Leddy Library News

Maintenance is scheduled to begin Friday May 4th at 23:59 and end May 5th at 04:00 (EST). This maintenance window is being used to upgrade existing network hardware. During this time, all Scholars Portal services (including Journals, Books, RACER, WizFolio, ODESI, GeoPortal, ASK a Librarian, Refworks, SFX, Verde) with be unavailable. We’re sorry for the interruption and appreciate your understanding.

Celebrate Black History Month by exploring some of Leddy Library’s fantastic Black History digital resources

Black Thought and Culture contains 1,297 sources with 1,098 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Particular care has been taken to index this material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets, letters and other fugitive material.

Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more.  It combines several resources for research and teaching in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, The HistoryMakers^® Videos and full transcripts for interviews with 100 contemporary African Americans, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), historical black newspapers, and the Black Literature Index.

Black Women Writers celebrates the many voices of women from Africa and the African Diaspora. Offering fiction, poetry, and essays from three continents, the database gives an unparalleled view of black women’s struggles through time. The database features over 105,996 pages.

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice: Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice. In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.

African American Music Reference will contain 50,000 pages that offers the first comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.

African American Poetry: The early history of African American poetry, from the first recorded poem by an African American (Lucy Terry Prince’s ‘Bars Fight’, c.1746) to the major poets of the nineteenth century, including Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

Ora has been named one of the top Canadian short films of 2011 by TIFF. Ora – A Thermographic Adventure is 5 min 59 s of behind the scenes on the set. This is one of the two short films on the filming of ORA to be found on the National Film Board website.

Women, War & Society, 1914-1918 makes accessible documents from the Women at Work Collection at the Imperial War Museum, London.

The First World War had a revolutionary and permanent impact on the personal, social and professional lives of all women. Their essential contribution to the war in Europe is fully documented in this definitive collection of primary source materials brought together in the Imperial War Museum, London.

These unique documents – charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, and press cuttings – are published here for the first time in fully searchable form, along with interpretative essays from leading scholars. Together these documents form an indispensable resource for the study of 20 th Century social, political, military and gender history.

You can explore this resource by clicking here.

By Mita Williams

Mita Williams is the User Experience Librarian at the Leddy Library at the University of Windsor.  She has been playing games as long as she can remember. Recently, her experience in alternative reality games led to a role as a game runner for Urgent Evoke, a 10 week crash course on changing the world that was sponsored by the World Bank Institute and designed by Jane McGonigal.

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The books I have selected for this month’s Five Books are some of the ones that took me from a time and place when I thought of games as just for leisure to a new land, where games are for leisure but also for learning, health, collaboration and community.

When does Tic-Tac-Toe cease to be fun to play? My favourite answer is from Raph Koster: when the players have learned all the patterns and the game no longer seems novel.  Koster’s A theory of fun for game design (GV1469.17.S63 K67 2005 – 2nd Floor, Main Building) is the best introduction to the idea that games are all about learning and it is presented with enough whimsical and illuminating text and cartoons that it delivers the fun that it also seeks to understand.

There have been others who have noticed that children are very happy spending many hours playing some of the most difficult video games but are admittedly less motivated to engage likewise when learning within the classroom. James Paul Gee, who wrote the next selection What video games have to teach about learning and literacy (GV1469.3 .G44 2004 – 2nd Floor, Main Building and online) is a professor of social linguistics with a background education, and is, as such, well positioned to understand the different literacies involved in reading and game-playing.  One of Gee’s most recent posts is 10 Truths About Books and What They Have to Do With Video Games and after his ten described “truths” about books, Gee describes four properties of video games.

And one of Gee’s properties of video games is: “Games can lead to more than thinking like a designer; they can lead to designing, since players can “mod” many games, i.e., use software that comes with the game to modify it or redesign it.”  At the moment there are some very ambitious projects, such as the Quest to Learn school, that work from the premise that designing games can provide even greater opportunities for learning than playing games.  The Art of Game Design (QA 76.76 .C672 S34 2008 – 3rd Floor, Main Building) by game designer Jesse Schell is a highly recommended book about game design.

Game designer Jane McGonigal makes the case that games can go much farther than the realm of formal learning in her recent book, Reality is broken : why games make us better and how they can change the world (GV 1201.38 .M34 2011 – 2nd Floor, Main Building).  McGonigal tells us that we can build stronger and more collaborative communities by playing bigger and better games. We might even be able to change the world.

