Library News

Arts & Humanities Services presents Inner Selves, a collaborative display created by participants in Enable (an individualized service center for people with disabilities) and Writing 205 students from Syracuse University. In this display, the students help articulate the thoughts and emotions of the Enable participants, who describe their lives and interests as they theatrically transform into a role model of their choosing. Photographs of the participants in character accompany text co-authored by the participants and the students. The display is located in the Biblio Gallery on the 4th floor of Bird Library, and will remain up until July 11th.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 2:24 PM | Permalink

Elaine Coppola, Librarian for Government Information, Political Science and International Relations in the Social Sciences and Area Studies Department at Syracuse University Library has received the 2008 Syracuse University Library Distinguished Service Award.

Elaine’s letters of support were strong and eloquent in outlining her many contributions to Syracuse University Library. One colleague wrote:

“Because human relationships are central to effective academic librarianship, employees like Elaine are priceless. Her collegial nature, sense of humor, analytical ability, and overall sense of advocacy for individual librarians and the broad field of librarianship more generally, is demonstrated on a daily basis.”

Elaine is widely known for her skill in user support, faculty liaison work, reference, and government documents. She began her career at Syracuse University Library in 1979 as a Catalog Librarian Technical Services, a position she held for the next 10 years. In a portent of things to come, Elaine volunteered at the reference desk from 1984 until 1989, when she transferred to public services and joined the Reference Department.

Elaine served in a number of key roles in the ensuing period, including Social Sciences Reference Bibliographer, Reference Desk Manager, and Head of Reference from 1999 through 2003. Elaine assumed her present position in Social Sciences and Area Studies in 2005.

Concurrently, Elaine amassed an impressive array of publications, including her most recent article, “May Day, May 1” in the Spring 2007 issue of Documents to the People, reviews for Choice magazine, and the Political Science section of The Guide to Reference Books, 10th edition supplement.

Elaine’s commitment to SU Library is also evident in her extensive record of service, serving on or chairing library committees ranging from the current MetaLib Committee, to the Electronic Resources Advisory Group, the Library Cabinet, the Collection Development Committee, various search committees, SULA, and many others.

Elaine was previously honored by the Eastern NY Chapter of ACRL with its Librarian of the Year award in 1996 for her contributions to that organization. She has also been involved in a number of ALA committees and activities over the years.

Posted by Kathleen White at 9:42 AM | Permalink

Trial access has been established for RIPM - Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals.
Trial is through June 29th, 2008 and it is available via IP authentication.

To access the database, point your browser to: RIPM - Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals

For Off-Campus access please point your browser to: RIPM - Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals - Off-Campus access

RIPM - Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals is an international annotated bibliography of writings on musical history and culture, found in music periodicals published in seventeen countries between approximately 1800 and 1950. Treating primary source material, RIPM indexes the content of complete runs of journals, including articles, reviews, news columns, miscellaneous items, surveys of the press, bibliographies, iconography and advertising. In addition, this database offers access to an immense bibliography of music and to thousands of English-language translations of foreign documents. Approximately 20,000 records are added annually. Plans are currently underway to expand RIPM's coverage to include Latin America. RIPM is produced under the auspices of the International Musicological Society (IMS) and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML).

Note: Due to the nature of the sources in RIPM it is highly recommended that customers use the display format "Detailed" as the default setting for display of records in the result list

For more information or comments, please contact Carole Vidali.

Posted by Ozemede Kadiri at 2:23 PM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library now offers access to the world’s largest archive of visual histories of the Holocaust. The Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive, housed at the University of Southern California, includes nearly 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors, rescuers and other witnesses gathered by the Shoah Foundation. The interviews, which are in 32 languages, were conducted in 56 countries between 1994–2005. Syracuse University is one of only 10 partner universities worldwide that provide students, faculty, staff and the general public with access to the complete archive.

“Syracuse University Library is honored to become one of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s partners. The Visual History Archive is a welcome addition to our collection of multidisciplinary research tools,” says University Librarian and Dean of Libraries Suzanne Thorin. “The firsthand perspective provided by these interviews will be invaluable to students and scholars of history, religion, anthropology and many other disciplines.”

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute grew out of Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, established by film director Steven Spielberg following the release of “Schindler’s List.” The purpose of the project was to document the experiences of survivors and other witnesses to the Holocaust. The majority of the interviews—about 90 percent—are with Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution; also represented in the archive are political prisoners, Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) survivors, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, along with liberators, witnesses, rescuers and aid providers.

Users can search more than 50,000 geographic and experiential keywords, the names of every person mentioned in the testimonies, and biographical information for each interviewee. A selection of testimonies will be immediately available at SU; users can request that other testimonies be delivered to SU’s local server. The Shoah system makes use of Internet2, a relatively new network that is ideally suited to transferring large files like the Shoah videos. Users must be physically present on the SU campus to access the Visual History Archive, which is located at http://vha.usc.edu/.

“The Visual History Archive is an extraordinarily useful tool for addressing the issues of the Holocaust and making it relevant to the theme of being a bystander in today’s world,” says Alan Goldberg, professor emeritus in SU’s School of Education and coordinator of the institute’s “The Holocaust, Lessons for the Classroom,” a collaboration of Syracuse University, the Holocaust Museum, Houston, and the Warren Fellowship for Future Educators.

The mission of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is to “overcome prejudice, intolerance and bigotry—and the suffering they cause—through the educational use of the institute's visual history testimonies.” The institute relies upon partnerships in the United States and around the world to provide public access to the archive and advance scholarship in many fields of inquiry. The institute and its partners also utilize the archive to develop educational products and programs for use in many countries and languages.

For more information about Shoah or to arrange for a demonstration, contact Lydia Wasylenko at 443-4692 or lwwasyle@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 11:31 AM | Permalink