Summer in the Library
by Charlise Holmes, Assistant Circulation Supervisor

The University Library welcomes all our online students who will be coming to the campus for summer residency. We hope you will be able to enjoy the attractions around Virginia Beach, but research will probably occupy your time as well. Here are a few tips for making your time at the Library productive and enjoyable:

Finding your school’s liaison is extremely helpful and easy to do. Every school in the University has a library liaison that is an expert on researching topics within that field of study. These librarians can be contacted in person, via email, telephone, and even live chat on the internet. If you haven’t contacted your librarian yet, be sure to say “hello” while you’re in town.

The General Collection continues on the second floor of the library. The general collection begins on the first floor of the library and continues on the left wing of the second floor. If you need help locating the Popular Collection, Reference Section, or the Curriculum Section, the friendly staff at the Circulation Desk will gladly point you in the right direction.

The Library is open until 10:00 pm on most nights. During the summer months, the library is open from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, Monday thru Thursday, and from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm on Fridays. On Saturdays we are open from 9:00 am – 9:00 pm, and on Sundays the library is closed. For a detailed list of hours and holiday closings, click here.

Can’t find it? Try Reference. Whether you need just one more source for a research paper or you don’t know where to begin, the Reference Desk is a great place to find help. Librarians and Graduate Assistants are available to assist students with all their researching needs.

The Library is cool. Although the weather in Virginia Beach might be a balmy 90 degrees, inside the library it is usually a brisk 65. If you forget to bring along a jacket or a sweater, the Circulation desk has blankets that you may check-out on your library account.

You can purchase books for as low as 50¢ a piece! Be sure to visit the sale shelf that is located next to the Circulation Desk, where you will find paperback books for 50¢ and hardbacks for 75¢. What a deal!

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When Art Meets Literature
by Ian Hackmann, Administrative Assistant

Then Miss Watson took me in the closet and prayed
Jim got down on his knees
Miss Mary Jane…
My hands shook
Your eyes is lookin’
Then for three minutes, or maybe four
There warn’t no harm in them
When I lit my candle.

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Changing Spaces
by Elizabeth Keen, Circulation Supervisor and Ian Hackmann, Administrative Assistant

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Coming Soon, to Regent Library!
by Elizabeth Keen, Circulation Supervisor

Digital Media is a vital part of learning today, not just for the School of Communication and Performing Arts, but all schools at Regent. The Library recognizes this, and recently gathered a number of films to increase the breadth and depth of our collection.

Film students need to watch films! In fact, it’s part of their homework. The animation department is expanding, and to support that growth, we are adding not only popular films like The Incredibles, Toy Story, and Shrek 2, but also several Anime box sets of Astro Boy, Kimba, and InuYasha. Since our film students study the classics, we have purchased Alfred Hitchcock: The Signature Collection, the Humphrey Bogart Collection, and the Cary Grant Box Set. Film students also need to study the best in CGI development from films like King Kong, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Mission Impossible 2. And what DVD collection would be complete without award winners like Walk the Line, Crash, or Good Night, and Good Luck?

It’s not just film students who can benefit from the DVDs at the Library, though - all schools will. We are adding over 60 films from The Films for the Humanities and Sciences that include sets of films on Music, Art, Theatre, Economics, Science, Leadership, Business, and Sociology. To take a look the full list of the titles of these films, click here.

To view a list of the DVD Feature Films that the Library has available, you can go to the Library Catalog wepage and click on "Featured Item Lists." From here, simply click on "DVD Feature Films" and start searching! Also, to search just for items in our Media Room, go to Advanced Search, type in the specific fields in which you would like to search, and then in the drop down bar, limit to location "2nd S-Room 214."

This will limit your search of items to DVDs, Videos, Cassettes, and CDs.

Happy Media Hunting!

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Deeper into Databases
by Leanne Strum, Ph.D., Head of Technical Services & Systems

The “Mysterious” Database OmniFile Full-text Mega

If you have never clicked on the database, “OmniFile Full-text Mega” you are missing an opportunity to search multiple full-text databases in a single search. OmniFile is a composite database containing the following subject areas:

Special Features:

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Library Services for Undergraduate Students
by Harold Henkel, Assistant Librarian

Why can’t I just use Google?

During the past year, this column has outlined several of the Library’s most important resources and services for all levels of research, such as RefWorks, WorldCat, Academic Search Premier, and Interlibrary Loan. Still, some readers may be thinking, “why can’t I just use Google? Everything I need is on the Internet.”

No it isn’t! While no one would deny that the World Wide Web contains many outstanding, reputable sites on nearly every subject, the fact is that most high-quality information is not available free on the Internet. Samuel Johnson famously remarked that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Today Johnson might add “or made quality research available.” Most authoritative information is expensive. The Library subscribes to the databases used by leaders in business, government, and the professions—the kinds of roles for which you are preparing at Regent.

Here are some tips for improving your proficiency with the Library’s electronic resources:

For the student new to electronic resources, an initial look at the 136 titles on the database homepage can be a little intimidating. The above tips will help you raise your research skills level by moving above and beyond Internet search engines.

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Book Spotlight--Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber
Reviewed by Harold Henkel, Assistant Librarian

In the very first paragraph of Shakespeare After All, Marjorie Garber sets the caliber for the insights that fill her book:

Shakespeare After All is a masterpiece of explication. Its genesis was is in the undergraduate Shakespeare course the author taught at Yale in the 1970s. At Harvard since 1981, her lectures became so renowned that she began to give them in a campus theatre that could accommodate interested alumni and the general public. The book takes the form of a close reading of all Shakespeare’s plays in chronological order. Preceding coverage of the plays is an introduction covering Shakespeare’s life and career, the culture and theatre of his times, and a survey of the ways audiences and readers have responded to him over the past four centuries.

One important point Garber makes is that Shakespeare’s plays have always invited quotation, whether for the beauty of selected passages or for their cultural authority in reinforcing a point. However, taking words out of context is never so dangerous a business as in Shakespeare, where in the context of the play, the words can have quite a different meaning. One classic example of this is Polonius’s parting advice to his son Laertes in Hamlet (I.iii.58-80). Polonius’s words, so often taken to be Shakespearean proverbs on the proper comportment for a young man, are within the context of the play, a weary collection of platitudes from a tiresome old fool and court spy.

One way of measuring the strength of Shakespeare After All is to compare it with Harold Bloom’s study of the plays, Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human. Garber’s work is at once more accessible and more demanding than Bloom’s. Bloom’s book is the reflections of a great critic on the works that have occupied his mind for over fifty years. Garber’s is the work of a great teacher who leads the reader to look ever more deeply into the texts of the plays. Her analyses recall Hamlet’s advice to the players about “the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature…” Garber’s method is to hold up a mirror to Shakespeare’s plays, revealing their multiple facets and levels of meaning. She does not give her personal interpretation, for that would end the active participation of the reader to discover meaning through multiple readings.

On the final page of her study, in the acknowledgements, Professor Garber finally explains the evocative title of her book: “Shakespeare After All. After centuries of discussion, production, and analysis… we return, always to Shakespeare’s plays. Critics come and critics go; so do literary movements and theories. But the rich world of the plays—plays approached of necessity, differently in every generation—remains.” Critics and movements may come and go, but Shakespeare After All seems destined to live on in the permanent canon of Shakespeare criticism.

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