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.

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!

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.

Leap Day

Friday is the bonus day in 2008, the extra day, leap day. If you check on Wikipedia you will find a very succinct description covering several cultures telling you that the calendar is a complicated thing. If you want the backstory, perhaps a more detailed and readable explanation of how leap day came to be, check on our shelves for the history of the calendar. It involves math, history, religion, astronomy, personalities and several continents. Put those extra 24 hours to use and learn something new!

The Academy Awards

The 80th annual Academy Awards will be presented this Sunday, hosted by Jon Stewart. You can both read about past awards and check out award winning movies at the library. Van Wylen is not Blockbuster, and doesn’t intend to be, but we have worked to improve our selection by buying prize winners and best reviewed films while also accepting gifts from personal collections. We even have Jon Stewart’s “America (the book)”. Let the library enhance your red carpet weekend!

Valentine’s Day and the Library

What’s on the library shelves this Wednesday? Good things for your valentine at no cost to you! Check out “Love Songs from the Movies” for background music, “English Love Poems” for some traditional verse, “Love Poems of Ovid” for a really classical approach, or “Nothing But You: Love Stories from the New Yorker” for a modern slant on love. And there’s more, a lot more. The point is: with a little effort and the help of the library, you can present your sweetheart with a memorable Saint Valentine’s day treat. Play her some music, read him a story, put a poem in a card. You don’t have to tell that you got the idea here!

Parliament of Fowls Reading

Parliament of Fowls ReadingThe Cup & Chaucer, located in the lobby of the Van Wylen Library, will be hosting a read-aloud of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowls” on Valentine’s Day at 11a.m.This poem is the first reference to the idea that St. Valentine’s Day is a special day for lovers.All are welcome to come and be part of the reading, or come and listen to Curtis Gruenler perform sections of the poem in Middle English. For a brief synopsis of the “Parliament of Fowls” click here.

Lent and the library

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent. Forty days are set aside before Easter as a time of preparation. For some this might include extra devotions, prayers, fasting, or giving up favorite treats. Between the College and the Seminary we have many books about this season, but I would like to call attention to a category of items which might be of interest to anyone seeking a new way to prepare themselves for Easter. A call number search BV245 leads you to a list of prayer books in Van Wylen library. I find new inspiration in prayers written, not for a liturgy, but by other individuals, and there are many of them on the shelves this special Wednesday.

A. J. Muste

There are several events scheduled this week to honor A. J. Muste, a minister and graduate of Hope College who spent his life as a peace activist. If you were unable to see “Flags of Our Fathers” or “Letters from Iwo Jima” at the Knickerbocker, you might want to check the dvd out from the library. Or you could come in and leave a message on the interactive Muste sculpture in Van Wylen. You could peruse “Reminiscences of A.J. Muste” by using the microfiche machines, or just pull one of our many books on peace and non-violence from the stacks. If you know of an appropriate item about peace studies, which you think would be a good addition to the collection, send me a note.