Monday is actually All Saints Day, and Sunday is Reformation Day or Halloween, however one would like to look at it. Whatever your holiday of choice, a fun and harmless tradition is to get free candy during this time of the year. We wouldn't want to go against the tradition here at The Emma Waters Summar Library and so to get a cup full of candy, pens and other goodies on Friday just mention us in your Twitter Status, Follow Us on Twitter, or write on our Facebook wall to get free candy!
(UCLA Photograph).(2008). Daniel Walker Howe [Photograph], Retrieved October 27, 2010 from: http://magazine.ucla.edu/exclusives/saul-friedlander_pulitzer/
Last night I attended the lecture by professor Howe, who is Professor Emeritus at UCLA and at Oxford. As part of the Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lecture Series I was impressed by the notoriety of this speaker and previous speakers. Gordon Wood, who was here at Union in 2006, is one of the premier names in American History as is last night's speaker Daniel Walker Howe who has won a Pulitzer prize for his work on the development of America and communications. Howe, commenting on his book "What God Hath Wrought" addressed the idea of manifest destiny and its relationship to two social factors; protestantism and the development of new forms of communication. The title of his work, "What God Hath Wrought"is a reference to Numbers 23 that was included in the first telegraph. Howe's lecture was fascinating, incorporating a good deal of art work as primary illustrations for what was going in American History during the latter part of the 19th century. Howe draws a clear connection between Protestant Christianity and the idea of Manifest Destiny. We have What God Hath Wrought at The Summar Library and the call number is E338 .H69 2007. We also have a book on moral philosophy written by Daniel Walker Howe. It was an honor to hear him speak at Union.
This past Saturday I presented at a biannual meeting of The West Tennessee Academic Library Consortium. (I have embedded my slides below) This was a basic presentation that I wanted to be fun and light. I introduced myself and described how I look at Library Outreach. This includes a vision for the future of academic libraries in the digital age. I stressed that libraries can continue to play vital, even central roles as place, services and on the web. I discussed the need for a beautiful building, excellent customer service and user friendly web interfaces that can go mobile. I enjoyed meeting other librarians from places like Rhodes, The University of Memphis and Freed Hardeman. We were honored to host this meeting at Union.
If one walks through the PAC they will notice that we have a wonderful and prolific art department at Union and the art hanging on the walls and in the galleries really beautifies the hallways. I thought it would be nice to see some of that art here in The Summar Library and so thanks to Haelim Allen for hanging us some pieces. We plan to have labels with information about the work and tha artists but in the meantime I thought that I would comment on the two pieces that are on the wall directly across from the information desk. Both are copies of classic works.
The painting below is a copy of a wood carving that is part of a series called, "Thirty-six views of Mt. Fuji" by Japanese artist Hokusai. It is a depiction of a great wave as seen below.
Hokusai, Katsushika. The Great Wave at Kanagawa. c. 1831-33. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 22 Oct .2010, http://www.metmuseum.org/.
Here is how the Metroplitan Museum art experts have explained the original painting.
"The preeminence of this print—said to have inspired both Debussy's La Mer and Rilke's Der Berg—can be attributed, in addition to its sheer graphic beauty, to the compelling force of the contrast between the wave and the mountain. The turbulent wave seems to tower above the viewer, whereas the tiny stable pyramid of Mount Fuji sits in the distance. The eternal mountain is envisioned in a single moment frozen in time. Hokusai characteristically cast a traditional theme in a novel interpretation. In the traditional meisho-e (scene of a famous place), Mount Fuji was always the focus of the composition. Hokusai inventively inverted this formula and positioned a small Mount Fuji within the midst of a thundering seascape. Foundering among the great waves are three boats thought to be barges conveying fish from the southern islands of Edo. Thus a scene of everyday labor is grafted onto the seascape view of the mountain."
Below is the black white copy done by Union's own, Kate Byrd and now hanging in the Library.
Facebook is a social medium that has altered our culture in many ways. Facebookers have spent countless hours chatting with friends, updating statuses, searching for that old high school buddy, and reconnecting with family. Facebook has even changed our vernacular, for example, by turning the word friend into a verb (“Friend me”, one person may say to another). According to Wikipedia, Facebook has more than 500 million active users as of July 2010. That equals about one person for every 14 in the world. Statistics have shown that if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest, ahead of America, and behind only China and India.
The movie The Social Network is based off a book by Ben Mezrich called The Accidental Billionaires. It tells the (likely embellished) story of Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, and how Facebook came to be. It should be noted that Eduardo Saverin, once a friend of Zuckerberg and co-founder of Facebook, was a consultant for the book on which the movie was based.
The story told is a very interesting one. The opening scene shows the future founder of Facebook and his then girlfriend Erica Albright, and how their relationship was the catalyst for Facebook as we know it.
