Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Nobel Winner's articles -- free

Nobel Prize

Cell Press has made the articles from the Nobel Prize Winners for chemistry, physiology and chemistry available on line, free!

2012 Nobel Laureates

Nobel Prize Winner John Gurdon Shinya Yamanaka Shinya Yamanaka Medicine/Physiology
Nobel Prize Winner John Gurdon Sir John Gurdon Medicine/Physiology

Brian K Kobilka chemistry
Robert J. Lefkowitz chemistry

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Ebooks, Patron and Libraries

Here are some statistics from a Pew Internet Survey on ebook use in America's libraries.

12% of readers of e-books borrowed an e-book from the library in the past year. But a majority of Americans do not know that this service is provided by their local library.

Some 12% of Americans ages 16 and older who read e-books say they have borrowed an e-book from a library in the past year.
For the remainder of the Survey, go to  http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/06/22/libraries-patrons-and-e-books/

Thursday, June 21, 2012

New Literature Database

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. It comes from the Castle Corvey collection of Victor Amadeus, discovered in the 1980s. The Corvey Collection of Romantic era writing includes fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry and more, with a focus on especially difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers.


History of the Corvey Collection:
THE ORIGINS OF CORVEY
Landgraf Victor Amadeus (1779-1834)Founded by Ludwig the Pious, son of Charlemagne, in 822, the Benedictine abbey of Corvey became a significant centre of northwestern European culture in the ninth and tenth centuries. Emperors lodged at Corvey as guests, Christianity found a stable locus in Corvey, and monks from Corvey occupied important positions within the ecclesiarchy of Germany.  Destroyed for the most part during the Thirty Years’ War, Corvey was eventually rebuilt from about 1660 onwards in its present form, as a Baroque residence with church, monastery and farmhouses.  The Imperial Abbey became a Principality in the early thirteenth century and a Bishopric in 1794, but during the Secularization of 1803 its ecclesiastical significance was dissolved.  In 1821, Victor Amadeus (1779–1834), Landgraf von Hesse-Rotenburg, acquired Schloss Corvey by exchange, and his nephew, Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, inherited the estate in 1834, becoming in 1840 the first Duke of Ratibor and Prince of Corvey.  It was Victor Amadeus and his wife Elise—both avid encyclopaedic book-collectors typical of post-Aufklärung Germany—who were responsible for collecting the works of literature which now form the Corvey Collection.
THE CORVEY COLLECTION
The collection held at Corvey consists of approximately 73,000 volumes, forming one of the largest private collections in Europe, and since 1987 it is a listed cultural monument of Germany; Corvey as a whole will probably soon become part of UNESCO’s cultural heritage of the world.  The preliminary breakdown of the volumes is as follows: German–36,000; French–19,000; English–16,000; Other languages–2,000.  The library was begun as a court library for the Landgrafs of Hesse-Rotenburg, typical of the tastes of the times until the coming of Victor Amadeus in the 1790s.  Following the French Revolution, there was an increase in the number of English titles collected, something unseen in comparative collections of the time.  Victor Amadeus was a bibliophile, who carefully collected books in French, English, and German from a variety of interests.  Compared with similar libraries which offer a broader spectrum of texts, the Corvey collection is interesting because of its concentration of belles lettres: a depth of focus which is of a significantly different order from its more austere contemporaries.  The kinds of works collected by Victor Amadeus could be considered those of the more ‘trivial’ sort: novels, tales, travel literature, biographies, memoirs, and drama.  As a result of Victor Amadeus’ more populist tastes, many of the books held at Corvey are simply not to be found in other significant libraries in Europe or the United States.  The density of popular literature which had been collected during Victor Amadeus’ tenure at Corvey dissipated with his death in 1834, which coincides with the focus of Peter Garside and Rainer Schöwerling’s bibliography of the English novel, 1800–1829.


Older Adults and Internet Use

Overview

As of April 2012, 53% of American adults age 65 and older use the internet or email. Though these adults are still less likely than all other age groups to use the internet, the latest data represent the first time that half of seniors are going online. After several years of very little growth among this group, these gains are significant.
Read the full Pew Internet Report

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The Causes of Stability and Unrest in the Middle East and North Africa: An Analytic Survey

The Causes of Stability and Unrest in the Middle East and North Africa: An Analytic Survey
http://csis.org/files/publication/120213_MENA_Stability.pdf



The report focuses on underlying forces and causes at a time when political crisis -- and serious security issues -- dominate the region. These political dynamics and unrest are, however, only part of the story.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

NAXOS Music Online



Listen to holiday music from the library's database Naxos Music Online
Naxos Music Library offers online access to more than 17,000 CDs with more than 250,000 tracks, making it one of the largest classical music databases in the world. In addition to classical music, Naxos offers thousands of tracks of jazz, film music, world music, and classic and contemporary rock. Search for recordings by genre, label, instrument, composer, or performer, then create and listen to your own playlists