One of the most famous graphic novels is Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman, which tells the story of his father, a concentration camp survivor.  It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Here are a few others you might like:

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente – One of the best baseball players in history, Clemente was born in Puerto Rico and played for the Pittsburgh Pirates for eighteen seasons. During that time, he led the National League in batting four times, and played in the 1971 World Series.  This book tells the story of his family life in Puerto Rico, his experiences moving to the mainland U.S. in the 1950’s, his sports success, courting his wife Vera, and his humanitarian work.

King: A Comics Biography – This book follows King’s life from his childhood in Atlanta through his leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott, his role in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington DC, and his untimely death in 1968. The striking art – black and white illustration mixed with historic photographs – helps bring this part of history to life.

Stiches : A Memoir – Author David Small’s father, a doctor and radiologist, treated his son’s childhood sinus conditions with X-rays, which caused cancer and eventually led to surgery at the age of fourteen.  The author recreates his complex family relationships with his parents and brother as he traces his recovery in this autobiography, a National Book Awards finalist.

Feynman – A biography of Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist whose work in the field of quantum mechanics changed our understanding about the nature of matter. Feynman also worked on the Manhattan Project, the research venture that developed the world’s first atomic bomb, and helped to investigate the causes of the space  shuttle Challenger disaster.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – Alison Bechdel, first known as a cartoonist, tells the story of growing up in rural Pennsylvania in a dysfunctional family. Discovering her own sexual orientation is a focus of the book, which also deals with her relationship with her father, a funeral home owner and closeted gay man.   This book won an Eisner Award in 2006 and the American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards in 2007.

Your friendly GPC librarians are ready to help if you’ve got questions about these or any other graphic novels in our collection. Happy reading!

~Karen Viars

RSS stands for really simple syndication. RSS information sources are called feeds, and chances are very good that you use feeds without even knowing it. Facebook nearly always opens with a feed of recent posts. News organizations, blogs, and other sites also offer feeds. You can find these feeds and gather them together at your favorite reader.

RSS has the reputation of being an oversize tub for “bathing in news.” If you don’t read twenty different sources a day,why do you need RSS? Three to six feeds, The New York Times paywall, and your hometown newspaper are all great reasons to give RSS a second look.

A feed to the New York Times provides an unlimited, legal stream of links to free articles from the portions of the paper that interest you.  Scroll down to the bottom of the New York Times’ homepage and click RSS.  Times Topics has feeds for your favorite topics.

RSS also gathers information on a wealth of  subjects besides news and politics.  Accuweather and The Weather Channel turn daily forecasts into RSS feeds. Most blogs syndicate via RSS. On one reader, I have a link to the touching cat photos and stories at Love and Hisses. while at another ChowHound and The Fresh Loaf keep me up to date with the latest on home cooking and baking.

Of course a picture sometimes speaks a thousand words. Thankfully both Pinterest and Flickr let you follow photographers, pinners, and boards. To find your favorite Flickr photographer’s feed, scroll to the bottom of her page and click Latest under Subscribe. Note: Flickr feeds work best with The Old Reader (see below).

Finding and choosing an RSS reader is surprisingly easy. If you like a plain and simple interface, The Old Reader is for you. It is a nearly plain text design, and you arrange feeds by dragging and dropping them.

NewsBlur features a variety of design choices that range from plain text to graphically rich. It moves more quickly than the Old Reader. Unfortunately, NewsBlur is clumsy with RSS feeds from Pinterest and Flickr.

My favorite reader is NetVibes. It features a graphic, “widget house” style and lets users choose and design their own themes.  You can add other sorts of widgets besides RSS, combining your favorite news, photos, and entertainment with games and a place to publish messages. NetVibes serves Pinterest feeds easily but refuses to add feeds from Flickr.

RSS is not only still with us, it is a thriving gateway to useful information, entertainment, great graphics, and just plain fun.  There are feeds and readers for everyone, and you don’t have to bathe in news or be a journalist to enjoy it. Find the reader and feeds that work  for you, have fun, and don’t forget to spread the word.

~Eileen Kramer

Credit: Short sleeved kaftan with a Çintamani design (detail), Late 15th century, 117 cm, Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, inv. No.13/6.

Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and hard work by GPC librarians across the 5 campuses, we have the opportunity to enjoy and learn from the Muslim Journeys project, a year-long educational experience which will feature speakers, panels, films, and lots of discussion. Over 900 libraries across the country have won this award so it will be a shared national experience. The mission of Muslim Journeys is to provide “resources for exploring new and diverse perspectives on the people, places, histories, beliefs, and cultures of Muslims in the United States and around the world.”

