Inside Wilson

A tribute to H. W. Wilson on the American Libraries blog

2011-07-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Robert Wedgeworth for this warm and informative look back over some of Wilson's history and its place in the broader history of American libraries.

Thousands of new images in Cinema Image Gallery

2011-07-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

Just in time for summer vacation, we have updated Cinema Image Gallery with a total of 4,393 images from 831 movies and TV shows, more than 300 of which are new to the database. These additions include:

Thor 27 images
Cowboys & Aliens 15 images
The King's Speech 15 images
The Fighter 12 images
Black Swan 24 images

as well as 17 images, including behind the scenes stills, from the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce (check out the original movie also, for which Joan Crawford won the Best Actress Oscar in 1945, and for which we have 27 records). We also have 52 images from the 2011 version of Arthur (with 12 images from the original 1981 version starring Dudley Moore).

This update means that Cinema Image Gallery now features more than 210,000 images from 21,000 different movies and television shows, so you are bound to find something to interest the whole family this summer.

Cannes Film Festival on Cinema Image Gallery

2011-05-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

Barton Fink

The 64th Cannes Film Festival is currently under way in France, with moviemakers from all over the world showcasing their latest work.

Did you know that Cinema Image Gallery features at least a record for every winner of the festival's prestigious Palme D'Or dating back to 1946? And that the database has a substantial number of images for almost all the movies that have won this coveted international award since that date?

A Man and a Woman

Using Cinema Image Gallery to search for Palme D'Or winners not only gives you a full list of all the awards each movie has won, but also allows you to see at a glance which of the movies your library has in stock.

Why not look and see if any of the following films are available in your library, so you can recreate the atmosphere of the Croisette in your own living room?

Union Pacific (11 images) • The Lost Weekend (15 images) • The Third Man (15 images) • Othello (13 images) • Friendly Persuasion (12 images) • The Cranes are Flying (6 images) • La Dolce Vita (31 images) • The Leopard (21 images) • A Man and a Woman (25 images) • Blow Up (71 images) • If (34 images) • MASH (50 images) • Scarecrow (15 images) • The Conversation (17 images) • Viridiana (9 images) • Taxi Driver (81 images) • Apocalypse Now (80 images) • The Tin Drum (11 images) • Kagemusha (12 images) • All That Jazz (38 images) • Missing (19 images) • Paris Texas (15 images) • Otac na Sluzbenom Putu (4 images) • The Mission (12 images) • Wild at Heart (28 images) • Barton Fink (13 images) • Farewell My Concubine (8 images) • The Piano (16 images) • Pulp Fiction (64 images) • Secrets & Lies (12 images) • The Pianist (24 images) • The Wind That Shakes the Barley (15 images) • 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 7 Days (10 images) • Entre Les Murs (22 images) • The White Ribbon (3 images) • Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (8 images)

A reminder about our new phone system

2011-05-11T05:35:00.000-07:00

Just a note to remind you that H. W. Wilson has switched over to a new VoIP phone system.

This new system means that you can contact your sales representative using the 1-800 number (within the U.S. and Canada) and their extension no matter where they are without needing to take note of cellphone numbers or different area codes.

Overseas subscribers can also call any member of the H. W. Wilson team using a single central number and an extension, without other geographical information, no matter where their chosen representative is based.

You will find the numbers you need for Sales Representatives, Customer Services, and Technical Support here.

(You'll also find this picture of Elizabeth Taylor in Cinema Image Gallery.)

Friday May 6 birthday quiz with Biography Reference Bank on WilsonWeb

2011-05-06T04:44:00.000-07:00

We haven't had a birthday quiz for a while, so let's have one today. Happy birthday if you were born on May 6. You'll find all the answers to today's quiz in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait till later today when we will tweet them.

