In the News: Coffee

Week of February 23, 2009

News Item: For many college students, coffee is the quintessential morning beverage of choice (or the mail afternoon and evening drink, if it’s finals week) . It’s easy to brew, easy to buy (thanks to the many java establishments on campus), and recent studies have shown that coffee may even help lower the risk of stroke. Just how popular is coffee in academic library holdings? See below….

Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival
By Daniel Jaffee. U of California Press, 2007
Call Number: HD9199. D442 J34 2007 or available online through NetLibrary

Buyer Be Fair: The Promise of Product Certification (DVD)
Directed by John De Graaf. Bullfrog Films, 2006
Call Number: HF1413 .B89 2006 (Media Center)

Changing Forests: Collective Action, Common Property, and Coffee in Honduras
By Catherine M. Tucker. Springer, 2008
Call Number: HD9199 .H6 T93 2008
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Eighteenth Century Collections Online Upgrades

Discover Eighteenth Century Collections Online and get up close and personal with history. You can access images of books published between 1701 and 1800, check out accounts of voyages and discoveries, browse historical biographies and memoirs, or search genealogical collections, gazetteers, works on church antiquities and tourist guides of Britain.

Already familiar with Eighteenth Century Collections Online? Check out the new look and look for these added features:

Research Guide section for undergraduates with contextual essays and chronology
Image Gallery
Most Popular Searches and Key Documents sections
Citation generator and export functionality
Expanded download and e-mail features
Keyword in Context feature from results list

Connect here to access Eighteenth Century Collections Online off campus.

Spirit Award Winning Films in the Library

As the first event to honor independent film exclusively, Film Independent’s Spirit Awards has made a name for itself as the premier awards event for the independent film community. It’s a celebration of the spirited pioneers who bring a unique vision to filmmaking. See Film Independent’s Spirit Awards for a complete description.

This years Spirit Award’s ceremony will be held on February 21st, and will recognize achievements in independent film, including Best Feature, Best First Feature, and Best Feature Made for Under $500,000 (the John Cassavetes Award). Below are past Spirit Award winning films that can be checked out from the FAU Library Media Center. To find books on independent cinema, see In the News: Independent Cinema.
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In the News: Food Safety 2009

Week of February 16, 2009

News Item: One year ago, In the News highlighted titles on food safety after 143 million pounds of ground beef was recalled from a California meat company. Since then Melamine was found in Chinese infant formula in 2008, and a Georgia processing plant was recently blamed for an outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium found in peanut butter and peanut paste products. How safe is our food, and what is the FDA and USDA doing to eliminate future foodborne illnesses?

The Chemical Feast: The Ralph Nader Study Group Report on Food Protection and the Food and Drug Administration
By James S. Turner. Grossman Publishers, 1970
Call Number: HD9000.9 .U5 T83

Ensuring Safe Food: From Production to Consumption
By the National Research Council (U.S.) Committee to Ensure Safe Food from Production to Consumption. National Academy Press, 1998
Call Number: TX531 .C587 1998

Fast Food Nation (DVD)
Directed by Richard Linklater. 20th Century Fox, 2006
Summary: “When a marketing executive for a huge burger chain finds a nasty secret ingredient in their burger recipe, he goes to the ranches and slaughterhouses of Colorado to investigate and finds that the truth is sometimes difficult to swallow.“
Call Number: PN1997.2 .F3768 2007 (Media Center)
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Diversity and Digital Collections@FAU Libraries

For Black History Month, the Digital Library features its Pearl City Oral History Collection. Pearl City was Boca Raton’s pioneering African-American community. One of the featured interviews is with Ms. Lois Dolphus Martin where she describes her 1930s segregated school experience at Roadman’s Elementary School, the first school in Pearl City.

The Roadman Elementary School

The school was first called Boca Elementary and the name was changed when it was moved to Dixie Highway and what is now Glades Road here in Boca Raton, Florida. Martin’s firsthand account sheds light on race relations as they existed in Delray Beach and Boca, and the events and changes over the decades which brought diversity to our community. To read and listen to Lois Martin’s interview or other Pearl City resident interviews click here.

In the News: Equity in the Workplace

Week of February 9, 2009

News Item: President Barack Obama recently signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 which makes it easier for workers, regardless of race, age, and gender, to get the pay they deserve. Also, the New York Times reports that women are likely to take the majority in the labor force for the first time in U.S. history. However, this has more to do with the current recession rather than gender equity as men have been on the receiving end of at least 82 percent of recent job losses.

Age Discrimination in the American Workplace: Old At a Young Age
By Raymond F. Gregory. Rutgers UP, 2001
Call Number: KF3465 .G74 2001

The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream
By Phyllis Moen and Patricia Roehling. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005
Call Number: HD4904.25 .M638 2005

Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It
By Martha Burk. Scribner, 2005
Call Number: HA1426 .B845 2005
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Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts – February Database of the Month

Overwhelmingly cited by a majority of aquatic science librarians as their primary database, the ASFA series (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts) is the premier reference in the field of aquatic resources. A growing international network of information centers provides input to ASFA, by monitoring over 5,000 serial publications, books, reports, conference proceedings, translations and limited distribution literature. ASFA is a component of the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Information System (ASFIS), formed by four United Nations agency sponsors of ASFA and a network of international and national partners.
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BioOne has a New Platform

BioOne is a not-for-profit collaboration that provides access to critical peer-reviewed research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. The new BioOne platform includes:

Easy reference downloads to all major citation managers (including EndNote, RefWorks). See Downloading to a Citation Manager help page.
Title-level tools such as RSS feeds, new issue e-alerting, and title/publisher information (including current ISI Journal Citation rankings)
Article-level tools such as related article and author searches, and reference linking both within and outside of BioOne
Free, personalized profile through “My BioOne” allowing for saved searches, favorite journals, e-alerting preferences, and institutional holdings

Also see BioOne’s Featured Articles, a special section highlighting selected articles by participating BioOne publishers. Many articles are open access; log in here to access FAU subscribed titles off campus.

In the News: Labor Unions

Week of February 2, 2009

News Item: On January 30th, President Barack Obama signed three executive orders that would “level the playing field for labor unions in their struggle with management,” and undo Bush administration policies that heavily favored employers over workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently announced that in 2008 the number of U.S. wage and salary workers who were members of a union increased by 428,000 to 16.1 million, or 12.4 percent of the overall workforce.

Autobiography of Mother Jones
By Mother Jones. Arno, 1969
Call Number: HD8073 .J6 A3 1969

Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson
By Tom Sito. UP of Kentucky, 2006
Call Number: Available online through NetLibrary

Fighting Against the Odds: A History of Southern Labor Since World War II
By Timothy J. Minchin. UP of Florida, 2005
Call Number: HD8083 .S9 M56 2005

On & Off the Shelf

Month: February 2009