New Bestsellers

Lane Library has a selection of newly published bestsellers, ready to check out for your summer reading:

• Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis
• Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities by Elizabeth Edwards
• Driving Like Crazy by P.J. O'Rourke
• The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow
• Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
• Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
• Seducing an Angel by Mary Balogh
• Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
• Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley
• The American Future: A History by Simon Schama
• Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever by Walter Kirn
• Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
• My Father's Tears and Other Stories by John Updike
• Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
• Loitering with Intent by Stuart Woods
• One Nation Under Dog by Michael Schaffer
• The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David A. Kessler
• Wetlands by Charlotte Roche
  

Sunday Shift at the Reference Desk

There are days when it's just really slow-going at the reference desk. Today was one of them. Plenty of students in using the computers, but very few needing much assistance. Despite that I did get a doozy of a question. A student came to ask for help finding two peer-reviewed articles on the rectus femoris muscle (a part of the quadriceps I've come to find out). The difficulty was that it could not be a case study or a case report. Lots of articles on the muscle group, but we couldn't find anything that wasn't a case study. I suppose that most medical journals would prefer to publish results from experiments.

Turns out that I had the best luck searching some of the more general databases like Proquest and Academic Search Premier rather than some of the more focused medical databases I started with like Medline and Cinahl. I did a keyword search for "rectus femoris" with limits on Peer-reviewed and Full Text and did some scanning of the results list and found 3 articles the student could use. Just goes to show - sometimes (and I usually don't think this is true in a search strategy) the most general your search, the better your results.

Catalog Card Generator

Have you seen this online Catalog Card Generator? It is a fun tool for the bookish types out there.

Lane Library - Now on Facebook!

Are you on Facebook? Do you find yourself on it when you should be studying? Now you can multi-task a little bit more easily. Keep yourself linked into what's happening at the Lane Library and how we can serve you by becoming a fan of ours on Facebook.

Lane Library at Armstrong Atlantic State University's Facebook Page

Promote Your Page Too
You can link to our website, get in touch with a reference librarian, find out about new books and much more. You can even search JSTOR and Worldcat right from Facebook under the Boxes tab. Just another way that we're trying to serve you!

1958-05-20 Adlers fire 003

1958-05-20 Adlers fire 003
Originally uploaded by AASU Armstrong University Archives

Fifty one years ago May 20th Adler's Dept store, a landmark on Savannah's Broughton Street for 70 years burned in a fire that took 9 hours to contain. Thanks to Vann E. Hettinger for donating these photographs to Lane Library's Special Collections and agreeing to make them available on Flickr.

Books for Understanding

If you need to find books on current events, check out the Books for Understanding link. This is a free online bibliography created by the American Association of University Presses, and highlights scholarly books in different categories. They post new bibliographies on major news stories or events, with national and international topics ranging from Hurricane Katrina to Islamic Thought and Culture. The broader categories covered in their Book Lists include Literature, Art, Religion, Science, Nature, United States, Civics, International, and Public Policy. A permanent link to this resource is located in Lane Library's Blog List for quick access - just click on Books for Understanding.

The Book as an Artistic Medium

Su Blackwell's Illustrated Book of Birds

As any book lover knows, books can be made of a variety of gorgeous bindings and images. The materials used in making books are not only visually stimulating but include the tactile appeal of quality paper, leather and cloth. Looking at books displayed on shelves, or that particular smell of a used book shop, is a multi-sensory experience for people who are passionate about books.

Several artists have taken the book as an art form one step further by physically altering books to create something entirely new. Some of the techniques involved are collage and paper cutting; other techniques are developed and refined by these creative artists. Sculptural and dreamlike landscapes are the specialty of Su Blackwell, whose work is similar to a (highly evolved) pop-up book. Lisa Occhipinti uses old books and turns them into mobiles that hang from the ceiling (thereby adding a new definition to the phrase "book mobile"). Photographer Cara Barer soaks outdated books in water and then sculpts them into organic looking shapes. Scottish artist Georgia Russell uses a paper cutting technique to sculpt dust jackets and books, displaying them inside bell jars or cases. Brian Dettmer is another sculptural book artist, cutting three dimensional scenes into old books. And Robert The cuts shapes into or out of books, taking a sculptural approach to his work.

So, what do you think of artists redefining the way we look at books as an art form? In this digital age, is the content of greater value than the physical book?