1) Which Italian-born silent film star known for their brooding good looks was born on this day in 1895?
a) Rudolph Valentino
b) Greta Garbo
c) Frederick March

2) Which Arctic explorer, born on this day in 1856, became the first person to reach the North Pole on April 6, 1909?
a) Edmund Hillary
b) Robert Peary
c) Ernest Shackleton

3) Which baseball player, born on May 6, 1931, became the highest-paid player in the history of major league baseball in 1966 when he signed with the San Francisco Giants for an estimated $130,000 a year?
a) Willie Mays
b) Mel Ott
c) Mickey Mantle

4) Which former British prime minister, born on May 6 1953, won his third term on his birthday in 2005?
a) John Major
b) Gordon Brown
c) Tony Blair

5) Which American actor, nominated for both acting and writing awards for the movie Good Night and Good Luck, was born on this day in 1961?
a) Robert Downey Jr.
b) George Clooney
c) Brad Pitt

Eighty years of the Empire State Building

2011-05-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Opened on May 1, 1931, the Empire State Building was the tallest building in New York between 1931 and 1972 (and has been again since 2001), and has become an icon of the New York skyline. It is the site of an invitation-only race, the Empire State Building Run-Up--an event that draws world-class competitors from all over the world, including, in 2010, the blind runner Suleiman Rifai.

The building is also an important site for broadcasting antennas: it was the site of the first high-definition telecast in 1936, and the first mobile telvision unit for broadcasting outdoor events relayed its broadcasts from here in December 1937. According to articles in Omnifile, the Empire State is also an unusual spot to view migrating birds, and a commercial building that comes with a set of challenges and opportunities unique to the world's most iconic buildings.

How, for example, can millions of tourists be safely guided around the building with the minimum of disruption to the tenants? Who needs to be consulted when restoration work is undertaken? Articles discussing all these issues and more can be found in Omnifile Full Text Mega, with citations to many more articles available in Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals.

The image of men working on the building comes from Art Museum Image Gallery, and some of the other information in this post comes from Famous First Facts.

There's always a wedding happening on Cinema Image Gallery

2011-04-29T03:36:00.000-07:00

To mark the occasion of the British royal wedding, today's quiz is all about movies with wedding in the title. To make it even more apt, we've even included a movie called A Royal Wedding (there, that's one answer given away).

You'll find images from all these movies, and more wedding-themed films too, in Cinema Image Gallery. We will tweet the answers later today.

Read a Wilson programmer's experience of implementing the server side of SUSHI

2011-04-27T08:27:00.000-07:00

Brinda Shah, one of Wilson's web programmers, is featured in the Winter 2011 issue of Information Standards Quarterly, the quarterly magazine of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO).

In her article, Brinda describes her experience of implementing the server side of the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol here at H. W. Wilson, an experience that took her from "total confusion with endless terms and technologies" all the way to a "pretty neat and straightforward service" that ended up being "one of the most interesting projects I have worked on."

You can download a PDF of Brinda's article from the NISO website.

The Bay of Pigs operation, with Omnifile Full Text

2011-04-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

April 17-19, 2011, marks the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, in which 1,500 exiled Cubans landed on the south coast of their country in an attempt to free Cuba from Fidel Castro's Communist rule. These invaders were left on the beach without the supplies, protection, and support that had been promised them by their sponsor, the U.S. government, and most of them were killed or captured.

So says a very interesting account of the Bay of Pigs invasion, written by Jack Hawkins, a former colonel in the United States Marine Corps and one-time chief of the paramilitary staff at the CIA's Cuba Project. Published in the National Review in December 1996, this article follows the declassification of many of the documents surrounding the events of 1961 and is prompted by Hawkins's stated belief that "the facts should be reported." His article criticizes the invasion from a military and logistical perspective, pointing out that if the Cubans had been trained in the U.S. rather than in Guatemala and Nicaragua, they would have been in a better position to carry out their mission. He is also critical of the failure to destroy Castro's air force before the invasion was attempted. Indeed, Hawkins concludes that if the landing had been made at Trinidad and had received adequate air support, it might have succeeded in overthrowing the Cuban government.

Omnifile also features an article from the May/June 1998 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which reviews the findings of the recently-released CIA review of the Bay of Pigs invasion. This document, "The Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation," deflects blame from President John F. Kennedy's decision to cancel the air strikes that had been intended to coincide with the invasion and instead concludes that the "fundamental cause of the disaster was the agency's failure to give the project... appropriate organization, staffing throughout by highly qualified personnel, and a full-time firection and control of the highest quality." The report, written by then-CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick six months after the operation, does concur with Hawkins in some respects, however: it finds fault with agency's handling of nearly every aspect of the operation.

