Library News: Updates and New

After commencement and beyond into summer sessions, operating hours at James Branch Cabell Library will be reduced compared to the busy spring semester. Please refer to this chart for summer hours. Also, note that Cabell Starbucks will be closed May 21-28 for remodeling.

In addition, the building will be closed on these days:

• Sunday, May 13 (day after commencement)
  
• Saturday, May 19
• Monday, May 28 (Memorial Day holiday)
  
• Wednesday, July 4 (Independence Day holiday)
  
• Saturday and Sunday, August 11-12
• Saturday and Sunday, August 18-19

Just in time for summer, when faculty and staff are on the go, VCU Libraries has upgraded its subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Readers can now access The Chronicle using an iPad, smart phone, tablet or any computer located anywhere in the world. 

Simply create a free account using your "@vcu.edu" e-mail address at http://www.chronicle.com/.

Account holders may download The Chronicle's iPad editions at no cost, view the new mobile interface using a web browser on a smart phone or tablet and access the publication via computer from any location.

A limited number of Working Dead posters will be given to library patrons Sunday-Thursday, May 6-10--the last week of long hours in the spring semester. The posters were developed by artist Dave Morrison and VCU Libraries to mark expanded hours.

Want a poster?

Share or comment on the Cabell Facebook page or tweet about #libraryzombies or retweet something from #VCUCabell and come to the main circulation desk to pick up a poster...until supplies are gone. 

The web-based Worth Global Style Network (WGSN) and its archive are now available through VCU Libraries.

This news and culture site tracks trends worldwide with a focus on retail, fashion and design industries--all the style-related industries. It publishes in real time and posts updates daily.

WGSN brings a global view to trends in fashion and design, with a specific focus on areas where style and commerce intersect. The network and its 12-year archive contain more than 5 million images from runways, trade shows, retail outlets, exhibitions and streets around the world. Visual searching allows the user to find similar items according to shape, color, and pattern. WGSN also gives patrons access to 16,000 downloadable copyright-free graphics from a unique library of sector-specific conceptual collections. (At right, a lighting display by Tom Dixon at Milan Design Week in 2012.)

According to its website, WGSN is "the leading online trend-analysis and research service providing creative and business intelligence for the apparel, style, design and retail industries."  It was founded in 1998 and has regional offices and freelancers throughout Europe, Asia, South America and in the United States, where it has offices in New York and Los Angeles.

To access the database: http://library,vcu.edu/search/1168
 

The Index to 19th-Century American Art Periodicals is now available through VCU Libraries.

This resource is the sole online index to 42 periodicals published in the United States during the 19th century.

Each issue is indexed for its entire contents--articles, art notes, illustrations, stories, poems and advertisements. This is a valuable resource on American art, artists, and collecting, as well as popular culture and industry.

To access the database: http://library.vcu.edu/search/1167

 

 

This video captures some of the energy of academic life on campus. James Branch Cabell Library is featured in this one-minute production for VCU admissions.

Editorial cartoonist Charles Henry 'Bill' Sykes (1882-1942) drew barbed political cartoons often loaded with complex political commentary on Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Germany and Japan and other major actors on the international stage in the years before the United States entered World War II.

James Branch Cabell Library acquired this collection of original circa 1940 drawings in 1980. They are available for view in Special Collections and Archives. This month, they were released in a digital format, further augmenting access to Cabell's outstanding collection of comic arts. The online collection

Born in Alabama and graduated from Philadelphia's Drexel Institute in 1904, Sykes drew as a freelancer and then worked for newspapers. In 1914, he became the first and only editorial cartoonist for the Evening Public Ledger. It ceased publication in 1942, the same year Sykes died. Sykes also had working relationships with Life, Colliers and The New York Evening Post.

His most famous cartoon, "Madonna and Child A.D.1940," depicts the ugliness of war.  The image is of a mother and child wearing gas masks. It was published on August 13, 1940--the first day of the Battle of Britain.

The Sykes Editorial Cartoon Collection consists of 297 original editorial cartoons, three unfinished sketches, a U.S. War Bond poster and a U.S. Victory poster. The cartoons focus on American reaction to the Axis powers in the 1930s and 1940s. Sykes created his early cartoons using the unusual patterns of coquille board for the shading effect. His later works were created with a crayon-and-wash technique.

The online collection
 
 
 

More than a century of cultural history is easily accessible in image and text through The Vogue Archive, new to VCU Libraries. The Vogue Archive gives users digital access to the entire run of the U.S. edition of Vogue (1892-present) with its photographs, articles and advertisements. Comprehensive indexing allows for searches of keywords, materials, products, garments, designers, individuals and companies.

Students from a wide range of disciplines will find this resource useful, according to Emily Davis, arts collection librarian.

"Students who would be most interested would be in the areas of fashion, interior design, art history, advertising, mass communications and gender, sexuality and women's studies. Those in history, film studies and business might also find its content useful. The page formats are left intact so that may be of interest to graphic design."

"While many people think of Vogue as just a fashion magazine, in reality it presents a broad portrait of its era," Davis says. "Searching through the archives one can not only track the change in silhouettes, but they can also view pictures of Paris after the liberation, read an interview with Fellini, or an essay by Simone de Beauvoir. Fashion does not exist in a vacuum. Vogue documents both style and society."

