Presidents Day booklist

Posted on by
Reply

The SPU Library hopes you enjoyed yesterday’s break from classes in honor of Presidents Day. While the rest of the campus was closed, the Library remained open from 3 – 11 p.m. to assist with your studying and research needs. Take a look at the booklist we compiled yesterday of items on our shelves that relate to United States presidents across the centuries:

Interested in learning more about the enigmatic William Henry Harrison, the only president to die after one short month in office? Try this book with library call number E392 .C65 2012.

 

In the wake of a series of movies featuring Abraham Lincoln, you might want to read more about his legacy before and after the Civil War. The call number for this book, written by Pulitzer Prize-winner James McPherson, is E457 .M46 2009.

 

Swartzenagger is not the first actor-turned-politician. Ever wonder how Ronald Reagan went from Hollywood actor to the presidency? This book, call number E877 .D54 2007, reviews the transition and explores the policies of our fortieth president.

 

Though this era had its controversies, Nixon is also known for ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam in 1973, launching the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and initiating a missile treaty with the Soviet Union. Read this biography with call number E855 .S63 1999.

 

The HBO miniseries highlights the tension between John Adams and his contemporaries as the country forged a path to independence, but it also allows us a glimpse into the affectionate relationship between the former president and the love of his life. This book, call number E322 .A4 2007, provides a deeper look into the world of John and Abigail Adams through their letters.

Born wealthy, Franklin D. Roosevelt may never have depended on a paycheck, but his charisma and determination in the wake of illness and subsequent lower body paralysis made him a man of the people during the Great Depression. Take a close look at his presidency in this biography, call number E807 .S58 2007.

Need a video? Try the SPU Library!

Posted on by
Reply

In addition to our print and online collections, our library has a robust video collection. We own many media items such as documentaries, biographies, and tutorials, but we also have a wide variety of movies as well. Our popular titles range from Bill Murray classics (Groundhog Day) and modern-dysfunctional family scenarios (Little Miss Sunshine), to animation (The Secret of Kells), groundbreaking science fiction (Blade Runner), and a plentiful array of Jane Austen (Persuasion). To browse a full list of all our videos, sorted by date, check out the classic catalog. Visit the SPU WorldCat catalog to browse our selection by subject, or, if you have a topic prepared and you are curious to know what media resources we have on our shelves, you can narrow the search by checking your options on the “Video” filter.

Some tips:

  • Check the “Libraries that own this item” line in the listing to ensure that it is indeed an item we carry. If we do not own the item, you may still be able to access it. See our recent blog post on requesting Summit items.
  • While most videos check out for a week at a time, some titles may be on reserve with limited checkout hours for a professor’s class. If this is the case with an item you are looking for, you can watch the video in one of our media rooms, viewing stations (headphones can be checked out at the Tech Desk), or in a study room on your laptop.

Book Review Tuesday

Posted on by
Reply

Curious about how the Internet has changed how we view facts, knowledge, and expert opinion?

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts aren’t the Facts, Experts and Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room by David Weinberger is an interesting and accessible optimist’s view of how the Internet has changed our understanding of information.  David Weinberger highlights new knowledge gathering concepts such as “crowd sourcing” research, appealing to “citizen-experts,” and the benefits and risks in allowing everyone an equal voice in the conversation.  Weinberger acknowledges that this last attribute can be both populist and unsettling when trying to determine an expert opinion on a topic.

Weinberger takes the time to place these new knowledge concepts within historical context.  I appreciated Weinberger’s explanation of the concept of long form thought.  In the past, when communicating with colleagues was more difficult and print media limited the ability to correct mistakes or offer clarification on a topic, experts tended to write long form arguments.  This is where one would try to think of all the arguments that could be made against one’s theory and offer a clarification or rebuttal to this imagined argument.  Weinberger offers Darwin’s On the Origin of Species as an example of this, saying, “Darwin spends a full six out of fifteen chapters addressing objections he imagines his readers may have” (p. 94).  I also enjoyed the section where Weinberger admits, and explicates his reasoning for, writing a long form argument – this book – about web form knowledge.  While I am not sure I agree with the cover flap’s claim that “this groundbreaking book shakes the foundations of our concept of knowledge,” the context that Weinberger put around how information “works” in the digital age is well worth reading.