To find either of these articles, or other material on the operation, search Bay of Pigs in Omnifile.

Civil War Movie Quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2011-04-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

To mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, today's quiz invites you to identify these movies, all from Cinema Image Gallery, all set during the Civil War.

As usual, we will tweet the answers later today.

Happy birthday, Henry James

2011-04-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

The novelist Henry James was born in New York City on April 15, 1843 but began his travels abroad almost immediately: his father took the family to Europe when James was just 12 years old. Throughout his life in Paris and England, he sought to perfect his novel writing craft, eventually--while living in Rye, Sussex--writing The Ambassadors, a work that American Authors, 1600-1900, describes as "a novel so astutely autobiographical, in part, and so psychologically exhaustive that many have labeled it James' masterpiece."

The literary website Bookslut features a whole section devoted to James's birthday this week, and The Guardian newspaper collects all its columns and writings about James into a neat section. For more serious research into this classic writer, however, you should check out our Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1905-1982, which contains links to full-text books containing essays both by and about Henry James, and Essay & General Literature Index Retrospective: 1900-1984, which contains links to no fewer than 45 full-text books featuring essays both about and by the writer, allowing researchers to easily access opinion of James back as far as the start of the 20th century. For newer perspectives on James, there are many websites devoted to him and his books, maintained by both academics and enthusiasts.
Subscribers to Omnifile will find an excellent collection of articles (140 full-text records in all) about James together in one place. From "What is the Matter With Henry James?" in Studies in the Novel, Spring 2009, to "Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller and the Limits of Fidelity," in Literature/Film Quarterly, 1991. That should certainly be enough to whet anyone's appetite for information about the master.

National Library Week Library Heroes: Philip Larkin

2011-04-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

Although Larkin (August 8, 1922 - December 2, 1985) became a librarian only after his attempts to get into the British civil service failed, he was relatively successful in his job. He began his library career in 1943 at the Wellington urban district council in Shropshire, then acquired his professional accreditation through correspondence courses. He moved on to the post of assistant librarian at the University College of Leicester in 1946, then sublibrarian at Queen's University, Belfast, and in 1955 he became librarian of Brynmore Jones library at the University of Hull, Yorkshire.

In a 1965 interview, Larkin complained that "work encroaches like a weed over the whole of my life... It's all the time absorbing a creative energy that might have gone into poetry." He also said that he "equate[d] librarianship with stoking boilers." By the time he was interviewed in 1979 for the London Observer, however, he had changed his mind: "Librarianship suits me--I love the feel of libraries--and it has just the right blend of academic interest and administration that seems to match my particular talents... I've always thought that a regular job was no bad thing for a poet." On living in Hull, he said that he felt "the need to be on the periphery of things."

National Library Week Library Heroes: Melvil Dewey

2011-04-13T06:09:00.000-07:00

Library reformer and creator of the Dewey Decimal System of book classification, Melvil Dewey was born December 10, 1851 at Adams Center, New York into a relatively poor family where thrift was a necessity. He began working in libraries as an undergraduate at Amherst college, visiting many other institutions during his time there in order to see how they ran their libraries.

In 1876, while still at Amherst, he published A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library, which was eventually adopted by libraries all over the U.S. to become the standard American library classification system. Indeed, although it has been supplanted by other systems in academic, specialized, and larger public libraries, the Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index is still used in many school and public libraries.

As if that wasn't enough, Dewey went on to become the first secretary of the American Library Association, and twice president of that organization. He edited the first five volumes of the Library Journal, organized the Library Bureau in Boston, and became associated with the American Metric Bureau, the Spelling Reform Association, and other educational reform groups.

Melvil Dewey is also credited with inventing the vertical office file cabinet.

He died on December 26, 1931.

National Library Week Library Heroes: Jorge Luis Borges

2011-04-12T05:40:00.000-07:00

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1899, Borges was one of Latin America's great men of letters. He was best known for his esoteric short fiction, rich in fantasy and metaphysical allegory. More importantly for this post, he also served as the director of the National Library in Buenos Aires from 1955-1973.

