LMU Library News

Lions Read! Announcing our new summer reading contest, May 29 – August 3.

What are you reading this summer? 

The Lions Read Program was developed to showcase the library’s Popular Reading Collection and the Children’s Book collection, but any book from the library is eligible. We want you to read!

Who can participate?

All members of the LMU community with library borrowing privileges are eligible to participate. This includes staff and faculty and their family members, plus students, alumni, and community members. There are two divisions: Youth – Lion Cubs (age 0 - 13) and Adult – Lions (14 years and older).

How long is the program?

The program runs for 10 weeks, from May 29 – August 3.

Sounds fun! How do I participate?

It’s easy! Check out books from the Hannon Library, and read. When you finish reading each book, return and complete a ticket to be entered into our weekly raffle. Tickets will be at the Information Desk on the first floor. The raffle ticket will ask for your name, contact information and the title and author of the book. One ticket per book; you may not use multiple tickets for the same book. Books must be read between May 29 and August 3, 2012. Prior readings are not eligible.

Readers are also encouraged to submit book reviews and/or photos during the contest. Guest reviews may be featured on the library's blog and/or Facebook page. In addition, we encourage everyone who is participating to join the Lions Read Facebook community, where you can share feedback about what you've read, see what others are reading, and find like-minded LMU Lions who love to read!

What can I read?

Only books owned by the Hannon Library or available through LINK+ may be counted. Books read must be age-appropriate. (For example, adults may receive credit for YA fiction, but no other categories from the children’s book collection.) Youth are also required to read books appropriate for their age and reading abilities. Watching a DVD based on a book does not count.

Reading aloud to children is acceptable and encouraged!  In the case of an adult reading aloud to a young child, the child will receive the raffle ticket.

When are the raffle drawings? What can I win? How many prizes will be offered?

Drawings will be held weekly, every Friday between May 29 and August 3 at 3 p.m. (Note: no drawing will be held during the week of July 4.) There will be two winners for each division. Prizes will be $10 gift certificates. Winners need not be present.

Are any parties or events planned?  Free food?  Free books?

Two Lions Read celebrations will be held at the library (dates & times TBD).  At these events, participants will be invited to meet others and “talk books.”  Refreshments will be served and free books will be distributed! 

What if I have more questions?

Please feel free to get in touch with Education Librarian and Lions Read coordinator Silvia Gutierrez. You can call her at 310.338.7488, or email her at Silvia.Gutierrez@lmu.edu.

 

Featured Resource: DVDs available for checkout

Did you know that undergraduates can check out films from the Hannon Library Media Department for three days? Yep, it’s true!

The new policy was put into place last summer, but many students are not aware of the change. 

• 3 day checkout and 1 renewal

• $5.00 a day late charge

• Restriction: films on reserve are still limited to a 3 hour loan period.

 

The Hannon Library’s collection consists of over 5,000 films from the major studios as well as small independent filmmakers.    

We have Oscar winning films, Disney and Pixar animation, shorts, documentaries, and more. 

    


So, what do you want to watch this weekend? Check us out!

 

 

Time for a break...

...Spring Break!

Between sunbathing, napping, and any other extracurricular activities that you might get up to over spring break, you might find yourself with a little extra time on your hands. Why not fill that time with a good, escapist book?

The William H. Hannon Library's book stacks may be filled with denser academic texts like Wordsworth translated : a case study in the reception of British Romantic poetry in Germany, 1804-1914 and Process-Induced Food Toxicants: Occurrence, Formation, Mitigation, and Health Risks. Certainly there's a time and a place for these, since we are, after all, an academic library.

But we can also help you find some lighter, more unexpected fare. Our ever-changing Popular Reading Collection on Level 2 (by the fireplace) has something for everyone, from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs to Joseph Epstein's juicy, incisive exploration of gossip in all its forms, to Diana Gabaldon's latest historical fiction.

(Like what you see? Bookmark our Popular Reading Collection blog to see what's new each week!)

 


Indecisive? Check out our online guide to Reading For Fun.

Be safe, have fun, & if you find something in our collection that you really love, come back and tell us about it!

Beach photo used under a Creative Commons License / Flickr / tommy.chang

Reading 1911: librarians explore the Centennial

What were we reading in 1911?

The William H. Hannon Library celebrates the LMU Centennial through books (we are after all librarians!).

What were people reading during this time when William H. Taft was our president?  When the US population was 93,863,000, there were 46 stars in our flag, the cost of a first-class stamp was only $0.02 and the U.S. was crossed by plane for the first time –and it only took 50 days! 

