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Add persistence to article links in Blackboard and websites
by Jon Ritterbush, Assistant Librarian

Words such as e-mail and e-commerce are commonly associated with the Internet, but so are words such as elusive and as ephemeral.  The challenge of linking to database articles from Blackboard or other websites can pose a significant hurdle to faculty and students, particularly when web surfing from off-campus.

The Systems Department of Regent University Library has developed an online guide and “link converter” form at http://www.regent.edu/general/library/research_tools/persistent_links/home.cfm.   By following the instructions in this guide, specific to each database, users can build persistent links to database articles which will work from off-campus as well as on-campus.

Please contact the Reference Desk if you have any questions about building persistent links for your course or webpage.

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Scores and More
by Elizabeth Keen, Circulation Supervisor

Library users researching on the second floor might be surprised to run into a large collection of classical music scores and monographs. Since Regent offers no degree in music, a word of explanation is in order. In the 1980s, the University planned to add a school of music, and the Library was charged with building a collection that could support it. The University eventually decided against the music school, but not before the Library had acquired a music collection that could form the core holdings of a music conservatory.

J.S. Bach

Regent music lovers will find much to peruse and check out from this collection. Some of the highlights include portions of the authoritative collected works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. There are extensive holdings of medieval and Renaissance church music in scholarly editions. You will also find a large collection of pocket scores, perfect for gaining a deeper insight into your favorite symphony or opera as you follow along while listening. If you do not read music, check out a biography of your favorite composer.

The circulating music collection is located in two sections on the second floor. Larger scores are in the oversized section; smaller scores and monographs are in the general collection. In the Library of Congress Classification system, musical items occupy three subclasses, which will help you go quickly to the kind of material you are looking for:

M: Musical scores
ML: Literature on music
MT: Musical instruction and study

The Library music collection has something for every level of interest and proficiency, from beginning listeners to expert players. Whether you’re planning to tackle a piano sonata or follow the score as you listen to the Saturday afternoon opera, chances are you will find something of interest in the Library’s music section.

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Undergraduate Research
by Harold Henkel, Assistant Librarian

How to (Ethically) Steal Research

Few research situations are more frustrating (and frightening) than spending 30 fruitless minutes searching the Library catalog or databases. This impasse is a common dilemma for college students because many professors require that research papers be supported by a minimum number of peer-reviewed articles. In such a situation, often the best strategy is to become a bibliography raider—use the citations and bibliographies of the most relevant books and articles you have to lead you to other scholarly works. Not only is this strategy not plagiarism, it is actually the way most professional scholars keep abreast of their colleagues’ latest research.¹

Besides helping you to find a required minimum number of articles to cite in your paper, this strategy has additional potential benefits to recommend it.

• By combing the references of articles or books that you have already found useful, you are in a sense making the author your personal research secretary.
• Although by no means always the case, articles and books cited in bibliographies are already on their way to being considered the more important ones in their field.² Every work cited in a list of references has in effect been recognized as important by at least one scholar—the citing author.
• Bibliographies may contain articles that make up one chapter in a scholarly anthology. Articles within a book can be exceedingly difficult to find using the library catalog or even databases.

Two points of caution are in order:

• The purpose of using bibliographies and lists of references to find more articles is not to pad your bibliography. You are seeking scholarly material that supports the arguments in your paper.
• Bibliography raiding is most effective with new works of scholarship. A book published in 2000 is unlikely to contain any citations later than 1999, which most professors will not consider current.

Using bibliographies to locate resources is not a substitute for searching the Library catalog and databases, as well as consulting with a reference librarian. However, this strategy should form one component of your hunt for the best literature on your topic.

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Collection Spotlight--The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation, translated by Aliki Barnstone.
Reviewed by Fotini Kontos, Assistant Librarian

Constantine Cavafy

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933) was one of the preeminent Greek poets of the 20th century. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt into a wealthy merchant family from Constantinople. Apart from five years spent in England and three in Constantinople, Cavafy lived his entire life in Alexandria, only occasionally making short trips to Athens, Italy, France, and England. Reflective of the cosmopolitan world of Alexandria, Cavafy read or spoke ancient and modern Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, and Arabic. Although he lived for only three years in Constantinople (1882-1885), his time there was seminal for his artistic development, and he absorbed the history and literature of Greece’s Classical, Hellenistic, and Byzantine heritages. It was also in Constantinople that he began to write poetry. Among his early admirers was T.S. Eliot, who published several of his poems in The Criterion in 1924.

The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy is a new edition of Cavafy’s poems translated from the Greek by Aliki Barnstone. Ms. Barnstone has done a wonderful job at rendering into English the style of Cavafy’s peculiar mixture of Demotic (spoken) and Katharevousa (literary) Greek. Cavafy’s poems are infused with the mythology, literature, and history of Greece. He himself divided his poems into three different categories: historical, sensual, and philosophical.

As a poet, Cavafy was a perfectionist, honing his verses to extraordinary lyrical intensity. For this reason, he published only about 200 poems in his lifetime. His verses are both rhymed and free and make use of iambic meters of 10-17 syllables. In terms of subject matter, Cavafy’s poetry is informed by both his personal experience and his enormous understanding of ancient and Byzantine Greek history. A recluse, living in what had been one of the great cities of the Greek world; his poems often focus on religion, nostalgia, isolation, and regret for the coming of old age. His poems evince empathy and compassion for the outsider and outcast.
 
Some of the famous poems in this collection include “Ithaca,” in which the voyage of Odysseus becomes a metaphor for life. There Cavafy advises his audience to focus not on life’s destination but the journey itself. Other famous poems include “Waiting for the Barbarians,” about the invisible enemies that we must face in life, and “Thermopylae” focusing on debt to forefathers.

While Cavafy received very little recognition during his life, his influence and reputation grew steadily after death. Although there have been at least three major translations of Cavafy’s work, Aliki Barnstone’s excellent new version gives English readers a fresh opportunity to become acquainted with one of Greece’s great modern poets.

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National Library Week image from http://www.alastore.ala.org
Jamestown image from http://www.theassembly2007.org/
Blackboard image from http://blackboard.regent.edu
Bach picture from http://www.jsbach.org/biography.html
Book cover image of The Routledge Atlas of African American History from http://library.regent.edu/record=b1246368
Cavafy picture from http://www.poemhunter.com/constantine-p-cavafy/biography/poet-6796/

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