Borges took his first library job in 1937 and called it "nine years of solid unhappiness," feeling that the work was menial and dismal. Libraries, nevertheless, crop up from time to time in his work, notably in "The Library of Babel," in which Borges creates a literary cosmos:

Everything is there: the minute history of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, a demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue... the truthful account of your death, a version of each book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books.

Borges's appointment to the position of director of the National Library came just after the fall of Peron. Around this time he was also appointed to the National Academy, and was made professor of English and North American literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He devoted more time to these duties as his eyesight began to fail. He eventually became blind, and turned back to poetry, which he had neglected since the 1920s.

Jorge Luis Borges died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986.

National Library Week Library Heroes: Zenodotus

2011-04-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

Born approximately 325 B.C., Zenodotus was a Greek scholarly writer who lived in Alexandria, Egypt under the reign of Ptolemy Soter and Ptolemy II Philadelphus. He became the first director of the Alexandrian Library around 284 B.C., directing the preliminary classification of its books and becoming the first editor of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Zenodotus also prepared editions of Hesiod's Theogony and the poems of Pindar and Anacreon, and produced Foreign Terms, a collection of non-Greek expressions found in literary texts, as well as a Homeric Glossary, which laid the foundation for later scholarly linguistic study. Zenodotus was also the earliest person known (so far) to have employed alphabetical order.
You can find a more detailed version of this profile, originally from Greek and Latin Authors 800 B.C. - A.D. 1000, in Biography Reference Bank, and the picture of the ruins of the Alexandrian Library in Art Museum Image Gallery.

Friday remakes quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2011-04-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

Today sees the release of Arthur, starring Russell Brand in a remake of the 1981 comedy classic that was such a hit for Dudley Moore.
Following in the remake trend, today's Friday quiz invites you to name the movies pictured here, all remakes of earlier movies, or based on earlier movies.
You will find all the answers in Cinema Image Gallery, or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them.

National Library Week: April 10-16, 2011

2011-04-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

Running alongside the American Association of School Librarians' School Library Month, the American Library Association's National Library Week this year invites you to "Create Your Own Story @ Your Library."

We all know it's a difficult time for libraries, but the campaign to save libraries in Great Britain has generated a lot of interest and support for libraries (just listen to what these supporters on the BBC Radio 4 program Book Club say in defense of their libraries), as have several campaigns across the U.S. We hope to highlight some more of these on Inside Wilson across National Library Week, as well as bringing you some biographical tidbits about some key individuals in the history of libraries.

April Fool's Day quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2011-04-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

Today's quiz invites you to identify five movies, all with "fool" in the title. One of them is even called April Fool, just because we thought we'd help you out a bit.

As usual, we will tweet the answers later today, or you'll find them all in Cinema Image Gallery.

Also, if you can't get enough of April Fool-related quizzes, you could try this literary one in the Guardian.

Playwriting plaudits for a member of our Biography team

2011-03-31T02:10:00.000-07:00

We hope you join us in congratulating Molly Hagan, of our Current Biography team, who has been chosen as a national finalist in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Ten-Minute Play Award for her work, Spaceships and Things That Look Like Them.
Molly's play, along with the other ten-minute plays in the final, will be staged at the Kennedy Center Family Theater in Washington, D.C. on April 22.
We wish Molly the best of luck in her category.

Break a leg, Molly! (Do you say that to the writer?)

Molly has worked at H.W. Wilson since October 2010, and Inside Wilson asked her a few questions about her writing.

What inspires you as a writer?
As a playwright, I'm inspired by theatricality and the challenge of writing for the stage. The neat thing about theater is that what we see is largely dependent on language. The play exists in the mind of the audience.
At Current Biography, I am interested in introducing readers to fascinating people who they may not know.

Of all the profiles you've worked on for Current Biography, whose was the most interesting or surprising?
I just finished working on a profile of Connie Rice. She's a civil rights lawyer and founder of an "action tank" (as opposed to a think tank) called the Advancement Project. She's also an expert on gang warfare in Los Angeles - and is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's cousin. I had never heard of her until I came across an article about her on the Daily Beast. Rice is incredibly smart and seemingly fearless. I could have written a book about her.