There is something for every taste in the collection of books and movies on offer. Concepts have been organized by themes: American Stories, Connected Histories, Literary Reflections, Pathways of Faith, Points of View, and Art Spots. GPC librarians have prepared a thorough research guide as an introduction. Or, go to GIL for a list of all the items included in the collection.

Credit: Circular ornament, Iran, 16th-17th century, Steel overlaid with gold, Purchase F1940.9, by permission of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

In addition to the books and movies, we have access to the powerful Bridging Cultures: Muslim Journeys Bookshelf website. All of the themes include an extended web essay written by a scholar in the field. These essays really provide context to enhance the Muslim Journeys experience. Every book and movie has a short review, links to additional articles, and citation information.

Visit your GPC library and look for the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf. As we go into fall, multiple copies of the books and movies will be available. If your curiosity is piqued, get a sneak preview this summer by checking out some of the books and movies.

~Sherry Durren

Many students enjoy the fact that they can access GALILEO through iCollege without having to know the GALILEO password.  This feature will still be available in the D2L version of iCollege, but access to GALILEO will be even easier: There will be a link to GALILEO on the top of every page!   There will also still be a link to the library website on the iCollege homepage.

Here’s how it will look:

If instructors or students want to recommend library resources in their iCollege classes, it’s easy to do!  Just follow step-by-step instruction in the Faculty Toolkit.  You can include lists of books, links to e-books and articles in GALILEO, images from Artstor, and videos from Films on Demand or American History in Video.  Library services can also be embedded or linked: Ask a Librarian chat/text service, Ask a Librarian FAQ knowledge base, Research Guides, or library video tutorials.  (One of our most popular videos gives an overview of how to use GALILEO.)

If you need extra help, of course you can always Ask a Librarian!

~Mary Ann Cullen

Image from Flickr Creative Commons

The Vikings have arrived at the History Channel this month and it’s the perfect time for today’s topic:  Norse Mythology and Vikings.

Norse mythology and Viking history are colorful and daring, full of battles of conquest,  plunder—human and material, and the compulsive desire to explore the world beyond the horizon.  Their need to understand the world and its mysteries are evident in their mythology.  Joseph Campbell explains why mythology is so powerful to any culture in the world, including Vikings.

“Mythology is a universal event and Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”

― Joseph Campbell,  The Power of Myth

Georgia Perimeter College Libraries are the perfect place to begin your Viking and Norse Mythology voyage.

For books, use GIL Find. Try a “Subject” search on Vikings, Norse mythology or Norse folklore and you will find plenty of books to fire your interest.

If you want to read articles on the Vikings, Norse Mythology, Icelandic Sagas, Thor, Loki, Freyja, or any of the Norse gods try searching in GALILEO databases.   I highly recommend these databases:

GALILEO Discover Tool

 Project Muse                                                      

Bloom’s Literary Reference Online

JSTOR                                                                    

Ancient and Medieval History Online

Films on Demand                                

World History Collection

MLA International Bibliography

 In addition to GIL Find and GALILEO, there are a few select web sources you can use for research:

Encyclopedia Mythica

University of Nottingham, UK Centre for the Study of the Viking Age 

Smithsonian Institution:  Vikings: The North Atlanta Saga

If you have any questions about library sources, please stop by and see us at the Reference Desk at your Georgia Perimeter College Campus Library or visit our website : http://depts.gpc.edu/library/

~Ellen Barrow

You can use your Kindle not just for pleasure reading, but for school work too! In academic libraries, many e-books are in ePub or DRM – protected PDF formats. Installing an e-book app that supports Adobe Digital ID is your best choice if you want t0 borrow e-books from Georgia Perimeter College Libraries.

To enable the installation of apps from outside the Amazon Appstore, you need to open the settings menu on your Kindle Fire, select Device, then turn on “Allow installation of applications from unknown sources”.  Your choice of apps is endless, but here are  two that we tried and found easy to use:

Aldiko – an ePub app that offers ample formatting options and is one of the few Android apps that supports Adobe DRM e-books. You can use it to read Academic eBooks on EBSCOhost or eBooks on EBSCOhost titles. It also supports PDF files, so you can download chapters and articles from Gale Virtual Reference Library.

BlueFire Reader is familiar to iPad users, but is also available for Android and  Kindle Fire users. It supports Adobe DRM and will open ePub and PDF e-books, so it is a great choice for all GPC e-book collections.

Before downloading a library e-book, you must authorize your e-reading app with an Adobe ID.  To create an ID, visit this Adobe page.  If you have already created an Adobe ID to borrow e-books from your public library, you can use the same ID to transfer GPC Libraries e-books to your device.