The library call number for this item is HM851.W4297 2011.

-Carrie Fry, Electronic Services/Systems Librarian, Librarian for Health Sciences

SUMMIT: Requesting items

Posted on by
Reply

Have you ever borrowed a book through Summit? If all our copies of an item are checked out, you may still be able to request it. As a member of the Orbis-Cascade Alliance (SUMMIT), our students, staff, and faculty have access to nine million titles from thirty-seven universities and colleges in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. These non-SPU owned resources are integrated with our own collection in the WorldCat catalog, which can be searched via our library’s homepage. Upon request, the items are processed by their owning libraries, shipped to our institution in a matter of days, and picked up at the library circulation desk.

Here are a few tips on ensuring a simple Summit request:

  1. When you find an item, check the catalog to see whether or not SPU owns it. If the record shows that we have a copy, the Summit request will not be successful and you will receive an email indicating that your request has been canceled.
  2. If the record shows that we do not own a copy of the item, expand the holdings for all Summit libraries and check the availability. If all copies are checked out or unavailable, the request will not be successful.
  3. If there is at least one copy of the item available, click on the “Request Summit Item” button. Be prepared with your name, student identification, and university affiliation.
  4. Using the dropdown menu, state if you need a specific edition or add a note to the request if there is one volume of a multi-volume series that is desired.

Summit is a large, evolving system that revolves around many institutions, so at times you may still receive cancellation notices even if you have followed the process correctly. But following these easy steps can make your requests more successful and seamless.

The two Books of homilies (copy dated 1676)

Posted on by
Reply

Steve Perisho, Theology and Philosophy Librarian, and curator of the Library’s Emmanuel Room, talks about a rare find in the Wesleyan, Wesleyan Holiness, and Free Methodist Collection and recounts the history surrounding this unique item. Lee Staman did the initial research into the Senkler family.

When the thirty-five-year-old Anglican priest John Wesley, six months or so after having felt his heart “strangely warmed”, 1 “began more narrowly to inquire into . . . the doctrine of the Church of England” 2, he turned to the Edwardian Book of homilies, and before the year was out had published a twelve-page condensation of three of them entitled The doctrine of salvation, faith, and good works (1738) 3. This “went through [twenty] editions in his lifetime and was a staple . . . [of] Methodist instruction.” 4 “The book which, next to the Holy Scripture, was of the greatest use to [the earliest ‘Methodists’] in settling their judgment as to the grand point of justification by faith,” he noted (looking back almost fifty years later in 1787), “was the Book of Homilies.” 5

Continue reading →

Notes:

  1. John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980 [1964]), 66. ↩
  2. Journal II, 101, as quoted in John Wesley, ed. Outler, 121. ↩
  3. 13th ed., 1797:  http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00000069/00001. ↩
  4. John Wesley, ed. Outler, 66, as corrected in Doctrinal and controversial treatises I, ed. Randy L. Maddox, vol. 12 of The works of John Wesley =The bicentennial edition of the works of John Wesley, ed. Randy L. Maddox (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2012), 29. ↩
  5. Sermon 107, “On God’s vineyard.” Sermons III, 71-114, ed. Albert C. Outler, vol. 3 of The works of John Wesley =The bicentennial edition of the works of John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1986), 505.  See also Michael Pasquarello, “Evangelizing England:  the importance of the Book of homilies for the popular preaching of Hugh Latimer & John Wesley,” Asbury theological journal 59, nos. 1-2 (Spring/Fall 2004):  151-159. ↩