How has access to Wilson resources helped you in your writing?
Working at Current Biography, I have access to the life stories of thousands of people. I have found lots of inspiration for characters, not only in the research for the biographies that I write, but in the countless biographies that exist in our database as well. I think we do a good job of providing a detailed portrait of our subjects, rather than just a list of their accomplishments.

Elizabeth Taylor on Cinema Image Gallery

2011-03-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

Today's quiz marks the passing of screen icon Elizabeth Taylor. We're asking you to identify these five movies from various stages of Taylor's career, just five of the hundreds of images of Elizabeth Taylor we have in Cinema Image Gallery, all licensed for use in non-commercial settings like schools and libraries.

We will, as usual, tweet the answers later today.

Happy... International... Talk Like William Shatner... Day.

2011-03-22T03:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's the second annual Talk Like William Shatner Day, and today it just so happens to fall on the great man's 80th birthday.

Happy birthday... Mr. Shatner.

Here are some Shatner facts from our Biography Reference Bank database to help you wow your friends with your arcane knowledge:

Shatner's father, Joseph, ran a successful clothing manufacturing firm called Admiration Clothes.
Shatner got his first taste of acting success performing in a play at the French-Canadian summer camp he attended, where he also gained his great love of the outdoors.
His first acting job in U.S. films was in MGM's production of the Brothers Karamazov (1958).
After the famous Saturday Night Live parody sketch in which he told Trek fans to "get a life," Shatner admitted that it took him many years to understand the depths of passion Star Trek inspired in its legions of devotees.
Shatner was inducted into the Academy of TV Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2006.

Women in Movies quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2011-03-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

Because we just can't shake the movie buzz this week, and because next week is International Women's Day, we decided to ask you to identify these actresses and film makers.

You'll find the answers in Cinema Image Gallery, (which has been updated with all the Oscar information for 2011), or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them.

World Book Day with Core Collections on WilsonWeb

2011-03-01T06:31:00.000-08:00

March 3 is World Book Day, an event set up by UNESCO to encourage the celebration of books and reading. Whether you are participating through a library or on your own, Core Collections on WilsonWeb and WilsonWeb Mobile can help you choose books for you, your family, friends, reading group, children, study group, or whatever group of people is joining you in your love of books.

Looking for books on gardening? Graphic novels suitable for under-12s? Naval adventures? Psychological thrillers? Books translated from other languages? The best specialist dictionaries? Whatever kind of book you want, our Core Collections databases are filled with recommended titles grouped according to age and type of books covered:

Children's - covering fiction and nonfiction, graphic novels, picture books, and magazines for readers from preschool to sixth grade.
Middle & Junior High - covering fiction and nonfiction, graphic novels, and collections for readers in grades five through nine.
Senior High - covering fiction, nonfiction, collections, graphic novels, and more for readers in grades nine through twelve.
Fiction - featuring classic and contemporary fiction for a general adult audience, including literary, general, and genre fiction.
Public Library: Nonfiction - featuring reference and non-fiction books for adults.
Graphic Novels - highlighting around 2,000 titles from this increasingly popular and important literary form.

Core Collections databases feature best-of lists, starred reviews, excerpts from substantive reviews, links to sites where you can buy your chosen books, and many more features designed to make collection building and readers' advisory easy, no matter who you are choosing books for.

Interested in Core Collections? Sign up for a 10-day free trial here.

You'll also find useful tips, lists, features, and updates in The Core newsletter, and around the site built by librarians for librarians: www.corecollections.net

New full-text content for Omnifile

2011-02-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

Coming to Omnifile from March 1: thousands of new full-text articles from more than 100 journals, most brand new to WilsonWeb.

The new full-text content will be added to the following databases:

Art Full Text 16 journals
Applied Science & Technology Full Text 2 journals
Biological & Agricultural Index Plus 7 journals
Wilson Business Full Text 6 journals
Education Full Text 51 journals
General Science Full Text 3 journals
Humanities Full Text 22 journals
Index to Legal Periodicals Full Text 4 journals
Library Literature & Information Science Full Text 6 journals
Readers' Guide Full Text 7 journals
Social Sciences Full Text 29 journals

And included in the relevant sections of Omnifile. This expansion means that Omnifile subscribers now have access to an additional 100,000 articles from 153 journals in all subject areas.

