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Inauguration Milestones

In the blog "Confessions of a Community College Dean" at www.insidehighered.com yesterday, the opening sentence read: "When Barack Obama was born, his parents' marriage would have been illegal in Virginia. Last Fall, he carried Virginia."

Less dramatically, in my family, it was the second inauguration of President Eisenhower in January 1957 that prompted my father to get a television for the household. He thought children should be able to see such historical occasions.

To read an eyewitness account of today's festivities from the perspective of a college president, visit Daan Braveman's blog at http://naz.typepad.com/braveman/.  Now president of Nazareth College in New York State, he was also on the Washington Mall in August 1963 for Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr.'s speech. 

Barack Obama takes advantage of the new communication technologies now available by posting his weekly addresses at YouTube (www.youtube.com). They're the 21st century version of President Roosevelt's Fireside Chats that he gave on the radio during his presidency in the 1930s and 40s.

Today we'll have the television monitor in the library lobby tuned to coverage of the Inauguration all day (we close at 4:30).

Time flies...

Recommended Reading for the President-elect

In his article "Turning a Page" in yesterday's Inside Higher Ed (Here's a link to the page:

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/11/05/mclemee)

Scott McLemee published a reading list he had compiled for President-elect Obama after "conducting an utterly unscientific survey of academics, editors and public intellectuals" for their recommendations.

Several of them are available to borrowers at Camden County College:

Era of Theodore Roosevelt, by George Mowry - call number E 756 .M85

Preparing to be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt - e-book, available online

History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides - call number DF 229 .T55 C7 1996

On Thermonuclear War, by Herman Kahn - call number UF 767 .K25 1960

The Great Transformation: the Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, by Karl Polanyi - e-book, available online

In Pharaoh's Army, by Tobias Wolff - available from the Camden County Public Library

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else, by David Cay Johnston - available from the Camden County Public Library

Superman Comes to the Supermarket, by Norman Mailer - This essay on the 1960 Democratic convention is in 2 anthologies: Some Honorable Men: Political Conventions 1960-1972 (call number JK 2255 .M243) and Presidential Papers (call number E841 .M25).

What reading would you recommend to President-elect Obama? Post a comment!

McCain and Obama Agree on "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

NPR’s Susan Stamberg reports:

“They're fierce political opponents, but it turns out that the presidential candidates do agree on a literary matter: Each man picks Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls as a favorite…”

Robert Jordan, Hemingway's Bipartisan Hero

by Susan Stamberg

Listen Now [7 min 19 sec] add to playlist

Or read her complete report at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95604448

“…The book tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American who hides out in caves during the Spanish Civil War and wages guerrilla war against the fascists.

   In a 2002 public radio interview John McCain said, 'Robert Jordan was everything I ever wanted to be.'

  Though NPR was unable to talk to Barack Obama about the character so late in the campaign season, in a July interview for Rolling Stone Magazine, the candidate cited For Whom the Bell Tolls as one of the books that most inspired him...

  Now fate has given McCain and Obama the chance to make history. It's a fight schooled, in part, by a fictional character they both admire."

In the College library, cardholders will find and may borrow:

For whom the bell tolls  [VHS videorecording] ; a Sam Wood production ; Paramount Pictures. Call number PS 3515 .E37 F6 1995

For whom the bell tolls [book] by Ernest Hemingway. (4 copies) Call number PS3515 .E37 F6

Holocaust and Genocide: display, programs, bus trip

For Fall, 2008, Camden County College's William G. Rohrer Center, in cooperation with the College's Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility and the Office of Student Life and Activities, presents a multimedia display, "The Holocaust and Genocide: The Betrayal of Humanity", a series of programs, "The Holocaust - Lessons Learned...Lessons Yet To Be Learned", and a bus trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Display: Through the generosity of the Goodwin Holocaust Museum and Education Center, the display will be on view now through December 12, 2008. Fourteen panels examine the Holocaust and the war years, from persecution to death-camp horrors to liberation. The display is accompanied by a 22-minute video loop of oral history accounts from South Jersey Holocaust Survivors. Visitors are welcome Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.; Friday, 9 a.m. - 6 p.m., and Saturday 9 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.

The Programs: To complement the exhibit, the College's Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility will sponsor a public lecture series, also at the Rohrer Center. All lectures begin at 7 p.m.

Monday, October 13 - The Ever-Changing Role of Women During the Holocaust - Professor Diane Bannon, Camden County College.

