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Diversity in the Stacks: Central American Political and Social History

Posted on by Brie Gettleson
Two books are stacked on a table. The top book says "Los indígenas también queremos ser guatemaltecos..." and shares author name of Alberto Esquit Choy.

Recognizing the importance of Central American Studies, the Penn Libraries recently acquired a substantial collection of ephemera, books, and audiovisual materials from the region. 

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Penn Libraries Establishes Lecture Series on Global Subjects

The pavilion in the Kislak Center has a full audience, with some people clapping.

The newly endowed Park-Choi Lecture Series supports the Penn Libraries’ ongoing commitment to meaningful engagement with individuals, institutions, and communities through scholarship support and programming.

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University of Pennsylvania Libraries Announces Brian Vivier as Inaugural Director of the Center for Global Collections

Posted on
Brian Vivier

In his new role, he will provide strategic vision, leadership, and oversight for the Center in building world-class distinctive global collections and engaging programming. 

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Making Science Labs Safer at the University of Pennsylvania

Posted on by Rebecca Ortenberg
A computer screen showing a spreadsheet on the left and a page from the PubChem website on the right. Most of the text is unreadable, but on the PubChem website you can see warning symbols in red boxes.

It’s the job of Penn's Office of Environmental Health and Radiation Safety (EHRS) to develop, implement, and manage the systems that keep the university's many science labs as safe as possible. But in the last few years, the team has begun turning to chemistry librarian Judith Currano as a vital partner in these processes. 

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Summer Featured Books and DVDs: For the Love of Food

Posted on by Amanda Alexander
DVDs lined up in a row with "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" in the front

Some of us eat to live, and some of us live to eat. For some of us, making and eating food can also be a rich source for cultural analysis and storytelling. This month’s featured materials show some of the many ideas and values food can represent. 

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New eBook Subscription: Harvard Business Publishing Collection

Posted on by Cynthia Cronin-Kardon
Covers of three books from the eBooks package: Collision Course, Compassionate Leadership, and Beyond Collaboration Overload.

Just in time for summer reading season, the Penn Libraries has subscribed to the Harvard Business Review ebooks package from EBSCO.

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Books on the Move: Changes in the Van Pelt Stacks

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A masked individual moves books from a shelf to a rolling cart

Through Summer 2023, the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center stacks are undergoing a multi-phase refresh and reorganization.

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Diversity in the stacks

Diversity in the Stacks: Highlights from the Penn Sexuality Collection

Posted on by David Azzolina
The cover of the first issue of the magazine Blue on the front cover, showing a man with dark hair looking at the camera in a sultry manner

The Penn Sexuality Collection will add materials to the Penn Libraries that fall outside the usual purview of academic libraries, helping to make the Libraries a destination for sexuality researchers. 

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Rebuilding Rare Books in a Virtual Space: A Conversation with Curator Dot Porter

Posted on by Rebecca Ortenberg
Two people stand at the edge of the frame reaching out towards a large book sitting in a box in the middle of the table

We recently sat down with curator Dot Porter to talk about how she tries to bring very old books to life in the digital world.

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June Featured Books and DVDs: Pride Month

Posted on by Amanda Alexander
DVDs in top row are Moonlight, The Celluloid Closet, Ammonite, and Pariah. Bottom row is Rock Hudson's home movies, The Signifyin' Works of Marlon Riggs, A Fantastic Woman, and Welcome to Chechnya.

Penn’s LGBT Center will be kicking off their Pride activities with a Queer Dance Class on Friday, June 3 , and will be hosting special events throughout the month. In the meantime, LGBT Center staff provided the Penn Libraries with the following recommendations, each of which offers an an inspiring and enriching reading or watching experience

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September 2019

Penn Libraries enter a ‘new era of innovation’

Source: Penn Today
Published:

September 2019

Criminal Justice Abstracts upgrades with fulltext

Posted on September 2019 by Lauris Olson

Criminal Justice Abstracts is the leading database for finding journal articles in criminology and related fields. The Penn Libraries have upgraded our subscription to include full text for several hundred academic journals, trade publications, magazines, and conference papers and proceedings.

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FERN's Ag Insider : food policy news service

Posted on September 2019 by Lauris Olson

FERN's Ag Insider logoFERN's Ag Insider news service provides daily reporting and analysis on US federal and state food and agriculture policy.

