Top Shelf

by Sidney Laramie and Laura Galván-Estrada, SWC Librarians

Thanks to Sidney and Laura for this week's Top Shelf picks - the "best of the best" resources, brought to you by SWC Librarians.

Book Selection
Encyclopedia of Exploration
Call No. Ref G 80 W33 2004

I picked this reference set largely because of the subtitle of the second volume. The subtitle of the first volume is “Explorers”, and that of the second is “Places, Technologies, and Cultural Trends”.

The first volume contains almost 1,000 biographic entries in alphabetical order. The authors’ definition of “explorer” is broader than most – they include astronauts, scholars, artists, underwater explorers, and more. In addition, the book lists the explorers by “most relevant occupation”, “region of activity”, “sponsoring country or…nationality”, and year of birth. Most entries are between a half a page to two pages in length; some have illustrations. They usually end with a brief description of the future influence of the explorer’s finds.

The second volume is also a series of a-z entries, some of which are over ten pages long. Many of these are overviews of explorations of particular areas or geographic features; explorations by particular organizations, countries, etc., and explanations of geographic terms and of items used in exploring and cartography. These range from mappa mundis to keelboats and gnomons. There is an appendix of 65 maps of trade and exploration routes and a 101 page “Chronology of Exploration”. Both volumes are indexed and contain cross-references.

I had wondered how the authors were going to deal with the “cultural trends” in exploration and concluded they did a pretty good job. They accomplished this through articles such as “European Age of Exploration”, “Native Peoples and Exploration”, “Writing and Exploration”, “Renaissance”, and “Religion and Exploration”.
-Sidney.


Website Selection
http://www.hrw.org/
Human Rights Organization

Human rights involves such a wide range of issues and this site has so much information. Topics include but are not limited to Children's Rights, Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, Health & Human Rights, HIV/AIDS, Migrants, Refugees. You can also see the state of human’s rights in a specific country, by looking at its yearly report. Some of those reports date back as far as the late eighties. So, sit back and learn about the world around you in this multilingual, heart-wrenching site!
-Laura.