What's New

Travel Grant Recipient to Speak at Olin Library Nov. 4

Each year, Washington University's Department of Special Collections awards travel reimbursement grants of up to $1,000 to out-of-town scholars interested in using WU's unique collections for research. This Friday, November 4, one of the 2011 grant recipients--Heidi Dodson--returns to the University Libraries to discuss her research project titled "African American Farm Worker Communities in the Missouri Delta: Claiming Territory and Educational Facilities in the 1940s."

The brown bag lunch presentation will be held from 12 to 1 p.m. in Olin Library (Room 142). Free and open to the public, Dodson's discussion will examine the intersecting racial and spatial politics of Africa American rural community development in the 1940s through the lens of several farm worker villages in southeast Missouri. The research is part of a larger dissertation project which looks at African American community development and activism in relation to the territory and the built environment, which has been central to African American freedom struggles.

The villages in southeast Missouri were originally created by the federal Farm Security Administration to provide housing for displaced African American and white sharecroppers. In 1945, when political opposition prompted the liquidation of the projects, the houses, land, and community buildings were purchased by the private non-profit Delmo Housing Corporation. African American farm laborers faced unique challenges in their efforts to claim community space and resources.

Dodson, who is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a graduate fellow at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, consulted a range of documents housed in the University Archives while conducting her research. Drawing on documents from the Archives' Delmo Housing Corporation  Records,  newspaper articles, and NAACP records, Dodson's presentation will highlight two particular struggles: controversy in 1941 over the geographical location of the African American villages and the battle waged by North Wyatt for school facilities.

For more information and to RSVP (preferred), contact University Archivist Sonya Rooney at srooney@wustl.edu or 314-935-9730.

Photo of sharecroppers demonstration, 1939. Image from Library of Congress Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection

New issue of "Off the Shelf" features Digital Gateway, collaborative efforts

The latest issue of Washington University Libraries' biannual magazine arrived this week. Highlights of the Fall 2011 issue of Off the Shelf include a number of collaborative efforts, ranging from in-house projects and partnerships between librarians and faculty to larger initiatives spanning multiple institutions. The issue also features several of the Libraries' unique collections, photos and rundowns of recent events, profiles, book reviews by library staff, and more.

Printed copies are available in Olin Library, and an online version can be viewed at library.wustl.edu/offtheshelf, where past issues are also accessible.

Open Access Week at Wash U

The faculty of Washington University in St. Louis recently passed a formal resolution to make its scholarship freely and easily available to the world community. To learn what this new commitment means for the university and for you, attend the Libraries' town hall session this week in the Danforth University Center (DUC Room 276) at 12 noon Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011. Bring your questions--about author rights, digital repositories, and more--and find out what Open Access is all about.

The town hall session and a special exhibit in Olin Library are occurring in conjunction with Open Access Week, an international event aimed at promoting Open Access as a new norm of scholarship.

 

New Features in the Classic Catalog

There have been a number of recent additions in the Classic Catalog which might be of use to you:

• QR (quick response) codes like this appear on every full record display.  Scan the QR code with a smartphone scanning app (e.g. RedLaser or Scan), and the phone will jump to that record in our mobile catalog.  It's a direct link to the catalog record that you can take with you to the stacks or add to your saved list in the mobile catalog.

 

• Use My Lists to keep track of library titles of interest (such as books you haven't read or movies you haven't watched or even gift lists!).  Look for these buttons, click, and follow the catalog prompts.  For more information, see Create Personal Reading Lists.

• A catalog link to item status information.  Click on the Status icon in the item summary box to open WU Libraries Catalog Status Messages to see what a status means and what you can do about it.

• The Classic Catalog now has an icon (at right) and a corresponding MATERIAL TYPE limit "Electronic Resource" to help you identify library materials that can be accessed remotely.  Until now, most of these materials displayed the book icon, which did not distinguish them from print materials, and the only way to refine a search to these materials was by limiting to LOCATION "Internet."  Work is underway to identify and retrospectively update records in the catalog.  Many ebook and ejournal records already display the new icon.

• The Classic Catalog now offers you the option to batch request items that you mark and save.  When you click on the View Saved button, you will see the new "Multiple Requests" button. 

 

• You now have the option to choose a "Cancel if not filled by" date when you place a hold.  The system default is 180 days, after which time the hold will be cancelled.  In My Catalog, you can see cancellation dates when viewing your list of holds.

• You can now modify pickup locations for items that are in your hold queue but not yet in transit to or already on the hold shelf for you. You do this in My Catalog.

• And finally, you can now suspend or "freeze" holds that are in your hold queue.  While your hold is "frozen," your position in the hold queue is skipped over.  This allows you to stay in the hold queue while holds are filled for other people further down in the queue, which can be especially useful during break and vacation periods.  You cannot freeze MOBIUS holds, just WU Catalog holds.

Contact your subject librarian if you have any comments or questions about these new features.

ProQuest, CSA Outage Saturday, Oct. 22

ProQuest® will be performing infrastructure maintenance from 9pm this Saturday, October 22, 2011 until 9am the next morning (a 12-hour window).  During this time none of the following databases will be available:

    Accounting & Tax
    American Film Institute Catalog
    American Periodical Series Online
    ARTBibliographies Modern
    ASSIA (CSA)
    Avery Index (CSA)
    Chicago Tribune, Historical (1849-1985)
    Design and Applied Arts Index
    Digital Sanborn Maps
    Digitale Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker
    Dissertations & Theses (ProQuest)
    Early English Books Online (EEBO)
    Ethnic NewsWatch
    Film Index International
    GenderWatch
    GeoRef
    Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online
    Index Islamicus
    International Bibliography of Art
    International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
    International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text
    International Index to Performing Arts Full Text
    Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
    Literature Online (LION)
    New York Times, Historical (1851-2005)
    PAIS Iinternational and Archive
    PILOTS
    Social Services Abstracts
    Wall Street Journal, Historical (1889-1991)
    Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

We apologize for any inconvenience this outage causes.

