Lafayette College Library

Student interns are blogging about the work they are doing in Special Collections and College Archives, as well as highlighting some of the interesting and exciting objects in the collections, at Veritas Liberabit.

Some of the Special Collections projects that you can read about in students' own words, are:

• creating a Facebook profile for the Marquis de Lafayette;
• using Lafayette's archives as well as archives in Liberia to recreate details of David McDonogh's life;
• making cases for Skillman's rare books and artists’ books;
• interacting with student diaries from the mid-1800's; and
• discovering lost Lafayette College traditions, such as the Cremation of Calculus.

Skillman Library worked together with Professor Mary Jo Lodge to select and purchase approximately fifty vocal scores (at a rare discount) for the library's collection. Vocal scores include those for the recent musicals Wicked and Avenue Q. While the scores are still being cataloged, you can view the Library Catalog records for them, and for the library's entire collection of vocal scores.

Adekemi (Kemi) Egunsola has won the David Bishop Skillman 1913 Library Prize. The $200 prize is awarded to a graduating senior library assistant whose exemplary performance, skill, and dedication has enhanced the library's educational role. Since 2006, Kemi has worked in Skillman's Circulation and Technical Services departments and at Kirby Library, doing stellar work and surpassing library expectations each semester. In the words of library staff Kandyce Fisher: "She is thorough, efficient, a leader, exemplary in every way. She will continue her education after Lafayette, studying to become a doctor. I love her and wish we had more like her." Congratulations, Kemi!

The library's subscription to JSTOR now includes access to the Ireland collection, 25 Irish periodicals from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
The collection will grow to include 75 periodical titles and 200 monographs.

Additional information about the Ireland Collection.

Connect to the Ireland Collection.

This digital library created by the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) and the History of Parliament Trust contains some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. The complete Calendars of State Papers, Domestic and the Calendars of State Papers for Scotland and Ireland are a critical primary source for historians of early modern Britain, for the study of central government and administration, and for the social, cultural, and economic history of the period.

Connect to British History Online.

The library has just added a guide on its Guides and Help page on Using Refworks with Web of Science. Unlike many of our other databases, Web of Science does not offer a direct export option to RefWorks. The guide offers detailed instructions on how to export your search results.

A chat box now appears on the Ask Us page of the library website. The chat box indicates when a reference librarian is online and available to answer questions by instant messenger. While Lafayette's reference librarians have been available via instant messenger for several years, this new chat box means that users no longer need to open an additional IM program in order to initiate a reference chat.

A selection of 73,000 high-quality documentary photographs of major world events and personalities from the Magnum Photos cooperative is now available in ARTstor. The images cover industry, society and people, places of interest, politics, news events, disasters and conflict from the late 1930s to the present day, including photographs of the Spanish Civil War, the Gulf War, Marilyn Monroe the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the crisis in Chechnya. ARTstor images can be used in presentations, papers, theses, and noncommercial scholarly publications.

Bytes & Books is a biannual newsletter of the Lafayette College Library & Information Technology Services. Issues from 1987 until the present are now available online through the College's digital repository, including the most recent Spring 2009 issue.

Connect to Bytes and Books.

JSTOR has added 19th Century British Pamphlets to its archive, a primary source collection focusing on the political, economic, and social issues that fueled the great Parliamentary debates and controversies of the 19th century. The pamphlets will be available until June 30, 2009.