WWII for Young Readers

With my family connection to WWII (my grandparents fled Lithuania during the 2nd Soviet invasion aided by Germans) I’ve always been fascinated with the non-text book accounts of the not-so-great war.  I remember when I was in middle school coming across the Art Spiegelman’s inventive, Maus series, which plays out the Nazi saga with cats and mice and devouring it.

And today, I’ve discovered Alan’s War:  The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope by Emmanuel Guibert sitting on my desk, waiting to be read.  Turns out NPR Books did a great story about the process of creating the book  and the post contains a link to a 7 page preview of the text/illustrations.

People’s Republic of China at 60

NPR will be turning to best-selling Chinese authors this week to gain some insight into the people’s perspectives on the People’s Republic during its controversial 60 years of rule.  Today’s story, the first of the three parts, focuses on Jian Rong’s, Wolf Totem which I happened to pick up not too long ago, fascinated by the subject of Beijing intellectuals electing to go live with the nomadic people of Inner Mongolia and learning from their cultural adoration for the wolf.  Listen to the story and join in the conversation, here.

American Experience “We Shall Remain”

Monday evenings at 8pm April 13th through May 11th UAS will host a big screen broadcast of the PBS series “We Shall Remain” in the Egan Library. Each broadcast will be followed with an informal discussion. Please contact Wendy Girven (wjgirven@uas.alaska.edu) with any questions or visit the show’s website.

The Future of Newspapers

Thought this would be a timely discussion following last Tuesday’s final print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer after 146 years of ink and newsprint existence.  The PI and The Rocky Mountain News are now entirely digital, despite being the largest circulating papers in their respective regions.  Library users who are regular readers of the PI will not be completely without Seattle news in print as we have picked up a subscription to the Seattle Weekly.   With recent cutbacks at the Juneau Empire leading to a much slimmer daily print edition, many news outlets have begun exploring the possibility of a world without paper.  Check out a great discussion on Democracy Now, “The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers”.   Robert McChesney takes a look at The Newspaper Revitalization Act, currently being debated in congress which suggests a new business model for American newspapers, one resembling the non-profit organization of public radio and television which would allow the essential media form of printed daily news to survive today’s economic climate.

If you’re familiar with digital editions of newspapers and enjoy online content, you should know about the Internet Public Library’s Newspaper Collection. The Internet Public Library is an index of high quality web content, regularly reviewed and organized by Library and Information Science graduate students at The University of Michigan, Drexel University and Florida State University.   The Newspaper collection features links to online English editions of papers from all 50 States and 80 countries worldwide.

Are you looking for a newspaper article that can’t be found using the online editions of a paper?  Try Newspaper Source,  a subscription database available to Juneau Public Library patrons.

Newspaper Source provides selected full text for 25 national (U.S.) and international newspapers, including USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, The Times (London), The Toronto Star, etc. The database also contains selected full text for more than 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers, including The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press, The Miami Herald, The New York Daily News, The San Jose Mercury News, etc. In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are provided from CBS News, FOX News, NPR, etc.

If you’re into Historical newspaper perspectives, check out the Alaska State Historical Library’s brainchild, Alaska Newspaper Project.  Spanning 1886-1998, this finding guide will aide researchers in navigating the wealth of history preserved on microfilm.

Where do you see printed newspapers in 10 years?  How about printed books?  There’s much pressure in the market and industry for electronic resources, e-books, e-journals, etc, which do you prefer to take to read in bed with you at night, your computer, e-book reader or a paperback?  Let’s hear from you.