We’ve added new online reference titles from the Gale Virtual Reference Library in history, literature, multicultural studies, social sciences, and technology:
History
- American Decades, 10v, 2001
- American Decades Primary Sources, 10v, 2004
- Ancient Greece, 3v, 2007
- The Antebellum Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1820 to 1860, 2003
- The Civil War: Primary Documents on Events from 1860 to 1865, 2004
- The Early Republic: Primary Documents on Events from 1799 to 1820, 2004
- Historical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, 2nd ed., 2008
- The Progressive Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1890 to 1914, 2004
Literature
- Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873-1999, 2008
- A Companion to Jane Austen Studies, 2000
- Gothic Literature: A Gale Critical Companion, 3v, 2006
- Greek and Roman Mythology, 2002
- Holocaust Literature, 2v, 2008
- Literature of Latin America, 2004
- Literature of the Caribbean, 2008
- Margaret Atwood: A Critical Companion, 2004
Multicultural Studies
- Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life, 2nd ed., 5v, 2009
Social Sciences
- Ballistics , 2009
- Birth Control, 2009
- Blackmail and Bribery, 2009
- Body Image, 2009
- Censorship, 2009
- Child Abuse, 2009
- Discrimination, 2009
- Forensic Art, 2009
- Mental Illness, 2009
Technology
- Multimedia Forensics and Security, 2009
Please ask a librarian if you’d like assistance using these new resources.
It’s been a while since I’ve featured an electronic resource for New Stuff Tuesday (you have to go all the way back to 21 October 2008 for the last digital NST). It doesn’t mean that we haven’t gotten anything new for our online collection – on the contrary, we have added a number of e-reference titles and the Gale Literature Criticism Online, among others.
However, Barb mentioned in her post yesterday that the Wisconsin Department of Instruction had added Newspaper Source Plus to BadgerLink, the state’s online electronic library. What she didn’t mention that they added so much more! Apparently, the DPI decided to celebrate BadgerLink’s tenth birthday in style with the massive upgrade of its offerings from EBSCOhost. All of the residents of the state of Wisconsin now have access to TWENTY-EIGHT resources from the vendor. That number includes twelve resources that are either new or upgraded.
- Auto Repair Reference Center
- Book Collection: Nonfiction — Elementary, Middle and High School Editions
- Business Source Premier
- Consumer Health Complete
- Educational Administrative Abstracts
- History Reference Center
- Humanities International Complete
- Literary Reference Center
- Newspaper Source Plus
- NoveList
- NoveList K-8
- Science Reference Center
Make sure to check out the new resources either through BadgerLink or our website!
If you’re a frequent user of the ProQuest Newspapers database, you’ll know it’s missing! We had access to that database through BadgerLink, a selection of databases the WI Dept. of Public Instruction provides to residents of the state. Well, they’ve negotiated for a different newspaper database, starting this July:
Newspaper Source Plus (EBSCOhost) includes over 1,500 full-text newspapers and newswires, providing more than 27 million full-text articles. In addition, the database features more than 583,100 television and radio news transcripts, videos & podcasts. Several Wisconsin newspapers are in the database, including full-text staff articles from
- Eau Claire’s Leader-Telegram (since mid-Feb. 2008),
- The Janesville Gazette (since mid-Mar. 2005),
- La Crosse Tribune (since Dec. 2005),
- Madison’s Wisconsin State Journal (since Sept. 1997),
- The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (since Sept. 1997), and
- Superior’s Daily Telegram (since mid-Jan. 2005).
We also continue to have access to newspapers through the LexisNexis Academic and Campus Research databases.
But give the new resource a try! We hope you’ll like it.
Euromonitor has recently bulked up their foreign trade offerings. Our Passport Reference & Markets subscription now contains import/export figures for all sorts of commodities, from fruits to furniture, for approximately 140 countries. Here are a few interesting tidbits that I just learned from looking at the new data:
- Germany was the world’s biggest exporter of passenger cars in 2008 (US$140,158 million). Forty percent of all of the world’s passenger car exports come from Germany or Japan.
- The USA was the world’s biggest importer of petroleum and petroleum products in 2008 (US$482,787 million). However, China is rapidly catching up, with growth of 397% in US$ terms between 2003 and 2008.
- China was the world’s biggest exporter of iron and steel in 2008 (US$65,065 million), exporting 41% more than the second biggest (Germany) with exports growing at an annual average rate of 68% between 2003 and 2008.
To access the new information, click on the Countries link in the main navigational bar – the statistics can be found under the Foreign Trade category to the left.
Actor Karl Malden passed away on Wed., July 3rd. I enjoyed watching Mr. Malden in television’s The Streets of San Francisco with a young Michael Douglas, but he also appeared in many movies. Andersen Library has a couple of movies if you’d like to see some of his best work: On the waterfront from 1954 (2nd-floor Browsing DVD, Feature Film, call no. “On”) and A Streetcar named Desire from 1951 (2nd-floor Browsing VHS, call no. PN1997 .S74x), both starring Marlon Brando, by the way.