Tuesday, October 28 - Root Causes of the Holocaust - Professor Larry Glaser, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Tuesday, November 11 - Echoes and Reflections: A Multimedia Curriculum on the Holocaust - Professor Rebecca Aupperle, Camden County College

Tuesday, November 18 - Screening and Discussion of Facing the Sudan Documentary Film - Facilitated by Dr. Jerry Ehrlich  http://www.facingsudan.com/sudan.html

Monday, December 1 - Screening and Discussion of Paper Clips Documentary Film - Facilitated by Professor Diane Bannon, Camden County College  http://www.paperclipsmovie.com and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq8dFU72NOA

The Bus Trip: Open to the public, the trip will take visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, December 7. The Museum's permanent exhibition presents a narrative history of the Holocaust using more than 900 artifacts, 70 video monitors, and four theaters that include historic film footage and eyewitness testimonies. Visit the Museum website at www.ushmm.org for more information.

Tickets - $15 for students and $30 for the public - are now on sale at all College locations. Museum passes are included in the trip cost.   

     On December 7, the bus will leave the Camden Campus at 7:30 a.m.; it will leave the Rohrer Center, Cherry Hill, at 8:00 a.m.; it will leave the Blackwood Campus at 8:30 a.m. The bus will depart from Washington, D.C. for the return trip at 6:00 p.m.

For more information about any of these events and activities, please contact Barbara Laynor at 856-874-6001 or blaynor@camdencc.edu.

Visitors to the Wolverton Library on the Blackwood Campus will find a display of books related to the Holocaust and Genocide available for loan. Afficionados of Google Earth may wish to view Google Maps, "Crisis in Darfur" to see the devastation caused by the genocide there.

Constitution Day Events, Resources

Camden County College will celebrate Constitution Day 2008 with several events, including panel discussions, voter registration, and film screenings. For all the details visit http://www.camdencc.edu/tlc/constitution/Index.htm

There is a link to the above page, and also to a list of resources in the libary's collections related to constitutional issues, on the library website, http://library.camdencc.edu, under Library News and Events. A display in the Wolverton Library features many of these resources (borrowers may still check them out).

Also on display is a 1944 poll tax receipt from Houston TX and small collection of campaign buttons from years past. If you'd like to lend us buttons from your collection - or other election memorabilia - for the display, just leave a comment here.

NJ Knowledge Initiative to end February 29, 2008: campaign to restore funding needs your help

One-third of the research databases listed on Libraries @ Camden County College website will go dark on March 1, 2008, if NJKI funding is not restored.

  Since the late June announcement of the $1 million shortfall that would cause all NJKI-funded resources to be discontinued as of February 28, 2008, State Librarian Norma Blake and her staff with other library supporters in Trenton have been seeking ways to continue this program. Now they need our help. They ask us to contact our legislators and to call the Governor’s office (609-292-6000) or email http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail.html (choose topic: Commerce) to tell them what this program means for students, faculty and administrators at Camden County College, and to businesses in the County.

   On our website we’ve identified the resources to which access by College library users is funded by NJKI (go to http://library.camdencc.edu/ and click on DATABASES BY TITLE). The following resources are at risk; college librarians consider those with asterisks vital for our community:

               For Science and Health:

                             Biomedical Reference

                             CINAHL and Pre-CINAHL*

                             MEDLINE*

                             Nature Research and Review Journals*

                             Nursing and Allied Health Literature*

                             OVID/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins

                             Wiley InterScience

               For Business and General Research:

                             Business Source Premier*

                             ReferenceUSA*

Regional Business News

                             (Academic Search Premier* is part of NJKI, but its contract expires 6/30/08.)

  Ironically, NJKI has just won the prestigious Innovation Award from the Council of State Governments (CSG) that is given to only 8 projects in the country each year. Other states want to replicate it for their academic and business communities!

  While the State Library is obtaining pricing for members of VALE (our academic library consortium) to cover the March-June shortfall – with high hopes for full funding in FY09 – this will not help Libraries @ Camden County College, as our budget for online resources is already fully committed for this year. Neither will it help the 300 small businesses that joined NJKI or the members of the public that use some of these resources through JerseyClicks using a NJ public library card.

  Since NJKI began in FY06, more than 10 million articles/records have been used by NJ researchers and entrepreneurs; colleges and university students and faculty; legislative staff and state agencies; and the more than 2500 member libraries of the NJ Library Network and the people they serve. For more information, see, “NJKI is Vital to the Needs and Goals of Higher Education”, posted at http://www.njstatelib.org/LDB/NJKI/2007_Advocacy/NJKI%20Academic%20Library%20Survey%20Points%20-%20Jan%2007.doc