Actress Lauren Bacall passed away this week. You can read about her in books such as the autobiography Now published in 1994 (3rd-floor Main Collection, PN2287.B115 A3 1994), or watch her in movies from Andersen Library’s 2nd-floor Browsing DVD Feature Films (they’re shelved alphabetically by title):
When I lived in the Washington, D.C. area, I loved to visit the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian). I enjoyed it so much, that when I traveled to other cities I looked for other natural history & science museums to visit (in Denver, Seattle, Albuquerque, etc.). I’ve never been disappointed. But I don’t travel all that much, so thank goodness for the Internet!
The web sites of all of these museums are fascinating. This spring the American Museum of Natural History in New York City launched an online image database, which contains thousands of images of archival photographs, art, museum memorabilia, drawings and rare book illustrations from its visual collections. An example of what’s in store for virtual visitors to the Digital Special Collections is the Julian Dimock Collection: photos of nature (agricultural work, fishing, wildlife, birds) and people, including African Americans and Native Americans, in Southern states from about 1904 to 1911, and images of immigrants at Ellis Island. In addition, the database features “lantern slides created at the turn of the 20th century by Museum staff to illustrate culture, paleontology, and zoology in places as diverse as Greenland, Mongolia, and Africa” and “the Lumholtz Collection, which documents four expeditions led by ethnographer Carl S. Lumholtz to northwestern Mexico between 1890 and 1898 and includes portraits of the indigenous peoples of Mexico.” Browse the collections and enjoy!
Robin Williams, an extraordinary comedian as well as an award-winning dramatic actor, may have left us, but we can honor his memory and appreciate his work by watching some of his movies. Andersen Library has several in the 2nd-floor Browsing DVD Feature Films (the collection is alphabetical by title):
UWW students and staff may read (or listen to) Robin William‘s biography in the H.W. Wilson’s Biography Reference Bank database. The New Yorker published an article in 2011 in which Williams talked about his visits to entertain U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan: “Good Morning, Baghdad.”
The Love of Beer
by Alison Grayson
HD6073.L62 N77 2012
New Arrivals, 2nd floor
It’s still summertime and I hope you are able to relax and enjoy the rest of August before the Fall Semester. If your relaxation includes fermented beverages, then you should watch this documentary on women in the beer industry. Featuring Tonya Cornett, originally of Bend Brewing and recently of 10 Barrel Brewing, the film explores how women in the industry break stereotypes, balance work and home life, and craft amazing beer. Perhaps those of you 21 and over could enjoy a brew from New Glarus, a Wisconsin brewery with a woman co-owner, while you watch.
The 11th annual State of News Media report for 2014 from the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project is available online, and it includes chapters on U.S. journalism revenue, news video on the web, growth in digital reporting, acquisitions and content sharing shaping local TV news, Hispanic news outlets, and more.
One of the interesting (and somewhat headspinning) trends is journalists migrating from more traditional news outlets to work on experimental online news venues, which sometimes have rather interesting funding. For example, Ezra Klein, formerly a well-known voice at the Washington Post and still affiliated with Bloomburg News and MSNBC, launched Vox.com a few months ago. First Look Media, funded by eBay’s founder, launched in February 2014 with The Intercept, a digital magazine created by a trio of founding editors including Glenn Greenwald, an award-winning journalist formerly of The Guardian US. Nate Silver‘s FiveThirtyEight site (named for the 538 electors in the electoral college–there’s a hint he’s into data journalism), has been around a while, formerly affiliated with the New York Times and relaunched in partnership with ESPN in March 2014 with Silver as the editor-in-chief. BuzzFeed has been beefing up its investigative journalism, hiring people like Mark Schoofs, formerly a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, and the nonprofit ProPublica (tagline, “Journalism in the Public Interest”) and Chris Hamby, another Pulitzer winner hired away from The Center for Public Integrity. Whew!
