The Patriot Spot

The Robert R. Muntz Library will feature the exhibit “The Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People’s Republic of China” in the library’s reading room. The exhibit will run from July 7^th to August 8^th, 2008.

The exhibit is part of the traveling exhibit series provided by Humanities Texas, the Texas affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibit provides an opportunity for the campus and the community to get a glimpse of the brilliant artistic achievements of the Chinese Bronze Age culture from its beginnings, around 2,000 B.C., to its final flowering in the second century B.C. The exhibit reveals the superb skills of ancient artists, and it enables us to learn about the religious, political, economic, and cultural aspects of a civilization which developed around the same time that Stonehenge in England was being built and that the principles of Judaism were being framed. With the upcoming Olympiad in Beijing, this exhibit is another way for us to learn more about China.

Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, conducts and supports public programs in history, literature, philosophy, and other humanities disciplines. Humanities Texas also supports various programs across the state such as lectures, oral history projects, teacher institutes, museum exhibitions, and documentary films. In addition, Texas Humanities circulates more than 5o exhibits, including the exhibit the library will be featuring.

The “Great Bronze Age of China” exhibit is free and open to the public. It can be viewed during library regular hours. For hours and information about the library, please visit our library website. For more information about the exhibit and other activities in the library, contact Angel Rivera, Outreach Librarian, at (903) 566-7165 or arivera@uttyler.edu.

As of 8:00pm Friday, June 27th, the Blackwell Synergy database will be closed down and over the weekend the content will be moved into the Wiley Interscience database.  During the move, the Wiley Interscience database will be unavailable.  Wiley Interscience should be back up by 8:00pm on Sunday, June 29th.  Most of the Blackwell Synergy content will be loaded by this time but there is some older content that will not be available right away but will be loaded in the next two weeks. A list of missing content will be available on Monday.

This move comes as a result of Blackwell Publishing, publisher of the Blackwell Synergy database being purchased by John Wiley & Sons, another publisher, some months back.  A brand new interface for the Wiley Interscience database will be rolled out some time in 2009.

Welcome to another post in the Reference Book of the Week series. Once again, we are featuring a U.S. Government publication: the Occupational Outlook Handbook. It is officially known as U.S. Deparment of Labor Bulletin 2700. When it comes to career information, this item is a lifesaver. Most libraries, whether they are document depositories or not, will carry a copy of this publication. In brief, this book gives information on careers. If you want to know more about a particular job or career, how much it could pay, what education it would require, and its outlook in terms of employment, this is the place to go. The handbook is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency within the Department of Labor, which is “the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics” (from the BLS website).

The Robert R. Muntz Library has the “library edition” of the Occupational Outlook Handbook. This is basically a hardcover edition with stronger binding for institutional use. In plain English, we buy a stronger edition because we expect it to be heavily used. You could also buy the book in trade paperback through the Government Printing Office (GPO) online bookstore if you were so inclined. However, you are welcome to come to the library and use our copy. So, what’s in the book then?

• The table of contents: This can be your first point to start a search. It gives you a sense of how the book is organized. The OOC is organized by career groups (clusters) such as: management, business, and financial occupations; professional and related occupations; and service occupations. Each cluster is then further divided. For example, you would find education, training, library, and museum occupations under the professional and related occupations cluster. My job, librarian, would be in that section (on page 266).
• Each job entry features the following: a set of significant points to give you some quick facts about the job; nature of the work describing what the job typically does and entail; training, other qualifications, and advancement where you learn what kind of education and/or training is needed for that job; employment; job outlook; earnings; and related occupations which often tells you other careers that are similar or require some of the same skills. Finally, each entry gives a list of additional sources of information, mostly websites.
• Special features: the volume includes a series of special sections on topics such as: sources of career information; and finding and applying for jobs and evaluating offers. There is also a section labeled “Data for Occupations Not Studied in Detail.” The OOC does not cover in detail every single career. They claim to cover 9 out of 10 jobs in the U.S. (23). This additional section “presents summary data on 128 additional occupations, for which employment projections are prepared, but for which occupational information is not developed” (843).
• The book features an index in the back of the book, which allows readers to look up a specific job and find the page directly. There are some cross-references. For example, let’s say you want to be a pet groomer. You look it up and find there is no “pet groomer” listing. However, you look a bit more, and there is a listing for “groomers,” telling you then to go to page 485. It also tells you that for groomers, you need to see jobs under “animal care and service workers.” However, unlike other reference books, it does not make you take the extra step of finding the “see also” entry in the index; it gives you the page right away.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook is revised every two years. The library just acquired the new 2008-2009 edition. It is available in the library’s ready reference shelves (the shelving right behind the reference desk) under the call number HF 5381 .A1036.

