OK, so it’s Friday the 13th. To me, it’s just another Friday at work, but some people might be home hiding under their blankets lest something bad happen to them.
Have you ever wondered about superstitions? Well, you’re in luck. We have an encyclopedia on them: The encyclopedia of superstitions (2nd-floor Reference Collection, BF1775 .R34 2002). Next to it on the shelf is the Dictionary of Superstitions (Reference Collection, BF1775 .D53 1989), which is also available online through the Oxford Reference Online database.
Journalist Kevin Sites will present a lecture “One Man. One Year. A World of Conflict” at 7 p.m. on Mon., Feb. 16th in the Irvin Young Auditorium as part of the Contemporary Issues Lecture Series.
Time magazine called Mr. Sites “the web’s best war correspondent.” In November 2004, as an NBC News correspondent, he filmed and reported on the Iraqi war, including an incident where a U.S. Marine shot a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a Fallujah mosque. For that he was honored with the Payne Award for ethics in journalism. As Yahoo!’s first news correspondent, he spent an entire year covering every major global conflict for the award-winning documentary “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone”. His website won a 2007 Webby for Best News/Documentary/Public Affairs site for coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah War.
Your University Library has a copy of his book, In the hot zone: one man, one year, twenty wars (3rd-floor Main Collection, PN4874.S5177 A3 2007), which includes his DVD documentary “A World of Conflict.”
So I’m just getting around to reading last week’s Royal Purple and I see that there is a film being shown every Wednesday for the next three weeks (it started Feb. 4) in honor of Black History Month. The movies start at 6:30 p.m. in the UC Summers Auditorium. Here’s the line-up:
If you missed Malcolm X (like I did), the University Library has it in VHS format (Browsing VHS, 2nd floor, PN1997 .M348 1993). Spike Lee directed and Denzel Washington starred in it, so you know you can’t go wrong. University Library also has the book on which the film is based, The autobiography of Malcolm X (3rd-floor Main Collection, E185.97 .L5 A3).
If you miss Freedom Writers you can get that from the University Library too (2nd-floor Browsing DVD, Feature Film, Fre). That’s based on the book The Freedom Writers diary: how a teacher and 150 teens used writing to change themselves and the world around them (3rd-floor Main Collection, HQ796 .F76355 2001).
The other two films in the series are not part of UWW’s video collection, but may be available to UWW students and staff from other UW libraries by using the free Universal Borrowing service. Requested materials arrive in 2-4 weekdays.
The 2009 Darwin Day lecture “Neandertals, Darwin, and the Sicilian Mafia; what do they have in common?” will be given by Dr. John Hawks, a UW-Madison anthropologist, on Thurs., Feb. 12th, at 7 p.m. in the Young Auditorium (free!).
You may have heard Dr. Hawks on NPR (National Public Radio) discussing Darwin and human evolution, and he is featured in an article “Are we still evolving?” (photo online at “They don’t make homo sapiens like they used to”) in Discover magazine’s March 2009 issue honoring 150 years of evolution (available in the Browsing area just inside the Library entrance). You can also learn more about Dr. Hawks and neandertals from his weblog.
Search the Library Catalog for books in the University Library about neandertals, human evolution, and Darwin, such as Reflections of our past: how human history is revealed in our genes (3rd-floor Main Collection, GN289 .R45 2003) or Darwin’s ghost: The origin of species updated (3rd-floor Main Collection, QH375 .J66 2000).
2009 is a special year for Darwin enthusiasts because it marks two major anniversaries: 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809) and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species.
February is Black History Month and the Library has many resources to support research on African-American culture and life. Here are a few specialized sources for your research.
