RECENT BOOK ACQUISITIONS

Would you like a quick and easy way to learn about books our library has recently acquired?

Have a look at "Recent Acquisitions" available on the "Find Books" flyout on the homepage. The link is also accessible from the "Find Books" tab on subsequent pages. Or you can visit http://library.samford.edu/newacq/.

Thanks to Ed Cherry for providing this wonderful service!

ENCORE: A NEW LIBRARY SEARCH TOOL

Encore is a new search tool that allows users to simultaneously search the Samford Libraries' catalog and other online resources available through the libraries. It functions like a search engine, allowing users to locate books, music, videos and DVDs, electronic books, and government documents with a single search.Encore provides users with the following helpful features:

• relevancy ranking
  
• easy to use facets to refine your search
  
• recently added books on your topic
  
• a tag cloud around your topic

Click here to access Encore and try it for yourself.

COMING SOON:
Encore is a new product, and is still in development. We will soon be adding database searching capability to the Encore search tool. When implementation is completed, a single Encore seach will cover the following resources:

• The Samford Libraries' Catalog
• Academic Search Premier*
• Academic OneFile*
• ABI/Inform Global (a subset of ABI/Inform Complete)*
• JSTOR*
• Google
• Google Images
• PubMed

BANNED BOOKS WEEK, SEPTEMBER 27-OCTOBER 4

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a growing number of challenges to books in schools, libraries, and bookstores. Banned Books week is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. It is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.

Since 1982, more than a thousand books have been challenged. These challenges have occurred in hundreds of communities in every state. The most frequently-cited reasons for challening a book are usually related to sexuality and violence. There are, however, a broad array of reasons for protesting the presence or use of a book, ranging from negative portrayals of certain groups to positive portrayals of others. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, for example, have been challenged for perceived offensive portrayals of African Americans, and for their use of slang. More recently, by contrast, a number of children's and young adult books have been challenged for their positive portrayal of homosexuality.

Challenged books range from items we now regard as "classics," such as James Joyce's Ulysses Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, to Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Click here to view detailed lists of frequently-challenged books.

"100 UNBELIEVABLY USEFUL REFERENCE SITES YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF"

We're inundated by new websites every day, and it can be difficult just to keep up much less take the time to evaluate them. Here is a site that provides a list organized into categories: teacher, librarian and student resources, consumer websites, and news/popular culture, among others:

http://www.teachingtips.com/blog/2008/07/07/100-unbelievably-useful-reference-sites-youve-never-heard-of/

Some of these sites may fit into assignments so well that you will want to add them to the library’s web site. We are happy to add resources to our subject pages, so feel free to let us know. You may view our current subject pages by visiting http://library.samford.edu/articlestopics.html .

Lori