Volume 15, Number 1 Spring 2003

       Eugène-François Vidocq was a master French criminal who was active in the early nineteenth century. Vidocq was so clever at his trade that the city of Paris made him its Chief of Detectives. He became legendary in the annals of crime and punishment and a number of novelists modeled characters on him, including Émile Gaboriau's police officer, M. Lecoq. Vidocq was not only a successful thief and detective but also an author of books on crime and criminals. It is well known among criminologists and crime aficionados that Vidocq's careers on both sides of the criminal fence inspired the eponymous Philadelphia Society of Forensic Professionals and Interested Private Citizens who applied their skills in solving "cold case" homicides. All this goes by way of prefacing Sealy Library's most fortunate acquisition of a first edition of Vidocq's significant work Les Voleurs, Physiologie de Leurs Mœurs et Leur Langage... (1837). In these two volumes Vidocq informs "honest men" of the ways, practices, and language of the Paris underworld. We were especially pleased to obtain the first edition, because as all good scholars know, subsequent editions and translations frequently contain major textual alterations and changes of format. On a number of occasions I have written about the importance of special collections in any research library. John Jay boasts the world's foremost such library in criminal justice and first editions of seminal works help us to maintain this well-deserved reputation. For instance, our copy of the German edition of Cesare Lombroso's Criminal Man, with the all-important atlas, has already been used in a number of publications, both here and abroad.

       Although special collections are invaluable to our research community, what makes us really "special" is the staff. And I am happy to report that two new substitute librarians began work in the Spring semester: Gretchen Gross and Kenneth Krepp. Both have CUNY experience and make a good fit in the Sealy Library. I am happy to welcome them to our faculty.
 

       Chomsky, Noam. 9-11. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001. HV6432.C44 2001

       Combating terrorism: Strategies of ten countries. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2002. HV6431.C647135 2002

       Corbin, Jane. Al-Qaeda: In search of the terror network that threatens the world. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002. HV6432.C656 2002

       Defede, Jim. The day the world came to town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland. New York: Regan Books, 2002. HV6432.D44 2002

       Dershowitz, Alan M. Why terrorism works: Understanding the threat, responding to the challenge. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. HV6431.D473 2001

       Encyclopedia of international terrorism. Updated ed. New Delhi: Deep & Deep, 2002. Ref. HV6431.E52 2002

       Esposito, John L. Unholy war: Terror in the name of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. HV6431.E76 2002

       Hagen, Susan. Women at Ground Zero: Stories of courage and compassion. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002. HV6432.7.W65 2002

       Ledeen, Michael A. The war against the terror masters: Why it happened, where we are now, how we'll win. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002. HV6432.L43 2002

       Miller, John. The cell: Inside the 9/11 plot, and why the FBI and CIA failed to stop it. New York: Hyperion, 2002. HV6432.M54 2002

       Nash, Jay Robert. Terrorism in the 20th century: A narrative encyclopedia from the anarchists, through the Weathermen, to the Unabomber. New York: M. Evans, 1998. Ref. HV6431.N366 1998

       Pipes, Daniel. Militant Islam reaches America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. BP67.U6P57 2002 HV6431.W49 2002

       Pyszczynski, Tom. In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington, D.C.: APA, 2003. HV6432.P97 2003

       Whittaker, David J. Terrorism: Understanding the global threat. London : Pearson Education, 2002. HV6431.W49 2002
 

       Patrons can now renew their library material instantaneously regardless of which CUNY library owns them. Click on the CUNY+ link from the Library's home page and choose New CUNY+. Then click on the Connect to CUNY+PLUS box.

       The catalog opens to the Basic Search Screen. Click on My Accounts on the uppermost blue taskbar. You will be prompted for your library barcode (21699….) and a password. The password is initially set to your library barcode number as well. It is a good idea to change it to something memorable once you are in your account. To change your password, click on the Change Password option on the dark gray taskbar.

       Once in your account, you are able to see any fines (cash transactions) which are owed, any holds which you placed, how many items you have charged out, and if they are delinquent. Click on the Loans link to see the list of titles you have out. From this numbered list, click on the line number of the item to be renewed. This will take you to the detailed view of this loan where you will find the Renew link.

       Once you click Renew, the screen will return to the list of items you have out. Notice the new due date for the renewed item and make a note of it!

       The My Accounts functions can also be used to set up an Alert which will search CUNY+ at specified time intervals and notify you by email of any new material which has been added to the catalog. You can also personalize your view of the catalog by clicking My Profile.

       For questions or problems with your account, please contact the Library Circulation Desk (ext. 2226) or Kathy Killoran (ext. 8263).

