Library News Blog

Dr. Paige H. Gordier, Lloyd Sealy Library Fellow for spring 2009, will present her lecture Capital Murder Trials in the Late 1800s: A Reflection of Public Opinion on the Death Penalty. This presentation will focus on the capital murder trials which took place in the county of New York in the late 1800s. Trial transcripts and newspapers of the times were used to determine what crime, offender and victim related characteristics would most often result in a death sentence. Dr. Gordier's study also focuses on the influence of public opinion on the criminal trial process. Public opinion on capital punishment, immigration and the role of women are reflected in the trial process and in particular, in the jury selection process.

Please join us for this exciting event! Monday, March 30, 2009, Room 630T, at 3:30 p.m. A reception will follow the lecture.

In partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, the library has arranged a short series of information literacy workshops for John Jay faculty. Click here for more information.

Ron Arons is appearing in a panel discussion at the Tenement Museum on March 11 at 6:30 PM, entitled Jews behaving badly. Appearing with Ron Arons will be Rich Cohen and Rose Keefe, to discuss gangsters and other notorious law breakers. Their books include The Jews of Sing-Sing, Tough Jews and The Starker: Big Jack Zelig, the Becker-Rosenthal Case, and The Advent of the Jewish Gangster. More information about the event can be found here. Ron Arons is a scholar who has spent a lot of time in the John Jay Special Collections carrying out research for his recent book, The Jews of Sing Sing: Gotham gangsters and gonuvim (call no: Stacks - HV6194 .J4 A76 2008 ). Information about the book can be seen on Aron's website.

The Chief Librarian Larry Sullivan and the Special Collections Librarian Ellen Belcher are making sure Broadway actors wear historically correct NYPD uniforms. The New York Times reports on how the Lloyd Sealy Library was able to help a West Side Story costume designer when other organizations could not. The NY Times article is here.
The Lloyd Sealy library is probably the only place in the world that holds such a variety of historical police manuals and handbooks which were produced for daily use within the departments and likely discarded after they became obsolete. Our special collections holds several general procedural manuals for the NYPD including those dating to 1929, 1940, 1949 and 1956 along with many historical manuals and handbooks from police departments worldwide.

The catalog, CUNY+ has been experiencing significant problems during the first days of the spring semester. The university systems librarian has apologized for the state of affairs, and has assured us that the problem has been identified, and a fix to restore normal service is being applied. We expect the catalog to return to normal by the latest, Thursday 5 pm, January 29th. Until the catalog returns, we cannot identify with accuracy the call numbers, locations and circulating status of books in the library. UPDATE: CUNY+ is back. Service should now be normal according to the CUNY director of library systems. Here at John Jay it does seem slow, but working.

The latest version of Classified Information, the Lloyd Sealy Library newsletter has just been published.

Eighteenth Century Collection Online.  Access the digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 26 million pages, it allows new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.

The Making of the Modern World.  Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature 1450-1850 provides digital facsimile images on every page of 61,000 works of literature on economic and business published from 1450 through 1850. Full-text searching on more than 12 million pages provides unparalleled access to this vast collection of material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport.

The Economist Historical Archive 1843-2003 is the fully searchable complete facsimile edition of The Economist, the weekly paper which is essential reading for anyone engaged in politics, current affairs and all aspects of business and trade worldwide. In 8,000 issues and more than 600,0000 pages, EHA offers full-color images, multiple search indexes, topic and area supplements and surveys, together with a gallery of front covers and a selection of exportable financial tables.

Faulkner Security Management Practices provides reports written by industry practitioners and technical writers on topics like facility security, IT and network security, financial and legal security, business continuity, biometrics, risk and crisis management, public safety, personnel security and security technology. About a dozen new reports are added every month.

Faulkner Advisory for Information Technology Studies provides reports on topics like wireless communications, data networking, security, streaming media, government IT topics, healthcare IT topics, information management, the internet and web. Types of reports include technology tutorials, marketplace insights, product face-offs, product and service profiles, standards reports, comparison and selection guides, and more.

Dong Dong Feng is the lucky and knowledgeable winner of our Second Annual Freshman Library Quiz!

A copy of the quiz was given to all freshmen in their information packets at Orientation Day. All students that answered at least 10 out of 13 questions about the library correctly were entered into a drawing for an iPod. The drawing took place on Thursday October 30th in the North Hall cafeteria, 12:30. Dong Dong Feng’s name was pulled from the box by Chief Librarian Dr. Larry Sullivan. Musical accompaniment was generously provided by Dr. Ben Lapidus of the Music Department (thank you Ben!).

The photograph shows the Chief Librarian Dr. Larry Sullivan reading the name of our Quiz winner.

SMP provides reports written by industry practitioners and technical writers on topics like facility security, IT and network security, financial and legal security, business continuity, biometrics, risk and crisis management, public safety, personnel security and security technology. About a dozen new reports are added every month.

FAITS provides reports on topics like wireless communications, data networking, security, streaming media, government IT topics, healthcare IT topics, information management, the internet and web.  Types of reports include technology tutorials, marketplace insights, product face-offs, product and service profiles, standards reports, comparison and selection guides, and more.

Please forward any comments to Nancy Egan at negan@jjay.cuny.edu.

CUNY+, the online library catalog shared by all the City University Libraries, has been experiencing technical difficulties this week.  Several attempts have been made to fix the problem and tonight more work will be done on the system from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., so CUNY+ will be unavailable at that time.  We apologize for any inconvenience.