Interested in learning more? Search for Library’s holdings via Research@UWW to find books such as JournalismNext: A practical guide to digital reporting and publishing (3rd-floor Main Collection, PN4833 .B75 2010) and Online journalism: Principles and practices of news for the Web, or government publications such as the Congressional committee hearing, The Future of Journalism (online or in print, 2nd-floor Federal Documents, Y 4.C 73/7:S.HRG.111-428).
Whoa, Wait. A Congressional committee hearing?? Here’s a quote from then-Senator John Kerry on page 1 of the hearing explaining the interest of legislators:
Some people might ask, sort of, Why the Committee—why is the government interested in this, and what are we looking at? Well, the fact is that we do have a responsibility for the licensing of broadcasts, we have a responsibility for the regulatory oversight of ownership of cable, satellite, other issues with respect to communications. And needless to say, how the American people get their information, what the structure of ownership is, is of enormous interest to all of us, because it is the foundation of our democracy. A brass plaque on a wall at Columbia University’s School of Journalism bears the words of the legendary newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, ‘‘Our republic and its press rise or fall together.’’
If we take seriously this notion that the press is the fourth estate or the fourth branch of government, then we need to examine the future of journalism in the digital information age, what it means to our republic and to our democracy.
Still looking for more? You also can find articles by searching Research@UWW, e.g., “Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Study of How Digitally Native News Nonprofits Are Innovating Online Journalism Practices” (JMM: The International Journal On Media Management, 2013, vol.15:no.1, pp.3-22, doi:10.1080/14241277.2012.732153), “The Life and Death of Political News” (Social Science Computer Review, 2014, vol.32:no.2, pp.170-181), and “Piracy Of Online News: A “Moral Rights” Approach To Protecting a Journalist’s Right of Attribution and Right of Integrity” (Journal Of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law, 2014, vol.24:no.2, pp.295-338).
For assistance with finding materials, please ask a librarian.
Andersen Library is a federal and Wisconsin depository library with federal and state government documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in various formats (print, DVD/CD-ROM, online). Check out your government at Andersen Library!
Today is predicted to be hot and rainy with a chance of thunderstorms. Haven’t seen the rain yet, but I’m sure it is just around the corner. The forecasters are always right after all. 😉 When the weather turns toward rain and wind I automatically think of settling in on the sofa with a “cozy mystery.” Typically the protagonist of these books is a college educated amateur sleuth in a small town, a woman with exceptionally keen powers of observation and intuition as well has friends with convenient “in” knowledge. You don’t want to be her friend though, as people who know her tend to die under mysterious circumstances.
Our Browsing Books collection is a great place to go for recent cozies, although we also have some older ones in the Main Collection and still more are available through UW Request. Here are a few you might want to check out from our Browsing Books:
To read more about cozies and get some ideas for more to read, check out the cozy-mystery website.
Enrique’s Journey:
The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with His Mother
by Sonia Nazario
921 Enr
Curriculum Collection, Juv Non-Fiction, 2nd floor
Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, Enrique’s Story has been adapted for young readers. Sonia Nazario has made a topic of current national debate accessible to readers, grades 7 and up. Educator resources geared toward middle and high school classes provide guides and suggested activities for leading meaningful discussions around both family relationships and immigration. To address the lively national debate and account for immigration data since first published in 2007, Nazario has authored a new epilogue and afterword which includes recent census data, polls, and studies, such as those conducted by the National Conference of State Legislatures for the ongoing Immigrant Policy Project, as well as reports and data collected by the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project.
University readers may wish to check out the original, 2007, Enrique’s Journey from the UW Whitewater Main Collection, 3rd Floor (E184.H66 N397 2007)
If Enrique’s Story sparks interest in the effects of emigration and immigration on family relationships throughout history, continue your research in Research@UWW.
Celebrate National Night Out on Tuesday, August 5, from 5-8 p.m. in Whitewater’s Cravath Lake Park!