Many people know Stewart Brand as the founder of Whole Earth Catalog but not many know that he was also a founder of the New Games Foundation. The book New Games? (GV1201 .N415 1976 – Leddy: CRC Circulating Books – West Building, 1st Floor) is a collection of these new games and if you are a child of the 1970s (as I am) you may remember their classic earth ball and parachute games. The New Games Foundation was very influential to many of today’s games designers. In this interview between Stewart Brand and Jane McGonigal, Brand suggests that game playing encourages rule changing and rule changing is one means to change the world. Game on!

Scholars Portal services (e-journals platform, e-books platform, search platform, Order Books and Articles Not in Leddy service (Interlibrary Loan), and our Browse Journals service will be intermittently unavailable from 2-7 a.m. on Dec. 1. The total amount of downtime should not exceed 2 hours during this period. This will also effect Google Scholar linking to Windsor-held materials.

Used print toner cartridges, spent batteries, and broken cell phones should not go straight to the garbage. These items require special handling as they contain keep remnants of hazardous material that could otherwise leach into landfills.

So next time you have to drop off your books to the library, why not drop off these things to our special Cartridge and Battery Collection boxes in the lobby of the Leddy Library?

Otherwise, please drop off your old electronics at the Public Drop Off Depot at the corner of E.C. Row and Central.

5 Books You Should Read about the Arab-Israeli Dispute

Suggested by Jonathan Nehmetallah

This month’s  “5 Books You Should Read” features selections from Jonathan Nehmetallah, a Master’s student at the University of Windsor in Political Science focusing on International Relations and Conflict Resolution. His areas of interest include conflict in the Middle East and Israeli/Palestinian dispute. He is also a stand-up kinda guy.  Check out last month’s 5 Books You Should Read too.

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited HV640.5.A6 M67 2004

The influential book by new historian, Benny Morris, was the first to seriously examine the cause of the Palestinian refugee crisis. This is the book that debunked many of the mythologies surrounding the Israeli War of Independence.

From Beirut to Jerusalem DS119.7 .F736 2000

The most well-written book on this list and certainly the most enjoyable to read, Friedman’s journalistic account gives those just learning about the Middle East conflict an easy place to start.

Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World D644 .M32 2002

Margaret MacMillan’s ambitious work surrounding around the Treaty of Versailles and the “Big Three” (Wilson, George, and Clemenceau) who signed it gives us an insight that is unparalleled into the making of the modern Middle East.

Divided Jerusalem : the Struggle for the Holy City DS109.93 .W37 2002

One of the key stumbling blocks to a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is the question of Jerusalem and what to do with the ancient city. This book looks at the city’s history while emphasizing post-1967 and highlights the historic divisions that exist within the city.
A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time DS 126.5 .S155 2007 On order

The book on Israel’s history…really all there is to say.

In honour of comedian John Wing’s campus lecture this week (Wednesday Oct 6, 7:00 PM), Leddy Library invited Mr Wing to be the inaugural contributor to Leddy Library’s “Five Books You Should Read series.” Watch this space for future lists.

Five Books You Shouldn’t Read While Drinking Any Liquid (because it will come out your nose) by John Wing

1. The Portable Ring Lardner by Ring Lardner
PS3523.A7 A6 1946 Leddy: Book Collection

“If you want to understand something about small town America between 1900-1925, and you appreciate trying to read something while laughing your head off, this is the book for you.”

2. Play it Again Sam by Woody Allen
PN1997.P5243 W6 – Leddy: Book Collection

“For anyone who has wished to live inside a movie, to say what our heroes say, and perhaps to be a little less pathetic with women, this be the play.”

3. The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
PS1097 .D4 1943 Leddy: Book Collection

“And you thought reading the dictionary was for wimps and bookworms. You were wrong. So wrong.”

4. Newspaper days by H.L. Menken
PS3525.E43 Z53 – Leddy: Book Collection

“Way back, before the internet, the news was delivered to people in paper form. Often those writing and producing it had to check their facts and make sure they were correct. This is the real Lost World.”

5. Joshua Then And Now by Mordecai Richler
PS8535.I35 J68 – Leddy: Book Collection

“‘The story of Job is NOT just another gambling story with a happy ending.’ For Canadians, Bible scholars, and lovers of comic vengeance, this novel will inspire you, fill you with happiness, and make your cheeks hurt.”

Comedian John Wing presents a lecture entitled “The Art of Stand-up,” Wednesday 6 October 2010, 7.00 pm, Freed-Orman Conference Centre on the University of Windsor Campus.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Windsor English Department, the Humanities Research Group, the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, and Dr. Stephen Pender, Research Leadership Chair, Faculty of Arts & Social Science