Also, like a good number of government documents, the OOC is available online is freely available online. Here is the direct link to the OOC. The BLS site, which I linked above, also links to it under the “Publications” heading. The online version allows you to look at the career clusters, there is a link to the A-Z index, or you can search the publication by typing a term in the search box to get the information (this is what I usually do when I use the publication). The online resource also features some other helpful features such as a guide for teachers. In addition, I would like to note that you can find other valuable labor resources through the BLS website such as information on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), productivity, and employment. If you want to see where many news anchors get their labor numbers or want to know what exactly is the CPI, the BLS site is a good place to look.

Looking for IPA transcriptions and literal translations of songs and arias? The library is pleased to announce a new subscription to IPA Source.

With over 3,450 texts, IPA Source is the web’s largest library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts.

IPA Source currently includes 2,924 Art Songs, 470 Opera Arias, 62 Latin Texts, 440 Composers, and 321 Poets. The database also includes MP3 recordings of various song and aria texts.

Doing some sociology, criminal justice, or other social science research? The library is pleased to announce a new subscription to SocIndex with Full Text:

With more than 1,918,000 records, SocIndex with Full Text offers comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. These include abortion, criminology & criminal justice, demography, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage & family, political sociology, religion, rural & urban sociology, social development, social psychology, social structure, social work, socio-cultural anthropology, sociological history, sociological research, sociological theory, substance abuse & other addictions, violence and many others. It contains full text for 428 “core” coverage journals dating back to 1908, and 163 “priority” coverage journals. This database also includes full text for more than 735 books and monographs, and full text for 6,785 conference papers.

SocIndex with Full Text is found under the Find an Article (Databases) page and several of the Research/Subject guides including Sociology and Criminal Justice.

Starting today, the Library has launched a redesigned website. Please visit http://library.uttyler.edu to see the new design. Many of the services faculty and student are already familiar with are still here but be sure to visit the Research Guides at http://libguides.uttyler.edu/. We are using a product called LibGuides to implement our research guides. LibGuides allows for more interaction online as well as for a variety of new and exciting features to better help our students and academic community.

Faculty members can contact their Librarian Liasons (http://library.uttyler.edu/liaison_directory.html) if they have any questions or comments. They can also leave comments here on the blog for feedback.

We hope that you will visit the new website, and that it will become a destination that meets your research needs.

Here is a list of new additions to the Bestsellers Collection. Remember you can browse the bestsellers in the reading area of the library’s second floor.

Fiction titles:

• Christopher Bohjalian has published his 12th novel: Skeletons at the Feast. This time, he is writing about German refugees during World War II fleeing West as the Russian army advances on them. Marvin Minkler of The North Star Daily writes about this book, “Chris Bohjalian has written his finest novel to date, set against the brutal, waning days of World War Two in Eastern Germany….Skeletons at the Feast is Bohjalian’s masterpiece. The power of the narrative will stay with the reader long after it is put down. Inspired by an actual World War II diary the author read, it will stand as one of the best novels ever written about one of the most brutal periods in history.” The book’s call number is PS 3552 .O495 S58 2008.
• Dean R. Koontz is back with Odd Hours. The New York Times said of the book: “The nice young fry cook with the occult powers is Koontz’s most likable creation.” This book has the call number PS 3561 .O55 O3 2008.
• If you are in the mood for a love story, Jude Deveraux offers Secrets: A Novel. Cassandra Madden becomes the nanny for widower Jefferson Ames. Things become chaotic when shots ring out of Althea Fairmont’s house, the actress. What are the secrets keeping Cassandra and Jeff apart? Find out in this book with the call number PS 3554 .E9273 S43 2008. This is what Booklist had to say about the book: “Deveraux gives her fans a sweet love story filled with twists and turns as her heroine changes from victim to a woman in charge of her own destiny.”
• Maybe you feel like some short fiction. How about some short fiction with cops and criminals? Michael Connelly edits Mystery Writers of America Presents The Blue Religion: New Stories about Cops, Criminals and the Chase. This anthology features 19 new tales by various writers in settings from Hawaii to L.A. to the Civil War to the present day. Call number for this book is PS 648 .D4 M97 2008.
• If you want a global thriller, David Baldacci’s The Whole Truth may be what you seek. Nicolas Creel is the head of the Ares Corporation, the world’s biggest defense contractor. Dick Pender is the man in charge of managing Ares Corporation’s image. And that is just for openers. The book is listed under call number PS 3552 .A446 W48 2008.
• Jeffrey Archer pays homage to The Count of Montecristo in his new novel A Prisoner of Birth. Four high class friends decide to frame Danny Cartwright, a poor and illiterate fellow, for a murder he did not commit. Danny gets a 22 year sentence, but with some help he manages to escape to get his revenge. Time Magazine has praised Archer as “a master entertainer.” Find this book under call number PR 6051 .R285 P66 2008.
• Jodi Picault brings us Change of Heart: A Novel. When a convicted murderer wishes to donate his heart, it creates complications for the execution. Add to this that the person needing the organ donation is the sister of the victim he killed eleven years ago. Call number for this book is PS 3566 .I372 C47 2008.