Events hosted by Whitewater’s Police Department include a dunk tank (let’s mention the most important item first, shall we?), emergency vehicles on display, public safety demos, K9 unit demonstration, search & rescue horses on display, bounce house, raffle, refreshments, and more. C’mon out and learn more about bike safety, home and vehicle safety, Internet safety, sexual assault awareness, drug and alcohol use, AED/CPR use, etc. Drive the “Operation Click” golf carts to see why you shouldn’t drive while impaired. All dunk tank proceeds will support the local K9 unit. I, for one, am really looking forward to meeting K9 Officer Boomer, who was sworn in on May 14th! Woof!
What is National Night Out? An opportunity to highlight local crime prevention programs and strengthen community-police partnerships. you can learn more about National Night Out from the web site of the National Association of Town Watch, or from the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Bulletin from the Field: Practitioner Perspectives, “National Night Out: Building Police and Community Partnerships To Prevent Crime“.
If you like assistance with finding additional materials, please ask a librarian.
Andersen Library is a federal and Wisconsin depository library with federal and state government documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in various formats (print, DVD/CD-ROM, online). Check out your government at Andersen Library!
Are you one of those people who likes to read a book before you watch the TV show based on it? Or maybe you prefer to watch then read? Simultaneously you say? Sounds like a challenge to me!
This summer I’ve been reading books in the Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series by George R. R. Martin and watching Games of Thrones, the HBO show based on them. Both are set primarily in the fictional kingdom of Westeros at the end of summer. Summer there has been a tad bit longer than ours. The first two seasons of the TV program were pretty good about sticking to the general concept of the related book, but it took seasons three and four to cover book three. When I say “pretty good” I’m actually very impressed with how much of the plots and many of the characters they were able to keep in spite of the massive length of the books and vast amount of source material. Martin hasn’t finished book 6 yet, so I’m hoping that in the future multiple seasons of the TV show will continue to cover single books again until the series is finished. It would be an artistic tragedy to have the show end because it ran out of source material. Note: Not for the faint of heart. Both the books and TV show have significant violence in them.
Song of Ice and Fire Series (Books) – Check Research@UWW for location and call numbers of individual volumes
Game of Thrones (TV Show) – Browsing DVD, call number: GAM
Such attention to original content has not been the case with True Blood, another HBO TV show, this time based on a rural fantasy (tropes of urban fantasy in a contemporary rural setting) series of books by Charlaine Harris set primarily in Louisiana. True Blood quickly strayed from its source material. Season one is pretty faithful, with lots of extra bits thrown in and little lost. Season two really starts to veer away, yet manages to cover major plot points. Season three continues on in that vein, and after that there are fewer and fewer connections. HBO is now airing the seventh and final season just over a year after the final book in the series was released. The books and TV program are, by this point, two different entities based in the same world with many of the same characters. I’ve been enjoying both immensely. Note: The TV program has significantly more sex and violence than the books.
Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mystery Series (Books) – Check Research@UWW for location and call numbers of individual volumes
True Blood (TV Show) – Browsing DVD, call number: TRU
It’s Complicated:
The Social Lives of Networked Teens
by danah boyd
HQ799.2.I5 B68 2014
New Arrivals, 2nd floor
Chill out. That is the message danah boyd wants to give to parents, teachers and other adults concerning teens’ use of social media. boyd does research and writes extensively about the relationship of youth and technology, especially social media. In her view, teens live very structured lives with not much freedom to just hang out with friends and sites like Facebook and Twitter offer that casual meeting space that used to be found at the mall. She does address some of the most stressful issues such as cyberbullying and sexual predators but she doesn’t see them as prevalent as the media has made them out to be. Her research combines traditional studies and extensive interviews with high school and middle school youth.
If you’re interested in this topic, you might also enjoy Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social-Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future, by S. Craig Watkins. This book can be found in the Main Collection (3rd floor) at HQ799.2.M352 W37 2009.
This post was written by Vicky Topp.
