New this week

If you haven’t checked out our new book lists–or subscribed to the rss feed–we publish new lists of new titles every week.  Yes the economy’s bad, but we are still buying new books, journals, CDs and films, and online resources. Here’s a sample of what’s new in the library this week: Since we’re in the season of meteor showers, it might be interesting to look at The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars by Christopher Cokinos, a study of the pioneering explorers and eccentrics who’ve become entranced by the meteors and their imprints on earth. Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep, from our CD collection, is a set of folk songs and nursery-rhyme inspired songs focusing on themes of motherhood and childhood.  Rolling Stone says, “The music is beautiful and the vibe mellow,” and you can hear her talk about it in a radio interview and sample the music here. A number of new titles about alternative energy, including its use in building design, the pioneering promise of nanotechnology in photovoltaics, a history of hybrid cars, and a look at wind energy are also new this week in the library. Finally, there’s my favorite genre: biography.  A biography of Mum Bett, the first slave granted her freedom by a United States court, in Massachusetts in 1781, by arguing that “all men are born free and equal” made her slavery illegal in Massachusetts.  A group biography of presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson also makes its appearance. Check out our other new books, or subscribe to the RSS feed!

Questions? Ask a Librarian!

Did you know that you can Text a Librarian for answers to all of your library or literature questions? All you have to do is text your question to 66746 and begin your message with the word husky. You can also get answers at the Reference Desk  by calling (617) 373-2356, or visiting on the second floor of Snell Library during these hours:
Mon-Thurs: 9:00am – 9:00pm
Fri: 9:00am – 6:00pm
Sat: 12:00pm – 5:00pm
Sun: 12:00pm – 8:00pm
Coming to a Snell Librarian with your questions guarantees that you’ll get put in the right direction, and they often go above and beyond the scope of their job to assist you in whatever project you have.

Publishers improve searching and retrieval

Several of our ejournal and online publishers have launched improved, redesigned web sites over the past weekend.  I’m not sure why all of a sudden everyone’s doing this, perhaps to prepare for the beginning of the academic year. Wiley’s web site, rechristened Wiley Online Library, has a more intuitive interface with neater layout and more white space.  There’s a new search engine to deliver more relevant results, and more options for receiving up-to-date information. If you already had a personal account on Wiley to receive alerts, your account has been migrated to the new system. Table of Contents, EarlyView  and Accepted Article Alerts have all been migrated with your account. Saved searches and saved search alerts were not transferred and will have to be re-created. Lexis-Nexis weighs in with a new interface as well, with more search options on the home page, easier access to “landmark” court cases, and improved navigation.   The Lexis-Nexis change is significant, and because this is a large database with many different types of materials, it may take some getting used to.  If you don’t see something you are looking for, please let us know. Finally our new Discovery service has some cosmetic changes on the results screen, with shadow boxes on the left for refining results and linked databases higher up on the right.  Because this service is currently under development at the NU Libraries, there will be further changes over the next few weeks.

Angry, Distraught, Jobless

Here at Snell Library, we are all fortunate to have jobs. Actually, we’re fortunate that the library is growing rather than diminishing, and that we will even be hiring new people in the fall. The same can’t be said of other libraries or many businesses. This is because thousands of people are jobless and probably will continue to be jobless for some time to come. I am even ready to believe that we maybe we’re being lied to about unemployment levels in this country and that actual unemployment may be much closer to Great Depression levels. I have prepared myself for the fact that perhaps this will last another ten years or so; just like the Great Depression. So, with apologies for doing a downer of a blog post, let me first of all say that I sincerely hope my outlook is a bit too extreme. I am simply preparing for the worst. I can also suggest one remedy for getting through a time of economic turmoil; reading about it. Watching it. Here are some books and movies we have that can help you make sense of these troubled times and provide some metaphysical sort of sympathy for those who have it worse off than us. 1. Hunger by Knut Hamsun, 1891 This book is a stream of consciousness tract written from the mind of an arrogant, lonely, starving writer who lives half the time on the street and half the time in a shoddy apartment that he is constantly behind on with his rent. Having read this book earlier this summer, I can attest that it is not an easy read, although it is only about 190 pages. When it was first published in Norway 120 years ago, it was considered a radical, experimental novel and rather explicit in its content. In any age, I think it can just be considered a classic novel of desperate unemployment. 2. The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner, 2006. Everybody has probably heard of the Will Smith movie based on this book; or at least, based on the life of the same man. Chris Gardner is now a billionare Wall Street broker. Decades ago, he was a twenty-something black man with a young son, working in San Francisco, yet homeless due to truly unfortunate circumstances. He spent nearly a year in soup kitchens, shelters and hotels with his son, but  never gave up. This is an inspiring story of unemployment, even if Gardner’s story itself is not the narrative of so many other working homeless people. 3.  Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, 2002. I have not read this book, but what I do know that it is  about the working class of the United States and how they have been tricked out of their optimism in the American Dream by low wages and cruel workplace treatment. Ehrenreich is an investigative reporter who went undercover for a year; finding work in menial jobs where she could get experience from the inside ,and compiled it all in to this book. Murnau_LastLaugh_2.jpg image by si86 4. The Last Laugh directed by F.W Murnau. 1924. Okay, I’ll be straight: this isn’t exactly the type of movie I’d recommend to just anybody. It is not , by today’s standard’s, “accessible.” It’s a silent film. It is in Black and White. It has the distinction of being a film without a single intertitle that pops up to explain any action. But being a fan of silent films, I have to put it here. And seeing as it is about a doorman who loses his job and is demoted to washroom attendant in a hotel, to his utter humiliation, I think it is an important enough film for recessionary blues. In fact,  the film has a completely unexpected happy ending that director F.W Murnau apparently did not want to put in, but he was forced to by the studio. This film was made in Germany. Even they like happy endings sometimes. 5. Naked and other Screenplays by Mike Leigh, 1995. I would just recommend the film Naked, a truly great, angry, distraught film. But we don’t have it on the shelves. So you can read the magnificent screenplay by English writer-director Mike Leigh if you please. Briefly, it is about a man, Johnny (played by David Thewlis in the film) who flees Manchester for London, where he reunites– for lack of a better word– with his estranged girlfriend, Liz and her troubled roommate, Sophie and proceeds to seduce Sophie while  manipulating and abusing both women. Later, he proceeds to further manipulate everybody he comes across on the streets of London. Not a film for the family. But then, most of these titles aren’t.