The Newspaper is Dead: Read All About It!

If newspapers, as we so often hear, are dead or dying, why are there so many of them in the BC Libraries? And why should you care?

Check out my article in the latest edition of ugrads@bc.library, the Libraries' undergraduate newsletter, to learn how newspapers can help you and how new kinds of access make them usable in ways that couldn’t have been conceived just a few years ago.

Also in this edition:

- Plagiarsm, Cheating, Academic Integrity. What's It All About: Online Tutorial to Debut in Fall of 2007

- Stephen Walsh: Student, Athlete, Library Employee!

- The O'Neill Library Media Center: Things You Didn't Know About It

- O'Neill (Thomas P.) at the O'Neill

....and more.

The Communication Collage @ BC

Have Fun! Win Prizes! Learning Something New!

The Communication Collage (http://www2.bc.edu/~lissk/collage) is a Web page with more than 100 images relating to various forms of communication.


Each month that school is in session, I'll create links on selected images sharing a certain theme. Each link will bring up a page with:

1. Fun Facts related to the current communication theme.
2. Research Tips on communication sources and strategies related to the theme.
3. One of a series of Puzzle Clues. Put all of the clues together, doing a little research in the process, to get the ultimate answer.
   

The first five BC Communication majors to send me the answer will win a prize.

The kickoff theme is "digital communication." That's "digital" as in the fingers at the end of your hand. Find six images in which someone is using a finger or fingers to convey a message. (Simply pointing or waving a hand doesn't count.) Have fun!.

Public Lives and Private Illnesses

Today's New York Times has an article on the impact on presidential campaigns of public disclosures of health issues affecting candidates and their family members. John Edwards' open discussion of his wife's cancer (and other recent examples) are contrasted with earlier presidents and presidential contenders who "dissembled...lied...covered up or simply kept their mouths shut."

In weighing the age-old question of how to confront serious illness [says The Times], presidential candidates and their spouses are increasingly opting to come clean. Many are tossing aside traditional notions that have suggested that public airings of such conditions might sink a campaign or derail a presidency.

Some say the shift reflects the greater freedom candidates have in modern times to portray themselves as more human and vulnerable. Others say the public confessions are driven by a desire to control the political message before reporters do. With Internet bloggers, cable news channels and around-the-clock news cycles, keeping such conditions safely buried in the closet is close to impossible, they say.

One thing the article does not address is the impact of such public illnesses on the health awareness and behavior of the general population. That's the topic of a new book recently added to the BC Libraries collections: When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine.

The book, by Barron Lerner, professor of medicine and public health at Columbia, looks at 13 cases, from Lou Gehrig to John Foster Dulles to Steve McQueen to Lorenzo Odone (subject of the movie Lorenzo's Oil).

Here's an excerpt from the book's blurb: "While celebrity illnesses have helped to inform patients about treatment options, ethical controversies, and scientific proof, the stories surrounding these illnesses have also assumed mythical characteristics that may be misleading."

Another, older (1952), book along the same lines in the BC collections is Medical Biographies: The Ailments of Thirty-Three Famous Persons.

New Communication Books at BC

There's been a large influx of new communication books in the libraries these past few weeks. Take a look at a selection of the new titles via the New Communication Books page. (Screen shot below.)


Clicking on a tag on the new books page takes you to a page in a service called LibraryThing where I have gathered books on that topic that have been added to the BC Libraries since the beginning of the semester. (Clicking on MOST RECENT ADDITIONS show the very newest titles in all categories.)

Once you’re in LibraryThing, there are several kinds of information available about each book, including:

* A link to Amazon.com, including descriptions, excerpts, and any other details that are available.
* Tags that have been applied to the book by me or by others who have included the book in their own LibraryThing collections.
* A link (in a box under Member Reviews - the most convenient place I could put it) to the Quest catalog record for the book at BC.
* Any ratings or reviews that LibraryThing users have submitted about the book. (Not many with these academic titles.)

New books continue to arrive almost daily. I'll post another update in a couple of weeks.

The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric Online

(From Books & Bytes in Major Mail)
The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, "a comprehensive treatment of the art of persuasion," is now online through April 6th as part of a new electronic trail of the Oxford Digital Reference Shelf. The Encyclopedia brings together expertise in classical studies, philosophy, literature, literary theory, cultural studies, speech, and communication for a wide-ranging reference work combining theory, history, and practice, with a special emphasis on public speaking, performance, and communication. Log in to the Electronic Resources Trials page to access this and other trial databases.

TV Series in the Media Center

(From Books & Bytes in Major Mail)
The O'Neill Library Media Center's collection of TV series on DVD and video continues to grow. New additions in the past few months include:

Arrested Development, Seasons 1 & 2
Boston Legal, Seasons 1 & 2
Dawson's Creek, Complete Series
Deadwood, Seasons 1 & 2
Lost, Season 1
The Mind of Mencia, Seasons 1-2
The OC, Seasons 1 & 2
Oz, Complete Series
Queer As Folk, Seasons 1-4
Will & Grace, Seasons 1-5

We've also added new seasons of several series already in the collection, including complete series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, and The West Wing.

For a longer, though not comprehensive, list of available series (new and old), see http://www2.bc.edu/~lissk/tvshows.html