Blacklisted Women Subject of 2008 Fromkin Research Project

UWM Director of Libraries Ewa Barczyk and the members of the Morris Fromkin Memorial Research Grant Committee are pleased to announce that Professor Carol Stabile, UWM Dept. of Journalism and Mass Communication, has been awarded the 2008 Fromkin Research Grant and Lectureship. The title of her research project is “Blacklisted Women: Television, the Red Scare, and Women Writers.”

In her proposal, Stabile writes that her project will consider “the work of several women writers and producers whose careers were either crippled or ended by the blacklist” and will examine “how the elimination of progressive women from the industry (as well as the message this silencing sent to others who continued to write for television) helped to create an industrial environment in which diversity became synonymous with controversy and in which both were demonized as evidence of a Communist conspiracy.”

Stabile’s lecture, to be delivered at the Golda Meir Library in the fall, will be the 39th in the Fromkin lecture series, the longest-running continuous lecture series on campus. This year’s committee members were Diane Amour, Ewa Barczyk, Audrey Begun, David Fromkin (Boston University), Susan Rose, Christine E. Scott, Winston Van Horne, Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Gary Williams, and Max Yela.

More information about the annual $5000 Fromkin Research Grant is available at http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/special/fromkin/grant.html

New Library Copiers Offer Digital Flexibility

In January, the Libraries added three new state-of-the-art photocopiers with digital as well as traditional capabilities. These copy machines allow the user to scan materials directly into a publicly accessible drive. The PDF files may then be emailed, stored in a Pantherfile space, downloaded onto a USB drive, or burned to a CD-ROM. The machines scan in black and white or color, and also make black/white and color photocopies. All scanning is free of charge.

The Libraries also have installed seven new traditional black/white copiers. For all copiers, black and white copies now cost 15 cents a copy and color copies cost 35 cents. The Libraries’ copiers are contracted through UWM Printing Services and prices are in line with those of other Printing Services-contracted copiers on campus.

Both coin-operated machines as well as those accepting just copy cards are available. The new copiers are located in the Reserve Room (1st floor East), the Reference and Instructional Support Room (1st floor West) and in the Current Periodicals Room (lower level West).

Digital Camcorder/Cameras Now Available

The Libraries now offer Canon DC50 camcorders/cameras for checkout to students, thanks to Student Educational Technology funding. The Canon DC50 offers a mini DVD-RW/R recording format and as well as the capability to take 5-megapixel still photos.

The cameras may be checked out for two days from the Multimedia Library on the first floor of the East Wing of the library. More information is available on the Multimedia Library’s camera checkout web page at: http://www.uwm.edu/Library/media/camera_checkout.html

Plan Now to Help AGSL Celebrate Its 30th Anniversary

The American Geographical Society Library will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its move to UWM on Friday afternoon and evening, May 30, with a dinner, an awards ceremony, and the annual Holzheimer “Maps and America” Lecture, this year presented by Alastair Pearson, University of Portsmouth (UK) and Michael Heffernan, University of Nottingham (UK). Their presentation is entitled “Ordering the South: The Mapping of Hispanic America by the American Geographical Society.”

One of North America’s foremost geography and map collections, the AGS Library was transferred to the UWM Libraries in 1978 following a nationwide selection process by the Society. At the event, medals will be awarded, one posthumously, to two AGS members instrumental in the preservation of the Library and its move to Milwaukee: Richard H. Nolte (1920-2007), former Chairman of the AGS Council, and John E. Gould, Chairman of the AGS Council.

The Holzheimer lecture begins at 4:30 p.m. and the awards ceremony at 6 p.m. Both are free and open to the public, and will be held in the AGS Library, third floor east wing of the Golda Meir Library.

The celebratory dinner begins at 7:30 p.m. in the fourth floor Conference Center and costs $45 per person. Reservations are required by May 16.

Sponsors include Janet and Arthur Holzheimer, UWM Libraries, and the Friends of the Golda Meir Library, who are also co-presenting the lecture as their annual program.

For more information on the dinner or the other events, please call 414-229-6282 or visit http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/AGSL/thirtieth/index.html

Archives Contributes Holdings Information to Statewide Resources Site

The UWM Libraries' Archives Department is now contributing finding aids to Archival Resources in Wisconsin (ARW), an on-line database of finding aids of archival and manuscript collections held in repositories statewide.

Finding aids are descriptive inventories, indexes, or guides that archivists create to describe and provide access to the contents of collections. They provide information about records, the context of their creation, archival actions such as acquisition and processing, and often an extensive contents list.

For the first time, researchers have the ability to search detailed descriptions of the collections of the Archives Department and other repositories from a single interface. ARW currently includes over 4,000 finding aids of archives and manuscript collections held in seventeen repositories statewide, including the Wisconsin Historical Society.

The site includes help pages with information about conducting a search, interpreting search results, and saving selected items in your "book bag" for downloading as text files or e-mailing. ARW may be accessed on the Web at http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/wiarchives/.

Michael Doylen

New Electronic Resources

New databases (http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/databases/new.html) offered by the Libraries include:

• ARTstor A digital library of approximately 550,000 images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.
• JSTOR Arts and Sciences IV Collection and Biological Sciences Collection Full-text searchable files of core scholarly journals, dating back to 1800. Recent years excluded.
• Urban Studies Abstracts 1980-present. Bibliographic records covering essential areas related to urban studies, including urban affairs, community development, and urban history.
• American Periodicals Series 1740-1900. Searchable full text of over 1,500 magazines, journals, and newspapers.
• Criminal Justice Abstracts 1968-present. Abstracts and citations of international journals, books, reports, dissertations and unpublished papers on criminology and related disciplines.
• Tests in Print A bibliography to commercially available tests that are currently in print in English.
• African American Music Reference Text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music.