Each month one of our librarians will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started. 

Our first contribution comes from Glenn Johnson-Grau, collection development librarian, who shares his perspective on this novel from a literary giant, Joseph Conrad.

 

 

 

Under Western Eyes 

Terrorism. Ideological extremism. Police surveillance. Political and social currents in a far off land that are alien and impenetrable to observers in the West. Joseph Conrad’s 1911 novel Under Western Eyes depicts the ripples of a violent act through society and individual lives. In the years after its publication it was seen as prescient concerning the start of World War I and the Russian Revolution; its continued relevance as an examination of the fallout from a fanatical act has been much noted in the post-9/11 era.

The novel came just past the midpoint in Conrad’s literary career, written after many of the works that now support his reputation as one of the great novelists in English and a precursor to literary modernism, but before he achieved commercial success. The son of Polish nationalists, Conrad fled his homeland for France to avoid conscription in the Russian army (Poland being ruled by the Russian Empire at the time). He joined first the French and then the British merchant navy; these travels took him to the locales depicted in his most famous works: South America in Nostromo, Malaysia in Lord Jim, and the Congo in Heart of Darkness. He retired as a ship’s captain in his late thirties for health reasons and to pursue a career as a writer; amazingly, English was his third language, after Polish and French.

Under Western Eyes is a political story but like its progenitor Crime and Punishment, it primarily focuses on the moral and psychological ramifications of a violent act. The story follows Razumov, a self-centered student who finds an acquaintance named Haldin in his apartment where Haldin confesses that he has just assassinated a government minister. Rasumov, inconvenienced by Haldin’s confession and by his political ardor, betrays Haldin and slowly becomes an agent for the Tsarist regime. Rasumov is sent as a secret agent to Geneva to infiltrate the revolutionary Russian expatriate community, who unknowingly embrace him as a hero. Rasumov’s guilt from his undeserved celebrity and the affection shown to him by Haldin’s sister Natalie send Rasumov’s life unraveling.

One of the most interesting facets of the novel is a framing device used by Conrad, where the narrator is an English teacher in Geneva recounting Rasumov’s story. This allows Conrad to tell the story of radical turmoil in the East from the perspective of an observer from the West, echoing Conrad’s own dual role as both a Pole and an English novelist incorporating topical events for an audience unaware of the perspective of the actors. In the years since 9/11, critics have noted the way that Conrad explores the psychology of extremism and the reactions that result from radicalism. As a twenty-first century reader, in addition to my enjoyment of a hundred year old psychologically complex political novel, considered one of Conrad’s greatest works, I was struck by Conrad’s point of the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, for an outsider to truly understand the thinking and the cultural milieu behind far-away events.

— Glenn Johnson-Grau

For more views of life from the perspective of 1911 as seen through Hannon Library resources, please visit this LibGuide.

Photograph of 1911 first editions courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, William H. Hannon Library 

Photo: Melanie Hubbard

 

New: Children's Literature at Hannon Library!

The children’s literature portion of the Curriculum Materials Collection (CMC) is now open for use. The collection currently has over 5,000 children's books for grades pre-K through 12, both fiction and nonfiction. The primary function of the collection is to support the learning and teaching needs of students and faculty in LMU’s School of Education, but the collection is available for all library users.

 

CMC children’s books circulate to all authorized library borrowers for three weeks, with one two-week renewal.

 

When bringing children to the CMC, please remember that our book stacks are adjacent to study areas, so we ask that young library users and their accompanying adults be courteous to people studying nearby. Nearby Group Study Rooms can be reserved in advance by members of the LMU community for groups up to 6-8 people; for larger groups please reserve one of our classrooms at least two days in advance.

 

New Library Services!

Just when you thought using the library couldn't be easier...

This summer, William H. Hannon Library has two new services available! 

Introducing book retrieval! We are pleased to announce that we will now retrieve books located in the open shelves (Main Stacks) for our users.  If you find a book in the library catalog that has the location Main Stacks and indicates “Available”, it is now possible to use the REQUEST button in the catalog to page the book. This service is designed especially for people using the catalog when they are not in the library.

 

Here’s how to do it:
All requests must be submitted online through the library catalog. When you are at the catalog record for a book you want, simply click on the button at the top of the screen that says REQUEST. To request items online, you must have library borrowing privileges.

 Online Requests generally take up to 4-6 hours to retrieve. You will be notified by email when the item(s) are ready for pickup at the Circulation Desk on Level One (just inside the library entrance). Retrieval stops 2 hours before the library closes, so any requests made at that time will be processed the next day. If for any reason the book cannot be located, a search process will be initiated by circulation staff, and you will be notified when the book is found. 

