by default. And libraries can't be liberal (or conservative) by default or we all lose out.

International Women's Day activities at the Library

2007-03-07T11:50:00.000-08:00

Gabriella Reznowski, our fabulous new librarian, has been working with the International Students Center on some celebrations of International Women's Day. Here's the schedule:

March 8th – Reception at the Holland and Terrell Libraries 11am-1:00 pm
All are welcome to drop by to make a card for a woman who has made a difference in your life, or leave a message of appreciation on the International Women’s Day message board. Refreshments will also be provided.

March 5th through 12th – There will be an International Women’s Day Display in the Holland and Terrell Libraries display case. The Display was created by members of the International Students Center.

Anthology of Palestinian Folk Tales Pulled from School Libraries

2007-03-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

In Palestine, the Education Ministry has ordered that a book of Palestinian folk tales be pulled from school libraries, and many Palestinians are unhappy with the book ban.

According to the Associated Press Release, "A senior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the issue with reporters, said 1,500 copies of the book had been pulled from school libraries and destroyed."

The book, Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales, is a collection of tales from 17 Palestinian tellers, mostly women, that have been carefully transcribed, and not only the tales but the introduction are well worth reading. It's available in the WSU Libraries if you're interested and in the area, or you can go to the entry at WorldCat, and check for copies in your area libraries by typing your zip code in the "Enter Location Information" field.

From the Media Awareness Network

2007-03-06T15:05:00.000-08:00

Can you tell it's Women's History Month yet? As the librarian liaison for both Communication and Women's Studies at WSU, I was happy to find that the Media Awareness Network (MNet) has a very nice section on Media Portrayals of Girls and Women.

I have a soft spot for MNet, and hopefully this quote from their site will tell you why:

The idea behind our work

In addition to addressing topics like Beauty and Body Image in the Media, Media Coverage of Women and Women's Issues, Media and Girls, and The Economics of Gender Stereotyping, the site offers links to "Related MNet Resources" and to "Recommended reading, viewing, surfing" on the left-hand menu. A very librarian-like thing to do, and perhaps another reason I like MNet.

Want more on women and media? I'll post soon on resources in the WSU Libraries, but for now, there's a good selection of resources on the Women & Media subject guide at the EBSS Library Resources for Communication Studies site.

Women's History Month Databases

2007-03-05T11:44:00.000-08:00

Alexander Street Press, who make some of the prettiest online resources around, provide free access to some fantastic Women's Studies databases during March. WSU will have access to the following until March 31st of 2007:

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Women and Social Movements

Questions? Contact Erica.

Thanks, Alexander Street Press!

Jane Austen Wins

2007-03-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

Something I should've mentioned this morning. Today is World Book Day, a most enlightened holiday observed in the UK and Ireland. A survey taken by readers revealed the following Top Ten list of books for the UK and Ireland:

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 20%
2) Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein 17%
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 14%
4) Harry Potter books – J K Rowling 12%
5) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee 9.5%
6) The Bible 9%
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8.5%
8) 1984 – George Orwell 6%
9) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 6%
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens .55%

Go, Jane! (Though I prefer Persuasion)

Fair Use

2007-03-01T16:05:00.000-08:00

Today I attended a Basic Copyright Law training session given by Marc Lindsey, WSU's copyright expert and author of Copyright Law on Campus. It was a good refresher on the basics, and upon further exploration, I found WSU's very own University Publishing Copyright site, which has some useful information about higher education and copyright law. The session also reminded me of Rachel Bridgewater's "Not a Series of Tubes" presentation, for which I promised to post a link: link

I encourage you to check out the presentation slides and then support Rick Boucher's FAIR USE ACT OF 2007 (Press Release) by contacting your legislators. Want to know how to contact your legislators? Try here for the House and here for the Senate.

Daylight Saving Time is coming faster than usual

2007-02-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

I much prefer falling back to springing forward when it comes to Daylight Saving Time. Having said that, I'm all for taking advantage of what daylight we have, even though moving into Daylight Saving Time (DST) is going to be more complicated in 2007 than it's been for a while. This year, instead of starting in the first week of April, DST begins on March 11.

WSU Information Technology Services has posted a nice set of guidelines for helping us get through the changes in DST this year. They've cleverly named their DST page Y2K Lite. I highly recommend looking at what they have to say, especially if you're as dependent on your calendaring software as I am on Outlook.

