Seminars for faculty and graduate students in using EndNote citation management software are being offered.  Click on the Seminars link located in the middle of the A.U. Libraries homepage for registration information, etc.  Seminars are free but registration is required.  Please note:  it will be necessary to establish an account before registering (instructions are provided when clicking on the “Signup” link that shows up on the Seminars link web page). 

Currently, Endnote seminars are scheduled for the following dates:

 May 15 and 30, and June 13.

For more information about EndNote seminars, please contact Bob Buchanan at buchara@auburn.edu .

The Special Collections and Archives Department, located on the Ground Floor of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library, has recently mounted an exhibit on the Alabama Maid of Cotton contest, at one time sponsored by the Alabama Cotton Manufacturers’ Association and later by the Alabama Farm Bureau Federation.  The contest was designed to promote the use of cotton in clothing and other products.  The exhibit, located in the three large glass cases immediately on one’s left upon entering the Special Collections and Archives Department, features numerous photographs, pamphlets, promotional materials, and informational captions.

In 1947 Alabama named its first Maid of Cotton, who went on the the national contest.  All of the major cotton-producing states participated.  At one time, Memphis, Tennessee hosted the national contest, which later moved to Dallas, Texas.

Special Collections and Archives houses the historical records of the Cotton Manufacturers’ Association and the Farm Bureau Federation, which are employed in the display.  Also used in the display are the personal papers of Mamie Hardy, an Auburn graduate and in 1953 the Dale County, Alabama Maid of Cotton.  Ms. Hardy later worked with the national Maid of Cotton contest.

The records of the Cotton Manufacturers’ Association and the Farm Bureau Federation also document a variety of other activities, including the political interests of these commodity groups.  In addition to her work with the Maid of Cotton contest, Ms. Hardy’s papers document her career in home economics education with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the University of Texas.

The ABC-CLIO company has made enhancements to the Historical Abstracts and America:  History and Life databases.  Enhancements include the maintenance of tagged search results records across multiple searches within a session, the using of “ANDing and ORing” search logic is now an option for subject terms in a displayed record, and search results are now presorted based on publication date and, secondarily, on chronological scope of the citation retrieved.

America:  History and Life provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.  It includes information abstracted from over 2000 journals published worldwide.

Historical Abstracts covers the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada).  Currently over 2000 journals published throughout the world are covered.

Because the Ovid company has dropped the Library Literature database from its offerings, the Wilson company is the only remaining provider.  Library Literature & Information Science is now available online via WilsonWeb with coverage from 1984 onward.  This bibliographic database indexes more than 229 key library and information science periodicals published in the United States and elsewhere.  Books, chapters within books, conference proceedings, library school theses, and pamphlets are also indexed.

Library Literature & Information Science is the online successor to the print index which is available for the years 1933/35-1983 on the Fourth Floor of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library under call number Z 666 .C211.  (The Supplement covering the years 1921-33 is available in the Closed Stacks storage area under call number Z 666 .C21 1927 Suppl.).

Jack Simms will provide a photographic history of Auburn University on Thursday, January 18 at 3 p.m. in the Special Collections and Archives Department, located on the Ground Floor of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library.

Photographers have documented the history of Auburn University and these images illuminate the university’s past in a way that textual documents cannot.  Jack Simms’s slide-illustrated program draws upon decades of experience in the selection and description of images that best depict the history of Auburn University through photographs.

Simms received a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and English from Auburn University in 1949, headed the Department of Journalism at Auburn from its founding in 1974 to 1992, and collaborated with Mickey Logue to produce Auburn:  A Pictorial History of the Loveliest Village.

The lecture is part of the Spring Semester’s Discover Auburn series, sponsored by the A. U. Libraries, the Center for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts, and the A. U. Bookstore.  For more information call 844-1732.

The third annual World Literature Lecture will take place on Wednesday, January 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Ralph Brown Draughon Library Auditorium located on the First Floor. 

The lecture will feature Harvard University professor Abiola Irele, who will present “The Significance of African Literature.”  He is professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard and is the author of several seminal works in his field, including The African Imagination:  Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora and The African Experience in Literature and Ideology.  He has edited works by Leopold Senghor and Aime Cesaire and is an editor of The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature and also The Norton Anthology of World Literature.

The lecture is being co-sponsored by the Department of English, the W.W. Norton Publishing Company, the special lectures fund of the Provost’s Office, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Auburn University Libraries.  For more information, contact Alexander Dunlop at dunloaw@auburn.edu or 844-9068.

For an informative and very interesting display concerning censorship and literature, take a look at the Banned Books Display mounted in the eight display cases on the First through Fourth Floors of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library.  The display cases are located opposite the central elevator doors where the old water fountains used to be.  The display will remain in place for the Spring Semester.

Edited by Grimes, Dickey, and Pishko, and published by American Scientific Publishers in 2006, this 10-volume set is located in the Reference Collection on the Second Floor of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library under call number TA 165 .E53 2006.

Edited by Richard S. Levy and published by ABC-CLIO in 2005, this two-volume work is located on the Second Floor of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library under call number DS 146 .E8 A58 2005.