Leanne Hillery

My name is Leanne Hillery, and I am joining the Regent University team this fall as a Reference Librarian and liaison to the School of Psychology and Counseling. Prior to my arrival here, I worked for almost three years as the Catalog Librarian at the Regent Law Library. I received a Master's in Information and Library Studies from the University of Michigan in 1988, and have been working in libraries for almost twenty years. During this period, I served at the University of Miami Law Library and the Florida International University Law Library in Miami , Florida and at Ball State University in Muncie , Indiana . In all of my previous positions, I served as a cataloger. Now, I am transitioning to public service work. This change has been extremely exciting and challenging.

I majored in English at West Virginia University , and am currently a student in the MBA program here at Regent. I am looking forward to graduating in May 2008. As time allows, I love reading, going to movies and the theater, and watching sports. I especially enjoy football (Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins) and basketball (Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat). However, my favorite pastime is being with my family. My husband, David, and I have been married for 15 years and have two small children - Ryan, age 4, and Margaret (a.k.a. Meg), age 2.

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Library Faculty Recommendations
by Jon Ritterbush, Assistant Librarian

Websites About Communication & Arts on Del.icio.us

More recently, Web 2.0 tools have opened new channels by which web users may store, repurpose or mashup, and share information. Wikipedia and blogging have entered the popular lexicon as leading examples of Web 2.0 technologies, but social bookmarking websites, such as Del.icio.us are changing how web users, including librarians, share websites.

On the Library's Communication & Arts subject page is an example of social bookmarking in action. This page contains a "tag cloud" of links to websites related to communication and arts topics. Each word or phrase in this tag cloud describes one or more websites, selected and "tagged" by this librarian through Del.icio.us. The larger and bolder the tag, the more websites are described with that tag.

Once a website is tagged in Del.icio.us, it is accessible in a number of ways:

•  Easy URLs based on the tag name. For example, the URL of http://del.icio.us/comartslibrarian/screenwriting will retrieve a list of the websites I recommend on screenwriting.

•  RSS feeds. By subscribing to an RSS feed for a particular tag or set of tags, you can receive immediate updates of new websites added to my Del.icio.us list.

•  Automatic blog postings. Within hours of adding links to my Del.icio.us list, a copy of these links is automatically posted to my blog at http://comartslibrarian.wordpress.com.

•  Javascripting. The tag cloud shown above is dynamically generated using free Javascript coding. In other words, the moment I add a website with a brand new "tag" category, that tag will appear in the cloud. Other free Javascript can automatically display a list of the last five websites added to my Del.icio.us account, such as the list shown below.

Tags can also be combined to allow a user to narrow down their search. Users can click or type their way to tag combinations to view a list of journalism databases, for example. The URL for this tag combination would be http://del.icio.us/comartslibrarian/databases+journalism.

Recently, I added three new tags for some introductory courses in the School of Communication & Arts. All I had to do was add a tag (e.g. THE_700) to those databases or websites I had already bookmarked in Del.icio.us, and voila, a new course-specific list of web resources related to the Theater 700 class was online. No knowledge of HTML coding or web editing software was necessary.

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Collection Spotlight-- The Book of Job: Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Raymond P. Scheindlin
Reviewed by Randall J. Pannell, M.Div., Ph.D.

The Book of Job raises important questions concerning some of the most powerful and unsettling themes for human reflection, particularly within the context of Western civilization: What is our place in God's creation? Are the good rewarded? Are the evil punished? Is there merit or justice? What is goodness? What is the nature of evil? Can we grasp the ways of creation or are they beyond our comprehension?

With a rare and deep understanding of Hebrew poetry, Professor Scheindlin has undertaken to capture the "fierce beauty" of the poem that is by far the majority of the Book of Job. In so doing, a somewhat different Job emerges from the traditional Job, the patient sufferer, whose faith in God is finally rewarded. Scheindlin's new translation and subsequent notes and introduction depict an angry Job who insists that his suffering is undeserved, and who is quarrelsome, demanding a formal dispute with God.

Scheindlin's work contains a new translation of the entire book (including the "difficult" passages sometimes "massaged" or omitted altogether in other translations) as well as a complete introduction and notes that both clarify his translations and offer useful commentary. In the latter, Scheindlin addresses from a scholarly perspective, issues concerning the integrity of the text, its meaning, and interpretation. Interestingly, the author takes a different point of view from most modern scholars of Hebrew Scripture. For example, contrary to much contemporary scholarship, he argues for coherence and unity of the text in its final literary form. Scheindlin's linguistic and poetic competencies make for very intriguing and stimulating perspectives regarding Job. Even though the format of separating the translated text from the notes requires an extra step on the part of the reader, the effort is very rewarding. The text, especially of the poem, is easy to read and to understand.

