Library & Archives

Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

August 12, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Harry Dresden is a private investigator in present day Chicago. He is also a wizard. Taken together, these two facts tell you almost everything you need to know about the Dresden Files series. Really, the only other relevant information is that the books are fun to read. In this particular installment Harry is heroically and possibly stupidly defending an old nemesis, the warden Morgan, from the wrath of another set of nemeses, the White Council of Wizards, while trying to keep the collateral damage amongst the non-supernatural denizens of Chicago to a minimum. There are also vampires, werewolves, a skinwalker, a hard-boiled Chicago cop named Murphy, and what is apparently a sentient island of some sort. All in all, it’s an excellent breezy page-turner.

Availability: USMAI or COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Michelle Milne, Assistant Professor of Physics
Rating: Recommended

Too Awesome Not to Share

August 9, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

As Celia mentioned in her last post, librarians have a long tradition of upholding library users’ privacy. It’s in our professional Code of Ethics!

We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.

Code of Ethics of the American Library Association (last amended Jan. 2008)

We’re quite good at making sure that library users’ records and web browsing sessions are kept private (or not kept at all), and have a great history of standing up to legislation we see as infringing on users’ right to privacy (see the NYTimes article in which we receive the now infamous radical militant librarians label, then see us put it on a t-shirt). In general, people love us for this, but people also love social media, online shopping recommendations, and seeing what their best friends just bought on Etsy. There’s a weird conflict between the kind of privacy people say they want and the kind of privacy infringement they’re willing to put up with in order to have a personalized online experience. Libraries have largely stayed out of it, but recently I came across this really cool initiative that seems to have a good balance of user privacy and personalized recommendations.

Behold, THE AWESOME BOX:

This project is the brainchild of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and is being implemented at not only Harvard but a select group of public and academic libraries in the U.S. The concept is simple: Think something is awesome? Return it to a special “awesome box” or flag it with an “awesome bookmark” and library staff will scan it and have it magically appear on that library’s Awesome Page. What you read remains private, but you now have a better sense of what your fellow-library-goers are reading, watching, and listening to throughout the year.

Plus who doesn’t need a little awesome in their day?

What are your thoughts on the Awesome Box? Would something like it fly at St. Mary’s?

The Likeness by Tana French

August 7, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Early one morning, police detective Cassie Maddox is called to a murder scene. When she arrives she is horrified to discover she looks exactly like the murder victim, Lexie. Next, the cops on scene all decide not to notify the victim’s nearest and dearest, but instead report Lexie as injured and recovering so they can send Maddox undercover in her place to investigate the crime from the inside and the plot carries on from there.

If you can accept the assertion that Maddox is capable of imitating Lexie so well that she can successfully fool the woman’s four best friends/roommates and the even more outrageous assertion that any cop anywhere would think this was a legitimate investigation technique, this is an excellent mystery. French has a genius for writing wonderfully evocative characters and beautiful prose. This mystery was much longer and more rambling that is usual in the genre, but it was a great pleasure to read.

Availability: SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Michelle Milne, Assistant Professor of Physics
Rating: Recommended with Reservations

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

August 6, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is an interesting take on how humans make moral decisions. The book’s thesis has two main points. Firstly, humans make moral decisions via instinct and then use reason to rationalize their decision after the fact, which the author amusingly illustrates using the metaphor of a rider (reason) carried along on the back of an elephant (instinct). Secondly, humans evaluate moral behavior using six different foundations (care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation) rather than judging behavior solely on whether it causes harm to anyone or anything. Haidt argues that the weight a person assigns to each of the foundations is closely correlated with that person’s political affiliation. This argument goes a long way toward explaining how two people from opposite sides of the political spectrum can each leave a debate legitimately convinced that they occupy the moral high ground and that the other person is morally depraved.

The book is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive study, so don’t expect any judgements on what ethical behavior actually consists of. However, it is a pleasure to read and very clearly written. Haidt concludes each chapter with a scrupulous summary highlighting his main points so that the material is easy to understand even if you have no background in ethics, philosophy, or sociology.

Availability: SMCM Library, COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Michelle Milne, Assistant Professor of Physics
Rating: Highly Recommended.

The Library, the Surveillance State, and You

July 29, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

This has been the summer of surveillance. The Edward Snowden affair, the Bradley Manning trial, and WikiLeaks have dominated the news and prompted lots of conversations about privacy and surveillance.

How much privacy are we guaranteed? How much do we need? How much do we willingly give up? Did the events of September 11, 2001 change how we must think about the right to privacy?

