There was great fun and excitement as the Lib-r-Bocce tournament got rolling today at Gleeson Lawns.

Greg Borman, a current Gleeson Library | Geschke Center intern, wrote this post.

The three titles detailed below represent the kinds of art-related print reference books that the Gleeson library holds. These can be found near the reference desk on the library’s first floor.

Further information about the Gleeson library’s art reference materials, including online databases, can be found at our art reference webpage.

The creators of Raw Vision journal have published Raw Vision Outsider Art Sourcebook. Raw Vision focuses on a genre of art alternately known as “art brut,” “naïve art,” or “visionary art.” Outsider artists typically have no formal art training, and, whether due to socioeconomic status, mental illness, or other factors, are unable or unwilling to participate in the mainstream art world. The Sourcebook features 50 profiles of artists in a section titled “Classic Outsiders.” Biographical information, along with details about each artist’s influences and thematic concerns, is included in each profile, along with a list of institutions that collect their work. Another major element of Raw Vision Outsider Art Sourcebook is its “Visionary Environments” section. This section covers unique creations known as “environments,” which fall somewhere between sculpture and architecture. Sections that provide information about galleries and museums around the world that collect outsider art are also included, as are publications and websites that cover the genre. (Call Number: N 7432.5 .A78 R39 2002)

Contemporary Women Artists, edited by Laurie Collier Hillstrom and Kevin Hillstrom, includes a preface written by prominent writer and activist Lucy Lippard. In the preface, Lippard notes that an international feminist art movement aided the increase of women participants in the art world during the 1970s. Lippard adds that not all of the artists represented in this resource have identified themselves as feminists, and indeed a number of the artists included were active before the term was in currency. Contemporary Women Artists includes over 350 entries covering 700-plus pages that detail the lives and careers of 20th century artists. There are also over 200 images of the artists and their work. A number of art specialists have contributed succinctly written essays that provide key biographical and career insights. The entries also include basic biographical information such as birth and death dates, education, career highlights, and awards received. Exhibition histories of individuals are also listed, as are public collections that house their works. (Call Number: N 8354 .C66 1999)

The result of extensive research carried out by author Mercedes Rochelle, Post-Biblical Saints Art Index offers the opportunity to search religious artworks by their subjects. The main section of the book features over 200 pages of alphabetically listed saint names accompanied by details about their title, lineage, priestly order, and martyrdom. Under each saint’s name, there is also a listing of artworks that they appear in, with information about where the work is held or reproduced in print. A “Directory” section provides addresses of locations (museums, churches, libraries, etc.) where the works in the index can be found.  Additionally, a smaller “Index of Attributes and Events” section provides access to the subjects covered in the works of art that are listed under the saint names. (Call Number: N 8079.5 .R63 1994)

Of course, there is plenty of art to see in the San Francisco Bay Area, and here are some places to view work that relates to the reference books covered here.

The A440 gallery in downtown San Francisco features work by a number of outsider artists. Click here for more information.

Squeak Carnwath, a prominent Bay Area woman artist who has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and California College of the Arts, has an exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California that runs through late August.

Finally, the Legion of Honor in San Francisco has in its collection a number of works with religious themes.

This is pretty nifty. Hathi Trust is a digital repository of materials being scanned at research libraries. (Hathi is the Hindi word for “elephant.”) You can get the fulltext of out-of-copyright books and government publications. I found examples of old government documents with fulltext in Hathi Trust, but not in Google nor Google Books. I’ll be using this a lot, I suspect.

In 6 Lessons One Campus Learned About E-Textbooks the Chronicle of Higher Education provides an intriguing report on Northwest Missouri State University’s experiment with e-textbooks. In a move to cut costs of the campus textbook-rental program, the university provided 240 students with textbooks on Sony Reader devices. Frustrated with the software and format, the next semester they switched to PC-based e-book software. The results were mixed. About 17 percent of the students said the e-format helped them study more; twice as many said they studied less. But they seemed to like the format better after they had a chance to get used to it. “The more I have used it, the more I have discovered what I can do with it.” wrote one student.

