Month: November 2010

Great speeches of the civil rights movement and beyond

It would appear that most people don’t want to go outside, with the way everybody’s treating snow like it’s one of Oprah’s Favorite Things. So if you stay in, I recommend grabbing a book.

Like this one! Triumph, inspiration, struggle, a true appreciation for hardship and an understanding of America’s past and present: Say it Loud! compiles the greatest speeches of the Civil Rights Movement and African American identity. It’s a great resource, tracing the struggles of the 50s and 60s all the way to President Obama’s inauguration speech. While having a collection of speeches is helpful for things like history classes and assignments, it’s an important part of American history and identity that everyone should stay familiar with.

A thorough challenge to your school’s progress

You ever think that someone’s been arguing for the same change so long that they’ve been left behind?  Today’s book argues that both sides can end up hurting school progress by getting hung up on certain ideas, regardless of whether or not they’re more traditional or progressive. In Same Things Over and Over by Frederick Hess, the author shows how debates rage on about hot topic issues like bilingual eductation or vouchers, many aspects considered standard in education are often overlooked (like defining grades by age, for example).

It’s an interesting book for both students, educators, future educators, or current and future parents.

So you’ve got a corpse. What now?

In one of the more interesting (and probably weirder) books we’ve added to the collection recently, Norman Cantor’s After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver explores the trip of dead human bodies from end of life through into the ground. Find out what sort of social practices, legal processes, and other fun things get applied to bodies after their primary function has ceased.

It’s a morbidly interesting trip through our customs, medical, and legal systems to find out the rules for cadavers. Recommended for pre-med, pre-law, or anyone else. It’s actually pretty interesting!

Prep for this week’s House by upping your smallpox knowledge

Check out that wicked cover! That’s how you know that, in its day, smallpox was some hardcore business. The wickedly titled Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox is brought to you by author Gareth Williams, and chronicles how smallpox ravaged humanity. Not to spoil the story or anything, but smallpox is eventually defeated by a rural doctor from the very metal sounding Gloucestershire area in the United Kingdom.

Anyway, beyond the obvious target audience of pre-med and people interested in medical things, on House this week, they’re leading us to believe that smallpox is back like the McRib, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this is FINALLY lupus’s big week. Regardless, it might be fun to prep by finding out what the real smallpox was like.

A hen bakes a cake in the Book of the Day

Occasionally I like to remind you that we collect children’s books to support our early child education courses. Why? Because we’re total suckers for pictures here.

 

In The Red Hen, adapted by Ed and Rebecca Emberly, Red Hen bakes a Simply Splendid Cake for her friends… none of which are helping out. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end in a steel cage match, but the pictures are neat and kids will enjoy it.

Use the library to understand the sustainability push on campus

 

We get a lot of books to support the campus’s sustainability push. Pros, cons, debates, and more fill the pages of many of our new items, like today’s book: Powering the Future: The Problems & Possibilities of Green Energy. Learn the differences between alternative and renewable resources, explore the debates about certain fuels that might not pay off in the long run, and the impact these have on developing nations.

All of that and more issues are summed up in this great introductory text to the big issues inside sustainability. Remember, we’ve got plenty more like this one. Just ask a librarian!

Is your campus being bought and sold? This book thinks so

Today’s book, The Lost Soul of Higher Education by Ellen Schrecker, posits that outside interests are leading an idealogical assault on academic freedom. From corporate influence on material taught, distribution of funds, and using the current economic state to scare initiatives into action or inaction, the author compares the intrusion of outside interests on campuses across the US to the obstacles faced during the McCarthy era – and she would know, she’s a Cold War scholar.

So pick it up and see what you think. It should be of interest to anyone working, attending, or paying for higher education.

Money over medicine in today’s book

How bad is America’s healthcare system? Many already feel that the need to make profit is more important for pharmaceutical companies, but the author of today’s book believes it to be much worse.

White Coat, Black Hat by Carl Eliot contains many purportedly true horror stories from the medical world. Companies letting money jeopardize the testing process, secretly bankrolling every-day physicians, patients as consumers with no chance for advocacy, scholarly research journals depending on drug corporations’ advertising dollars, huge gifts frequently accepted by doctors from companies… It’s a big, scary list! It should be interesting for anyone entering the medical profession, people concerned with patients’ rights and advocacy, or anyone with a shady doctor.

The Ledger’s now available online. How to get it

Volume 33; Issue 4

If you’ve missed any of the Campus Ledger since, say, 1978, don’t worry! you can get any volume since its beginning at Billington Library’s Campus Ledger Archives.

There’s an 8 minute video (GAH!) explaining how to navigate it, but here’s a quick summary:

  • Search in that wonderful search box, or by clicking “advanced search” up top
  • Browse each year by selecting a volume (to the right of that glorious search box)
  • If you have an issue open that you need to print or download, there should be a dropdown in the left column for you to select “complete print document” that brings up a PDF of the issue, or “subset of print document” that lets you pick and choose pages. (It probably has the “document description” text currently showing)
  • The librarians would love to assist you! Get a hold of them or ask them on Twitter