University Library eNewsletter: March 2012 News

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A new trend of searching has formed in libraries throughout the country, and Alkek Library is following suit.

The Start Your Research discovery tool combines most of the Library’s information resources in a way that they can be accessed from a single search box. Previously, students would have to search an online catalog for a book or a database for an article, and there was no easy way to search multiple resources at once to find information.

Alkek Library will hold Introduction to Discovery workshops throughout April for the Texas State Community. The basic workshop will give a full overview of how to use the new research tool efficiently and how to access all of the functions it can perform. Graduate students may also attend sessions that are tailored specifically to their research needs. Faculty interested in learning more about Start Your Research can contact the library.

Librarians will explain how to find needed information in mixed media resources, such as finding the archived digital collections written by Texas State faculty and staff, how to search for images, video and audio and even how to have a citation generated. Reference librarian at Alkek Charles Allan has also created a video tutorial that can be found on the Library’s YouTube channel. The tutorial explains what the discovery tool is, talks about limiting results and points to some advanced features that Start Your Research offers.

The interface is very user-friendly, and focused towards both the novice user and advanced researcher alike. Start Your Research aims to appeal to Google users by its single search box with the expectation that students will start their academic research using Alkek’s search tools, not Google. Some of the features are geared to graduate students and faculty doing long-term research, such as creating an individual account that tracks the searches, setting up email alerts and RSS feeds. The research tool also works within the citation manager RefWorks.

A list of the dates and times of the Introduction to Discovery and a link to the registration form can be found on the Library’s website underneath the News-Events tab or by this URL:  http://www.library.txstate.edu/help/workshops.html.

-- Submitted by Elizabeth McLellan

Photo courtesy of Tara Spies Smith    

Walk through the doors, take a right and gaze upon the wonders of Alkek Library's graphic novel collection.

Featuring work by Will Eisner, Alan Moore, Chris Ware, Harvey Pekar, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman and more, a graphic novel display sits on the main floor of the Library in the exhibit cases to the right of the entrance. Art and design librarian Tara Spies Smith uses graphic novels from Alkek Library’s collection to  highlight some of the more important graphic novelists and artists of the genre.

Graphic novels often present adult subjects such as racism, poverty and hardship, politics or religion. Graphic novels are longer than traditional comic books, but similarly to comics, they include sequential art to tell the story. Will Eisner was one of the first artists to call his work a graphic novel and to use the term “sequential art” describing drawings or art that depict sequences of events telling a story.

The display holds a few movies adapted from graphic novels as well as some graphic novels adapted from books. Even the United States Constitution has been adapted into a graphic novel topic: The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation, and is currently the Texas State 2012-2012 Common Experience book for this year’s theme “Freedoms: The First Amendment”.  The exhibit has books and videos to help students learn about graphic novelists, artists and the graphic novel genre. Also featured are some of the books from the Library’s collection that can help students learn how to create their own graphic novel.

Come check out the exhibit! It will be on display through March 29. See the Graphic Novels Research Guide located on the library website on the Research Guides page for tips on how to find graphic novels or books and movies about graphic novels in the Library.

--- Submitted by Tara Spies Smith

Photo courtesy of Tara Spies Smith

Student enjoying a graphic novel in Alkek Library.

This tutorial introduces the new discovery tool. You will learn features search strategies, limiting by source type, getting keywords and advanced search for images and by language. Thanks Charles Allan!

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth McLellan

Witliff's invitation to Hugo Brehme's Timeless Mexico's launch and signing. Please RSVP to thewittliffcollections@txstate.edu.

Saturday, March 24, the Wittliff Collections invite the Texas State campus to celebrate their new book and current exhibition, Timeless Mexico: The Photographs of Hugo Brehme. Both the book and the show present an outstanding selection of Hugo Brehme’s photographs of early 20th century Mexico, ranging from imagery of the Mexican Revolution to scenic landscapes, colonial architecture and the everyday life of indigenous peoples.