If you're interested in some of the history of Daylight Saving Time, you might want to check out Daylight Saving Time, which provides a nice history of DST, including legislative changes, correct spelling, and a great Incidents and Anecdotes page that helps put our current Y2K Lite into perspective.

And if you want to know what time it really is, try The Official US Time for a nice, clickable time zone map.

Web Working Group Retreat

2007-02-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

Many more people use the WSU Libraries' web site on a daily basis than use any of our physical sites. This is why I didn't mind spending an entire day (well 9:30 am- 3:30 pm, but you get the idea) working with fellow library employees to improve our web presence.

The Web Working Group, of which I am a member, met today to plot and plan ways to make our web site easier to use. The WWG is one of the busiest and most energetic groups in the Libraries (probably in all of WSU, if that's not too immodest) and we get a lot done in terms of maintenance and upgrades to things like our online catalog and our article search tool. But today we talked about the big picture our our web, and are hoping to make some very large improvements in terms of how easy it is to use. I can't go into much detail yet, but we are planning to

Make our public pages patron-focused
Evaluate what pages/features on our website people find most useful and make getting to those pages easier
Work with the new WSU web page templates to make our front page cleaner, with fewer links
Work towards migrating to a Content Management System so that pages are maintained consistently

Awfully ambitious of us, and how we make all of this happen will depend a lot on the information we gather in the next few weeks, but it's highly satisfying to be part of such a positive plan for the future. And my colleagues on theWWG deserve a lot of praise for their dedication and determination.

All comments and input about ways to improve our web pages are welcome - just send them to Erica Carlson Nicol

Online Northwest Conference, Done

2007-02-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

Online Northwest 2007 is over, and I'm going to get some impressions down here before my brain cells carry out their threat to stop working for the day.

The conference started off with a keynote address from Stephen Abram, one of the rock stars of the library world, and for good reason. He's reliably visionary and provocative. Here are some highlights from the keynote:

So, invigorating.

And kind of a hard act to follow, but I was pleased that Alex and I managed to hold the attention of our audience when we presented on WSU's federated searching tool. We ended up with a lot of good questions, and I'll post the link to our PowerPoint slides soon.

The last session of the day that I attended was "Not a Series of Tubes," By Rachel Bridgewater of WSU Vancouver. This was possibly the clearest delineation of internet copyright and technology policy that I've ever heard, with very good descriptions about how issues like net neutrality affect not just libraries but everyday people who use the web. I'm hoping to link to her presentation materials as soon as they're up, too.

It's been a long day, but my mind is buzzing with new ideas that I get to bring back to work with me, and I'm tickled about this - clearly the sign of a good conference.

Online Northwest

2007-02-14T13:01:00.000-08:00

I'll be heading out to Online Northwest in Corvallis, OR tomorrow. I enjoyed attending last year, but this year I'm really looking forward to it, partly because I now know that there's a really amazing Thai restaurant in Corvallis, and partly because this year I'm presenting with a WSU collegue. Our presentation title is "Integrating Metasearch into Your Library: Social, Technical, and Practical Obstacles," which, translated, means that Alex Merrill and I will be discussing the process of launching a metasearch tool here at WSU, including lots of information about what went wrong and why, and how we learned from that and managed a successful launch. Should be hair-raising. Er, fun, I mean.

New Books in Anthropology at WSU Libraries

2007-02-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

All books on this list are in the Holland and Terrell Libraries' collection. If you are curious about a title, please click on it to see further details and information on availability.

Aguilar, Mario I. Rethinking age in Africa: colonial, post-colonial, and contemporary interpretations of cultural representations.
GN645 .R48 2007

Barker, Graeme. The agricultural revolution in prehistory: why did foragers become farmers?
GN799.A4 B38 2006

Breglia, Lisa. Monumental ambivalence: the politics of heritage.
F1435.3.E72 B74 2006

Conway, Susan. The Shan: culture, arts and crafts.
DS530.8.S45 C66 2006

DeBernardi, Jean Elizabeth. The way that lives in the heart: Chinese popular religion and spirit mediums in Penang, Malaysia.
BL2080 .D43 2006

Doyel, David E. & Dean, Jeffrey S., eds. Environmental change and human adaptation in the ancient American Southwest.
E78.S7 E68 2006

Dunand, Françoise. Mummies and death in Egypt.
DT62.M7 D8513 2006

Early, John D. The Maya and Catholicism: an encounter of worldviews.
F1435.3.R3 E37 2006

