Psych, Soc, Ling & Af Am @ the Library

I’d like to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed working with you over the past 4 ½ years. Not only have I learned a huge amount about each of your disciplines, but I’ve been able to see several students grow and learn as well. Nothing  could be more exciting or enriching.

However, I am leaving UF and have accepted a position as a psychology and education librarian at the University of St. Thomas, the Minneapolis campus. I’m thrilled to get back to *cold* weather and away from the 8 months of summer we have

Get a Job You Love

At the moment, I don’t know who will be taking responsibility for my assignments, i.e. who your new librarian will be, but as soon as I know, I’ll let you know.

My last day will be Thursday, September 3, 2009. Have a great life at UF!

• Leave a comment... (1)

Yesterday on American Public Radio’s  The Story, Kimeli Naiyomah told the story of his life in Masailand and the gift of 14 cows that the Masai people honored America with to comfort us after 9/11.

• Leave a comment... (0)

You might have heard that psychologists were involved in the torture or “enhanced interrogations” conducted by the Bush administration. Psychologists suggested that their involvement developing methods hastened responses from prisoners and lessened the need for physical torture. To me this just means that the psychological torture was probably more painful than physical torture might have been.

The American Psychological Association has been criticized by its own members for not responding more quickly to the actions of these psychologists. A timeline linking to APA’s responses during the entire discussion is here. They just released a letter to its members stating that participation in torture is unethical for psychologists. Some people are still disappointed that APA isn’t suggesting or imposing sanctions against the psychologists who participated.

Andrew Sullivan The Daily Dish: The Latest from the APA On Torture. The Atlantic June 18, 2009

(Thanks to Monica Bigler for apprising me of the above article and letter.)

• Leave a comment... (0)

For many years, various social sciences and sciences have “Annual Yearbooks:” including broad overview articles, written by current authoritative researchers. These have been extremely helpful for teaching new areas of study, learning new areas of study, and finding reference sources.

Now, Wiley- has published an online journal, Compass, that provides broad, overarching articles on issues in Linguistics. Often articles in disciplines like Psychology or LInguistics report about very narrow issues or experiments. Compass make it possible to place the report into a larger questions and theory.

Here are some wonderful new papers in compass.

Sands, B.. (2009) Africa’s Linguistic Diversity. Language & Linguistics Compass, 3(2), 559–580. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00124.x

Simpson, A. P. (2009). Phonetic differences between male and female speech, 3(2), 621-640. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00125.x

Cohen, A. (2009). Probability in Semantics. Language & Linguistics Compass, 3(1),  265-281. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00097.x

Dallas, A. & Kaan, E. (2008) Second Language Processing of Filler-Gap Dependencies by Late Learners. Language & Linguistics Compass, 2(3), 372-388. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00056.x 

• Leave a comment... (0)

After protests by students, Patricia Telles–Irvin, UF’s vice president of Student Affairs, stated that ICB and LGBT programs will be retained. Good work!

• Leave a comment... (0)

The Alligator reported today, April 21, 2009, that if the University of Florida needs to make “worst-case scenario” cuts, the Institute of Black Culture and LGBT Affairs will be eliminated. Apparently because these are the only programs in Student Affairs that aren’t mandated by law.

College is a time when young adults are solidifying their identities, as people and members of  groups. This is a time when many folks explore their history, ethnicity, and sexuality. The university has a responsibility to  support students in their exploration.

This is one of the reasons that I thnk the library needs good collections in African American Studies, Latino Studies, LGBT Studies, etc. And why the university needs to maintain its multicultural and gender programs. The student government is suggesting that a fee be added to tutition so that these programs could be saved.

I think  that this is a good use for stimulus money. Anything that helps support students and encourage them to remain in college is good for the the economy.

Join the protest!

• Leave a comment... (0)

My mother once told me she didn’t enjoy history in school, because she could never find herself in her history books. We’re Eastern European Jews and back when my mom was a kid, you couldn’t find us anywhere.

Then came John Hope Franklin, whose great scholarship made history inclusive. After a long struggle, folks recognized that American history is fragmentary if limited only to white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men. Even though Prof. Franklin lived to the old age of 94, he still died too young. But he made the world a much better place for the rest of us.

His obituary from the Washington Post.

