Vol.4, No.2
Howard E.Graves
Editor
Howard.E.Graves@Hofstra.edu

A Welcome Message from Dean Daniel Rubey

Welcome to the latest issue of the University Library newsletter. In this issue, we highlight several databases, a collection, a conference, and a library service. Women and Social Movements provides full text of primary sources that document the relationship between women and a wide range of social movements. An article on LibQUAL+ provides details on this widely used survey instrument on library service. Please register your opinions, and send us your comments. The Carman Family Collection is another fascinating part of the Library's Special Collections Department highlighted in this issue. There is another reminder about ScienceDirect. It's now bigger and better. Library professors Martha Kreisel and Elena Cevallos are co-directing a scholarly conference on fashion in April. Read on to find out the details. Need help tracking your citations in scholarly literature? Find out how the Library can help in Cited Reference Searches.

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of the newsletter. Want to learn more about a database or service? Suggest an article.

Daniel Rubey
Dean of Library & Information Services

Online Database Enhance's Women's Studies

Recently added to the web-based offerings of the University Library, Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000, provides an abundance of primary and secondary sources to enrich students' understanding of women's lives and activism in the United States over four centuries.

A joint project of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at the State University of New York and the Alexander Street Press, the database is a repository of resources for students and scholars of U.S. history and women's history. The website's content is organized around the history of women and social movements in the United States between 1600 and 2000. Its purpose is to foster scholarly debates and understanding as well as to bring the discussion of women's issues into the classroom.

The Women and Social Movements database includes the following resources:

Altogether these document projects provide more than 2,100 documents, approximately 800 images, and over 700 links to other websites.

• More than 28,000 pages of documents pertaining to women and social movements.
• A dictionary of social movements and organizations.
• A chronology of U.S. women's history.
• Teaching Tools with lesson ideas and document-based questions related to document projects.

Processing of Carman Family Collection Nears Completion

Though the Carman Family Collection has been accessible to researchers for some time, the staff of the Special Collections Department is currently working on processing the collection in accordance with archival principles and standards. The newly processed collection and a detailed finding aid will be available this summer.

The collection was donated by William G. Carman and traces the history of his ancestors, several of whom were among the original settlers of the Hempstead Plains in the mid-17th century. Notable Long Island farm and merchant families represented in the collection include the Birdsalls, Langdons, Seamans and Garners. Materials in the collection range from the late 17th century through the early 20th century, with the bulk of materials being from the 19th century.

While the materials in the collection deal largely with the business of running a farm or a merchant store, the collection is also rife with items that document the interpersonal relationships between family members. Also included are papers that document the activities of some Carman ancestors during the Revolutionary War.

The collection is particularly rich in business and land indentures, but also includes some indentured servitude and slave documents. In addition, the collection contains business and personal correspondence, business notes, receipts, ledger sheets, photographs, Last Will and Testament documents, school papers, tax documents and a variety of other materials. Remarkably, many of these documents are in mint condition.

When completely processed, the Carman Family Collection should prove an invaluable research tool. It should be useful to researchers of history, education, business, and a variety of other disciplines. We invite faculty, students, and all other researchers to come and explore this extraordinary resource.

Contributed by Michael O'Connor, Curator of Special Collections

ScienceDirect Full Text

ScienceDirect full text expanded from 900+ titles to 1,800+ titles as of January 1, 2007. Nearly all the titles in the collection are available in full text, many with coverage back to the mid-1990s. The database offers browse and advanced searching. Articles available in full text are clearly noted on the results list. The database also offers personal customization which supports search, topic, volume/issue, and citation alerts. Alerts are sent via email to the registered user when new articles meeting the profile conditions are added to the database.

The name ScienceDirect is something of a misnomer. Although the majority of the journal titles in the database are science, technology, or medicine titles, there are 391 titles in the humanities and social sciences.

ScienceDirect is available from the Research Databases link on the library's home page or try it now here.

Contributed by Prof. Howard Graves

DEFINING CULTURE THROUGH DRESS:
Individual and Collective Identities

The connections between dress and both individual and collective identities continue to be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the world of fashion and dress. These connections will be addressed at Defining Culture Through Dress: Individual and Collective Identities, a conference presented by the Hofstra Culutural Center scheduled for April 19-21, 2007.

Dress is an important component of our daily lives. Through clothing, individuals establish their sense of self as well as their place in society. The connections between dress and both individual and collective identities continue to be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the world of fashion and dress. Interdisciplinary in approach, the conference establishes associations between culture and dress through a dialogue among scholars in the fields of sociology, psychology, art, history, anthropology, communication, journalism and business, as well as fashion experts.

The conference will feature some of the country's leading fashion experts, analysts and trendsetters, as well as fashion shows. The opening keynote address on Thursday, April 19, will be given by Harold Koda, Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the same day there will be a performance of Fashion Statements!, conceived and directed by Bob Spiotto.

Highlights on April 20 include a panel on HipHop fashion with a fashion show presented by Rocawear, and the conference banquet featuring an address by James Aguiar, co-host of Full Frontal Fashion. There will be two fashion shows on Saturday, April 21. The first will feature Ladies' Church Hats, modeled by the Women's Ministry of Union Baptist Churt in Hempstead, NY, and the other will be of Bridal fashions, sponsored by David's Bridal.

Panel topics include "Men and Women of the Cloth," "Middle Eastern and African Identities," "Communicating Fashion," "Fashion and Image," "The Influence of Movies on Fashion," "Fashion Uniforms and Uniformity," "Asian Identities," "The Rich and Famous: Upperclass European Women's Fashions," and "Fashion Identities: American Experiences."

For a complete schedule of panels and other events, as well as for information about how to register for the conference, please view the Conference Registration Program

From the Conference announcement (edited)

Cited Reference Searches Available with Library Faculty Assistance

For those faculty interested in determining where their publications have been cited, the library faculty offer a citation search service. Faculty have found this useful for tenure, promotion, and personal interest.

This citation search will be prepared for you in response to your request by library faculty using Google Scholar. According to the Google web site, Google Scholar provides a simple way to conduct a broad search for scholarly literature. It is global in coverage and can search across many disciplines and sources, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, university presses and websites, and other scholarly organizations. We have found it to be effective and relatively comprehensive in finding cited references.

If this search does not prove to be inclusive enough for your needs, we can also search Academic Search Premier and Business Source Premier through the Hofstra University Library web site, and Social Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index through DialogSelect.

Although these resources are extensive and cover a significant percentage of published academic materials, not every article, book, or paper published is included, and there may well be other sources citing your works that are omitted from these results. Certainly more recently published materials will have had less time to have been read, absorbed and cited.

We hope you will take advantage of this service. For further information or to have a search done, please contact either, Carol Simon, Assistant Professor of Library Services, 463-6530, or Martha Kreisel, Associate Professor of Library Services, 463-6528.

Contributed by Prof. Martha Kreisel