All of us who use retail bonus or frequent customer cards, or have bought anything from Amazon know that our purchasing habits are well-known. Many of us willingly offer up all kinds of information about ourselves, including photos, on Facebook and other social media. But – in these examples we control what information we put other there (or at least we think we do).

How do you feel about finding out that the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on all of the phone calls you have made. What information? Metadata. What are metadata? We librarians thought you’d never ask! Metadata are pieces of information that describe or help locate other information. In the library authors’ names or titles (or even individual words in titles) are types of metadata. So are the descriptor words we use to describe the content of an article or book. The metadata you have been reading about in the news includes lots of information about the phone calls you make, but not the actual conversations you have had.

But there is metadata about you, too, if you have every borrowed something from the library. We can tell how many SMCM undergraduates borrowed SMCM books, we can tell how many times a particular book or DVD has been loaned, but most libraries scrub the specific data about who borrowed a particular book. In fact, the Annotated Code of the State of Maryland states that your library record is confidential and not subject to scrutiny even by a Freedom of Information Act request.

The USA Patriot Act changes all that in some ways. It says that the FBI can require us to given them information about what you library materials you have borrowed (if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court gives permission) and that we are not permitted to tell you that you are being investigated.

We think what you read, or watch, or listen to, is your business. Does it matter to you? Would it matter to your employer that you have been reading about how to get unions into a workplace? Would it matter to the government that you have been reading about anarchy? Should it?

The librarians’ code of ethics has been based on reader confidentiality since 1939. Some of the metadata can be very useful. We want to know if that book on anarchy has been borrowed 5 or 15 or 50 times in the past ten years. But we don’t want to know who has been reading it.

Keep your eye on the surveillance debate. This is about more than which brand of frozen peas you bought, or the banana slicer you purchased on Amazon, or the book on socialism you borrowed from the library. In the meantime, we’ll keep working hard to protect your privacy.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

July 29, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Ender’s Game is a science fiction novel set in Earth’s future. To protect earth from being attacked by aliens. The government designed a plan to breed geniuses in search for the perfect child to save planet earth. A young brilliant boy by the name of Ender lives with his parents and two other siblings. All three siblings are highly intelligent, though vastly different in genetics. Ender is a sensitive boy, his brother cruel and controlling and his sister a peacekeeper. Though Ender’s brother and sister were exceptional and wanted to join the government military training courses, the government only selected Ender for what was to become the transformation of his mind and body.

Availability: SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Cheryl Colson
Rating: Highly Recommended

The Best American Short Stories

July 12, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

The Best American Short Stories series perfectly highlights the amazing diversity and skill of today’s writers. The book is set up in a way that each short story is like a chapter – maybe ten pages – but each story is so completely different that within an hour you can feel elated, terrified, uncomfortable and content. Topics range from road trips to Jewish women to love lost to the trouble of children. Within one book – and there are at least seven within the SMCM library, each denoting a year – you are bound to find at least one story that will appeal to you. This is the perfect thing to read when you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to a whole novel, but you want a thought-provoking way to get lost for a few hours. Even as a person new to short stories, I consider these books a must-read for anyone who needs a little pick-me-up.

Availability: SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Jennifer Walker
Rating: Highly Recommended

A librarian walked into a bar…

July 9, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Do you remember Paula Cole? She is a singer songwriter known by some for her first big hit, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and by others for the Dawson’s Creek theme, “I Don’t Want to Wait.” You are most likely not in the rarefied group, those of us who will remember her as the singer who shushed librarians in the House of Blues. Yes, it was a very special occasion for us all when she politely but firmly asked us to shut up and listen to her sing. Since becoming a librarian I have been shushed many times in the library, but never before have I been shushed in a bar. This was without a doubt one of the most memorable moments of this year’s American Library Association’s Annual Conference (ALA.)

There were few celebrity sightings at ALA this year, but there was a panel with Baltimore native Laura Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series and winner of almost every crime award possible; the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Agatha Award, Nero Wolfe Award, Shamus Award, and the Quill Award.

I did get a sneak peak at Grumpy Cat’s new book, A Grumpy Book. Unfortunately he wasn’t available to sign his book so the question remains, will he sign autographs with his left or right paw?

–Pamela

June’s Prize Winner is …

July 3, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Melanie Gilkerson has won the monthly prize drawing for June.

Submit a review in July to be eligible for the our next drawing. Don’t forget prizes are available for all participants who submit a review between June 3 and August 16.