Foley, Robert. Unknown boundaries: exploring human evolutionary studies.
GN281 .F67 2006

Galush, William John. For more than bread: community and identity in American Polonia, 1880-1940.
E184.P7 G35 2006

Ganz, Nicholas. Graffiti women: street art from five continents.
ND2590 .G348 2006

Karpf, Anne. The human voice: how this extraordinary instrument reveals essential clues about who we are.
PN4162 .K285 2006

Lavender, Catherine Jane. Scientists and storytellers: feminist anthropologists and the construction of the American Southwest.
GN560.U6 L38 2006

Macdonald, Charles J-H. Uncultural behavior: an anthropological investigation of suicide in the southern Philippines.
DS666.P34 M23 2007

Matson, R. G. & Kohler, Timothy A. Tracking ancient footsteps: William D. Lipe's contributions to southwestern prehistory and public archaeology.
E76.45.L57 T73 2006

Nelson, Sarah Milledge. Handbook of gender in archaeology.
CC72.4 .H36 2006

Neale, Jenny. No friend like a sister: exploring the relationship between sisters.
BF723.S43 N43 2004

Notar, Beth E. Displacing desire: travel and popular culture in China.
DS797.86.D37 N67 2006

Odland, J. Claire. Fashioning tradition: Maya huipiles in the Field Museum Collections.
GN2 .F4 n.s. no.38

Peace, Sheila M. Environment and identity in later life.
BF724.85.H65 P43 2006

Peck, E. J. (Edmund James). Apostle to the Inuit: the journals and ethnographic notes of Edmund James Peck, the Baffin years, 1894-1905.
BV2813. P42 A3 2006

Powell-Martí, Valli S. & Gilman, Patricia A. Mimbres society.
E99.M76 M55 2006

Quilter, Jeffrey & Miller, Mary Ellen. A pre-Columbian world.
E55.5 .P73 2006

Regis, Helen A. Caribbean and Southern: transnational perspectives on the U.S. South.
GN2 .S9243 no.38

Reyes, Angela. Language, identity, and stereotype among Southeast Asian American youth: the other Asian.
E184.S695 R49 2007

Ring, Laura A. Zenana: everyday peace in a Karachi apartment building.
HN690.5.K33 R56 2006

Robertson, Elizabeth C. Space and spatial analysis in archaeology.
CC72.4 .U55 2002

Robson, Eleanor; Treadwell, Luke & Gosden, Chris. Who owns objects?: the ethics and politics of collecting cultural artefacts: proceedings of the first St. Cross-All Souls Seminar Series and Workshop, Oxford, October-December 2004.
CC135 .S7 2004

Talalay, Lauren E. In the field: the archaeological expeditions of the Kelsey Museum.
CC101.M268 T35 2006

Tokeley, Jonathan. Rescuing the past: the cultural heritage crusade.
CC135 .T645 2006

Walter, Chip. Thumbs, toes, and tears: and other traits that make us human.
GN281 .W35 2006

Wells, Jonathan C. K.; Strickland, S. S. & Laland, Kevin N. Social information transmission and human biology.
BF444 .S62 2006

Yengoyan, Aram A. Modes of comparison: theory & practice.
D16.8 .M697 2006

New Books in Women's Studies at WSU Libraries

2007-02-11T19:23:00.000-08:00

All books on this list are in the Holland and Terrell Libraries' collection. If you are curious about a title, please click on it to see further details and information on availability.

Ali, Kecia. Sexual ethics and Islam: feminist reflections on Qur'an, hadith, and jurisprudence.
HQ32 .A45 2006

Brown, Mary. Boom: marketing to the ultimate power consumer--the baby boomer woman.
HC79.C6 B76 2006

Carpenter, R. Charli. Innocent women and children: gender, norms and the protection of civilians.
KZ6515 .C37 2006

Derrida, Jacques. Geneses, genealogies, genres, and genius: the secrets of the archive.
PQ2663.I9 Z62713 2006

Eaton, Gale. Well-dressed role models: the portrayal of women in biographies for children.
CT21 .E2155 2006

Ferrell, Robyn. Copula: sexual technologies, reproductive powers.
HQ1075 .F474 2006

Fonda, Jane. Jane Fonda's words of politics and passion.
PN2287.F56 A3 2006

Franklin, Diana Britt. The good-bye door: the incredible true story of America's first female serial killer to die in the chair.
HV6534.C5 F73 2006