African American Biographical Database
- The African American Biographical Database contains biographical sketches of African-Americans from 1790-1950 taken from rare biographical dictionaries and other reference works
- The database is available to all Wisconsin residents via Badgerlink
Ethnic News Watch
- Ethnic News Watch is a bilingual (English/Spanish) database of magazine, newspaper and journal articles from the ethnic and minority press in the United States
- Presents perspectives different from those found in the much of the mainstream media
- Search by ethnic group, subject, document type (interview, editorial, etc.), geographic location and more
Black Drama 1850-present
- Black Drama contains the text of 1200 plays by 215 playwrights
- Search for plays by title, author, character (including occupation and race), scenes, literary period and theater
- Locate unique and hard-to-find plays from the African-American theater.
African American Music Reference
- African American Music Reference provides access to text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music.
Reference Universe can help you find articles in specialized encyclopedias, biographical sources, handbooks and other reference-type books. And don’t forget the University Library Catalog and the many other research databases available via the library’s Articles in Journals, Magazines and Newspapers page that can help you with your research.
Reference books (e.g., encyclopedias) can be a great place to start research and get a quick background on a topic. But don’t think just Encyclopedia Britannica! I’m talking about specialized reference materials, like the Encyclopedia of archaeology, Berkshire encyclopedia of extreme sports, Encyclopedia of beat literature, Encyclopedia of film noir, Developmental psychopathology, Europe: A continental overview of environmental issues, Elections A to Z, Bilingual education: A reference handbook… and many, many other titles. But how do you find the right reference titles for your topic?
It’s possible to search everything in our Reference Collection at once for your topic, using the Reference Universe database.
For example, a search for gangsta rap will find 13 reference titles with content on this topic. Clicking the link to view index entries shows you which page(s) to look at in the book. Click on the title of a reference work to get its call number and Library location from the Library Catalog (most, but not all, of these titles are in the 2nd-floor Reference Collection). Ask a Librarian for more about this resource.
Take a break from your classes…or find a topic for that English 102 paper…in the Library’s Browsing Collections. Walk straight ahead as you enter the Library toward comfortable seating, current newspapers, and a selection of current magazines (also DVDs, VHS, audio books, recent fiction & non-fiction books, CDs, and graphic novels). The Food for Thought café is close by as well.
Happy browsing!
The Difference:
How the Power of Diversity Creates Better
Groups, Firms, Schools & Societies
By Scott Page
HF5549.5 .M5 P34 2007
New Book Island, 2nd floor
One of the main buzzwords in society for the past decades: diversity. Having a variety of people from different backgrounds, whether it be tied to race, gender, sexual orientation or other characteristics, has been the goal for everyone – businesses, governments, universities, all organizations. The issue has pretty much gone undisputed (or argued to no avail) and accepted. This week’s featured book delves into the question of why and does it really matter? The short answer: yes.
Page, professor at the University of Michigan and the Sante Fe Institute, tackles the issue of the individual versus the group. He explores how the collective working together will overpower the individual with a superior intellect (and not by use of force). Drawing on his groundbreaking research, the author explains diversity differently and demonstrates just how it generates benefits.
John Updike died last Tuesday of lung cancer. He was the author of more than 50 books and twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for titles in the tetralogy about the life and death of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom (Rabbit, Run, 1960; Rabbit Redux, 1971; Rabbit Is Rich, 1981; and Rabbit At Rest, 1991). You can read a plot summary in the MagillOnLiterature Plus database, which says “The Rabbit Angstrom books provide an accurate, absorbing, and aesthetically satisfying social history of middle-class North America from the 1950’s into the 1980’s; taken together, the novels may well constitute Updike’s finest achievement.”
Some of you may be more familiar with The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a 2000 stage musical and a 1987 movie (starring Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer as the witches and Jack Nicholson as the devil). Updike published a sequel in fall 2008 called The Widows of Eastwick.
Many Updike titles are available in the University’s Library, including both Eastwick titles. Search the Library Catalog for locations and call numbers.
More information about John Updike is available from the Library database Contemporary Authors, the NPR web site article “Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author John Updike Dies At 76.”, or “John Updike’s Mighty Pen” (Charles McGrath’s “Week in Review” published January 31st) on the New York Times web site.
