In Other News: Race

three hands from different race people clasping hands

A look at a current news item through the lens of different titles available on GVRL to find research inspiration.

By Michelle Eickmeyer

A fair skinned woman with a weave claims to be black. A white kid with twisted views killed nine innocent blacks while attending a Bible study. The president said the n-word. A lot of people are talking about a flag. The last two weeks have been filled with conversations of race and what it means in America.

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Student & Instructor Perceptions on Libraries and Research

By Jennifer Albers-Smith

When it comes to student and instructor perceptions about academic libraries and research, some interesting insights are revealed – as well as lot of questions.

In spring 2015, Gale’s parent company, Cengage Learning, issued its Engagement Insights survey to some 3,000 students and nearly 700 professors, gathering feedback on different topics including how both audiences valued the library, how they often they took advantage of its resources and more.

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Celebrate with Gale: 800 Years of the Magna Carta

By Bethany Dotson

The Magna Carta, proclaimed at Runnymede on 15 June 1215, is 800 years old this week.  The Magna Carta, or Great Charter of Liberty, is the document that King John signed, accepting restraints on the monarchy. It remains a cornerstone of modern English and American law. During the American Revolution, “the English used the Magna Carta to support their claim of parliamentary sovereignty, whereas Americans distilled from it the principle of ‘no taxation without representation.’”[1]

It’s no surprise, then, that using Term Frequency tool in Gale Artemis: Primary Sources, searching through the 26 collections currently cross-searchable in this experience (including Eighteenth Century Collections Online, the Making of Modern Law collections, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, and more), I was able to isolate a surge in the popularity of the term “Magna Carta” in documents published between approximately 1749 and 1796. The high point? Fifteen out of the 16,490 documents in Artemis: Primary Sources published in 1767 contain this term.

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New Titles Added to the InfoTrac Collections in May 2015

Posted on June 11, 2015

The titles below have been recently added and can be located in the mentioned InfoTrac product using Basic or Advanced Search forms. Titles can be found via Browse Publications within two weeks. For complete coverage information please see the product title lists.

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Feminism in Cuba: New Content Added

By Bethany Dotson

With the re-opening of U.S./Cuban diplomatic relations—and the recent failure of the fourth round of negotiations—Cuba is experiencing a new wave of interest from intellectuals and the general public alike.

With this interest in mind, Gale has added new supplemental content to the Archives Unbound collection Feminism in Cuba: the journal Minerva, Revista Quincenal Dedica a la Mujer de Color, or Minerva, Quarterly Journal Dedicated to the Woman of Color, published between 1888 and 1914.  Cited in recent academic publications as diverse as Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), Between the Lines: Literary Transnationalism and African American Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2011), Cuba’s Racial Crucible: The Sexual Economy of Social Identities, 1750-2000 (Indiana University Press, 2015), and Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), Minerva is useful not only for its study of feminism in Cuba but also for Afro-Cuban nationalist ideology and identity, racial politics and culture in the Cuban Republic, and much more.

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In Other News: Caitlyn Jenner & Gender Identity

transgender symbol

A look at a current news item through the lens of different titles available on GVRL to find research inspiration.

By Michelle Eickmeyer

When Bruce Jenner sat down with Diane Sawyer, he openly discussed a battle he has been fighting for most of his life. And on 24 April, he let the world in on his secret: Bruce Jenner, American hero athlete and reality pseudo-star, is transgender. Though Jenner is an actual stranger to most of us, many people do feel that they know Bruce. They may have seen him on TV, or on a magazine cover. They may have rooted for him all those years ago as he seemed to embody America’s battle against the USSR. Because of this unique position and circumstance, Jenner’s revelations and transition are special. For the first time, perhaps ever, most of the country (if not the world) can truly say they know someone who identifies as transgender. On ` June, the world said goodbye to Bruce, and hello to Caitlyn Jenner. She is who she has always been, and is now sharing her battle to be herself, and her appearance, with the world.

Caitlyn is the most recent in a growing list of main-stream transgender people. In 2007, Candis Cayne turned heads as Billy Baldwin’s mistress for 11 episodes on ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money, marking the first time a trans character appeared for more than a single episode on prime time American television. Chaz Bono began his transition in 2008, after suffering for years with the press. Laverne Cox, one of the stars of Orange is the New Black, became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time Magazine (May 2014) for an article titled “The Transgender Tipping Point.” Andreja Pejic (Instagram) was the first transgender model to appear in Vogue magazine while Hari Nef (Instagram) signed with modeling agency IMF earlier this year, a first for the powerhouse agency. There are others, famous and not, making changes every day.

Less 1/3 of 1% of the U.S. population identify as transgender (Source). Historically, this group is the recipients of an extremely disproportionate amount of violence, 20% of murders and 40% of violence by police. (Source) More recent statistics for the first quarter of 2014 show that 10% of violent crimes were committed against trans kids under 18. Kids.They were beaten, stabbed, stoned, shot, hanged, strangled, and dismembered. (Source) Sometimes by strangers; sometimes by family. Too often, they kill themselves.

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In Other News: Bribery

man receiving rubber-banded Euros behind his back

A look at a current news item through the lens of different Gale electronic resources.