A list of some of his books that we have in the library or are available through the library online:

In search of the promised land : a slave family in the Old South
John Hope Franklin, Loren Schweninger.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.
LIBRARY WEST General Collection E444 .F825 2006    

Mirror to America : the autobiography of John Hope Franklin
John Hope Franklin.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. 
  LIBRARY WEST General Collection E175.5.F73 A3 2005    

Tributes to John Hope Franklin : scholar, mentor, father, friend
edited by Beverly Jarrett.
Published: Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 2003. 
 LIBRARY WEST General Collection E175.5.F73 T75 2003    

From slavery to freedom : a history of African Americans
John Hope Franklin, Alfred A. Moss, Jr.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: New York : A.A Knopf, 2000.
LIBRARY WEST General Collection E185 .F825 2000    

Runaway slaves : rebels on the plantation
John Hope Franklin, Loren Schweninger.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.
LIBRARY WEST General Collection E447 .F7 1999    

The diary of James T. Ayers, Civil War recruiter
edited, with a new preface, by John Hope Franklin ; with a new introduction by John David Smith.
Author: Ayers, James T. 1805-1865
Published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1999. 
  LIBRARY WEST General Collection E540.N3 A96 1999    

My life and an era : the autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin
edited by John Hope Franklin and John Whittington Franklin.
Author: Franklin, Buck Colbert 1879-1960
Published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c1997. 
  LEGAL INFORMATION CENTER General Collection KF373.F745 A3 1997    

The color line legacy for the twenty-first century
John Hope Franklin.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri Press, c1993.
 Read this E-book Licensed for UF students, faculty and staff

Race and history selected essays, 1938-1988
John Hope Franklin.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c1989.
Read this E-book Licensed for UF students, faculty and staff

Visions of a better way : a Black appraisal of public schooling
preface by John Hope Franklin.
Author: Joint Center for Political Studies (U.S.) Committee on Policy for Racial Justice
Published: Washington, D.C. : Joint Center for Political Studies Press ; Lanham, MD : Distributed by University Press of America, 1989.
  EDUCATION LIBRARY General Collection LC2771 .J65 1989    

A southern odyssey : travelers in the antebellum North
John Hope Franklin.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c1976.
 LIBRARY WEST General CollectionF213 .F76    

The historian and public policy.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: [Chicago] University of Chicago, Center for Policy Study [1974]
LIBRARY WEST General Collection E169.1 .F826    

The free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860
John Hope Franklin ; with a new foreword and bibliographic afterword by the author.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: Chapel Hill, NC : The University of North Carolina Press, c1995.
  Read this E-book Licensed for UF students, faculty and staff

Runaway slaves rebels on the plantation
John Hope Franklin, Loren Schweninger.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.
  Read this E-book Licensed for UF students, faculty and staff

Racial equality in America
John Hope Franklin.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 1993.
  Read this E-book Licensed for UF students, faculty and staff

The militant South, 1800-1861
John Hope Franklin.
Author: Franklin, John Hope 1915-
Published: Cambridge : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970.
Read this E-book Licensed for UF students and faculty and staff

• Leave a comment... (0)

Most of you know of my love for knitting, spinning, weaving, dyeing — all of the fiber arts. Well, I finally have something I can legitimately share with you on this blog.

A researcher, Dr Karen Norberg from the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, decided to knit an anatomically correct brain. She says that unlike clay or metal, the development of the brain through the knit stitches mirrored the growth of a human brain.

Check out the Museum of Fabric Brain Art. And this article in Scientific American.

Dr Norberg used different colours to represent parts of the notoriously complex organ : Barcroft Media

• Leave a comment... (1)

Thank you Kurt Vonnegut for all you’ve done for us.
All you’ve brought to us. All you’ve given us.

• Leave a comment... (0)

Free Online Access to All Sage Journals Until October 18th, 2006

Sage Publications is trying to entice us to subscribe to more of their journals directly from them. We already subscribe to a very large number. Some we get directly from them, others through other vendors like Wilson Web or EBSCOhost. But, hey, why not take advantage of their offer by reading as many articles as possible between now and October 18th.

Go to their website and browse through their journals. If there is a journal you think we can’t live without, please let me know. (You might want to check our catalog first. We really do subscribe to a large percentage of their journals.) You may discover hidden journals we have that few people use! One of my goals is to get folks to use our resources. If books lie around on shelves or e-journals float in the ether, the University is tossing your tuition and tax money away.

• Leave a comment... (0)