The second new service is Laptop Loan!  If you are a LMU or Loyola Law School student, staff or faculty member, and would like to make use of a laptop while visiting the library, we are pleased to announce that we are lending laptops!  MacBooks are now available at the Media & Reserve Services counter on Level Two. The loan period is 4 hours and is first come, first served.  (Renewals are possible if nobody else is waiting for one).  The MacBooks run only MacOS. Ask for more details at the Media & Reserve Services counter.

 

What We're Reading, Summer 2011. Dean's Edition.

Dean Paul Zeleza’s Summer Reading

 For many of us, “summer reading” conjures images of paperback novels consumed around the swimming pool or at the beach.  But for Paul Zeleza, dean of Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, the fare is decidedly more serious -- but fascinating!  He sent me the following list of books that he has either read very recently or planning to read over the “next few weeks.”  Paul will be reading these books on his iPad but for those of you who would like to check them out from the library, I have included links to the record in LINUS or LINK+. 

 What are you reading this summer?  Send me your lists and your recommendations; I will share them with the LMU community via the Library News Blog.     

 Kristine Brancolini, Dean of the Library

brancoli@lmu.edu

 

Autobiography and Biography

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Viking, 2011.

Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays, Alfred A Knopf, 2009. 

Condoleezza Rice, Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me, Delacorte, 2010. 

Helene Cooper, The House at Sugar Beach, Simon & Schuster, 2008.

The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: Quest for Freedom 1939-1976, Wiley, 2010.

Peter Firstbrook, The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family, Crown, 2010.

Mary L. Dudziak, Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Dubois, New York University Press, 2000.

 

World Political Economy

Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, Penguin, 2009. 

Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, Penguin, 2009.

Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, Norton, 2010.

Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of America Exceptionalism, Metropolitan, 2009.

Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Penguin, 2008.

George Soros, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, Public Affairs, 2008.

 

Higher Education

Mary Burgan, Whatever Happened to the Faculty: Drift and Decision in Higher Education, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.  

Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, Norton, 2010.

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on American Campuses, University of Chicago Press, 2011.

 

Miscellaneous

Eugene Robinson, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America, Doubleday, 2010. (Read last week).

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Random House, 2010.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, Norton, 2010.

 

Coming soon...new interface for Taylor & Francis e-journals

We have subscriptions to many journals from Taylor & Francis, currently accessed through the Informaworld platform. On June 27, 2011 those will be migrating to a newly developed platform, Taylor & Francis Online. We will handle the back-end migration so you have seamless access. If you'd like to see what the new platform looks like and how to navigate through it like a professional, check out the tutorials at http://resources.tandfonline.com/tutorials/. If you have any questions or hit any snags with the new platform, contact us and we'll help.

Taylor & Francis is on Twitter at @tandfonline.

Beat the June Gloom with our Popular Reading Collection!

Unpredictable coastal weather got you frazzled? Whether you need a fireplace or refreshing air conditioning, the Popular Reading Collection is there for you, all year round. Best of all our popular book collection circulates, so you can take your favorite new author to your favorite new summer happy place.

Located on Level 2 (by the fireplace) the popular reading collection has something for everyone, from R. Crumb's remarkable graphic novel Book of Genesis Illustrated to Curt Smith's new biography of legendary announcer Vin Scully, to Zadie Smith's latest collection of essays. 

   

Indecisive? Check out our online guide to Reading For Fun.

Whether you're staff or student, enjoy! And if you find something in our collection that you really love, come back and tell us about it!

 

Get the library materials you need, from anywhere, for free!*

The William H. Hannon Library has over half a million books, and nearly 40,000 current journal subscriptions, most of which can be accessed through one of our 280 online databases. And our collection is growing every day.

But despite our rich collections, it's inevitable that our students and faculty occasionally have research needs that require resources that we may not have on hand.

You may already be familiar with LINK+, where you have access to millions of books in 40+ academic and public libraries throughout California and Nevada, all for free. But did you know that our interlibrary loan services for books unavailable in LINK+ and articles unavailable through our own collections are also free for all LMU students, staff, and faculty?

This means, if you come across an article from a publication to which we don't subscribe, all you need to do is fill out this online form, and most articles will be emailed to you within a week.

*We regret that, while we can get pretty much anything that has ever been published delivered directly to you, we cannot do it at the last minute! For more information about document delivery at the Hannon Library, check out these FAQs.

 

Home page image used under a Creative Commons license:

Flickr/Amelia-Jane