New chat reference service from the Library!

Instant messaging chat reference is here!

The link on any Library web page will lead to four options: E-mail, Phone, Chat and Consultation Appointment. Select the option that works best for you--no question is too small or too large!

Have a new @loop.colum.edu email address? Add askccclibrary@gmail.com to your Gtalk (or MSN) buddy list! You can also add askccclibrary to other chat programs like Yahoo! and AIM.

Questions about how to use chat or any of our other services? anytime.

Company Dossier database in LexisNexis

Check out the new Company Dossier database in LexisNexis! Use Company Dossier to find company snapshots, news and legal information, corporate hierarchies and more!

Complement your Company Dossier research with one or two of our other proprietary business research databases, like Business & Company Resource Center or Business Source Elite.

Company and industry research is a complex process--ask for help anytime by using our service.

LexisNexis has a new look!

LexisNexis has officially launched their newly redesigned interface! What does this mean for you? While the search screen looks a little different, you can still access the same robust News, Legal and Business content and then some.

From the Library's home page, click on Databases A to Z to get to this list:

LexisNexis Academic:

• Accounting Research


• BBC Worldwide Monitoring Country Reports


• Business News Publications


• Business Digests


• Company Profiles


• Federal & State Cases


• Federal & State Codes


• Illinois Newspapers


• Industry News Publications


• Law Review Journals
  Legal News Publications


• Legal News Group File


• Markets & Industry News


• News Search


• Patent Search


• Roper Public Opinion Polls


• SEC Filings


• Shepard Citation Search


• TV & Radio Broadcast Transcripts

Interested in learning more about how the new LexisNexis works? Training webinars are offered by LexisNexis about twice a week. Go to this website for more info:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/academicwebseminars/

LexisNexis is a powerful database and there's a lot in there! Don't hesitate to ask for help with LexisNexis or with any of our other subscription databases. Just click

New database! Black Studies Center

The Library is pleased to announce that thanks to a generous contribution from Dr. Sam Floyd and the Center for Black Music Research we have recently added the Black Studies Center database to our growing collection of online scholarly resources.

The Black Studies Center is linked from our Databases A to Z page. You can also access the three main components of the Black Studies Center on our Find Articles--African American Studies, --Chicago, --Journalism, and --Literature pages.

The three main components of the Black Studies Center are:

Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience
A unique database detailing the rich tapestry of the African experience throughout the Americas, comprising interdisciplinary essays written by leading scholars on the Black Experience accompanied by a timeline, images, video clips, and other selected research materials.

Chicago Defender Historical Archive (1910-1975)
Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Defender in May 1905 and by the outbreak of the First World War it had become the most widely-read black newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago.

Black Literature Index (1827-1940)
This searches over 70,000 bibliographic citations for fiction, poetry and literary reviews published in 110 black periodicals and newspapers.

Need help using the Black Studies Center? Just click

College Archives site launched

The web site of the Columbia College Chicago Archives is now live! Here's an introduction to the Archives from our College Archivist, Heidi Marshall:

Who were Columbia’s past presidents? Has the school always been known as Columbia College Chicago? How does one best preserve digital images? A strange string of questions but answers to them share a common home. Check out the Columbia College Chicago Archives pages for answers!

The Archives, established in 2005, houses the historic records of the College on the second floor of the Library. Seeking a course catalog from the 1940s? Trying to find an article that appeared in the Columbia Chronicle in the 1980s? The College Archives has them!

Browse the pages, find out the history, read articles written by Columbia’s founders, and learn how to protect your own collection. And, as always, if there are questions, just drop us a line: collegearchives @ colum.edu. Enjoy!

Kerouac's 'On the Road' Turns 50

From today's New York Times: "Viking is releasing a 50th-anniversary edition on Thursday (the original came out Sept. 5, 1957), and is also publishing, for the first time in book form, the original version that Kerouac typed on a 120-foot-long scroll and a new analysis by John Leland, a reporter at The New York Times, titled "Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of 'On the Road' (They're Not What You Think)."" (Note: The Library will be receiving Why Kerouac Matters during the upcoming Fall semester).

Want to see the original 120-foot-long scroll? Columbia College Chicago will be hosting the historic document in the Fall of 2008. Read a description of the event HERE and stay tuned for more info.

Read the whole NYT article on the 50th anniversary of On The Road HERE

New Music (August 2007)

View a full list of this month's latest arrivals. Here are a few selected works (click the links to be taken to the full catalog record):

Rock Music: Led Zeppelin (also known as Zoso) / Led Zeppelin

Techno Music: From here we go sublime / the Field

String Quartets: op. 18, nos. 2 & 3 / Beethoven

Country Music: My name is Buddy / Ry Cooder

New movies (August 2007)

View a full list of this month's latest arrivals. Here are a few selected films (click the images to be taken to the full catalog record):



Batman



How art made the world



Expo : magic of the White City



Maude. The complete first season



My beautiful laundrette

New books (August 2007)

View a full list of this month's latest arrivals. Here are a few selected titles (click the images to be taken to the full catalog record):



Embroidering identities : a century of Palestinian clothing



Gothic fantasy : the films of Tim Burton



Bodies in code : interfaces with new media



Advertising sin and sickness : the politics of alcohol and tobacco marketing, 1950-1990



The golden age of advertising : the 60s



Death of Art



Swingin’ chicks of the ’60s : a tribute to 101 of the decade’s defining women

New Orleans update

Our intrepid colleague, Shirley Bennett, has sent us a dispatch from New Orleans (see this post for some background on the trip). Here are some excerpts:

"The Mosquitoes are a fact of life here...and they have deadly aim! They are able to target areas along the straps of your sandals or bras as well as the lower half of each finger on one hand.

My NOLA experience is drawing to a close...this morning there is a writing session focused on capturing what two days in the field has wrought. [Yesterday and the day before, we were dispatched to specific houses or field sites where residents had asked for help.] On my first day, I along with four others, worked in the home of Mr. Heyward Jackson, who is is living in a FEMA trailer alongside his badly damaged home. There was a second home handled by another team of 5. Our tasks were basic: remove nails (high and low, to leave the frame of the house ready for drywall, clear the floors of loose debris and nails there. The work, though simple, takes a lot of time when one has to cover every crack and crevice of a place--especially one that has been pummeled as these places have been by such extreme natural elements.

Yesterday, I was all over the place...pulling Chinese tallow(?) in the wetlands area...cutting foot-high grass in a football size field...and ending up at the home base for the organization through whom our efforts for the day had been coordinated--Common Ground. One of the co-founders was on hand to share how the organization had begun and what projects lay in the near future for them. In fact, Mr. Rahim was on his way to Chicago to speak at some function at McCormick Place this weekend.

Ok, there has been some fun. A poetry slam, a crab bake in the parking lot, beignets in Congo Square and a barbecue at the home of the local poet celeb, Shakespear."

All of us here at the Columbia College Chicago Library are looking forward to Shirley's return and to hearing more about her experiences in New Orleans.

Italian director, famous for "Blow-up," dies at 94

Another film great has passed away. Michelangelo Antonioni, one of Italy's most famed modernist film directors, died on Monday at his home in Rome. "Mr. Antonioni is probably best known for "Blowup," a 1966 drama set in swinging London about a fashion photographer who comes to believe that a picture he took of two lovers in a public park also shows, obscured in the background, evidence of a murder." Read the whole New York Times obituary HERE.