For more information about GPC Libraries e-books and using them on mobile devices, please visit our E-Resources and Mobile Devices subject guide.

Take advantage of the GPC Libraries e-book collection and tell us about your experience and your favorite e-reading app.

~Sonya Slutskaya

As a part of a National Endowment for the Humanities and an American Library Association Muslim Journeys grant, Georgia Perimeter College Libraries received a one year subscription to Oxford Islamic Studies Online (OISO). [Note: If you are accessing the database from off campus, you will be prompted to enter your GPC username and password. For more information on accessing GPC resources off campus, see this page.]

OISO is an authoritative resource that provides the best current material in the field. OISO covers global Islamic history, concepts, people, practices, politics, and culture, and will help students to have a more accurate and informed understanding of the Islamic world.

Students can search a variety of resources: primary sources, images, biographies, and maps. Specialized features include a timeline, date converter, and a Qur’an verse lookup.

Take a guided tour of OISO and explore our new database!

~Amy Bursi

Image provided by openclipart.org

Join the Online Business Club at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, March 27^th for a webinar on a great, free citation tool called Zotero.  Zotero is an extension which can be added to the Firefox, Safari or Chrome browser to capture citation information from library catalogs, databases, and even some web pages.  It’s a great way to organize and save time doing research.  In Part One, participants learned how to set up Zotero and how to create bibliographies.  Part One Archive – Click here. (The link will take you to a Wimba room and the presentation will play. You can use any user name to log in.)

In Part Two, we’ll show how to add a Microsoft Word plug-in to insert citations into your papers and add them to a bibliography.  Additionally, we will see how you can make a group library to share resources for cooperative class projects.

Everyone in the GPC community is invited to attend.  Here’s how:

1. Go to http://www.gpc.edu/business.
2. Click on Business Clubs on the left-hand side of the page.
3. Click on Online Business Club (OBC).
4. Click on the “Live” Speaker’s Forum tab in the top menu.
5. Read the narrative beneath the link to the virtual lecture hall first; then click on the link.
6. Click on Participant Login; enter your name; and click Enter.

~Pat Ziebart

When talking about literature, a primary source is the actual work — a novel, short story, poem, biography, or other genre of literature – that is the central focus of analysis and evaluation for the assignment. For example, if the project concerns Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, then that book is the primary source. Any interpretations such as literary analysis articles accessed through GALILEO and online databases such as Literature Resource Center, Literary Reference Center, JSTOR, or Bloom’s Literary Reference Online are secondary sources.

When dealing with history, primary sources are original records created at the timehistorical events or incidents occur or well after the events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. “Primary sources include original manuscripts, original research or thought, diaries, memoirs, letters, journals, photographs, drawings, posters, film footage, sheet music, songs, interviews, government documents, public records, eyewitness accounts, newspaper clippings,” and other items of a similar nature. (Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science by Joan M. Reitz).

Secondary sources are the books, articles, analysis and interpretations of the original events or works. A secondary source is “any published or unpublished work that is one step removed from the original source, usually describing, summarizing, analyzing, evaluating, derived from, or based on primary source materials, for example, a review, critical analysis, second-person account, or biographical or historical study” (Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science by Joan M. Reitz). Secondary source documents are often located in books, documentaries, journals, and magazines.

To clarify, video recordings of the 2001 airplane crashes into the Twin Towers in New York are primary sources for that event. However, authors writing an article today about the 2001 airplane crashes in the Twin Towers in New York, quoting or referring to primary sources in their article, would be secondary (unless it’s a memoir or oral history that could alternatively be considered a primary source).

If you need help locating primary resources for your assignments, projects, or other research, visit our online guide Primary Sources – History or just ask one of your friendly librarians!

T. Wesley Stewart, Librarian

The images in this post are by Why Tuesday? and Snowlepard and are available under Creative Commons License.

All students, staff, and faculty are invited to attend a panel discussion titled “Lincoln: A Scholarly Discussion” on Thursday, March 14 at 1:00 p.m. in the Dunwoody auditorium, NC-1100. The panel discussion will be moderated by Mario Bennekin, History and Political Science Chair at the Dunwoody Campus. Following the panel discussion, there will be an exhibit tour and reception in the Dunwoody Campus Library, NLRC. This event is free and open to the public.

The exhibit will be on display through April 3 in the Dunwoody Campus Library. For more information regarding this event or forthcoming events related to the Lincoln Exhibit, please contact Lora Mirza at 770-274-5085 or at melora.mirza@gpc.edu.

~Lora Mirza