You can obtain biographical information about Mr. Malden in the database Contemporary Authors, or look for his book, written with his daughter Carla Malden in 1997, When Do I Start?: A Memoir. Andersen Library does not have a copy, but UWW staff & students can request it from other UW campus libraries using the free Universal Borrowing service.
OK, we also lost some other well-known people recently. The Library has a movie Farrah Fawcett made with Robert Duvall in 1997: The Apostle (2nd-floor Browsing DVD, Feature Film, call no. “Apo”) and books about Michael Jackson, including Moonwalk written by the King of Pop himself (3rd-floor Main Collection, ML420 .J175 A3 1988).
If the Fourth of July celebrations aren’t enough for you this weekend, check these out and enjoy.
I’ve blogged a few times now about international years, which the United Nations has been designating since 1959 to to draw attention to major issues and to encourage international action addressing concerns with global importance and ramifications.
2009 is the International Year of Natural Fibres (also of astronomy and reconciliation). Since it’s been so hot lately I thought it was appropriate to talk about cotton, one of the 15 natural fibers being celebrated, and probably my favorite fabric all summer long. One of my coworkers, though, swears by her bamboo shirts and socks.
But natural fibers like cotton aren’t good only for their ventilation. They also are environment-friendly, renewable, and sustainable, as well as vital to the economies of many developing countries and the livelihoods and food security of millions of people. Did you know that “more than 60% of the world’s cotton is grown in China, India and Pakistan? In Asia, cotton is cultivated mainly by small farmers and its sale provides the primary source of income of some 100 million rural households.” You can get more information from the web site linked above.
Search the Library’s article databases (Academic Search Premier, etc.) to find related articles such as “Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry” in Environmental Health Perspectives (2007, vol.115, no.9, pp.A448-A454) and “ECO-CHIC” in Discover (2008, vol.29, no.9, pp.70-71).
Please ask a librarian if you would appreciate assistance in finding these and related materials.
The Supreme Court is in the news: On May 26th President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appellate court judge (U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit), to replace retiring Justice David Souter.
Curious about how this process works? After all, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, not just for a President’s term. Here are places for more info:
- Search CQ Electronic Library for “supreme court” and nomination, and the results list will show items such as “History of appointments: The Senate’s role” (from Guide to Congress, 6th ed.). To see the newest results first, click the down arrow under “Date” and find items such as the CQ Weekly article “Supreme Court Nominees Are Presented, Not Just Announced”.
- Search the Library Catalog for keywords (judges or “supreme court”) and selection to find books such as Pursuit of justices: Presidential politics and the selection of Supreme Court nominees (3rd-Floor Main Collection, KF8742 .Y35 1999) and Advice and consent: The politics of judicial appointments (3rd-Floor Main Collection, KF8776 .E67 2005). This catalog search also finds government publications, such as Congressional confirmation hearings of previous nominees to the Court: Confirmation hearing on the nomination of Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (2nd-floor Federal Documents, Y 4.J 89/2:S.HRG.109-277).
- A more recent title, available to UWW students and faculty from other UW libraries by using the free Universal Borrowing service, is The next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court appointments process (2007).
- Search Oxford Reference Online to find information about the Court, the nomination process, and a listing of “Nominations and Succession of the Justices” from sources such as The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States.
You can read Sotomayor’s decisions also, using the LexisNexis Academic database: Select the Legal portion of the database, then on the left select “Federal & State Cases” and then search for her as a judge:
The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!
The Library will be closed Saturday-Monday, May 23-25. Summer hours will start on Tuesday, May 26th (7am-9pm).
Remember that even when the Library is closed:
- The Library’s article databases are available…just login when prompted with your campus Net-ID (same as for your campus email or D2L).
- You can search the Library Catalog and use links to the titles that are online, including ereserves for classes.
- You can renew your checked-out books, DVDs, etc. online (once) through your Personal Record.
- You can ask a librarian for help using email or chat, or phone us at the Reference Desk during open hours (262-472-1032).
Ever come across an unusual word and wonder how it ever came into the language? Well, if you have, check out the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), an online database from the Andersen Library.
This enormous online source contains the complete text of the OED’s twenty-volume print second edition and draft material from the current OED project. Not only will you find definitions, pronunciation information, and the part of speech to over 600,000 English words, but this dictionary also traces the word’s development (the “etymology” of words). Using quotations from around the English-speaking world, the OED helps demonstrate how the English language has changed and continues to change. Some word entries go back fifteen hundred years!
To search the OED online, just type a word in the search box and enter.
See a short tutorial of how to use the simple search in the OED.
Are you writing a research paper? Please avoid contextomy, which is distorting meaning by quoting of context. You can read more about it in the 2005 article “Contextomy: the art of quoting out of context” (Media, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 511-522).
Avoiding unintended contextomy may be as simple as making sure you understand the original text of the sources you’re using for your paper. When you encounter words you don’t understand, look them up using:
- your favorite print dictionary (We have several in the Library!),
- Google (search for define:<your word here>, e.g., define:contextomy), or
- your favorite online dictionary (We link to several at http://library.uww.edu/subject/dict.html).
And if you are interested in growing your vocabulary one word a day, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) online has a Word of the Day RSS feed for you, or you can click to get a random word every time you visit the site!