The tour de force of this work is Scheindlin's translation of the biblical Hebrew. One reviewer has described it best as a translation into "language that is [smooth] and eloquent, yet contemporary in tone." Scheindlin writes in the introduction that he has tried to "let the text itself suggest its own translation" and to interfere as little as possible. He desired to produce a translation that would reflect the poetic values specific to biblical Hebrew. As a result, Job is seen to be angry yet hopeful; one who knows and insists that his suffering is undeserved, and yet adamantly requires an audience with God. Scheindlin's fresh, lyrical poetry allows us to feel once again Job's pain and distress as he courageously faces the lack of correspondence between himself and God while also attempting to understand his suffering.

Let Him kill me!-I will never flinch,
     But will protest His conduct to His face,
And He Himself will be my vindication,
     For flatters can never come before Him. (13:15-16)

Let God weigh me in an honest balance
     He will have to see my innocence.
          If only I had someone to hear me! (31:6)

I found the translation of the poetic passages of the book (thirty-nine of its forty-two chapters are in verse) to be more conversational, even colloquial; more forceful and contemporary than the translations of NIV, NASV, NRSV, and even the Jewish Publication Society version (JPS).

Man born of woman:
His days are few, his belly full of rage.
He blooms and whithers like a blossom,
     flees, unlingering, like a shadow,
     wears out like a rotten thing,
     a cloth moth-eaten. (14:1-2)

One hears instead of "Job the Patient," rather Everyman , and "Job's suffering [converted] into an extreme case of what is endured by all who are subject to death and capable of reflecting upon it" (p. 10).

Scheindlin's respect for the primacy of poetry leads to one of the most interesting facets of his translation. Scheindlin observes that "if the Book of Job is not alone in the Bible [and in pagan culture] in its pessimistic, even nihilistic, message [cf., Ecclesiastes], we still must ask what positive message it was meant to bear; above all, we need to ask, why a poem?" (p. 19). According to Scheindlin, "Job's poetry achieves the book's purpose of consolation partly by providing its own vigor as an antidote to its pessimism, by changing the level of the discussion from a meditation on life's injustice to a parade of life's sheer multitudinousness" (p. 25).

"To be sure, Job was not intended as a systematic treatise on the meaning of human suffering or on the nature of divine justice. . As a work of consolation rather than theology [or even wisdom per se], Job attempts to take control of our human agony, to give it full expression and tame it by means of imagery, rhythm, and wordplay" (pp. 19, 23).

"The poetry is in part a vehicle for steering us away from the suffering with which life burdens us towards the delight at what life has to offer. This is not a quantitative argument. The author does not make the simplistic claim that life's delights are commensurate with or compensation for life's sorrows. He does not make any argument at all. All arguments have been rendered nil by the book's premise. Since the narrative presents Job's complaint as rational and correct, there is no room left for a rational solution. Rather, poetry is used to shift the ground from reason, where life must lose, to emotion, where it at least has a chance " (p. 25 emphases added).

I think Scheindlin correctly recognizes that poetry gives full expression to Job's grief and anger, as well as allowing his expressions more easily to become our own. In other words, if Job could eloquently say how he really felt and could still experience God's presence as well as His affirmation, then so might we! Job's anger arises from his own "demand for meaning," and from a "refusal to yield emotionally to the terrible pointlessness of our suffering." Job is never reconciled. His heart demands a meaning that intellectually he cannot have. Job knows this truth, but because he remains engaged in life and nobly refuses to succumb to Ecclesiastes' sensuous listlessness, he hates this truth. It is the "paradoxical meeting of the book's pessimistic assumptions and this vigorous engagement in life" that produces Job's anger and poetry (p. 26).

The consolation that Job offers us is that his anger "helps tame ours," to "bring it into manageable compass," and stubbornly and contentiously to remain engaged in life. We read Job "not because it provides answers to our questions, consolation for our grief, or redress for our anger," but because it calls us to remain alive and encourages us to express our questions, our grief, and our anger "with such force" (p. 26).

This is an extraordinary work of translation, art, and spiritual gravity. I encourage you to investigate it for yourself.

Randall J. Pannell, M.Div., Ph.D. is Acting Vice President of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Hebrew & Old Testament at Regent University.

Are you interested in reviewing a resource in the Library collection? If so, please contact Harold Henkel at harohen@regent.edu.

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