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Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice

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Opening page of 'The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano

Opening page of ‘The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano’
© The British Library, London

Historical researchers, be they students or faculty, are always interested in primary source materials–original photos, essays, letters, legislation, newspapers, etc.–that may open a door to the past. Among the St. Mary’s Library’s digital primary source collections is Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice, a database that brings together documents from archives and libraries around the Atlantic world.

Included in this online resource are documents covering the following themes:

  • Slavery in the Early Americas
  • The African Coast
  • The Middle Passage
  • Slavery and Agriculture
  • Urban & Domestic Slavery
  • Slave Testimony
  • Resistance & Revolt
  • The Underground Railroad
  • The Abolition Movement
  • The Legacy of Slavery

This is just a sampling of the various topics covered in this truly amazing collection. Take a few minutes to explore.

19th Century African American Newspapers

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Frederick Douglass greeting

The Library has a great collection of 19th century African American Newspapers that you can access online through Accessible Archives. Primary source research has never been this easy! Included in this collection are the following historical newspapers:

  • The Christian Recorder
  • The Colored American/Weekly Advocate
  • Frederick Douglass Paper
  • Freedom’s Journal
  • The National Era
  • The North Star
  • Provincial Freeman

Take a few minutes, explore the collection, and learn more about this amazing collection of first-hand reports from the 1800s.

Happy Birthday Rosa Parks

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Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks in November 1956
Photograph: Photographer not identified/Library of Congress

February is Black History Month, and while we all take time to recognize and reflect upon our nation’s history, present, and future, we can also make Black History Month come alive thanks to the Library of Congress.  Today (February 4) would have been Rosa Parks’ 102nd birthday, and surely not by coincidence, an exhibit of her letters and photographs opens at the Library of Congress.

Selections from the 10,000 item collection will be available for public viewing on the first floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building from March 2 – 30, and then will be included in the current exhibition The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle For Freedom, which is open through September 12, 2015 on the second floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building.  Both exhibits are open Monday – Saturday from 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM.

Pictures of some of the items are available here from The Guardian (full article here) and just from these few pictures, the breadth of the collection is astonishing: there are images of poll tax receipts, a Presidential Medal of Honor, a pancake recipe, and even a letter complaining about not being allowed in the library.  Rosa Parks’ act of refusing to give up her seat on the bus is well-known throughout our country – it is rightfully regarded as a seminal moment in not only the civil rights movement, but the whole of U.S. history.  To be able to see her thoughts and words in her own handwriting provides a stark perspective of what led her to strike one of the first blows against Jim Crow.  Looking at and reading these documents allows us to appreciate the immense significance and courage of her actions – not just on that day in December 1955, but in the ensuing decades until her passing in 2005.

If you can’t make it up to D.C. to view the exhibit, fear not – the Library of Congress will be posting some of the collection online later this year.  And you can always check out some of the SMCM Library’s materials about Rosa Parks and the larger U.S. civil rights movement.

-Conrad Helms

Check Out a Chromebook

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chromebookThe SMCM Library now has two Chromebooks available for students to borrow, in addition to the laptops we already loan.

A Chromebook is similar to a laptop, but there are a few distinct differences:
It’s lighter….a LOT lighter.  If you’ve ever borrowed one of our regular laptops, you know that they are heavy.  While you can do many of the same things on a Chromebook that you would expect to do on a laptop (i.e. word processing, slide shows, spreadsheets, etc.)they don’t run the same types of applications that regular laptops do.  Everything is cloud-based and based on Google Apps.  As a result, one thing you’ll notice right away is that they boot up a LOT quicker than the laptops do–less than 30 seconds from pressing the power button! This is because there’s virtually nothing to load; everything is accessed online.  Once it boots up, you open the Chrome browser and log in to your smcm.edu account.  From there you can go straight to Google Apps to start working or accessing your saved documents.  The files you create in Google Apps are fully compatible with their Microsoft Office counterparts (Google Docs = MS Word, Google Slides = MS PowerPoint, Google Sheets = MS Excel).  Google saves your work in real time, so you’ll never have to worry about losing your work due to a power outage or Windows crashing.  If you want to save it locally, you can do that too–just put your thumb drive in the USB port and save your files there!
Our loan policies for the Chromebooks will be the same as the ones for the laptops:a default 3 hour loan (with one renewal) as well as an option for a 2 week loan (subject to availability).  They’ll come with a case and a charger, so they’re ready to work right away.
If anyone has any questions, ask at the circulation desk or email Conrad Helms, Patron Services Librarian, at cahelms@smcm.edu.

A New Look for the Library Website

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Screenshot of old library website

Goodbye, old website! We thank you for serving us well these past few years!