Undergrad Research Symposium Oct. 22

Somewhere between 150 and 200 Washington University undergraduate students will display posters and talk about their research as part of the university's Undergraduate Research Symposium on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011.

The symposium begins at 12 noon in the Laboratory Sciences Building (Room 300) with a lunch and keynote address. Then, from 1:30 to 3 p.m., the students will congregate in Olin Library to showcase their research in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The Olin Library portion of the event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit http://ur.wustl.edu.

Elizabeth Bishop Talk & Reading Oct. 23

Washington University Libraries and the St. Louis Poetry Center will present a program featuring the works of renowned American poet Elizabeth Bishop at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 23, in Wilson Hall, Room 214, on Washington University’s Danforth Campus. A reception will follow in the Ginkgo Reading Room in the nearby Olin Library. The event is free and open to the public (read full story in the Record).

Archive Hosts Home Movie Day Oct. 15

Join the Libraries' Film & Media Archive at 12 p.m. Saturday, October 15, 2011, for the annual Home Movie Day event. Free and open to the public, the international event invites people to bring and share their Regular 8mm, Super 8mm, and 16mm home movies.It's a celebration of amateur films and filmmaking and a chance to share those films with a community audience.

Home Movie Day will be held at the West Campus Conference Center from noon to 3 p.m. In addition to screening home movies, the event provides an opportunity to learn how to care for those movies. Movies on video or DVD are welcome, in addition to those shot on film.

Renowned documentarian Ken Burns has called the international event, which is held each year in many venues worldwide, a "perfect opportunity for people to connect with our past and to move the conversation about preserving our cultural heritage into the future."

Contact the Film & Media Archive (wufilmarchives@wumail.wustl.edu or 314-935-8679) for information about including your home movies in the program.

WU Libraries Co-Host “Full Disclosure” Screening, Exhibition

A documentary film titled Full Disclosure will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday, October 12, 2011, in Wilson Hall, room 214, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University. Free and open to the public, the event is hosted by the University Libraries and the Center for the Humanities. Immediately following the film screening, the Libraries will host a reception and exhibition viewing in Olin Library’s Ginkgo Reading Room.

Full Disclosure was filmed by independent journalist and filmmaker Brian Palmer about his time embedded with a U.S. Marine combat unit in Iraq. Palmer, who will attend the screening and reception, concentrates on the daily activities of American troops and the effects of combat on them as well as on Iraqi civilians. Palmer made his first trip to Iraq in 2004. Armed only with a pen and a camera, he felt that his essays and photographs did not sufficiently capture the experience. So when he returned in 2005 and 2006, he brought a video camera.

“I tried to probe deeper into the stories of the Marines and the Iraqi men and women I met,” Palmer says. The film also explores the filmmaker’s conflicting role as an impartial journalist sometimes mistaken for a Marine. According to Palmer, “My presence affected everyone’s behavior. Although I didn’t carry a gun, I looked intimidating in my black helmet, desert camouflage bulletproof vest, and combat boots. Small children cried and ran away if I came too close.”

In conjunction with the film, the Libraries are exhibiting a number of Palmer’s photographs and journal entries along with war-related items from the Libraries’ Special Collections. These are displayed in Olin Library’s Grand Staircase Lobby and adjacent Ginkgo Reading Room, both on level 1. They can be seen whenever Olin Library is open.

About Brian Palmer

Brian Palmer is an independent journalist and filmmaker. He has written for Mother Jones, the Huffington Post, Pixel Press.org, and ColorLines, among others, and has produced video projects for various outlets including PBS and MTV. He is a Fellow at NYU’s Center on Law and Security and the recipient of a National Institute grant for reporting in Bangladesh in 2010. Palmer received a Ford Foundation Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom grant in 2008 to complete Full Disclosure. He is an instructor at the The School of Visual Arts in New York City and an adjunct instructor at Baruch College, City University of New York.

A documentary film entitled Full Disclosure will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday, October 12, 2011, in Wilson Hall, room 214, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University. This event is free and open to the public. It is hosted by the University Libraries and the Center for the Humanities.

Pick Up ILL Requests at West Campus Library

Have you ever wished you could pick up Interlibrary Loan requests at the West Campus Library?  Well, now you can.  All you have to do is select West Campus Library as your pickup location on the request form.  We’ll take care of the rest.

 If you’ve never used Interlibrary Loan before, now may be the time to start.  Whenever you can’t get something through WashU Libraries or MOBIUS, log onto http://illiad.wustl.edu/illiad/logon.html.  Choose the appropriate request form from the menu on the left of the page, fill out the form, and choose your delivery location, either West Campus or Olin Library.  When the item arrives, we’ll send it to West Campus, if that's the location you chose.  You can both pick up at the West Campus Library and return items there when you’re done. 

 If you have any questions or problems, please do not hesitate to contact the Interlibrary Loan office at (314) 935-5442 or ill@wumail.wustl.edu.