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Diversity in the Stacks: Afrofuturism

Posted on September 2019 by Nick Okrent
Stack of books

Today we launch a series of blog posts to celebrate the Penn Libraries’ Diversity in the Stacks initiative.  Diversity in the Stacks aims to build library collections that represent and reflect the University’s diverse population.  Our inaugural post highlights holdings related to Afrofuturism.

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Kicking Off the Year of Data at New Student Orientation

Messier 104. Credits: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team

The Class of 2023 filled the rows of Irvine Auditorium. Onstage, the projector screen displayed a wispy black halo encircling a core of brilliant lilac light. It was the iconic photo of Messier 104 — better known as the Sombrero Galaxy — taken by the Hubble Telescope. And, as the Libraries’ Will Noel explained, the photo was essentially fake.

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Archives Direct: Sources from The National Archives, UK

Posted on September 2019 by Nick Okrent
Black and white photo of men with camels

Archives Direct is a suite of collections sourced from The National Archives, Kew, the official archive of the United Kingdom.

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Musical Instruments on Loan

intruments

Penn’s Albrecht Music Library houses a growing collection of loanable electronic musical instruments. The holdings include high-end synthesizers (a Novation Circuit), mixers (an Allen & Heath Zedi10FX), and a laptop preloaded with recording software — though the most mesmerizing apparatus currently on offer is arguably the Moog Etherwave Plus theremin.

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Featured Books Display: Philadelphia

Signage for the book display

The latest Featured Books Display in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center spotlights the City of Brotherly Love. “We have new students who’ve never been to Philadelphia and returning students who haven’t ventured off campus,” explains Eileen Kelly, Head of Collection Management. “The holdings we’ve selected are meant to encourage exploration and appreciation.”

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Colonial America: Growth, Trade and Development

Posted on September 2019 by Nick Okrent
Colonial era bill of lading

Colonial America consists of all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them. This unique collection of largely manuscript material from the archives of the British government is an invaluable one for students and researchers of all aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history and the early-modern Atlantic world.

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Research Tea: Manuel S. González Canché

Photo of Manuel S. González Canché

For the Libraries’ next Research Tea, Manuel S. González Canché will speak about his recent work on geographical bias in standardized testing. An associate professor in the Higher Education division of Penn’s Graduate School of Education (GSE), González Canché’s scholarship focuses on the interplay between environmental circumstances and educational/occupational outcomes.

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Just Launched: Geologic Field Trip Guidebooks Web Archive

Posted on September 2019 by Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation
Geological map excerpt

The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation is pleased to announce the launch of the Geologic Field Trip Guidebooks Web Archive. The Geologic Field Trip Guidebooks Web Archive aims to preserve web-based geoscience field trip guidebooks, which document local geologic information and are often ephemeral.

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17th and 18th Century Manuscript Verse

Posted on September 2019
Old printed poem

The Brotherton Collection of 17th and 18th century English literature includes over 180 manuscripts that contain nearly 7000 poems and verses. These manuscripts were gathered together to form a discrete collection of verse.

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Research Tea: Konrad Kording

Konrad Korting

Dr. Konrad Kording – a dually-appointed PIK professor of neuroscience and bioengineering – will be the first speaker in the Penn Libraries’ Fall 2019 Research Tea series. Dr. Kording will consider various problems in science research, including image fraud, epistemological failures, tools failures, and replicability. 

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400 years of democracy and slavery in Virginia: Virginia Company Archives

Posted on September 2019 by Nick Okrent
Colonial era map of Virginia

The year 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the first representative legislative assembly in the British Colonies.  The “General Assembly,” composed of men from each of Virginia’s eleven major settlements, met for the first time at Jamestown from July 30-August 4, 1619.  1619 was also the year in which the first enslaved Africans arrived at Virginia.  The beginnings of democracy and slavery in the British Colonies as well as can be studied through the Ferrar and related papers of the Virginia Company Ar

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Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History, narratives from the Schlesinger Library

Posted on September 2019 by Nick Okrent
Black and white photograph of Sphinx and Pyramids

This resource brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Students and researchers will find sources covering a variety of topics including; architecture; art; the British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war.

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