This is the newest volume in the Wittliff’s Southwestern & Mexican Photography series with the University of Texas Press, and author Susan Toomey Frost, who has collected Brehme’s photography for many years, provides an illuminating introduction to his life and work. Frost also describes his practice of printing and distributing his photographs as collectible postcards—a practice that, together with publication in countless books, magazines and tourist brochures, gave Brehme’s work the wide circulation that made his images of Mexico iconic. Through his beautifully composed, timeless images of lo mexicano, Brehme created an idyllic vision of Mexico that influenced photography, film and literature for a hundred years.

A longtime Brehme expert, Frost donated her major collection of Brehme’s work to the Wittliff in 2009. Arranged by Wittliff Collections photography curator Carla Ellard, with assistance from Ken Fontenot, the Timeless Mexico exhibition—on view now through August 5, 2012—presents over 100 of Hugo Brehme’s masterful photographs. His vintage and real photo postcards and hand-tinted photographs published in Frost’s book are included in the collection.

The public is invited to the exhibition reception and book party for Timeless Mexico that will feature a program with Frost and Dennis Brehme, grandson of Hugo Brehme, as guest speakers on Saturday, March 24, 2012. The event opens with hors d’oeuvres at 7 p.m., and the talk is expected to begin between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. Books will be available for purchase at the event, and a signing with Frost, Brehme, and the author of the foreword, art historian Stella de Sá Rego will follow the program. Admission is free and there will be a cash bar. Attendees are asked to RSVP to thewittliffcollections@txstate.edu prior to the event.

--- Submitted by Samantha Snell

Our Library is fully branching out to reach the Texas State community in a variety of ways. Have you seen the Alkek Library News & Research Help Blog? Check out the Bag of Tricks Business Librarian section and the Bobcat GovInfo blog posts.

A lot of great things are going on at the Wittliff Collections this spring. The third author reading and book signing hosted this semester by the Wittliff will be a very special appearance by Dagoberto Gilb on Tuesday, March 6, 2012.

Dagoberto Gilb, a donor to the Wittliff’s Southwestern Writers Collection and former Texas State professor of creative writing, is considered by many to be one of the leading voices from the American Southwest. Through humble beginnings, he has become a critically acclaimed and award-winning author. In the 1970s, he made a living in the construction industry as a laborer, stonemason, and carpenter. While he worked in many areas of construction, his specialty was high-rise buildings.

Even though Gilb labored on building giant structures, his most impressive construction is the career he built for himself as a writer, crafting together stories that led him to amazing success in the literary world. He won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 1993, the Texas Book Festival Bookend Award for Ongoing Literary Achievement in 2007, the PEN Southwest Book Award in 2008, and several other honors. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many magazines, most recently Harper’s, The New Yorker, and Callaloo, and his work is reprinted widely. Gilb is also editor of Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas Mexican Literature published as part of the Wittliff's Southwestern Writers Collection Book Series. He is currently artist-in-residence and executive director of the Center for Mexican American Literature and Culture at the University of Houston-Victoria.

Gilb will be reading from his most recent book, Before the End, After the Beginning, a collection of ten stark and gritty stories dealing with the trials and tribulations of several different characters—many of who live throughout the Southwest. These stories were created in the wake of a stroke Gilb suffered at his home in Austin, Texas, in 2009—the majority of them written during his many months of recovery. The result is a magnificent insight into the powerful yet fragile spirit of humanity.

The Wittliff’s March 6 program, held on the library’s seventh floor, will include a 3:30 p.m. reception and 4:00 reading by Gilb followed by a book signing. Books will be available for purchase by the University Bookstore. Admission is free. For more details, see the Wittliff Collections events page at www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu, or call 512.245.2313. 

--- Submitted by Albert Mendiola

Huff Post Books created a slideshow of a list of "Best Graphic Novel-to-Movie Adaptations". Click on the link to get information on some pretty amazing conversions.