The movie The Social Network is as much about human beings as it is about a website. It’s a story of greed, jealousy, and friendship. Keeping in mind that large parts of it are works of fiction, the film provides interesting insights into one version of how Facebook might have come about. It is well-acted and has a very fitting conclusion that is consistent with the movie as a whole. Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who played Zuckerberg, will undoubtedly get some Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook has certainly evolved from when it started. There is less exclusivity and more advertisements. It’s becoming a one stop shop for playing games, catching up with “friends”, and promoting your business or organization.
In light of homecoming and the fact that the library has been promoting Union's storied past like the football team it might be a good time to discuss the library's namesake, Emma Waters Summar. Before the current library or the Pennick Academic Complex was built Emma Waters Summar was the head librarian. Paul Sorrell has written an excellent article about who she was and so in case you why the library is called what it is and why her picture is hanging across from the circulation desk:
When I was considering coming to Union to take my first librarians position I was reading the Wikipedia article about Union University and found it fascinating that Bear Bryant's first coaching position was at Union. I hope that my time at Union lasts longer than the Bears did but the point is that many don't realize that Union does have a football history.
The fall of 1952 was the last season that the Bulldogs competed on the gridiron. It was their second season under head coach and athletic director, Robert Jelks. They finished their final season with 3 wins and 6 losses, boasting a big win over Georgetown. Through 1952, Union had some fine football seasons with great players like Casey Jones who consistently made the Little All American Team.
So for our latest display just outside the library in the PAC we wanted to Remember the Bulldogs. We found what we could in yearbooks, old football programs, and pictures harking back to the bulldogs glory days. There is also an old pair of Union football pants in archives but those were too fragile to display. One picture displays an early Union team who went up against Yale and we thought it was worth showing. So with homecoming approaching, if you are walking through the PAC then don't forget to stop and Remember the Bulldogs!
1934 Union Bulldogs Football. In the photograph: DeWitt Viar, ___ Lewis, Sheldon Carter, Francis Thompson, Paul Kilzer, Fred Baraga, ___ Lynch, ___ Garrison, Norman Burks, ___ Berryhill, Hubbard Trimm, Ernest Mullins, Raymond Phillips, Glen Johnson, Devoy Graham, Buddy Perry, Norman Hale, Joe B. Graham, Harlie Horne, M. C. Joyner, Odis Armstrong, John Alexander, Gerald Craig, John Rukavina, Bishop Arnold, Jack King, John Pechonick, Fate Lett, Lester Wright, Albert Kelly, R. L. Ammons
Apple's iPhone and now the iPad have fundamentally changed the way we get information from the internet. Recently many have been saying that the future of the internet will be applications and that Apps on hand held devices will play a major role in libraries. This ARTICLE from National Public Radio affirms this idea. Apps are essentially quick shortcuts to allow us to easily obtain the information that we want without having to browse through the information that we don't want.
I don't think that hand held devices currently play a huge role in the life of Summar Library but I think in the future that they might. Because I rely on my iPhone to get information, like e-mail, movie times and weather updates, quickly often I have been browsing the shelves and wished that it were easy to search our collection with a few taps on the face of my phone. On Friday I was browsing the movie collection looking for The New World and hand to run into Beth's office and ask her to search the catalog to see if we had it because my computer was already shut down. If we had an app that would not have been necessary and I could have just done a title search of our collections on my phone.
That being said, it would be a huge undertaking at this time for Summar Library to build it's own app. In The Summar Library one searches for our digital collection differently from how you search for a book or something that is physically in the library. So it might be a good ides to piggy back on apps that have been created by the providers of digital content like Gale. Gale is the company that provides one of our most used general databases called Academic One File. They also provide The Gale Virtual Reference Library and Literature Resource Center. So these collections are available now through our databases A-Z page and through your iPhone. After I downloaded The Gale APP, I had to prove that I was affiliated with Union University by providing a Union e-mail to obtain a password but then using the 3G networks I was able to search for journal articles. While I can't print from iPhone I can e-mail the articles to myself and it is just another interesting way to use our collections and do research from a hand held device.
If you have an iPhone or iPad you can just search the app store for Gale or Access My Library to download and start search our holdings on your phone.
Do your students need assistance with their research? Union’s Research Coaches are available to assist students with the challenges they often face when doing research:
Framing a research question
Choosing where to look for resources
Using resources in the most effective way possible
Knowing how to evaluate different sources
Citing your sources accurately
Union Librarians (Melissa Moore, T.R. Parker and Jenny Lowery) are “going public” to promote the availability of the library’s new Research Coach service. During October and November, you and your students will often find a Research Coach sitting at one of the round tables just inside the library’s entrance. Look for the yellow and black logo above to identify the location of one or more Research Coaches. If a Research Coach isn’t visible, please ask someone at the Information Desk for a Research Coach. You may also make an appointment with a Research Coach using the library’s Research Coach web page.
Many of you have heard the term "fair use" when it comes to using films in course or distributing copies of an article in class but what exactly is "fair use" and where does it come from? And how does fair use apply to academic libraries and university classrooms?