Grown, Caren; Braunstein, Elissa & Malhotra, Anju. Trading women's health and rights?: trade liberalization and reproductive health in developing economies.
HF2580.9 .T735 2006

Harrison, Charles. Painting the difference: sex and spectator in modern art.
ND1460.S44 H37 2005

Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy. The cult of thinness.
BF697.5.B63 H47 2007

Hunt, Krista & Rygiel, Kim. (En)gendering the war on terror: war stories and camouflaged politics.
HV6432 .E64 2006

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. Color of violence: the Incite! Anthology.
HV6250.4.W65 C627 2006

Jeffrey, Leslie Ann. Sex workers in the Maritimes talk back.
HQ149.M4 J44 2006

Korn, Fadumo. Geboren im groben Regen or, Born in the big rains: a memoir of Somalia and survival.
GN484 .K6613 2006

Nolin, Catherine. Transnational ruptures: gender and forced migration.
HV640 .N65 2006

Ribane, Nakedi. Beauty: a black perspective.
GT497.S6 R53 2006

Riverbend. Baghdad burning II: more girl blog from Iraq.
DS79.76 R587 2006

Simons, Margaret A. The philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: critical essays.
B2430.B344 P45 2006

Simonsen, Jane E. Making home work: domesticity and Native American assimilation.
NX180.S6 S572 2006

Skalli, Loubna H. Through a local prism: gender, globalization, and identity in Moroccan women's magazines.
HN782.Z9 M34 2006

Skidmore, Colleen Marie. This wild spirit: women in the Rocky Mountains of Canada.
F1090 .T47 2006

Speed, Shannon, et al. Dissident women: gender and cultural politics in Chiapas.
F1435.3.W55 D57 2006

Staples, David E. No place like home: organizing home-based labor in the era of structural adjustment.
HD2333 .S82 2006

Stearns, Peter N. Gender in world history. 2nd ed.
HQ1075 .S73 2006

Stiehm, Judith. Champions for peace: women winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
JZ5540 .S74 2006

Wadud, Amina. Inside the gender Jihad : women's reform in Islam.
BL458 .W33 2006

New Books in Communication at WSU Libraries

2007-02-09T15:18:00.000-08:00

All books on this list are in the Holland and Terrell Libraries' collection. If you are curious about a title, please click on it to see further details and information on availability.

Agbese, Aje-Ori. The role of the press and communication technology in democratization.
PN5499.N5 A53 2006

Applegate, Edd & Johnsen, Art. Cases in advertising and marketing management: real situations for tomorrow's managers.
HF5823 .A7935 2007

Barrett, Mary & Davidson, Marilyn. Gender and communication at work.
HD30.3 .G455 2006

Beder, Sharon. Free market missionaries: the corporate manipulation of community values.
HD59 .B375 2006

Beeler, Stan & Dickson, Lisa. Reading Stargate SG-1.
PN1992.77.S738 R43 2006

Berenger, Ralph D. Cybermedia go to war: role of converging media during and after the 2003 Iraq war.
P96.I73 C93 2006

Cashmore, Ernest. Celebrity/culture.
P94.6 .C376 2006

Castells, Manuel. Mobile communication and society: a global perspective: a project of the Annenberg Research Network on international communication.
HM1206 .M62 2007

Crow, David. L →R: left to right; the cultural shift from word to pictures.
P93.5 .C75 2006

DiFonzo, Nicholas. Rumor psychology: social and organizational approaches.
HM1241 .D54 2007

Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. Arab media in the information age.
P92.A65 A73 2006

Finnegan, Lisa. No questions asked : news coverage since 9/11.
PN4738 .F56 2007

Hachten, William A. The world news prism: global information in a satellite age.
PN4784.F6 H3 2007

Hallock, Steven M. Editorial and opinion: the dwindling marketplace of ideas in today's news.
PN4888.E28 H35 2007

Heffernan, James A. W. Cultivating picturacy: visual art and verbal interventions.
P93.5 .H44 2006

Holden, Todd Joseph Miles & Scrase, Timothy J. Medi@sia: global media/tion in and out of context.
P94.65.A78 M43 2006

Ickes, L. R. Public broadcasting in America.
HE8689.7.P82 P833 2006

Klein, Allison. What would Murphy Brown do?: how the women of prime time changed our lives.
PN1992.8.W65 K54 2006

