The Lawes Papers have been consulted by scholars researching the life and work of Lewis Lawes who was Warden of Sing Sing Prison. These topics included the Black Sheep prison football team , visits to the prison by Babe Ruth and Harry Houdini, and social programs for prisoners at Sing Sing. One scholar used the Lawes papers to research the incarceration of his father, and produced a moving account of his research in an article. Lewis Lawes granddaughter stopped by to see the papers and family photos of a grandfather who died before she was born.

Ron Arons visited us from Berkeley, California to use both of these collections in his research into the criminal history, conviction, and incarceration experience of Jewish criminals in New York. He has invited the John Jay College community to attend his presentation The Jews of Sing Sing on November 21st at 2:00 P.M. at the New York Jewish Genealogical Society at the Center for Jewish History (located at 16 West 15th Street). Contact the Center for Jewish History (www.cjh.org) for more information.

We encourage members of the John Jay Community to use the Rare Books, Archives and Manuscript collections in our Special Collections at Lloyd Sealy Library in their research. The collections are available by appointment only. Please consult our website or contact the Special Collections Librarian, Ellen Belcher, at ebelcher@jjay.cuny.edu for more information or to make an appointment.

Recent publications based on Special Collections include:

Blumenthal, R. (2004). Miracle at Sing Sing: How one man transformed the lives of America s most dangerous prisoners. New York: St. Martins Press.

Chauncey, G. (1994). Gay New York: Gender, urban culture, and the making of the gay male world, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books.

Gold, R.L. (Spring, 2002). Searching Sing Sing for my father: Harry Gold, inmate #76577, Sing Sing Prison, 1924-1930. The Westchester Historian, 78, 36-47.

Lombroso, C. (2004). Criminal woman: The prostitute, and the normal woman. (M. Gibson & N. H. Rafter, trans.). Durham: Duke University Press.

Markowitz, G. E. (2004). Educating for justice: A history of John Jay College. New York: John Jay Press.

Ellen Belcher

Drop-In Sessions

This semester, as in the past, we are offering open sessions of database instruction to the John Jay community. They are typically given about nine times a week and each of them addresses a particular database or library technique. All are welcome and a current schedule of them is available through a link from the Library home page.

We strongly suggest you bring them to the attention of your students. They are generally poorly attended, but experience tells us that low attendance does not indicate a lack of need.

Tony Simpson

Library Faculty Publications

Brooks, Marvie. Six articles: Aviation security, Financial crimes enforcement network, Intelligence and security command, Nuclear security: Department of Energy, Office of Security: Central Intelligence Agency, and Transportation Security Administration. In Encyclopedia of law enforcement, forthcoming from Sage Reference in 2004.

Brooks, Marvie. Caspar Holstein. In C.D. Wintz & P. Finkelman (Eds.). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, forthcoming from Routledge in 2004.

Brooks, Marvie. Valuing and fashioning a life/OR making a way out of no way. In D. Jones-Brown (Ed.). African-American woman: The law and justice system, forthcoming from Taylor & Francis in 2004.

Dunham, Janice. Four book reviews in Library journal: Founding mothers: The women who raised our nation, by C. Roberts (2004). The mind at work: Valuing the intelligence of the American worker, by M. Rose (2004). No ordinary women: Irish female activists in the Revolutionary years, by S. McCoole (2004). Love for sale: A world history of prostitution, by N.J. Ringdale (trans. 2004).

Dunham, Janice. Two articles: Miranda rights and Federal capital punishment. In Encyclopedia of law enforcement, forthcoming in 2004.
Gross, Gretchen. Three articles: Housing police, Interstate Commerce Commission, and Police Explorers. In Encyclopedia of law enforcement, forthcoming in 2004.