As you may have already noticed, the Library website, like the rest of the St. Mary’s College website, has a new look! Over the past few months the librarians and the amazing Web Services team have been working hard to create website for the Library, Archives, and Media Center that are

  • easy to use
  • attractive to view
  • informative
  • and responsive, meaning you can view and interact with the site effectively regardless of the size of your screen.

We know that most people come to our Library’s website to access research resources, so we’ve featured OneSearch and all of our research tools like the catalog, ejournals, databases, and interlibrary loan prominently on the Library’s homepage. Our menu options stayed the same (About, Services, Research), so most of our information is in familiar places. We’re also starting to feature different, lesser known library items in our In the Collection feature. Take a look! You just might find your new favorite journal, book, or database.

I know some of you may be asking yourselves: Why the change? Why so drastic?

The biggest push for this dramatic change is in the responsive nature of our new library website. As I mentioned above, this means that you’ll be able to access the library website from any device–laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc.–and have the display be optimized for your screen. No more zooming in or excessive scrolling. Our old library website layout didn’t meet responsive web guidelines, so we used this change as an opportunity to make some big changes.

We’re excited about our new website and we hope you are too!

 

Crafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist

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mathematical bead braceletsCrafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist is a new book from CRC Press featuring the stunning bead jewelry designs of St. Mary’s mathematics professor Dr. Susan Goldstine.

Drawing from her love of math, crochet, jewelry-making and puzzles, Dr. Goldstine and co-author Dr. Ellie Baker have put together a book designed for crafters, puzzle lovers, and pattern designers.

You can find Crafting Conundrums in the stacks on the 2nd floor of the Library.

MathSciNet

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soap bubbles

Photo by John Britt on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Published by the American Mathematical Society, MathSciNet is a searchable electronic database that contains reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for literature in mathematics. It contains over 3 million items and is pretty much THE disciplinary research tool (along with ArXiv) in mathematics. It’s now celebrating its 75th year of publication. Needless to say, that’s a lot of math over the years.

Involve: a Journal of Mathematics

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math drawing on chalkboard

Triangle by Clemens Koppensteiner on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The mathematical journal Involve features research that, at a minimum, contains one-third student authorship. It’s aim is to “showcase and encourage high-quality mathematical research involving students from all academic levels.” Published by Mathematical Sciences Publishers, Involve is an Open Access journal, which means all articles are available to read and download for free on the journal website.

 

O Privacy, Where Art Thou?

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A very disturbing discovery has been made. The software used by the St. Mary’s library, University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) libraries, and countless other academic and public libraries to lend ebooks is knowingly violating users’ privacy.

As documented in Ars Technica, Adobe Digital Editions tracks and compiles data on which ebooks users download and read, and exactly what each user does with those books. Worse yet, Adobe is sending that information to its servers in plain text, using unencrypted channels, so just about anyone could access that information. Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader made the discovery on October 6, 2014, but the violation is believed to have started with the release of Adobe Digital Editions 4.0 in early September.

How it works

Adobe Digital Editions is used by many libraries as a PDF reader for ebook lending to control the digital rights management (DRM) on all borrowed ebooks. This software is essentially what “returns” a borrowed ebook when the loan expires by removing it from a borrower’s computer. Most ebook publishers require a DRM as part of the licensing or sales agreement to ensure intellectual property rights are not violated by end users.

Our reaction

Librarians are furious. As you may recall from when Edward Snowden leaked the NSA’s secrets, librarians value their patrons’ privacy and take every possible precaution to ensure privacy is maintained.  The American Library Association (ALA) has issued this statement and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) has published this blog post in reaction to the news. Quoted from the ALA statement:

In response to ALA’s request for information, Adobe reports they “expect an update to be available no later than the week of October 20” in terms of transmission of reader data.

Here at St. Mary’s, we will be keeping a close eye on the situation.

 

Update 10/29/2014:

Adobe made available a software update on Friday, October 24th which includes an encryption mechanism so all user data gathered by and sent to Adobe’s servers is no longer transmitted in plain text.  ADE users can download the update (and read Adobe’s privacy statement) here. The American Library Association issued a statement on October 27, 2014 and Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader published an update on the privacy breach on October 23rd.

Books for Sale

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The annual library book sale is next week, October 7-8. We will be selling books on Tuesday and Wednesday from 9-4, rain or shine outside the entrance to the library. We have books in a range of subjects and movies on DVD. (Sorry, we have no VHS tapes.) This year’s featured collections include mid-20th century popular fiction and cookbooks.

Book Prices are $0.50 for paperbacks and $1.00 for hardcovers.

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