Wells Reference Blog

One of the best-kept secrets here on campus is the Events Calendar. You want to know if there’s somewhere you can go and practice speaking Uyghur in an informal atmosphere? Or when the Purdue Women’s Basketball team is playing here? Or you want to find out what the deadline is for dropping/adding classes in the Spring? Or you’ve heard that Dylan’s coming to campus, but no one seems to know where or when? Go here for arts, entertainment, lectures, conferences, sporting events. And not only that - you can also check the academic calendar and all the official dates. You can also find out what’s happening at other IU campuses. And if you’re involved in organizing an event yourself, you can post information about it. Every event listed is hyperlinked to more information. Be patient - sometimes it’s a little slow retrieving data, but it’s worth it!

Famous American Crimes and Trials, vols. 1-4. Edited by Frankie Y. Bailey and Steven Chermak. Westport, Conn: Prager Perspectives, 2004.

In the Reference Room, 1^st floor of the East Tower

HV 9950. F36 2004 V1-5

Are you a social scientist? Media specialist? Law student, writer or cultural anthropologist? Consider browsing Famous American Crimes and Trials for insight into 400 years of American criminal “justice.” Beginning with the trials of Puritans Anne Sexton and Mary Dyer and ending with the Unabomber, each crime chronicles a distinct moment in American history.  Each case is grounded in its social and historical background and concludes with notes on its cultural legacy while illuminating the development of the criminal justice system, dominant contemporary legal issues, and popular social concerns.

Mary Dyer being led to execution, 1660.

Most cases chronicled in FACT were historicized by famous trials articulating the anxieties of their era. What does the 1836 death of prostitute Helen Jewett reveal about the contrasts between female emancipation, sexual deportment and tensions between social classes? How did the coverage of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill influence public environmental awareness and the prosecution of “white collar criminals”? How and why were certain narratives like corporate avarice activated while others such as the plight of Alaskan citizens were ignored? What’s the Scopes monkey trial really about? FACT explores these questions while providing good, conscientious crime reading.

Organized into five volumes, each book describes about 14 incidents occurring between 1660 and 2000. Each volume features a unique introduction and includes citations. A table of contents at the beginning of each book outlines the crimes contained therein. As the years pass, smaller amounts of time and thus more crimes are covered in each volume.

Happy sleuthing…

Quotations are able to illustrate in a few words what is difficult to explain in many. Using appropriate quotations can strengthen and enliven any speech, paper or article - and finding the perfect quote is easy using the many resources available in the library and online.

Here are a few great quotation books available in the Reference Department.

The Last Word: A Treasury of Women’s Quotes, by Carolyn Warner

(REF PN 6084. W6 W37 1992)

“Happiness is good health and a bad memory.” Ingrid Bergman

Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

(REF PN 6084. H8 O94 2008)

“I’m not so think as you drunk I am.” J. C. Squire

Random House Webster’s Quotationary

(REF PN 6081. R29 1999)

“A full belly makes a dull brain.” Benjamin Franklin

To search for quotes online, I recommend Bartleby, WikiQuote and Quoteland.

http://www.bartleby.com/quotations/

http://www.wikiquote.org/

http://www.quoteland.com/

…are all entries in:

American Countercultures: An encyclopedia of nonconformists, alternative lifestyles, and radical ideas in U.S. history, ed. By Gina Misiroglu. M.E.  Sharpe, 2009

HM647 .A44 2009

Scope

This three volume reference set does not confine itself to the counterculture movements of the 1960s like some. The 500+ entries span topics on religious, political, and social movements, people, and events from the 17th Century to today.  Many entries are cross-referenced and contain images from their respective era, and suggestions for further reading.

Information

The information is scholarly but accessible and the entries are fairly extensive.  For example, the entry for Gangs and Gang Culture gives a definition of the term, an overview of the history and imagery of gangs from the Industrial Revolution to the 1950s, and culminates with substantial information on gang culture today.

Organization

The entries are organized alphabetically and there is “Topic Finder” at the beginning of each volume that organizes the information into broad categories for easy browsing, e.g., “Drugs and Drug Culture”, “Pastime, Fads, Recreation”, and “Sociopolitical Movements”.

A complete index to the set appears in the back of each volume and the third volume contains a bibliography and filmography, as well as a primary documents section.  The “Documents” section is a collection of writings, speeches, and songs including the National Organization for Women, Statement of Purpose (1966), Emma Goldman’s essay on Anarchism (1917), and the trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637).

The volumes are well written, well constructed, beautifully printed in black and white, and are fun to browse.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 1902-2004

The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers provide a rich primary source for the study of Britain, its colonies and its dependencies throughout the twentieth century. They cover all aspects of British life from agriculture to war. The online papers are searchable, with full text and suject indexing. The texts will dowload as pdf files (although not with OCR).

Find the official parliamentary report on the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 [Cd. 6352]

Shipping Casualties (Loss of the Steamship “Titanic”): Report of a formal investigation into the circumstances attending the foundering on 15th April, 1912, of the British Steamship “Titanic,” of Liverpool, after striking ice in or near Latitude 41° 46′ N,. Longitude 50° 14′ W., North Atlantic Ocean, whereby loss of life ensued

Continue with the search results of “Titanic” for further reports such as Report of the Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee respecting the Statutory regulations as to Boats and Life-saving appliances and other means of ensuring safety of life at sea, with appendices and Draft Life-saving appliances rules, with memorandum on safety of life at sea, by the President of the Board of Trade

The subject indexing “Wrecks–shipping casualties” will also lead to Report of a formal investigation into the circumstances
attending the foundering on 7th May, 1915, of the British S.S. “Lusitania,” of Liverpool, being torpedoed off the Old Hed of Kinsale, Ireland

Or,

if scandal interests you more, search for “profumo and sex” for Lord Denning’s report, Cmnd. 2152, on the behavior of the Secretary of State for War and the odd cast of characters around him. Espionage, sex, suicide, lies, charges of attempted murder, potential blackmail, and the resignation of a Prime Minister, it’s all there.

For fans across the world, the death of Michael Jackson sparked a renewed interest in his work: listeners, old and new, ran to record stores and iTunes to experience the sound of a legend.

Though Jackson may have been a defining figure of pop music, he wasn’t the first and won’t be the last pop sensation to rock the world, and there is encyclopedic proof.

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music 4^th edition, edited by Colin Larkin, chronicles the artists, labels, and albums that have shaped the genre since the early twentieth century. This is a fantastic resource for any person or researcher who wants more information on the inception, rise to fame, and legacy of major and minor entities in the pop music industry. Larkin’s encyclopedia also offers a volume with selected album reviews and biographies, a album rating system, and an index that allows for searching by song or album title, in addition to the general index.

Another resource that music lovers may find of interest, Rock Song Index: The 7500 Most Important Songs of the Rock and Roll Era: 1944-2000 2nd edition by Bruce Polluck, is also available the Wells Library Reference Reading Room. With the song listings of artists ranging from Michael Jackson to the Beach Boys, B.B. King to R.E.M., and the Dixie Cups to Madonna, this reference material is great for those who want more information on some of their favorite songs. Though this index doesn’t offer the benefit of articles like The Encyclopedia of Popular Music does, it provides data on a song’s original artist, album, label, and year, as well as cover band information. Another outstanding feature of this index is that it provides a detailed chronology of loosely defined “rock” music that lists every song released during a given year and indicates which songs defined that year’s music.