Book of the Week: Remembering Nora Ephron

Novelist, humorist, screenwriter and director Nora Ephron passed away this week at age 71 from complications of leukemia.

Ephron’s works make for great summer reading or viewing and have taught generations of women– and men– how to be strong, smart, modern, and romantic.

You can try romantic comedy favorites like You’ve Got Mail (DVD 3097), When Harry Met Sally (DVD 2706) or  Sleepless in Seattle.

Or you can taste-test something a little more serious like Julie & Julia (DVD 2513), Ephron’s Julia Childs bio-pic starring Meryl Streep or Heartburn (Call Number:PS3555.P5 H4 1996), her acclaimed novel about a cook-book writer whose marriage falls apart.

Last but not least, for a look at Ephron the humorous essayist, try I feel bad about my neck : and other thoughts on being a woman from our Popular Reading collection or the older but still relevant:  Crazy salad : some things about women (Call Number: HQ1154 .E6 1975).  Ephron’s work used humor to convey a feminist message that resonated with mainstream American culture and resuscitated a bit of the glamor of Hollywood romantic comedies from the 1940s with a quirky, modern twist.

New Databases in Education, Science & Technology, LGBT Life, Entrepreneurial Studies and more!

The Library is pleased to announce that we now provide access to 7 new databases through SUNYConnect.  

You can access these from the Library’s homepage. Just go to our Databases List  or the Research by Subject Guide of your choice!

If you are accessing our databases from off campus, make sure you go through the Library’s homepage and log in with your Purchase email username & password when prompted.

Test drive our new databases:

• Applied Science & Technology Full Text
  Covers of a wide variety of applied science specialties from acoustics and aeronautics, to neural networks and nuclear & civil engineering.

• Education Full Text
  Provides coverage for a wide range of topics, including adult education, continuing education, literacy standards, multicultural/ethnic education, secondary education, teaching methods and much more.

• Energy & Power Source
  A comprehensive full-text database designed to support the informational needs of the energy and power industries at all levels.

• Entrepreneurial Studies Source
  Offers users full text for more than 125 key periodicals, 135 reference books, numerous case studies, thousands of company profiles and over 600 videos with transcripts and related articles from the Harvard Faculty Seminar Series and Vator.TV, one of the world’s largest social network sites for high-tech entrepreneurs.

• Humanities Full Text
  Provides coverage of feature articles, interviews, bibliographies, obituaries, and original works of fiction, drama, poetry and book reviews, as well as reviews of ballets, dance programs, motion pictures, musicals, radio and television programs, plays, operas and more.

• LGBT Life with Full Text
  Contains full text for more than 130 of the most important and historically significant LGBT journals, magazines and regional newspapers, as well as more than 170 full-text monographs/books including Classics in Lesbian Studies, Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research, Handbook of Research with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Populations, Queer Theory & Social Change, etc.

• Social Sciences Full Text
  Provides access to a wide assortment of the most important English-language social science journals. Social Sciences Full Text includes full-text articles from hundreds of journals, covering the latest concepts, theories and methods from both applied and theoretical aspects of the social sciences.

Purchase Alum Makes It Big!

Purchase College graduate Malcolm D. MacDougall III’s sculpture Microscopic Landscape 2010 is now on display in New York City’s Union Square Park Triangle.  Many will remember the sculpture from the College’s main entrance where it stood for the past year.

The 24-foot-long by 11-foot-tall sculpture will be on view for six months, from June 14, 2012 through January, 2013.

Before making it big in NYC, MacDougall was one of the first student artists to exhibit art in the Library. In 2008 and 2009, MacDougall installed a series of 4 bronze sculptures in the Library’s mezzanine. Now the Library regularly displays student art on its walls. Stay tuned for more information on this year’s crop of artists!

Book of the Week: The Diary of Anne Frank

June 12th is the 70th Anniversary of Anne Frank’s 13th birthday, the day she started the diary that detailed her family’s life in hiding from the Nazis during World War II.

In honor of this anniversary, ProQuest is providing a free trial of various records related to the writing and publication of Frank’s diary.  You can read here about the diary’s publication and surrounding controversies.

ProQuest is also making available a database called American Jewish Newspapers, part of the Historical Newspapers collection of databases.  This database provides full text access to Jewish newspapers dating back to the 1850s, including:  The Jewish Advocate, American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, The American Israelite, and Jewish Exponent.  A great primary source resource for anyone interested in the life of Anne Frank, the Holocaust, Jewish immigration to America, and Jewish history!  American Jewish Newspapers will be available until June 30.

You can also check out a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank from the Library’s main collection, call number DS 135.N6 F73313 1989.