Click here to open a PDF of all the full-text content added to Omnifile since January 2010.
Click here for the full journal directory.

Oscar quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2011-02-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

Sunday night is Oscar night, and to celebrate Hollywood's biggest night of the year, we're putting on our designer outfits and asking about Oscar winners in our Friday quiz. We want you to identify the movies below, each of which has won the Oscar for Best Costume Design.

You can find the answers in Cinema Image Gallery, which indexes Academy Award winners and nominees in all the major categories, including Costume Design, as well as indexing several other industry awards too.

If you want to play but your library doesn't currently subscribe to Cinema Image Gallery, you can request a free trial.

Or you can wait until later today when we will tweet the answers.

George Washington quiz for Presidents Day with Biography Reference Bank

2011-02-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

Monday is Presidents Day, and to mark the occasion today's quiz is all about President George Washington.

The answers are in one of the several detailed biographical profiles in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait until later today, when we will tweet them.

1) What were the names of George Washington's parents?
a) Ann and Lawrence
b) Mary and Augustine
c) Martha and George

2) Washington's home, Mt. Vernon, was named after which significant figure in Washington's life?
a) A commander in the Continental army.
b) The governor who sent the 22-year-old Washington on an expedition to ascertain the number of French stationed on the Ohio and vicinity.
c) The admiral who was leading an expedition in which Washington was offered a place as midshipman as a youth.

3) In March 1776, Washington and his army surrounded the city of Boston. What was the outcome of this maneuver?
a) The British were defeated by Washington's troops in battle.
b) The British defeated Washington's troops and they had to regroup outside the city.
c) The British left the city without a fight.

4) What did Washington do on December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern, New York?
a) Attacked Cornwallis's army.
b) Surrendered his commission as commander in chief.
c) Accepted the presidency of the United States.

5) What domestic crisis did Washington face in July 1794?
a) Pennsylvania farmers rebelled over a tax on making whiskey.
b) Jefferson rebelled over recognizing the new French government.
c) His cabinet split into Federalists and Republicans.

6) How old was Washington when he stepped down as president?
a) 75
b) 80
c) 65

New content for Cinema Image Gallery - Oscar nominees and more!

2011-02-17T11:41:00.000-08:00

In time for awards season, Wilson has updated Cinema Image Gallery with 6,500 new images from 1,200 movies and television shows, including more than 450 movies new to the database, and with the nominee information for the 2011 Academy Awards.

More than 300 images from the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture are featured in the database, and the other award categories indexed by Cinema Image Gallery are also well represented.

New titles added to the database in this update include

Tron: Legacy: 94 images
Despicable Me: 57 images
The Town: 45 images
True Grit (2010): 44 images (Cinema Image Gallery also has 52 images from the original version)
Boardwalk Empire: 31 images
127 Hours (28 images)

The images added are a mixture of publicity photos, scenes from the movies and shows, production shots of the crews in action, and lobby cards and poster art.

Valentine's Day Quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2011-02-11T05:46:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for inspiration for some romantic movies this weekend, try a search in Cinema Image Gallery for romance, using the genre dropdown list.

That's what we did in compiling today's quiz, where we're asking you to name these romantic movies. The answers are all in Cinema Image Gallery, or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them.

Stormy Friday quiz with Omnifile

2011-02-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

Ejiri by Hiroshige Ando

With Australia being battered by storms and severe weather fronts sweeping across the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, today's quiz is all about storms. You will find all the answers to today's quiz in the Readers' Guide database in Omnifile (search for storms), or wait until later today when we will tweet them.

(Pictures come from Art Museum Image Gallery.)

1) Before the private-sector organization AirDat began using its wallet-sized, airplane-mounted Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting sensors, how was atmospheric data usually gathered?

a) Weather balloons released twice a day.

b) Sensors on top of tall buildings and high mountain peaks.

c) Gases collected from rainwater.

2) According to Greg Carbin of the Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma, what is considered "good advance notice" of where a tornado will strike?

a) It is impossible to give advance notice.

b) 2 - 3 hours.

c) 20 - 40 minutes.