In the fall, six colleges will be testing a new Kindle version designed with textbooks in mind. Northwest Missouri’s president thinks e-textbooks will be common on campuses in 5 years. What say you?

We’re shaking it up at the USF Book Club!

We enjoyed challenging ourselves by reading heady, nonfiction essays so much that we’re discussing a   g r a p h i c  n o v e l   in July!

We’re reading American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang and will discuss it on Tuesday, July 14, 2009, from 12 noon – 1 pm. We’re meeting in the Community Garden (East side of Lone Mountain, next to the Education building), which is a lovely respite from our stuffy offices.

You can request American Born Chinese through the library’s free service, Link+, by clicking here. The book will be delivered to Gleeson Library in about 4 business days.

Hope to see you there!

Greetings! We will be closed Wednesday, June 3, 2009 for our annual staff retreat.

On behalf of the Gleeson Library | Geschke Learning Resource Center it is my pleasure to extend an enthusiastic congratulation to the University of San Francisco’s 2009 graduating class. We applaud your achievements, and wish you great opportunities and success in your future endeavors.

2008 USF Graduation :: Photo by Sarainsanfran via Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarainsanfran/2498837354/)

Tyrone H. Cannon Ed. D.,
Dean, University Libraries

Did you know you can still use the Gleeson Library as an alumnus? Sign up for an Alumni Special Access ($20) or Borrowing Card ($50) – stop by the Gleeson Library Circulation Desk to request an Alumni Card. Annually renewed Alumni special borrower cards provide you with continued access to the Gleeson Library. To learn more about Library services and resources available to alumni, check out the libraries Alumni information page.

Howdy!
The Book Club June selection is King of Shadows by Aaron Shurin, who is the director of the MFA program (and my professor!) here at USF.

We’re meeting on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 in the Community Garden (just west of the Education Building, weather permitting) to discuss this collection of essays.

To get the book through the library’s free service Link+, click here. It will be delivered to Gleeson in about 4 business days. Or you can purchase it at the USF Bookstore, or at a local book seller like The Booksmith on Haight St. or The Green Apple on Clement St.

Publishers Weekly says, “This emotionally potent collection of 20 essays by noted Bay Area poet Shurin (Involuntary Lyrics) begins with a meditation on his fear of birds (”of course they’re dinosaurs”) and coming out in radical UC-Berkeley in the late 1960s. The collection progresses through meditations on how the difference between Shakespeare’s Oberon and Puck shaped his identity as a gay man and a poet, and his indebtedness to Robert Duncan, Frank O’Hara and Denise Levertov. The accumulation of biographic and literary details conjures up an apparitional dreamscape of a very specific moment in American history–a new sense of personal and literary freedom, a new period of progressive political and literary ideas. Shurin’s idiosyncratic style can startle with its imagery and captures a complicated, conflicted relationship to several cultural identities. Describing his anxiety about his looks before going to a bar, he writes ‘oh, my wiry, independent, shtetl hair, my Ukrainian ribbons from my mother’s side, folkloric bonnet of curls, was out of the question, way too heavily accented, ruefully unacceptable, untidy, un-Californian….’ The author addresses forthrightly the question of AIDS by the end of this book, one of Shurin’s best.”

Call 415-422-2236 or email reference@usfca.edu for more details or to sign up for the book club mailing list.

Hope to see you there!

H1N1 virus

Is swine flu a whole lotta hype or a big heap of scary? You be the judge! Get the facts about swine flu (aka H1N1 flu) from credible sources using Gleeson Library’s Swine Flu Research Guide.

If you’ve noticed that a book search in our library catalog Ignacio looks different than you remember, it is because we’re using a new keyword search engine that we first introduced as “Encore” about six months ago (it had a separate search box at that time, underneath Ignacio on the home page).

The “traditional” Ignacio interface hasn’t gone away, however; you can use it by clicking on the Author, Title, Subject, or Advanced Search links right under the search box.

The new keyword search lets you easily sort results by location, material type, and quickly locate relevant subject terms. You can even “tag” books yourself with helpful keywords.

The new interface is still missing a few features, such as marking and saving lists of items, so if you need to do that, just continue using the “traditional” Ignacio searches.