New Online Music Encyclopedia

A new addition to our Articles and Databases website is the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online .

This comprehensive online resource is devoted to music research of all the world’s peoples and includes the entire set of the ten volume Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. The online resource is searchable and provides an overview of a geographic region; a survey of the region’s musical heritage, traditions and themes; and a description of its musical genres, practices, and performances.


Visit our Articles and Databases website www.swccd.edu/~library/articles.htm to access the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online and other online resources that Southwestern College Library provides.

This Week in CQ Researcher

Racial Diversity in Public Schools by Kenneth Jost, September 14, 2007
Has the Supreme Court dealt a blow to integration?

Fifty years after the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools, a new ruling has raised doubts about how far local school boards can go to integrate classrooms. The court's 5-4 ruling in cases from Seattle and Louisville bars school districts from using race as a factor in individual pupil assignments.

Meanwhile, some experts argue that socioeconomic integration – bringing low-income and middle-class students together – is a more effective way to pursue educational equity.

• Should school systems promote racial diversity in individual schools?
  
• Should school systems seek to promote socioeconomic integration in individual schools?
  
• Is the focus on diversity interfering with efforts to improve education in all schools?

To read this article and others visit our Articles and Databases webpage http://www.swccd.edu/~library/articles.htm and click on CQ Researcher. Select the Access Off-Campus link for information on how to access this resource from off campus locations.

Alert! A new issue of your favorite periodical just arrived!

Would you like EBSCOhost to notify you or someone else each time a new issue of a favorite periodical enters the databases? It takes only a minute to set up a Journal Alert which will send you e-mails with links to each article in the new issue. Click here to find out what to do.

Botanical Riches - New Book of the Month

Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration by Richard Aitken (QK5 .A38 2007) catches the eye because of a huge red poinsettia on the cover. Inside, the bright-colored and sepia plates and sketches show plants from ancient times through the twentieth century.

Besides being delightful to look at, this book tells how plants have been used throughout history. We learn that the free-fruiting date palm had sacred significance in what later became Mesopotamia and that it has “perhaps the longest tradition of cultivation of any fruit tree in the Old World.” Throughout the area which gave rise to Islam, fig trees were used for food, shade, and beauty. The Olmecs, forerunners to the Aztecs, were vegetarians who ate maize (which had been domesticated from a wild grass perhaps 8000 years ago), beans, and squash. There are surprising facts in the book: the avocado was cultivated in southern Mexico and Guatemala as long ago as the time of the Olmecs, the sweet potato can be dated to 4000 years ago in coastal Peru, and tomatoes were once regarded as unsafe because of their poisonous cousin, the deadly nightshade.

This beautiful book can grace your coffee table for four weeks when you check it out from the Library.

ARTstor Image Addition

The Artstor Digital Library has added additional images in the second, and final, release of the Library of Congress "Eyes of the Nation" collection. This brings the total number of images in this collection to over 5,000 images.

"Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States," published 1997, provides a pictorial overview of American history including images of prints, posters, maps, manuscript pages, photographs, design, movie stills, and cartoons. The images found in the book were selected from the Library of Congress to "show how Americans have viewed themselves, and have been viewed by others.

To locate these images in the ARTstor Digital Library, simply perform a basic search with the following phrase, "eyes of the nation." You can also browse to view all the images included in this collection. From the ARTstor welcome page, click on "Image Gallery" then choose "Eyes of the Nation: A visual history of the United States (Library of Congress)" from the resulting list.

The ARTstor digital collection contains approximately 500,000 images from many time periods and cultures, and documents the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design, as well as many other forms of visual culture.

For information on how you can access and register for an ARTstor account visit our ARTstor information website at http://www.swccd.edu/~library/Docs/artstor0507.pdf .

Top Shelf

by Tony McGee and Katie Dunn, SWC librarians

Welcome to Top Shelf -- a weekly column where SWC Librarians share some of their favorite resources. Thanks to Tony and Katie for giving us this week's selections.

Book Selection:
Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes by Alexander Gates. Reference Collection QE521 .R58 2007

This encyclopedia provides an easy to navigate alphabetical listings for the terms, regions, people, and episodes in the fields of seismology and volcanology. It includes excellent in-depth discussions on topics like plate tectonics, seismic wave types, avalanches, landslides, and tsunamis. -Tony


Website Selection:
http://criticalcompendium.com/
Critical Compendium: a Daily Dose of Book Reviews from Around the World

Links to book reviews drawn from over 100 newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and online sources.

How it works: Each day 3-5 titles appear with a “teaser” of several lines. A link takes you to the actual review. The books reviewed are a mix of fiction and non-fiction. There is a long list of links to the book review sections of perhaps 100 newspapers, journals, magazines, and web zines. There is also a link to the archives.

What I like: Lots and lots of reviews in one place. Oh, how my To Read list is growing. Critical Compendium itself is not searchable but the short “teasers” can get your attention and link you to an exciting review. When you follow the links on the left side (to the newspaper and magazine reviews) you can search in whatever way that website is set up.

What I learned: Robin Pilcher is a male! I always thought he was a she. An August 29 review of a new book by this author caught my eye, and as I read though it, I thought perhaps the reviewer made a pronoun mistake, so I was off on a quick Google search. Well, I stand corrected.

Who maintains this site: Shawn A. Miller of Fairfield, CA. A Google search found that he writes a weekly column for the online version of the Fairfield Daily Republic. -Katie

This Week in CQ Researcher

“Domestic Poverty,” by Thomas J. Billitteri, September 7, 2007
Is a new approach needed to help the poorest Americans?

Despite sweeping welfare reforms in the 1990s and generally healthy economic growth in recent years, domestic poverty remains intractable. Moreover, signs are emerging that so-called deep poverty is growing sharply – most significantly among children. U.S. poverty is fueled by a long list of problems, including Katrina’s devastation, immigration, the growing income gap between rich and poor, the subprime mortgage fallout and education disparities.

* Is extreme poverty growing?
* Has welfare reform reduced entrenched poverty?
* Would more government spending on poverty help?

To read this article and others visit our Articles and Databases webpage http://www.swccd.edu/~library/articles.htm and click on CQ Researcher. Select the Access Off-Campus link for information on how to access this resource from off campus locations.