Williams College Libraries News

Researching the Post-Soviet Period

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The marking of the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall may prompt many in the Williams community to look into issues related to the post-Soviet transition years, and the Library has a multitude of great resources for this. A good place to start would be our online catalog FRANCIS, using Subject searches such as Former Soviet Republics, Berlin Wall Germany 1961-1989; in addition, keyword searches such as "post-Soviet" and "human rights" or similar would get you started on your specific topic.

Our digitized Historical Newspapers collection will get first-hand reports from major U.S. newspapers of the time, all in PDF format - including photographs. If you want to get material from a different perspective, you can access English translations of foreign broadcasts from that time, all indexed and digitized in our database Foreign Broadcast Information Service reports.

For more primary sources, a search through our Congressional Publications digital collections would get right to the documents that detail our government's legislative response to the political, economic, and social issues during those eventful years. This database contains digital reproductions of all Congressional hearings, reports and other documents from 1789 to the present. All types of documents in the database can be searched at once, and the results are clearly organized for better understanding and to help place them in context to each other.

For help finding these resources, or to get help with any research topic you are working on, be sure to stop by the Research Help Desk in Sawyer or the Services Desk at Schow. You can get on-the-spot help, or we can set up a research appointment for you to get your research project jump-started in the most efficient way.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

New Exhibit: 1989-2009: The Fall of the Wall and the USSR

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

(Sawyer Library Lobby)

November 2009 marks the twenty-year anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the hastening of the decline of the Soviet Union in 1991. This display highlights just a small portion of the library's related collections.

Included are headline news articles from our digital Historical Newspapers collection, Congressional hearings from our government documents collection, and a small portion of the hundreds of the Library's books related to the political, economic, social and environmental issues of this time.

Many thanks to Professor of Political Science Cheryl Shanks for contributing the introductory essay included in this exhibit.

For more information, please contact Rebecca Ohm at 413-597-4321.

Internet Archive - Sources of Untold Riches

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Interested in finding moving images of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 in the Sea of Tranquility? How about a reading of Robert Frost's poetry, a Kafka short story in German, a recording of Barack Obama's inaugural address or a digital book on the history of Williams College? All of this and much, much more is available in an incredible resource of digital information, the Internet Archive (IA).

As of the end of September 2009, the Internet Archive includes over

206,000 moving images
406 audio recordings
1.6 million books
150 billion (!) web pages

All of the material in IA is in the public domain and can be freely used, although attribution is always a good idea.

The mission of Internet Archive is "offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format." Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive receives data donations from Alexa and others. In late 1999, the organization started to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages, and is working to provide specialized services related to training, education, adaptive reading or information access needs of blind and other persons with disabilities.

As a member of the Boston Library Consortium, Williams College is a contributor, though a minor one, to Internet Archive. We are currently working with IA to make scanned copies of the Williams Record available for searching and viewing. This has proven to be a complex task but progress is being made. Here is a sneak preview of some issues of the Williams Record.

So if you need recordings, images, historic web pages, or e-books, remember that the Internet Archive is a good and growing resource.

New Exhibit: Black Poets: Roger Bonair-Agard and DL Smith

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

(Sawyer Library, Reference)

We have a unique moment where two eminent black poets, one of them our own, will read and talk about poetry and resistance. Both share a number of loves and influences including the works of C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, and Pablo Neruda. A selection of their works are displayed in this exhibit.

This exhibit supports the campus events with Bonair-Agard sponsored by the Theatre Department, Africana Studies Program, and the Multicultural Center during the week of October 26.

For more information, please contact Lori DuBois at 413-597-4614.

Sawyer Café goes Cup-less

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

After watching stacks and stacks of paper "hot cups" disappearing at the Sawyer café this fall, we have decided to go cup-less. Over 1,100 hundred cups have been used in the past six weeks alone, only half of which were used for café machine produced drinks. That is an awful lot of paper products being used and associated waste being generated. The Williams College Libraries are committed to be more sustainable and going cup-less seems like a logical next step to take.

We ask students and others to use their cups when partaking in the machine generated coffee, tea, or hot chocolate or when using the free hot water. This new policy took effect on Friday, October 23.

This decision was unanimously endorsed by the Library Committee and is being taken to promote the College's sustainability efforts and to reduce the cost of providing hot beverages.

Transfer of journals P-PM begins

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Literature journals in the P-PM section will be transferred to the Library Shelving Facility starting October 15.
Articles from these journals may be requested electronically. We guarantee delivery within 24 hours, Monday-Friday. Information on the journal relocation project

Transfer of journals to off-site continues with P-PM section

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Literature journals in the P-PM will be transferred to the Library Shelving Facility starting October 15. Articles from these journals may be requested electronically. We guarantee delivery within 24 hours, Monday-Friday. For assistance in accessing materials in storage, ask a librarian.
More information on the journal relocation project

New Exhibit: The Bailey Collection of Books on Bees

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

(Flat Display Case, First Floor, Sawyer Library)

The importance of the bee to life on earth is reflected in a significant collection of books on bees and beekeeping formed by Professor Duane W. Bailey of Amherst College (father of Duane A. Bailey of the Williams Computer Science Department). Shown is a selection from more than two hundred volumes recently given to the Chapin Library.

For more information, please contact Wayne Hammond at 413-597-2462.

PaperCut means less paper wasted in the libraries

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Less than a month after the implementation of PaperCut, Sawyer and Schow libraries are already noticing a dramatic decrease in unnecessary printing.

In only three weeks we observed
* a 31% decrease in printing
* a 70% decrease in paper waste

In 2008 during the first three weeks of the fall semester staff at Sawyer Library counted 1449 sheets of wasted paper left at public printer stations. This year during the same time period, that figure dropped to 429.

Sawyer and Schow staff will continue to monitor printer use through the semester. We fully expect to see a more significant reduction in wasteful printing over the course of the academic year.

PaperCut was implemented at the start of the fall semester at the initiative of the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives, based on the recommendation of a campus-wide committee with representation from the student body, faculty and staff from the Libraries and OIT. The goal of the committee was to make users of campus printing more environmentally conscious while at the same time reduce printing across campus. For more information on PaperCut, go to http://print.williams.edu.

New Exhibit: Carlos Moore and Race in Latin America

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

(Sawyer Library, Reference)

Carlos Moore is an expert on the impact of race and ethnicity on domestic politics and inter-state
affairs. He is a leader in the ongoing global discussion on the topic of race, particularly race in Latin
America. Selections of Moore's works and other scholarly works on race in Latin America, including Assistant Professor Devyn Spence Benson's dissertation, Not Blacks, but Citizens: Racial Politics in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1961, are on display.

This exhibit supports Carlos Moore's public lecture "Race and Revolution in Castro's Cuba: A Personal Account" on September 24.