By Michelle Eickmeyer

Boy, oh boy. American’s have an interesting relationship with soccer. For decades, soccer has held an unyielding grip on, well, every other country in the world. Though there have been the exceptional fanatic interspersed, soccer has largely remained relegated to a kid’s sport. Yes, most children play soccer. No, most adults couldn’t name 4 teams. Until 2014. (See my previous post here.)

During the 2010 World Cup, held in South Africa, 34% of American’s watched at least some part of a match. And we didn’t watch too much. (Source) But in 2014? We were ready. A lot of us watched, and we watched a lot of the matches. Thirty-nine percent more of us watched 33 percent more. (Source)

Why is soccer’s time “now” in America? One theory is that all those kids who grew up playing soccer, are now adults and are putting their time and money where their hearts have always been. Another believes American’s have begun to embrace the opportunity for a “great and exciting” game to end with a very low score.

When the U.S. led the charge to investigate corruption within FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, it raised a few eyebrows. Why is America getting involved was asked by several people, but with varying tone. ‘You don’t even like soccer’ on one side, and ‘finally but how come someone who cared more didn’t step up a long time ago’ from the other. The most frustrating response, in my opinion — as an American who likes soccer — was from Russian president Putin who said we were once again meddling in world affairs which were not our concern and somehow tried to get Edward Snowden involved. (Source) That is the sole statement I have read expressing this (paranoid?) opinion; let’s leave it alone. Other voices from around the wold have been more supportive, including this BBC article.

Obviously, no one at the DOJ consulted me when they planned this action, but there are several reasons which make it easy to understand how/why we chose to act when others did not. We like a fair fight. We aren’t afraid to say no or ask tough questions, even if we have to ask them of our friends. We don’t like being taken advantage of. And, perhaps most importantly, we can sometimes see things differently because we don’t have years of “just accepting it” like many other countries.

 

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Student Essay Winner Imagines a World without Creditors

Each year, the Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition encourages scholars to explore the areas of legal history, rare law books, and legal archives, and to acquaint themsleves with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and law librarianship.Gale is honored to partner with AALL to facilitate the prizes for the winners of this year competition by providing a cash stipend and travel allowance to AALL’s annual meeting.

This year’s winner comes from SUNY Stonybrook. Check out his summary of his award-winning essay below, and we’ll see you in Philadelphia!


Lay Justices and Local Finance in Early New York

By Sung Yup Kip

Living in the twenty-first century, it is hard to imagine economic life without the existence of credit. How many of us hasn’t had to borrow money at one point in life (unless you belong to that fabled one percent), whether in the form of taking a student loan, taking out a mortgage, or simply letting credit card debt pile up? Credit, perhaps just as much as money itself, is the lifeblood of the modern economy, allowing us to get by when our meager earnings fall short of our daily needs. People of course lent and borrowed money long before the advent of market economies and capitalism, but in pre-modern economies credit was often extended on a personal basis, whereas modern credit markets revolve around formal credit instruments supported by the firm hand of law. Thanks to this legal-financial system, borrowing no longer has to be limited to one’s immediate acquaintances, and creditors feel more secure about lending money to strangers, thus making more credit available in the market.

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In Other News: Charity

close up of charity entry in the dictionary

A look at a current news item through the lens of different titles available on GVRL.

By Michelle Eickmeyer

Saving and improving lives is expensive work. And without donations, most of it would not be possible. This week, the Federal Trade Commission charged four “charities” and their administrators for out-right stealing nearly $200 million. Two charities have already been dissolved. Reprehensible behavior. But if you want to give, how do you know with whom to spend your money? One solution is Charity Watch, an independent organization that can help you understand where and how a donation might be spent. There are a number of other resources and websites; that is just one.

In 2013, Americans gave $335.17 billion to charity. Of that, $240.6 billion was given by individuals (Source).  I’ve been especially interested in final numbers of donations for 2014 for a number of reasons. First, my cousin’s 2-year-old was diagnosed with leukemia. (Did you know that the National Institute of Cancer dedicates only 4% of its funding to pediatric cancer research (Source ) Why did cancer have to touch my family to learn that?) Second, the ice bucket challenge (and Mike Rowe). Here’s my previous post on it! In 2014, the ice bucket challenge raised $220 Million for the ALS Association (Source). That’s about 700% more than the year before (Source). Did more people give in 2014, or did people give more, or did they just give differently? The new numbers, expected next month, will tell.

Who currently gives (or doesn’t), and how much, when, and why are sometimes surprising. Low- and middle-income people give a higher percentage of their income than their high-income counterparts. Residents of large cities are less likely to give. When you compare the level of giving across states and the District, of the 20 most generous, only two voted democrat in the last election (Source). All sorts of assumptions will not be made on why that is the way it is.

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Today’s Your Day! It’s National Be a Millionaire Day!

By Melissa Rayner

Is it May 21st yet? Good, we still have time to figure out how we’ll celebrate the greatest arbitrary holiday of them all, National Be a Millionaire Day.

So you may think that being a millionaire is all gold swimming pools and palatial country estates…

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