Nonfiction Titles:

• Renowned author Kenneth C. Davis takes us on a new tour of American history in America’s Hidden History: untold tales of the first pilgrims, fighting women, and forgotten founders who shaped a nation. Did you know the story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists? Read about it here. Find Davis’s book under call number E 178 .D26 2008.
• Learn about one of the most famous movie companies of all time in The Pixar Touch: the making of a company by David A. Price. This is the company behind such hits as Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Even Alvy Ray Smith, co-founder of Pixar, praises this book when he says, “It’s quite a story, and David Price has finally got it right, it’s details and the players. This is the definitive history of Pixar.” Find it under call number NC 1766 .U52 P75 2008.
• Bestselling science writer Mary Roach looks at the science behind sex in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. Roach, author of books like Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers has been called “the funniest science writer in the country” by Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker. Find Bonk under call number QP 251 .R568 2008.
• Arthur Herman writes about two of the greatest men of the 20th century and their rivalry, a rivalry that led to the end of an Empire and the birth of two new nations. Read all about it in Gandhi & Churchill : the epic rivalry that destroyed an empire and forged our age. According to The Wall Street Journal, “the rivalry between Winston Churchill and Mohandas Gandhi could hardly have been played for higher stakes. The future of British India hung upon the outcome of their 20-year struggle…. As one might expect from the author of To Rule the Waves, a fine history … Mr. Herman has researched Gandhi & Churchill meticulously and written it fluently.” Find this book under call number DA 47.9 .I4 H47 2008.
• Cokie Roberts, political commentator for ABC News, brings us the stories of American influential women in her new book Ladies of liberty : the women who shaped our nation. Find this book under call number E 176 .R65 2008.
• If you are a music fan, or you just want to read a biography, former Texas Monthly writer Joe Nick Patoski looks at the life of an American icon in Willie Nelson : an epic life. Library Journal’s review states that “Patoski infuses his biography of Willie Nelson with an encyclopedic knowledge of Texas history that deftly illuminates the depth of influence the land and people of Texas had in shaping Nelson.” This book’s call number is ML 420 .N4 P38 2008.
• Learn about the highest court in the land in The nine : inside the secret world of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin. The book surveys the court from the Reagan Presidency forward. Find it under call number KF 8748 .T66 2007.
• Finally, if you want a real life crime case that reads like a fictional thriller, then you may want to read Twisted triangle : a famous crime writer, a lesbian love affair, and the FBI husband’s violent revenge by Caitlin Rother. The book tells “the compelling true story of Margo Bennett, a married FBI agent whose jealous, vengeful husband, Gene Bennett, a former undercover FBI agent, kidnapped and attempted to murder her after she had a secret love affair with best-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell.” Pulitzer-winning journalist Marcus Stern praises it as follows: “Hitchcock wishes he’d dreamed it up. Capote wishes he’d written it.” Find this thriller under the call number HV 6250 .W65 R68 2008.

Here we go with another edition of Reference Book of the Week here at The Patriot Spot. Today we feature a federal government document: the Economic Report of the President. Even though the title says “of the President,” don’t be fooled. The report is actually written by the President’s economic advisers. To be precise, the report, which is submitted annually to Congress, is written by the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. According to law, it “is transmitted to Congress no later than ten days after the submission of the Budget of the United States Government” (from the GPO Access website).

