In the News: College Athletics

Week of April 6, 2009

News Item: March Madness is over. Now it’s on to the Big Dance for the Michigan State Spartans, the UConn Huskies, the North Carolina Tar Heels, and the Villanova Wildcats. The 2009 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball champion will be crowned on April 6 in Detroit. Have some spare time before the final game tip-off? – check out some of these books on sports in higher education.

Air Ball: American Education’s Failed Experiment with Elite Athletics
By John R. Gerdy. UP of Mississippi, 2006
Call Number: GV346 .G468 2006 (also available online via NetLibrary)

Athletics and Academe: An Anatomy of Abuses and a Prescription for Reform
By Wilford S. Bailey and Taylor D. Littleton. Maxwell Macmillan, 1991
Call Number: GV351 .B34 1991

Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education
By Murray Sperber. Henry Holt, 2000
Call Number: GV351 .S63 2000

In the News: Liberal Economic Backlash

Week of March 30, 2009

News Item: President Barack Obama’s administration has drawn fire from left-leaning economists for continuing to bail out banks with hundreds of billions in taxpayer money. Some observe how this is a continuation of George W. Bush’s administrative policies. Many of these economists had been supportive of Obama’s bid for the presidency in the lead up to the November 2008 election. Paul Krugman, 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics; Joseph Stigletz, former World Bank Chief Economist; and Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration; among others, argue that greater spending on social programs and infrastructure will have a more positive influence on the economy in the long term than propping up banks destined for failure.

Contributed by James F. Tracy, Assoc. Professor, Communication and Multimedia Studies

In the News: Star Trek

Week of March 23, 2009

News Item: Many die-hard Star Trek fans go out of their way to collect anything and everything related to the science fiction television and movie series. There are action figures, comic books, trading cards, mugs, t-shirts, and even furniture based on the franchise that began in the 1960s. A recent story in the Home section of the New York Times highlighted the fascination that some Trekkies have for Captain Kirk’s U.S.S. Enterprise chair. These enthusiasts even go so far as to have sophisticated replicas of the chair built for their living rooms. The books below may not cover the architectural and interior design concepts of the Enterprise, but they do provide insight into the Star Trek phenomenon that continues to pervade American popular culture.

American Science Fiction TV: Star Trek, Stargate and Beyond
By: Jan Johnson-Smith. I.B. Tauris, 2005
Call Number: Available online through NetLibrary

Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles, and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek Series
Edited by David Gerrold et al. BenBella Books, 2006
Call Number: PN1992.77 .S73 B63 2006

Deep Space and Sacred Time: Star Trek in the American Mythos
By Jon Wagner and Jan Lundeen. Praeger, 1998
Call Number: Available online through Greenwood e-books
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Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet

In celebration of Women’s History Month, The National History Women’s Project (NHWP) is recognizing women in the forefront of the environmental movement. From the instinctual ecological considerations of gathering to battling the political complexities of bureaucracies and industries, women have always played a role in protecting and sustaining the world around them.

During the month of March the FAU library, Boca campus, is displaying books in the lobby highlighting women’s relationship to the environment. Browse titles from Florida’s own Marjory Stoneman Douglas such as The everglades: River of grass and The wide brim: early poems and ponderings by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, or NHWP’s featured honoree Rachael Carson’s selected writings, The house of life: Rachel Carson at work.

In the News: Singularity University

Week of March 16, 2009

News Item: In February MIT Professor Ray Kurzweil secured an agreement with NASA and Google to embark on “Singularity University.” SU will offer classes and research programs examining biotechnology, nanotechnology, and Kurzweil’s overall vision of a society where the “artificial intelligence” and decision making powers of computers will eventually surpass and replace similar capacities of humans. Especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, social scientists and self-proclaimed “futurologists” have assessed and ventured predictions on how automation and information technology influence economics, culture, and society. The establishment of SU provokes further concern about the present and future relationships between technology and society.

After the New Economy: The Binge…And the Hangover That Won’t Go Away
By Doug Henwood. New Press, 2003
Call Number: HC106.83 .H46 2003

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
By Ray Kurzweil. Viking, 1999
Call Number: Q335 .K88 1999

Being Digital
By Nicholas Negroponte. Knopf, 1995
Call Number: TK5103.7 .N43 1995
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Turn on, Tune in, Drop out, or Just Browse the Sixties

Shortly after the demonstration, I got a call from Manny, my college roommate. He was now an army psychologist, working on secret LSD experiments with soldiers (recently it was revealed that these experiments were CIA-funded), and he wanted to know if I was interested in trying some. “Sure,” I replied. I had never even tried marijuana, but I heard talk about LSD at Maslow’s house. At Berkeley, I had lined up at the Langley Porter Clinic for two hours hoping to be a subject in an LSD experiment, but the quota was filled. They paid volunteers one hundred and fifty dollars to take it then!

The CIA Turned Me On to LSD, by Abbie Hoffman. In Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman, by Abbie Hoffman. (New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2000).

Find this book and other primary sources in the new FAU database, The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960 to 1974.

In the News: Demise of Newspapers?

Week of March 9, 2009

News Item: The Rocky Mountain News, a daily newspaper from Denver, Colorado, published its final edition on February 27, 2009. Many papers across the country could face similar problems if potential buyers are not found, while others such as the Chicago Tribune are seeking bankruptcy protection. Also, the Christian Science Monitor will soon become a weekly paper, cease its daily print editions, and rely mainly on the Web as a means of publishing its news. Is this the end of traditional newspapers as we know them? (Democracy Now! reported on this topic last week)

American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media
By Neil Henry. U of California Press, 2007
Call Number: PN4888 .E8 H46 2007

Breach of Faith: A Crisis of Coverage in the Age of Corporate Newspapering
By Gene Roberts. U of Arkansas Press, 2002
Call Number: PN4867 .B674 2002 (At Jupiter – May be borrowed through ILL services)

The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
By David Nasaw. Houghton Mifflin, 2000
Call Number: Z473 .H4 N37 2000
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The American Civil War Research Database – March Database of the Month

The American Civil War Research Database is the definitive online resource for researching the soldiers, regiments, and battles of the American Civil War. Originally created by Historical Data Systems, Inc., the database contains indexed, searchable information on over 4 million soldiers and thousands of battles, together with 15,000 photographs. With thousands of regimental rosters and officer profiles, the database will continue to grow as new information is loaded bi-annually. Continue reading

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

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