     Hein-On-Line is one of the many new databases purchased with funds from the new student technology fee. Developed by William S. Hein & Co., Inc., exclusive distributors of over 900 legal periodicals, the company plans to eventually convert all back issues of indexed legal journals into electronic format. The database is still in phase I production but already contains page image full text of articles from close to 300 law reviews and journals dating back to the first volume of each journal. Phase II will make materials such as U. S. Reports, the Classics of International Law, and the Nuremberg Trials available. It currently has the 1967-1980 volumes of the Federal Register. This huge retrospective collection makes a nice complement to the more current law review and journal collection available in Lexis-Nexis.

     In addition to browsing by author, article title, or journal title, Hein-On-Line can be searched using various search methods like Blue Book citation, keyword, or "phrase." A search using Blue Book citation can be performed right on the opening page of the database. Simply choose the law review's abbreviation from a list of abbreviations and then type in the citation's volume and page numbers. To search by keyword or phrase, click on search article author/title and type in your selected keywords or phrase. Use quotation marks when you are phrase searching. Alternatively, you could expand your search by choosing fulltext search from the opening page. Again, you can type in either keywords or phrase. A fulltext search can be narrowed down by date or journal(s) title. Once you have performed a search and clicked on a citation to enter the content of an article, you can then navigate through the article via the top bar on the database page. From here, you can move from page to page, view the article in either text or page image, or print. You can also choose to view the table of contents of the journal that your article appeared in—a feature that is particularly useful as many law review articles appear in symposium volumes. For any further information on Hein-On-Line, please call the library reference desk at x8246 or contact Nancy Egan at x8269, negan@jjay.cuny.edu.
 

       Electronic Reserves has continued to expand this semester, with financial support from the Student Technology Fee. 88 faculty are now using our electronic reserves system, for 94 courses this semester. During February, 36 courses were accessed between 50 and 99 times, and 31 courses were accessed over 100 times. One course scored a total of 1742 hits! Though possibly those students were just having a lot of problems printing...

       One question we hear repeatedly from students is why all of their professors aren't using electronic reserves. Eventually we hope that most of the photocopies in our print reserve collection will move onto the electronic reserve system; for the moment, we are maintaining both collections, giving the faculty the choice of which system to use. Some materials are unlikely ever to be available on electronic reserves, due to copyright considerations and size. Entire books, psychological tests, videotapes and other materials provided by professors will continue to be available only at the reserve desk.

       Reserve readings consist mainly of journal articles, individual book chapters, magazine and newspaper articles and reports. Many reports, such as those published by the Federal government or by non-profit organizations such as Amnesty International, are available on the web, and we can link directly to them from our electronic reserve system. A few magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly, put their content up on the web. More importantly, many of the academic databases the library licenses contain the full-text of journal articles, which we can link to directly. Two of the most useful subscription databases for electronic reserves are the EBSCOhost Acadaemic and PsycARTICLES. The latter is published by the American Psychological Association and contains full text articles from 43 APA journal titles. The Student Technology Fee is paying for the library's subscription to this very useful database. Linking to the text of the item, whether free on the web or inside one of our subscription databases, avoids the issue of copyright permissions for copying.

       Any faculty member interested in using electronic reserves should contact Ellen Sexton at esexton@jjay.cuny.edu.

       Scan the front pages of The New York Times (with pictures) from World War I on your home computer. Search the content of 1,000 scholarly science journals. Read the full text of government reports from over 500 U.S. cities. Order and receive doctoral dissertations within minutes. Search statistical tables from U.S. and international sources. John Jay students and faculty can do all of these things in the Library and off campus courtesy of the Student Technology Fee.

       CUNY students have been paying a $75/semester technology fee since September. Some of that money has been allocated by the John Jay Student Technology Fee Committee to greatly improve the collection of Library electronic resources in all fields. While the extra fee is painful, the Library, by making use of consortial buying power, has been able to parlay it into priceless access to scholarly literature. Among the highlights of the new resources are The New York Times Historical File, the ACM Digital Library of computer journals, Biography Resource Center, CQ Researcher, Proquest Digital Dissertations, Grove Music Online, the AMICO Library of art images, the OED online, Project MUSE, PsycArticles, ScienceDirect, and Shepard's Citations. Because technology and standards are advancing, many of the electronic indexes can now link directly to the new full-text journal collections, turning the old reliable PsycINFO index, for example, into a full text database. All of these new are available remotely by using your John Jay email username and password. The full list of resources, with descriptions, can be found at http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/stech.html and a complete list of all the electronic journals that are now available can be found at http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/journals/

       In addition to the electronic resources, the Student Technology Fee has paid for the new Electronic Reserve system (described elsewhere in the newsletter), 50 new computers for student use in the Library, a full time network manager to manage the increasingly complex Library network, and a new library faculty position of Information Literacy Librarian to help integrate electronic information skills into the College curriculum and the skills of our students.