Payaguas Indians of Paraguay scare off a hurricane

3) Which year of the 21st century saw an unprecedented number of storms during the Atlantic storm season, including 27 named storms, 15 hurricanes, 3 Category 5 storms, and the most intense storm ever recorded in the Atlantic basin?

a) 2005

b) 2001

c) 2009

4) What is a lahar?

a) A glacier that is suddenly melting due to climate change.

b) A massive debris flood that can make changes to the landscape.

c) A large boulder that has been dislodged by a storm.

5) When did meteorologists start assigning unique names to hurricanes?

a) The turn of the 20th century.

b) During the cold war.

c) World War II.

Celebrating Chinese New Year with Wilson Omnifile

2011-02-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

Firing crackers in honor of kitchen god

Celebrations for the Chinese Year of the Rabbit begin tomorrow, and Omnifile has a number of articles on the festivities that are sure to give you and your patrons some ideas for marking the occasion.

In an article from Yankee (January/February 2008), Boston restaurateur Joanne Chang offers a recipe for Chinese dumpling and soy dipping sauce, which is an ideal party food that is also sociable to prepare. For a Taoist approach to preparing a New Year's feast, find inspiration in an article from Sunset (February 2002), where a full yin-yang menu including hot-and-sour soup, rock sugar ginger chicken, steamed sole with black bean sauce, stir-fried garlic lettuce, and steamed sponge cake is provided.

Rabbit by Nathan Oliveira

Remember that patrons can not only print out these articles to read, but also save them to an MP3 player to listen to at their leisure (they can opt for either a male or a female voice for the playback), which can be helpful when compiling a shopping list or cooking the recipes.

Those looking for some apt words for the occasion might consider a short speech from actor Nicolas Cage. After years of believing himself to have been born in the year of the dragon, he later discovered he was really a rabbit. You can read his whole speech in Los Angeles (January 2002).

(This entry is illustrated with pictures from Art Museum Image Gallery.)

Happy New Year!

Tennis quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2011-01-28T08:13:00.000-08:00

This weekend sees the final of the Australian Open, one of the world's most renowned tennis tournaments. It's a truly international affair, with Scottish player Andy Murray taking on Serbia's Novak Djokovic in the men's final, and Belgian Kim Clijsters playing Na Li, the first Chinese player ever to reach a grand-slam final.

(These players, by the way, are well profiled in Biography Reference Bank.)

To mark the occasion, today's quiz will be all about tennis, with the answers available in Biography Reference Bank or later today in a tweet.

1. On September 6, 1975, my request for asylum in the U.S. was granted, and although I had a rocky year in 1976, I bounced back in 1977 to bcome the first female tennis player to earn $100,000 in one year. Who am I?
a) Evonne Goolagong
b) Martina Navratilova
c) Andrea Jaeger

2. I was born in the U.S., but my father was an Armenian who boxed for Iran in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. Who am I?
a) Andre Agassi
b) Ivan Lendl
c) Boris Becker

3. In January 1997, at the age of 15 years 11 months, I became the youngest person ever to compete in the Australian Open. Who am I?
a) Llayton Hewitt
b) Sebastian Grosjean
c) Tim Henman

4. In addition to having won numerous singles and doubles titles, including the 2002 Australian Open Women's Doubles prize, I also speak six languages and am a classically trained pianist. Who am I?
a) Anna Kournikova
b) Ana Ivanovic
c) Daniela Hantuchova

5. A pioneer practitioner of power tennis, I was the first player to win the Grand Slam: Australian Open, French Open, U.S. Open, and Wimbledon. Who am I?
a) Arthur Ashe
b) Don Budge
c) Gene Mako

Downton Abbey and Costume Dramas on Cinema Image Gallery

2011-01-21T07:08:00.000-08:00

In its 40th year on PBS, Masterpiece has scored another critical and popular hit with Downton Abbey, the story of those who lived and worked above and below stairs in one of Britain's great houses at the beginning of the 20th century.

Everyone loves great costume drama. It makes for excellent entertainment and can be a great teaching tool too. So, to mark this popular movie and television form, today's quiz asks you to name these classic period dramas. All the answers can be found in Cinema Image Gallery, or you can wait till later today when we will tweet them.

