ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

New Publications

George M. Eberhart

Creating a Winning Online Exhibition: A Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums,by Martin R. Kalfatovic (117 pages, January 2002), offers excellent advice on how to develop, create, and launch a successful online presentation that showcases a special collection. Kalfatovic, digital projects librarian at the Smithsonian Libraries, emphasizes the practical aspects of getting ideas, writing the proposal, selecting the staff, and preparing the text and images for what could turn out to be an award-winning (courtesy of RBMS) exhibition. Contains a good introduction to digital file formats and markup language. ALA Editions. $40.00. ISBN 0-8389-0817-9.

Food Festival, U.S.A.,by Becky Mercuri (430 pages, April 2002), describes 250 food festivals, many of them featuring ethnic or regional specialties, held in all 50 states. Some are well-known, such as the Gilroy (California) Garlic Festival or Milwaukee’s Polish Fest; but many are known only to locals, such as the Alligator Festival in Boutte, Louisiana; the National Baby Food Festival in Fremont, Michigan; the Lenexa (Kansas) Spinach and Trails Fest; the Race to Bake the Biggest Apple Pie in Wenatchee, Washington; and St. Anthony’s Lebanese Food Festival in Glen Allen, Virginia. Contact information is provided, as well as a directory of festivals by month and a specialty recipe for each. $24.95. Laurel Glen Publishing. ISBN 1-57145-775-5.

Making Connections: Communication through the Ages,by Charles T. Meadow (365 pages, February 2002), serves as a basic text on the methods people have devised to exchange information, from simple speech and writing to speedy transportation technologies, the telephone and telegraph, radio and television, satellites, and the Internet. Writing in a casual style for nonspecialists, Meadow covers the basics of each technology, showing how it was invented, how it works, and the effect it has had on society. Not all communication is high-tech, as the author demonstrates in the chapter on visual signaling, which explores fires and flares, smoke signals, military flags, semaphores, and icons on the computer screen. The final chapter offers 100 dates to remember, from cave drawings in 50,000 B.C. to the trend in 2000 towards the convergence of computers, telephones, and TV. $47.50. Scarecrow. ISBN 0-8108-4233-5.

George M. Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries; e-mail: geberhart@ala.org

The Regions of Italy,by Roy Domenico (465 pages, February 2002), surveys the 20 Italian geographic regions and describes the history, economy, cuisine, politics, arts, and culture of each. Italy’s relatively recent unification in the mid-19th century allowed local identities and traditions to persist into the present day. This volume follows the format of Greenwood’s previous regional studies of Spain (1995) and France (1996) and will be of interest to geography and history students as well as tourists. $60.00. Greenwood. ISBN 0-313-30733-4.

Romanians in the United States and Canada: A Guide to Ancestry and Heritage Research,by Vladimir F. Wertsman (225 pages, April 2002), is a much-needed guide to genealogy for North Americans of Romanian or Moldovan descent. Beginning with an overview of the culture that offers insights into Romanian costume, cuisine, holidays, weddings, baptisms, religion, and arts, Wertsman goes on to list the best print resources, archives, libraries, organizations, and Web sites for documenting ancestors and other personalities. Appendices include maps of Romania and Moldova, the Romanian alphabet and a short dictionaiy, common names and name frequencies, and—no doubt because someone would wonder why it wasn’t included—a short section on who the historical Dracula was. A useful reference for an understudied group. $24.95- HeritageQuest. ISBN 1-931488-87-8.

Selkirk's Island,by Diana Souhami (246 pages, February 2002), is the true story of the shipwrecked man who was the basis for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Alexander Selkirk, a Scotsman who was abandoned in 1704 on one of the Islas Juan Fernandez nearly 400 miles off the coast off Chile, survived for more than four years by eating goats, fish, roots, berries, and birds’ eggs until rescued by a British ship commanded by Woodes Rogers. Souhami describes Selkirk’s adventures on the island and afterwards, when Rogers’s book about his voyage inspired Defoe’s novel. She finishes with a glimpse of the island’s wildlife today. $24.00. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-100526-5.

Suffragist Sheet Music,by Danny O. Crew (404 pages, March 2002), documents the music published in the United States from 1795 to 1921 that refers to women’s rights or the suffrage movement. Lyrics are provided in most cases, along with title pages or sheet music covers. The songs are arranged in order of publication, so that the evolution of arguments and attitudes can be readily observed. Antisuffrage music is also included. An excellent and often overlooked way to understand the images and emotions of a great social movement is in its music, and these songs don’t disappoint. Among them are “The Bloomer’s Complaint” (1851), “Bother the Men!” (1868),

“The Glorious Cause” (1888), “Weak Little Woman” (1910), “Every- body Works But Ma” (1913), “Since My Margarette-Become-a-daSuffragette” (1913), “She’s Good Enough to Be Your Baby’s Mother (And She’s Good Enough to Vote with You)” (1916), and “You’d Better Be Nice to Them Now” (1918). $45.00. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1298-4.

Voting Rights on Trial,by Charles L. Zelden (347 pages, February 2002), examines the history of vote denial and vote dilution in America since colonial times—or, put another way, the increasing empowerment of citizens to near- universal suffrage in the current century. Topics include the fall of the all-white primary, the one person/one vote standard, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the implications of the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision. $55.00. ABC-Clio. ISBN 1-57607-794-2. ■