      The importance of the Technology Fee money to the Library cannot be overstated. Last year we were able to offer few electronic resources outside of the major ones provided by CUNY--LEXIS-NEXIS, EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier, PsycINFO, and Sociological AbstractsBand those we could offer were focused very narrowly in the field of criminal justice. Now, the John Jay Library has one of the best electronic collections in CUNY--a collection comparable in quality to some of the private liberal arts colleges--and we can finally offer our students, and our faculty, the level of electronic library resources they deserve.

       ...wherein members of the faculty share some of their favorite books with us all.

       Marcia Clowers of the Speech & Theatre Department: Breaking The Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum-Security Prison, by The Women of the ACE Program of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Pr., 1998.)
      I met the women of the AIDs Counseling and Education (ACE) Program during the two-and-a- half years that I worked at Bedford Hills. These were strong and brave women; they created the program for themselves and helped fellow inmates with AIDS at a time when little was known about AIDS, which infects as much as 20% of the prison population and surrounded the infected at that time with stigma, fear, and isolation. I remember the pathos of the hospice unit which was staffed by inmates who themselves had AIDs. One of ACE's founders was inmate Kathy Boudin of SDS notoriety, who edited the book and contributed her story. Breaking The Walls will always be one of my favorites because it's a testament to hope and community.

       Mark McBeth of the English Department: For a research project-in-progress, I recently finished reading all of the books of J. R. Ackerley, a contemporary and friend of E. M. Forster. Ackerley is best known for his travel journal, Hindoo Holiday (1932), but he has also written We Think The World of You (1960), a novel, My Father and Myself (1968), a biography, and My Dog Tulip (1965), a pet biography. These have all been recently released in new editions by the New York Review of Books and other publishers. My Father…and My Dog…are whimsical and humorous with a voice that is inviting and a world perspective that is compelling. Although Ackerley chronicles two important figures in his life, his father and his dog, he ultimately composes a self-portrait that reveals his quirkiness of character as well as the strange workings of his mind. Once I started reading Ackerleys' works, I wanted to read them all. (Peter Parker, Ackerley's biographer, has also written a thorough portrait of the author's life which illuminates it even further.)

       Janice Dunham: Two articles: " Day Release" and " Miranda Rights" in Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002).
       Five book reviews in Library Journal: Dictionary of the Social Sciences, Craig Calhoun, Ed. (Oxford, 2002);
       Hey, Waitress! by Alison Owings (U. of CA Pr. 2002);
       Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen by David Hilfiker (NY, Seven Stories Pr., 2002);
       Random Family: Love, Drugs and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Scribner, 2003);
       Gambling: Who Wins? Who Loses?, Gerda Reith, Ed. (Prometheus Bks., 2003).

       Nancy Egan: Seven articles: "Army of God," "The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord," "James Ellison," "Robert Jay Mathews," "Richard Scutari," "The Turner Diaries" in Encyclopedia of Terrorism (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).

       Maria Kiriakova: "Video and Computer Games." In Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment (2002).
Six articles: "Anarchism," "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms," "Federal Emergency Management Agency," "Wall Street Bombing of 1920," "National Security Agency," "National Security Council" in Encyclopedia of Terrorism (2003).
"The Death Penalty in Russia 1917-2000: A Bibliographic Survey of English Language Writings." International Journal of Legal Information, 30, (Winter 2002), pp. 482-52.

       Ellen Sexton: Seven articles: "Anthrax," "Asymmetrical Warfare," "Delta Force," "FBI," "Homeland Security," "Leaderless Resistance," "Rewards for Justice," in Encyclopedia of Terrorism (2003).
"Stachybotrys." Library and Archival Security, 17. In press.

       Tony Simpson: "Popular Perceptions of Rape as a Capital Crime in 18th Century England: The Press and the Trial of Francis Charteris in the Old Bailey, February 1730." Law and History Review, 22, (Spring 2004). Forthcoming.
"Blackmail as a Crime of Sexual Indiscretion in Eighteenth-Century England." In Louis A. Knafla (ed.). Crime, Gender and Sexuality in Criminal Prosecutions (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002). Pp. 61-86.

       Larry E. Sullivan: Editor, Bandits and Bibles: Convict Literature in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Akashic Books, 2003).
With Brenda Vogel, "Reachin' Behind Bars: Library Outreach to Prisoners, 1798-2000." In Robert S. Freeman and David M. Hovde (eds). Libraries to the People: Histories of Outreach (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003). Pp. 113-127.