Today some of the librarians, faculty and others attended a webcast on fair use. It was entitled Libraries and Copyright: Fair Use and eReserves. It was conducted by Kevin Smith and Steve McDonald, both attorneys who specialize in copyright and work in academia. Kevin Smith is Scholarly Communications Officer at Duke University and writes extensively on copyright issues in regards to universities and academic libraries. He has commented on the recent court case involving Georgia State Universities and their eReserve policy. We hope to put eReserves in place at Union in the future. In any case today's presentation had to do with The Fair Use clause in American copyright law. I will try to be brief and unpack this in a way that is not mind numbing but it will be impossible to clear up all of the ambiguity with fair use. That is because fair use is a dynamic, not "frozen", "safety valve" of copyright restrictions.
In order to get to the need for the fair use provisions first Smith and McDonald needed to define copyright law. At the risk of oversimplifying copyright refers to intellectual or intangible property and prevents anyone besides the rights holder from copying, modifying, publicly distributing, performing or displaying the work. Well if you think about that present a huge problem for scholars and librarians. We copy, distribute and display works every day. Now there are exceptions for classroom use and exceptions for express written permissions like the license agreements that we sign with electronic journal databases. Yet still there are instances where Copyright law is just too restrictive.
In 1976 Congress ruled that fair use could be judged on a case by case basis. The idea was to uphold fair use and not to freeze it. Because information and the technology by which we acquire information is always chaning fair use must essentially be taken case by case. That is what makes fair use so ambiguous because it is meant to uphold the intent of the law and not the letter of the law where the letter of the law (Copyright) is just too restrictive. Below are listed the provisions or things that will be taken into consideration in a potential fair use dispute:
1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2)The nature of the copyrighted work
3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Essentially these four provisions of fair use mean that attorneys will have a lot of work. So much is open to interpretation. For those working in the academy this, in many ways provides more freedom because most of us are not reproducing, modifying or redistributing works to make a profit, nor are way doing so in a way that harms the profits of those involved. Considerations 1 and 4 both argue that purpose, in our case education, and economics will be taken into account. Also notice that provision 3 does not set a limit to the amount of a work that can be used. There is a myth that only 10% of a work can be reused but that is not true. It really is a case by case scenario and in academia we should use the appropriate amount to make a point or argument from another work.
In conclusion Kevin Smith argues that fair use should be a "last resort" because copyright law offers many other options such such as creative commons, public domain, classroom use, and works that are in the public domain. Still fair use can help us in academe to understand that we can take risks in an ever changing world of information.
References:
Smith, Kevin and McDonald, Steve (2010) Applying the Fair Use Doctrine, (PowerPoint Slides) Academic Impressions
U.S. Copyright Office. (2009) Copyright Law of the United States and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code. Washington, DC: U.S. retrieved from http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
We now have a great selection of Audio Books that you can download to listen to later. I recently downloaded, A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis and before I knew it, the file was in my iTunes account and now on my iPod. I was able to listen to Lewis struggle with humanity, death, love and the grief of bereavement in my car and my apartment over the weekend. The process is easy. When you click the link above or search in the catalog for "downloadable audio books" a list of all of the titles will come up. Choose the one you want and there is a link that will take you to NetLibrary. You will have to log in using your Union id and password if you are off campus and then you need to create a free account in NetLibrary. Once you do this you can log in to NetLibrary anywhere and then download away! The files download in portable MP3 format, can be stored in iTunes or on your computer, can be played using any MP3 device including an iPod or something else. If you need any help then don't hesitate to contact me at tparker@uu.edu or 407-461-2005 or comment on this blog. A list of our audio books is below but the collection will be growing. As many of you know audio books are great for listening to in the car when traveling.
1.Grief observed / C.S. Lewis
2.Problem of pain/ C.S. Lewis
3.Mere Christianity/C.S. Lewis
4.Heaven/M.L. Moody
5.Practice of the presence of God : /Brother Lawrence
6.Evangelical theology: an introduction / Karl Barth.
7.Prayer & praying men / E.M. Bounds
8.With Christ in the School of Prayer / Andrew Murray
9.My utmost for His Highest / Oswald Chambers
10How to pray / R.A. Torrey
11On Christian doctrine / St. Augustine
12The attributes of God, v. 2/ A.W. Tozer
13The attributes of God, v. 1/ A. W. Tozer
14Home tonight : further reflections on the parable of the prodigal son / Henri Nouwen
15Getting to know Jesus / George MacDonald
16Morning and evening daily devotions / C. H. Spurgeon
17Absolute surrender / Andrew Murray
18The Christian’s secret of a happy life / Hannah Smith
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Facebook is a social medium that has altered our culture in many ways. Facebookers have spent countless hours chatting with friends, updating statuses, searching for that old high school buddy, and reconnecting with family. Facebook has even changed our vernacular, for example, by turning the word friend into a verb (“Friend me”, one person may say to another). According to Wikipedia, Facebook has more than 500 million active users as of July 2010. That equals about one person for every 14 in the world. Statistics have shown that if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest, ahead of America, and behind only China and India. 
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