Mardigian Library News

Kevin Rank / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Friday, May 24: 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 25 to Monday, May 27: CLOSED

Our regular Spring Semester hours will resume on Tuesday, May 28

Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD) is the world's largest database for completely identified inorganic crystal structures. ICSD contains about 156,000 peer-reviewed data entries, including their atomic coordinates, dating back to 1973.
ICSD contains:
• 1,675 crystal structures of the elements
• 30,075 records for binary compounds
• 58,371 records for ternary compounds
• 55,754 records for quarternary and quintenary compounds
About 119,000 entries (75.9% of entries) have been assigned a structure type. There are currently 6,357 structure prototypes.

American Tortoise Rescue is sponsoring its 13th annual World Turtle Day today. World Turtle Day "was created as an annual observance to help people celebrate and protect turtles and tortoises and their disappearing habitats around the world." Check out a book from the library's collection about North American turtles, turtle ecology, and sea turtles.

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On May 23, 1783, South Carolina became the 8th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. I searched the catalog for "South Carolina" and was surprised at how much material we have in our collection about the 8th state. While many of the books deal with the Civil War, Reconstruction, and race, but there is a lot of online material from as far back as 1729! Some of our online resources include speeches, state assembly acts and resolutions, association and society constitutions, and a whole lot more. Much of these online resources can be found in the Early Americana database.

       

Twentieth Century Advice Literature provides the instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the twentieth century. Included are handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave.

On May 22, 1813, noted German opera composer Richard Wagner was born. Wagner was a colorful figure. Because of his political involvement, he was exiled and spent time in Venice, Switzerland, and Paris. He was invited back to Munich by King Ludwig (Mad King Ludwig) and eventually settled in Bayreuth where he supervised the design and construction of a new opera house. An annual Wagner festival, the Bayreuth Festival, is held at this opera house.

The library has many books about Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival, and we have some musical scores written by Wagner. Watch dozens of performances at the Bayreuth Festival in Naxos Video Online, listen to hundreds of tracks composed by Wagner in Classical Music Library, and see a few more Wagner operas in Classical Music in Video.

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Our subscription to Filmakers Library Online has been updated with more than 40 new films. When this new addition to our subscription (Volume 2) is complete, it will include 100 of the most influential issue-based documentaries of 2009 through 2013.

On May 21, 1863, during the Civil War, the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana began. The library has access to memoirs from two of the generals that were on the union side. Halbert Paine wrote A Wisconsin Yankee in Confederate Bayou Country: The Civil War Reminiscences of a Union General. Paine was born in Ohio, lived in Mississippi, but served as a Union general of the 4th Infantry from Wisconsin. Benjamin Grierson was the author of A Just and Righteous Cause: Benjamin H. Grierson's Civil War Memoir (edited by Bruce J. Dinges and Shirley A. Leckie). Grierson was born in Pennsylvania and served as a cavalry officer from Illinois (and died in Michigan many years after the Civil War).

Read both of their accounts of the events surrounding the Port Hudson siege and the Vicksburg campaign.

   

ProQuest Statistical Datasets is now called Data-Planet Statistical Datasets. Data-Planet Statistical Datasets provides access to statistical information produced by U.S. federal agencies, private companies, and intergovernmental organizations. Create maps and reports from data you select from over 640 datasets. Subjects include health, crime, population, finance, industry, and marketing.

The list of new books and other materials added to the library’s collection in April has been posted. Click on “…more New Arrivals” on the library’s home page. Or, go directly to http://library.umd.umich.edu/newbooks/.

Examples from the April list include:

       

Several new resources have been added to the Brill Online Reference Works. These online books and databases primarily cover Religious Studies, Classic Studies, Medieval & Early Modern Studies, and Middle East & Islamic Studies.

1. Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries Online includes dictionaries of Armenian, Greek, Latin, Proto-Germanic, Slavic, and several others.
2. Middle Eastern Manuscripts Online 1: Pioneer Orientalists
​3. Middle Eastern Manuscripts Online 2: Ottoman Legacy of Levinus Warner
4. Israel's Messenger - the "Official Organ of the Shanghai Zionist Association"
5. Moses Maimonides, unparalleled editions - includes imprints from the 16th to the 20th century, some of which constitute landmarks in the history of Hebrew printing. Some bilingual works are also included (Latin, Judeo-German, or French).
6. Africa Yearbook Online - covers major domestic political developments, the foreign policy and socioeconomic trends in sub-Sahara Africa – all related to developments in one calendar year.
7. African Studies Companion Online - over 1,800 entries covering guides and resources for African languages, Africa cartography and maps, African film, African studies journals, the African press, African studies library collections worldwide, national archives in Africa, centers of African studies and African studies programs worldwide, and a wealth of other subjects.
8. Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism - presents the latest research on all the main aspects of the Hindu traditions.
9. Brill's Medieval Reference Library Online - includes Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450-1450, Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, and Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle.

If you try to access research databases over the summer, you might get a 403 error. This normally happens when you try to access e-books, online journals, and other online resources through our website, but are not registered for the current semester. The vendors for our research databases do not allow off-campus access to students who are not registered for the current semester.

If you are not registered for a class during the spring/summer semester, you have two options:
• Access a research database through MeL. Look for a purple next to the database name on our website. Click on the purple instead of the database name. These databases are available to residents of Michigan, but you will need to log in using your Michigan driver’s license number. (You can also go directly to MeL Databases to access these.)
• You can come in to the library and use guest access computers.

World Newsreels Online, 1929-1966 includes the full run of newsreels on significant historical events from throughout the 20th century. It also includes the "March of Time" series, and selected videos from American History in Video and World History in Video, but adds new material from France, Japan, the Netherlands, and other countries throughout the world.

       

On May 15, 1963, the spacecraft Faith 7, piloted by Gordon Cooper, was launched. Faith 7 was the last of the Mercury-Atlas missions. This was the longest mission to space up to that time (22.5 orbits and more than 34 hours).

See newsreel footage of the event in American History in Video, listen to a prayer by Gordon Cooper on his 14th orbit at the Internet Archive, and see pictures and video commemorating the 50th anniversary of Faith 7 at the NASA website.

           

   
Click on images to see larger ones
BTW, the type of butterfly is a painted lady.