Lavery, David. Reading Deadwood : a western to swear by.
PN1992.77.D39 R43 2006

Lenard, Thomas M. & May, Randolph J. Net neutrality or net neutering: should broadband internet services be regulated.
HE7781 .N46 2006

Mathews, Mary Beth Swetnam. Rethinking Zion: how the print media placed fundamentalism in the South.
PN4888.F86 M38 2006

Mbaine, Adolf. Media in situations of conflict: roles, challenges, and responsibility.
P96.W35 M43 2006

Moeran, Brian. Ethnography at work.
HF6182.J3 M636 2006

Moore, Linda K. Emergency communications.
TK6570.P8 M66 2007

Moran, Albert. Understanding the global TV format.
HE8700.4 .M597 2006

Napoli, Philip M. Media diversity and localism: meaning and metrics.
P96.E25 M39 2007

Partington, Alan. The linguistics of laughter: a corpus-assisted study of laughter-talk.
P95.45 .P37 2006

Relke, Diana M. A. Drones, clones, and alpha babes: retrofitting Star Trek's humanism, post-9/11.
PN1992 .8 S74 R47 2006

Rich, John. Warm up the snake: a Hollywood memoir.
PN1992.4.R52 A3 2006

Schaefer, Todd M. & Birkland, Thomas A. Encyclopedia of media and politics.
Reference P95.82.U6 E47 2007

Sheffield, Tricia. The religious dimensions of advertising.
HF5821 .S49 2006

Sherr, Lynn. Outside the box: a memoir.
PN4874.S472 A3 2006

Thussu, Daya Kishan. International communication: continuity and change.
P96.I5 T48 2006

Toth, Elizabeth L. The future of excellence in public relations and communication management: challenges for the next generation.
HD59 .F827 2007

Watson, James & Hill, Anne. Dictionary of media and communication studies.
P87.5 .W38 2006

Weisman, Alan. Lone star: the extraordinary life and times of Dan Rather.
PN4874.R28 W45 2006

Zelezny, John D. Cases in communications law: liberties, restraints, and the modern media.
KF2750.A7 Z44 2007

Want to buy a cupcake? Want me to wash your car?

2007-02-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking of the possibilities of library bake sales and car washes, a post-Midwinter state brought on by seeing all of these cool databases that I want. I've met one librarian in my lifetime who was satisfied with her collections budget. I find that I'm intensely jealous of her all the time.

After the Midwinter Conference, we get to look at some fabulous databases on a trial basis, and some of them would be very good for the teaching and research faculty we support. It's like window shopping for academic librarians, and it's fun.

It's also bittersweet, because with the exception of that nameless librarian who exists far, far away, very few librarians are satisfied with their collections budget. We want to give you more. More full text, more years of coverage, more images, audio files, and more coverage for more subjects. When your life's work is helping people access information, it seems as though you can never do enough to increase that access. And, very often, Libraries are not funded as they should be, and the people who work in them (and the faculty they support) are faced with decisions like these:

Database X is great and has lots of full-text coverage in this area where we do a lot of research, but to afford it, we'd need to give up database Y, which covers different publications and is highly useful for another area of research. Do we get X and let go of Y, or hang on to Y and hope that someday we can afford to get X.

So, perhaps double-chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate icing? I thought so.

Goodbye, Molly Ivins

2007-02-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

Molly Ivins, fantastic political columnist known for her contributions to public interest journalism, passed away Wednesday. The world will miss her wit and her unabashed liberal perspective. One of the things I'll miss most about her is her respect for her readers. Here's a video snippet as an example:

If you're interested in Molly Ivins's books, here's a list of those at the WSU Libraries:

Because I've been watching too much TV

2007-01-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

My favorite TV show currently playing is Grey's Anatomy, which combines good writing, smart women characters, and some delicious soap-opera-y moments. However, I keep seeing the interns and doctors in the hospital library, pouring through books, and I keep wondering, where's the medical librarian? Surely a teaching hospital is a great place to find a McSmarty, search-savvy, helpful, and time-saving medical librarian character. Give him/her whatever personality quirks you like. I'd even settle for a guest appearance by Ms. Dewey.

Quiet Night

2007-01-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

It's relatively slow and quiet tonight, but with interspersed interesting questions. I get a good adrenaline buzz from a busy reference shift, but it's nice to look out at available computers, to feel comfortable spending extra time with patrons who welcome extra help, and to try to reflect on some of what's fresh in my mind from this past weekend's conference - approachability, patron-librarian collaboration, not pushing the instruction while working reference but sneaking it into the conversation in small bytes.