So, what does this document do? According to the Government Printing Office (GPO), it includes:

• ” Current and foreseeable trends and annual numerical goals concerning topics such as employment, production, real income and Federal budget outlays.” In other words, you get what the Council sees as current economic trends in topics like productivity, employment, and other topics. For example, the 2007 report looks at things like the transportation sector in terms of issues like fuel markets and infrastructure.
• “Employment objectives for significant groups of the labor force.” This is where some of that stuff on productivity mentioned above comes in.
• “Annual numeric goals.”
• “A program for carrying out program objectives.”

The report usually includes as well a year in review (for the year prior to the report) so you get an overview of the economic picture in the nation; they also look at international issues and trends as they may affect the United States. Another value of a document like this is in the tables. There are a lot of tables with statistics and figures to support the material. There are also boxes, which are basically text boxes with additional or supplementary information. This is yet another way to look at the federal government, the economic policies, and what they do with your tax dollars. The report also gives a look at the economy from the view of the executive branch. Thus, here why this document is important: it “is an important vehicle for presenting the Administration’s domestic and international economic policies” (219).

The library currently has the 2007 edition. It is placed in the Ready Reference shelf (behind the reference desk) under the call number HC 106.5 .A272 2007. The print edition for the 2008 is currently on order.

Note: This document is available online via the GPO Access website here. Under the link you can find the PDF to the 2008 edition, which is the most current. You can look at the complete document, or at individual tables. If you prefer to download the information, there are options for that as well. You can go as far back as 1995. There are some historical editions of older reports (1960-1980) provided via a collaboration between the GPO and FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research).

The Robert R. Muntz Library has acquired the following books by 2008 Texas Poet Laureate Larry D. Thomas. Mr. Thomas recently visited UT Tyler, where he was featured as the keynote speaker for the Annual Student Poetry Awards. The books are available to be checked out. Here are the titles and call numbers; their location is in the third floor stacks.

• The Woodlanders. PS 3620 .H63 W66 2002.
• Where the Skulls Speak Wind. PS 3620 .H63 W48 2004.
• Amazing Grace. PS 3620 .H63 A43 2001.

If you are looking for some poetry, and you are in the mood for poetry that evokes the greatness and beauty of Texas, then go check these books out.

This week we are featuring a government document:The United States Government Manual. This federal government publication is put together by the Office of the Federal Register. In brief, it is a directory with information about the government agencies on the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. According the Preface, “the Manual also includes information on quasi-official agencies; international organizations in which the United States participates; and board, commissions, and committees” (iii). You can use it to look pretty much any government agency. The book includes names and contact information as well as a description of the agency; it tells you what the agency does. For example, what is the United States Trade Representative? This book will tell you that the U.S. Trade Representative is “responsible for directing all trade negotiations of and formulating trade policy for the United States” (100; italics in the original). You then get a short history of how the agency was created and what it does. There is a list of officials in the agency as well as contact information for futher information. Still using the example of the Trade Representative, I learn from the book that there is a website for this agency at www.ustr.gov.

The book also includes some appendices that may be helpful. One of these appendices is a list of common abbreviations. So, if you know the initials of an agency, but you are not sure what the initials actually stand for, you can look it up here. For example the difference between DOD (Department of Defense) and DOE (Department of Energy). There are also two indexes: one for names and one for agencies and subjects. This is helpful if you know someone’s name, and want to find where they work. Or, what many people want to know: what agency does what. For example, use the agencies and subject index to find the entry for AMTRAK. Did you know that AMTRAK’s official name is National Railroad Passenger Corporation? The agency was created in 1970 by the Rail Passenger Service Act. I found it on starting on page 472.

The library has the 2007-2008 edition in the Ready Reference shelf (that’s the shelf behind the reference desk). It is under the call number JK 421 .A3 2007-2008.

Note: You can also access this publication online via GPO Access. Here is the direct link to the Manual’s page. GPO stands for the Government Printing Office. The Manual tells me that “the mission of the Government Printing Office is to inform the Nation by producing, procuring, and disseminating printed and electronic publications of the Congress as well as the executive departments and establishments of the Federal Government” (51; italics in the original). Basically, GPO makes a lot of government documents available to the public. It is one of the ways in which the government makes information available to the people, and the Manual is one example of government information. On the GPO link, you can look at the 2007-2008 edition as well as editions back to 1995.