Monday, March 31, 2008

Connection: Illinois Chamber Music Festival Performers and LehrerDance Visit Hope College




Performers from the Illinois Chamber Music Festival will be performing at Hope on Thursday, April 3rd (press release). This summer, they will perform and teach at Illinois Wesleyan University which provides biographical information of interest. The first image above is of cellist Tanya Remenikova, member of the faculty at the University of Minnesota School of Music, working with a student at the Illinois Chamber Music Camp.

Friday, April 4th and Saturday, April 5th Hope College will host LehrerDance (press release). Discover more about LehrerDance at the company's web site. The second image above is of a LehrerDance company member.


Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Women in Music

Today is the birthday of Diana Ross. The people at Guiness World Records have declared her the most successful female music artist of the 21st century. Although we have only one example of her work in our collection you can read about other women in music at the Music Library in the Nykerk/Wichers complex. And I would appreciate it if you would comment here on which of her other recordings we should own. Seriously! The only thing that comes up when you search "Supremes" in our catalog is about the court.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Connection: Tenth Annual Cesar Chavez Celebration

The Tenth Annual Cesar Chavez Celebration is Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Events are described in the Hope College press release. Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Chavez, of the United Farm Workers of America, gave an interview to the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy in 2006 in which she reflects on the successes and continued work of the UFW and related movements. Paul Chavez, Cesar Chavez's son, gave an interview to NPR's Travis Smiley in 2004 on his father's life and legacy. Join the celebration this year as we remember Chavez and his dedication to worker, civil, and human rights.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Connection: Lecture by Wildlife Biologist Dr. Rolf Peterson


One week from today, Monday, March 24, 2008, wildlife biologist Dr. Rolf Peterson will be speaking in the A. Paul Schaap Science Center at 4:00. Read more about Dr. Peterson and his research in the Hope College press release.

In 2005, Peterson co-authored "Monitoring and Habitat Analysis for Wolves in Upper Michigan" in the Journal of Wildlife Management. A concise and informative article on Peterson's many years of research on the UP's wolf population appeared in National Wildlife magazine in 2000.

For assistance locating additional articles and other information sources on Peterson, his research, and UP wolves, please visit the Reference Desk.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

The Content Keeps Coming

At least once a week I am notified of new content that has been added to our databases and electronic resources. Here are a few of the interesting items to come across my desk lately.

Three new scholarly journals have been added to Project MUSE; the Journal for the Study of Radicalism (Michigan State University Press), Feminist Teacher (University of Illinois Press) and American Literary Realism (University of Illinois Press). Project MUSE provides full-text, affordable and user-friendly online access to over 380 high quality humanities and social sciences journals from over 60 scholarly publishers.

Credo Reference has added The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy from Edinburgh University Press. This reference guide covers the most important authors and movements in Continental Philosophy. Each section focuses on a school of thought, bringing together articles by leading scholars which explore the key thinkers and texts. Arranged in chronological order, the volume begins with the founding texts of Classical Idealism and concludes with Post-structuralism.

Gale Cengage Learning, formerly known as Gale, continues to add peer reviewed journals and other scholarly content to their Academic OneFile database. The emphasis lately seems to be on health and medicine titles, with the addition of 35 journals published by Mary Anne Liebert; including AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, Breastfeeding Medicine, Cloning and Stem Cells, and Human Gene Therapy, just to name a few.

Cengage also continues to add media content to the Academic OneFile database including 280 videos of live surgeries. For example to find live video of knee replacement surgeries, do a keyword search for (webcast or OR-live) and knee. You can view a total knee replacement procedure performed by a leading orthopedic surgeon at http://www.or-. Audio and video can be found under the Multimedia Tab in the OneFile databases.

We continue to test new products that may support the research needs of students and faculty. Our latest trial is to PEP Web - a digital archive of many of the major works of psychoanalysis. PEP, to be released in April, contains the complete full text of twenty-six premier psychoanalytic journals, complete versions of fifty-six classic psychoanalytic texts and all twenty-four volumes of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. To give this database a try, go to our trials page. You will need to enter the username and password listed on the trials page to gain access.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Holy Week

Easter, Holy Thursday, Good Friday; when you search for any of these terms in the library catalog you will find that our shelves are not all under one roof. Students at Hope may use the library at Western Theological Seminary just as Seminary students may use Van Wylen. Easter is in the Curriculum library as well as in the Music library. I'm sure Easter can also be found among the many missionary writings housed in the Theil Research Center. Easter is on all our shelves this Wednesday.

The Feast of Saint Patrick

There are a lot of things to wonder about this week: what to do on spring break; what are the Ides of March; why does everyone want to be Irish on the seventeenth? Since I am Irish I am going to talk about that last topic. The Feast day of Saint Patrick is both a religious holiday and, in many communities, a civic day of celebration. You can learn about the Saint himself at the library, but you might want to look for something more modern and less religious to celebrate with this weekend. We have some wonderful collections of modern Irish stories to peruse while you are waiting for the corned beef to finish cooking. Beware the Bain Sidhe!

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

March Madness

What's on the shelves this Wednesday? March madness of course. Did you know that the phrase "March madness" was first used in 1939 to describe the Illinois High School Association's basketball tournament? The Association even registered the trademark. Lots of interesting information about basketball can be found on the library shelves. If you love biographies, we also have electronic editions of the lives of several great basketball coaches. Take a break and read one from your computer.