Also nice to think of going home to a dinner cooked by a much appreciated significant other and an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Contemporary Technologies: A Proposal

2007-01-23T14:49:00.000-08:00

Upon revisiting my conference notes, and wanting to keep conversations going about technology in libraries while not wanting my profession to seem slow, or any more un-cool than necessary, I have a proposal. It will need some fleshing out, and some more thought behind it, but what if we call blogs, Wikies, IM, and Chat "Contemporary Technologies" rather than "new" or "emerging" ones? This acknowledges their currency while also acknowleging that the world moves really fast and that these things aren't really new any more.

Here's my starter list of contemporary technologies.
Blogs
Wikis
IM
Chat reference
Classroom software such as Blackboard and WebCT
MP3 players and files

How to supplement your music section

2007-01-22T12:21:00.000-08:00

Win a giant basket of music books from Perseus! Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Johnny Dorsey & Ray Charles are coming home to the Holland and Terrell Libraries. Thanks, Perseus!

More Midwinter

2007-01-21T16:39:00.000-08:00

Here's my brief report from yesterday afternoon and today (so far).

AquaBrowser is very fun to look at, and I've been comparing it (wistfully, I'm afraid) to WSU Libraries' OPAC, which is, don't get me wrong, still better than our old one.

Today was going to be my busiest day, but I was too worn out to do all that I'd planned. I think that this happens to lots of people at large gatherings like these. Even comfortable shoes don't keep feet from getting sore after running from hotel to hotel all day.

I'm starting to think that all discussions about Web 2.0, new technology, and new media are essentially the same. I still appreciate hearing the different viewpoints, and getting feedback from people experimenting with new (and not so new) tech, but I'm looking forward to the day where we have more measurable results and are no longer thinking of social software as "new," but as another avenue for reaching patrons and making them comfortable in their information searches. This morning I attended the LIRT discussion on Instruction and Millennials. I've posted on Millennials before, and still find the ways that different generations are so predictably different to be fascinating, and still worry about whether or not terms like "Millennials" cloak fear and resentment and lead to more generalization than is good for us, but this was a good discussion, with people from public and academic libraries, from systems, and with varying interests and skill levels when it comes to the "new tech" we associate with Generation M.

This afternoon I took minutes for the first time at an ALA committee meeting, and it was a great learning experience. If you are new and want to make yourself learn names fast, I'd recommend taking minutes. Just make sure, if you do it on a laptop, that you can also type fast. Ten minutes into the meeting, I found myself overcome with a wave of gratitude for my high school typing teacher.

I'm glad to be a librarian, to get to work with people who are in it for more than money (luckily for us, 'cause generally the money's not especially big). I'm glad to have cool colleagues in the WSU Libraries, and to have chances to hang out with them away from our regular library setting.

But I still wish I could sleep in!

From Seattle

2007-01-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

This is my first full day of ALA Midwinter, and so far it is off to a good start. I had an interesting and (hopefully) productive discussion this morning about the particular challenges of providing instruction at the reference desk, and am enjoying my first meeting as a committee member. My only wistful comment so far is that I wish some of the sections would provide a bit more in the way of new member orientations than "here's how you sign up for committees." I realize it's Midwinter, not Annual, and that there may be fewer new members about, and that we're supposed to be outgoing and curious and just talk to committees anyway, but a little more hand-holding would be appreciated (and might help bulk up some section memberships).

Last night I attended the exhibit opening and realized that there is something irresistable about free advance reader copies. I worked at a bookstore for several years and never felt so inclined to pick up galleys as I did last night. The rush to get the "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?" tote bags, the registration for free stuff, the food that more savvy colleagues ate while I ran around like a madwoman collecting swag - all very dizzying and exhausting. I followed the opening with some good Thai food (thanks, Thai Ginger) and an early bedtime, a good idea considering what's on for today and tomorrow.

Moving house

2007-01-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

or, rather, URLs. On the off-chance that getting out into the wider world of blogging might result in more readers, or at least more passing glances from google-ers, I've moved my blog over to Blogger. For anyone who hasn't read me before, this is my professional blog, the one linked to my work in libraries. This year, in the spirit of January resolutions, I'll be putting out a new bi-weekly feature called "In Reference," which will highlight some of the works in the reference section of my library.