Gmail Priority Inbox

Do you get lots of email? Gmail has introduced this new "priority inbox" feature that you can train to sort the important from the less important. I've been using it for a couple weeks and am finding it really useful.

(And don't worry, if you'd rather use the standard inbox, you still can even after activating the priority feature.)

Google's Art Project

Last week, Google announced its new Art Project, which allows online visitors to tour the galleries and collections of 17 major art museums from around the world.  Here's a description of the project from the Official Google Blog:

"You’ll find a selection of super high-resolution images of famous works of art as well as more than a thousand other images, by more than 400 artists—all in one place. And with Street View technology, you can take a virtual tour inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam."

Visit Google's Art Project

Library Schedule for the End of Interim

Wednesday is the last day of Interim and the Library will be operating on a reduced schedule until the Spring Semester begins on Monday, February 7.  Here are our hours for the next several days:

Wednesday, Feb 2:  8am - 5pm
Thursday, Feb 3:  8:30am - 5pm
Friday, Feb 4:  8:30am - 5pm
Saturday, Feb 5:  Closed
Sunday, Feb 6:  Closed
Monday, Feb 7:  Resume regular hours

Yad Veshem's Holocaust archives online

Earlier today, Google and Yad Veshem, the Jerusalem-based center for remembering the Holocaust's victims and survivors, announced their partnership to digitize the center's photograph and document collections and make them available via the web.

Here are a few clips from Yad Vashem's announcement:

"Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yad Vashem and Google announced a partnership that will greatly facilitate preservation of and access to the world’s largest historical collection on the Holocaust."

"This initiative will not only bring this valuable information to a much wider audience worldwide, but it will allow people around the world to contribute, by identifying the stories behind photos and documents, adding their own stories and knowledge to the site."

"As of today, 130,000 photos from Yad Vashem’s archive will be viewable in full resolution online. This is a first step towards bringing the vast Yad Vashem archive online over time."


Read Yad Vashem's Announcement
Read Google's Announcement
Search the Collection

Tolbert Exhibition in the Library

Joseph Tolbert, an instructor of humanities at Augusta State University, uses a whimsical style of painting on every-day objects in addition to traditional canvases as platforms for expression with embellishments of glitter, glass, and faux jewels. The paintings fluoresce under black light. He calls his painting style "punk rococo" to reflect its influence from pop culture. His exhibition "Mixed Media Paintings" is open in the Sandor Teszler Library Gallery from January 25th to March 25, 2011. For information, call 864-597-4300.

ATLA Religion Database

The Library recently added a new electronic resource to the collection, the ATLA Religion Database, which provides information on topics such as biblical studies, world religions, church history, and religion in social issues. This database is the definitive index for religious and theological literature, and contains more than 1.7 million bibliographic records covering the research literature of religion. Try ATLA today.

Access World News Research Collection

The Access World News Research Collection is now available to the campus community and offers access to the electronic editions of local, regional, and national U.S. newspapers as well as full-text content of key international sources.  Search the entire Access World News Collection; segments of the collection, such as South Carolina Titles; or, specific titles like the Herald-Journal. 

Questions about using this new collection? 
Contact a librarian:  call 597-4300, email askalibrarian@wofford.edu or stop by the library.

"Vegetables All the Year Round"

Europe and the Northern States of this Union possess numerous works on Farming and Gardening, of which many have been widely disseminated throughout the Southern States; their directions, however, are not intended for, nor adapted to such a climate as we possess, so that a work developing the principles, and pointing out the method of their application to the Farming and Gardening of the South, and particularly of our low country, has been for many years a great desideratum.

So begins the preface to the 1852 edition of "The Southern Farmer and Market Gardener." And shucks, those 19th-century folks could sure write a sentence. I mean look at that thing up there - it's one sentence! Check out the proper use of the semi-colon and, yeah, there's a bunch of arguable commas in there, but still: it works. And "desideratum"? That's some AP vocab right there. By the way: The Oxford English Dictionary says it means "Something for which a desire or longing is felt; something wanting and required or desired." Anyway, this book was something of a first of its kind: a how-to for farmers and planters living in the Southern low-country.

The illustration above folds out from just within the front cover to show the reader which vegetables should be planted and which “should be fit for use” during a given month. What an abundant land, to provide "Vegetables All the Year Round."

View the illustration on Flickr, read the full text online, or visit the Littlejohn Collection and view our two copies of the 1852 edition.

Extended Hours for Exam Week

Here's our schedule for the rest of the semester:

Friday, Dec 10: 8am-midnight
Saturday, Dec 11: 8am-midnight
Sunday, Dec 12: 1pm - 1am
Monday, Dec 13 - Thursday, Dec 16: 8am - 1am
Friday, Dec 17: 8am - 5pm

Good luck with your exams!

New Human Rights Research Guide

 
In recognition of Human Rights Day, we have created a new research guide, which includes featured titles, documentaries, and films from our collection, as well as resources available on the open web.

Check out the Human Rights Research Guide