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

Mark Twain's "Autobiography" (v.1) is available at the Teszler Library

By design of the author, the world waited 100 years for this book.

But Twain's "Autobiography" is available now at the Teszler Library - look for it on the "New Books" display shelf.


Related links:
Mark Twain Autobiography official website "This is Mark Twain" - Interactive, informative.

"Dead for a Century, Twain Says What He Meant," New York Times article, July 9, 2010.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain – review, The Guardian, November 21, 2010.

The Adventures of Samuel Clemens (review), Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2010.

Yahoo Clues

Yahoo released a new tool today called Yahoo Clues, which displays demographic trends related to popular searches. It also includes a "search flow," a look at the previous and next search terms used.  At present, Yahoo Clues only tracks the most popular topics, but "Yahoo said they hope to expand the number of terms included over time," according to Search Engine Land.

Here's a brief description from Yahoo:

Yahoo! Clues lets you explore how people are using Yahoo! Search. When you enter a word or phrase in the [Find Trend] field and click Discover, you’ll see information about that search term’s popularity over time, across demographic groups, and in different locations.


You can also enter a second search term in the "Compare With" field. This will show you information on both search terms, side by side.

Or, read Search Engine Land's detailed discussion, Yahoo Clues: New Fun Search Keyword Tool.

Heinitsh Drug Store Papers now available online

Earlier this year a conscientious Spartanburg citizen donated the Heinitsh Drug Store Papers to Special Collections. This collection consists of prescriptions and formulas created in the operation of the family-run drug store during the 19th century.

The Heinitsh Drug Store was opened in 1856 and the proprietor Henry Heinitsh witnessed and participated in the explosive growth of Spartanburg after the Civil War. The store, located on Morgan Square for many years, would eventually boast the first telephone in the young city.

The collection we have basically consists of two items: a re-used cotton shipment ledger book in which were pasted prescription slips for various customers, and a small notebook presumably used as a reference by the Heinitshs marked "Formula's Private" (sic). The image above is a typical prescription slip. Below is the front cover of the formula book.


And here's the inside cover and front page:


Every page from the ledger and notebook have been digitized and put online for your examination. Surely this is an interesting collection for those interested in the history of medicine and pharmacology. And we can learn a great deal about the people and times from the maladies described in the prescriptions - perhaps this collection will provide new insights about the people and events of the period.

(Thanks to the staff of the Kennedy Local History Room at the Spartanburg County Library Headquarters for assisting me in my research about the Heinitsh family and their business. The resources provided there were critical to my understanding of this collection.)