According to The Vogue Archive Web site:

"Vogue was founded in New York in 1892 as a weekly society paper catering for Manhattan's social elite. When it was bought by Condé Nast in 1909, the publication changed dramatically: The quality of the paper, printing and illustrations improved, the frequency changed from weekly to fortnightly, the page count, advertising space and cover price all increased, and there was a new focus on fashion. The re-launched Vogue became one of the icons of the modern age: arriving at a time when the corseted gowns of the 1900s were giving way to simpler, more practical clothing for women, Condé Nast's use of eye-catching cover art by the great illustrators of the day created a similar revolution in magazine publishing. ... Cover illustration artists such as "Georges Lepape and George Wolfe Plank ... Helen Dryden, Eduardo Benito and others, were strongly influenced by the latest developments in modern art, from Klimt and the impressionists to Bakst and Modigliani, and the covers of Vogue provided a very public platform for the radical aesthetics of Art Deco, cubism and futurism in the 1920s.

These illustrated covers gave way to color photographs in the 1930s and 1940s, including extraordinarily innovative work by Horst P. Horst and Erwin Blumenfield. ...

"The contents of Vogue reflect the changing styles and culture of the postwar world, from the stylized and extravagant ultra-femininity of Dior's New Look in 1947, and the Parisian chic of Balenciaga and Balmain, to the youth-focused designers of the 1950s and 60s (Mary Quant, Jean Muir, Ossie Clark). Vogue was one of the main outlets for the new photographic style of the 1960s: the bold and dynamic handheld approach of David Bailey, Terence Donovan and others.

"The contents of Vogue are obviously of central importance to the history of fashion, from the liberating modernism of Coco Chanel to the cross-gendered experimentation of Jean-Paul Gaultier and beyond. However, it is also a rich source for other areas of modern culture, providing a record of changing social tastes, mores and aspirations in the modern world, and encompassing literary works by Kate Chopin, Evelyn Waugh, Vladimir Nabokov and Carson McCullers, articles by Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell, wartime photojournalism by Lee Miller, features on popular cultural figures of the day from Marlene Dietrich and the Beatles to Nicole Kidman and Beyoncé, and on prominent American women from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama."

How to access VCU Libraries databases:

• VCU students, faculty and staff can access the database through either the A to Z Guide to Databases  or using this link, http://library.vcu.edu/search/1163 from any computer with a VCU IP address.
• Off-campus, VCU users must first log into myVCU, then go to the VCU Libraries home page, click on Databases and drill down the database you want. Or go directly to  http://library.vcu.edu/search/1163
• If you are not a member of the VCU academic community, you can gain access to databases on campus by joining the Friends of the Library.

 

Just as the nation is poised to mark Emancipation Day in mid-April, a significant database of digital resources about slavery and abolition is now available to researchers through VCU LIbraries. 

"Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive" (SAS) traces the history and ongoing cultural impact of slavery. It provides access to thousands of full-text primary source documents and archival records, including those from:

• The American Missionary Association Archives from 1839-1882;
• The Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to the Suppression of the African Slave Trade from 1854-1872;
• Amistad Research Center in New Orleans covering the array of documents related to one of the most important slave rebellions and trials in American and world history.

Ultimately millions of pages of information will be available in SAS, letting VCU researchers search across all documents in each part in one seamless interface, according to Kevin D. Farley, Ph.D., assistant professor and collection librarian for the humanities. "The result will be unexpected and important contributions to the scholarly dialogue about American slavery and its local and global ramifications."

Farley notes that the addition of this collection is timely. During the sesquicentennial period marking the American Civil War, and given the centrality of the slave trade to Richmond history, he expects this database at VCU will deepen the study and teaching of these events in unprecedented ways. "In placing slavery practices against the longstanding U.S. and European efforts to abolish slavery, SAS allows researchers to see all aspects of this crucial and far-reaching history."

The database now consists of Part I, "Debates over Slavery and Abolition," and Part II, "Slave Trade in the Atlantic World." Two additional sections are being developed: Part III, "Institution of Slavery," and Part IV, "Age of Emancipation."

The online collection includes a small group of images, including the woodcut shown above of Underground Railroad leader and abolitionist Harriet Tubman. And, this rare photograph of two young American slave boys, mid-19th century.


How to access VCU Libraries databases:

• VCU students, faculty and staff can access the database through either the A to Z Guide to Databases  or using this link, http://library.vcu.edu/search/1158 from any computer with a VCU IP address.
• Off-campus, VCU users must first log into myVCU, then go to the VCU Libraries home page, click on Databases and drill down the database you want. Or go directly to  http://library.vcu.edu/search/1158
• If you are not a member of the VCU academic community, you can gain access to databases on campus by joining the Friends of the Library.

The VCU Friends of the Library Spring Book Drive will be held Saturday, April 14, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. James Branch Cabell Library, 901 Park Avenue.

Get an early start on your spring cleaning by cleaning off your book shelves! Drive up to the loading dock of James Branch Cabell Library with your books and book-related items, and members of the VCU Friends of the Library will be there to unload your donations for you. All we ask is that the books be in boxes or bags so that we can carry them safely and efficiently.

Anyone can make a donation. Acceptable items for donation include all types of books--such as novels, collections of poems, books of essays, children's books, and recent textbooks--as well as audiobooks, music CDs and LPs, movie DVDs, and more. For details on acceptable items

All donations go toward the VCU Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale in the fall, the proceeds of which help to fund the programs and collections of VCU Libraries.

For more information, contact Gregory Kimbrell, Membership and Events Coordinator for VCU Libraries, at (804) 828-0593 or kimbrellgg@vcu.edu. Donations are also accepted year-round at both James Branch Cabell Library and Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences. To make an appointment to drop off your donation, contact Gregory Kimbrell.

Directions: To reach the loading dock of James Branch Cabell Library, follow Park Avenue east until you reach North Linden Street. Take a right onto North Linden. As soon as you turn right, you will see a driveway to your left and a VCU Friend of the Library ready to greet you.