ALA Midwinter quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2011-01-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

In honor of ALA Midwinter's recent gathering in San Diego of librarians, administrators, library service providers, and other members of the library community, our quiz this week is all about librarians.

All the answers are in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait till later today when we will tweet them.

1) Born November 4, 1946, I was working as a librarian at Dawson Elementary School in Austin, Texas, when I agreed to a first date with the man who would later become my husband and president of the United States. Who am I?
a) Hillary Clinton
b) Michelle Obama
c) Laura Bush

2) Born July 19, 1904, I was president of the Special Libraries Association in its 50th year (1958-1959) and greatly expanded the activities of the library of the American Iron and Steel Institutes. Who am I?
a) Margaret Fuller
b) Ellen Mac Gregor
c) Flora Belle Ludington

3) Born May 9, 1906 I was a librarian and writer of children's books, many of which I also illustrated, including The Moffats and The Hundred Dresses. Who am I?
a) Anne Carroll Moore
b) Julia Gunther MacKaye
c) Eleanor Estes

4) Born December 23, 1937, I worked in libraries for 25 years before becoming a full-time children's author. I have published over 60 books including Things that Sometimes Happen and the serial Keep Your Eye on Amanda. Who am I?
a) Dr. Seuss
b) Avi Wortis
c) Thornton Burgess

5) Born April 7, 1816, I was a lexicographer and bibliographer known for my Critical Dictionary of English Literature, published in three volumes from 1858 to 1871. Who am I?
a) Samuel Austin Alliborne
b) George Shields
c) Carl Hastings Milam

6) Born May 7, 1892, I won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932, 1953, and again in 1959, and I served as a Librarian of Congress. Who am I?
a) Ronald Brunless McKerrow
b) Archibald MacLeish
c) George Henry Moore

North Korea allows screening of British soccer movie Bend it Like Beckham

2011-01-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

On Friday, December 31, the Guardian newspaper reported that the British soccer movie Bend it Like Beckham had become the first foreign movie to be screened on North Korean television. The version shown was heavily edited, with a running time of just one hour instead of its original 112 minutes, but the decision shows how the North Korean love of soccer and leader Kim Jong-Il's love of movies have combined to give North Koreans a rare glimpse of the outside world.

Kim Jong Il, from Biography Reference Bank

Wilson Omnifile features a number of articles about North Korea, including one (from New Republic, 2004) written by a Hong Kong-based journalist who gained unprecedented access to North Korean residents because he played soccer for Beijing Celtic, a team of expatriates working in China, and the team was invited to North Korea to play in a 2004 tournament. The database also features an article (from Macleans, 2010) about Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's fascination with North Korea and his invitation to the North Korean soccer team to train in Zimbabwe ahead of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, an in-depth article (from Foreign Policy, November/December 2009) about the challenges facing the North Korean leadership in the near future, and many more. Subscribers can search using a variety of keywords, including North Korea soccer, Kim Jong Il, and use the Content Discovery Keys to broaden their search without losing their original focus.

The lobby card for Bend it Like Beckham is just one of 21 images for this movie in Cinema Image Gallery, and you can also find detailed biographies of Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung in Biography Reference Bank.

Happy New Year from Wilson Biographies

2010-12-31T06:07:00.000-08:00

Everyone at H. W. Wilson hopes that your 2011 is a happy and productive one. To mark the start of another calendar year, we're celebrating those people whose birthdays fall on January 1. As usual, all the answers can be found in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them.

1) Born January 1, 1735, I am best known for my part in the Revolutionary War, but I was also a popular silversmith and engraver. Who am I?
a) Captain John Parker
b) John Singleton Copley
c) Paul Revere

2) Born January 1, 1895, I was named assistant director of the newly-formed Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice under William J. Burns in 1921. Who am I?
a) Kenneth McKellar
b) J. Edgar Hoover
c) Joseph McCarthy

3) Born January 1, 1970, I am best known for directing movies like Magnolia and Boogie Nights. Who am I?
a) M. Night Shyamalan
b) Paul Thomas Anderson
c) Kevin Smith

4) Born January 1, 1912, Victor Reuther helped organize the first sit-down strike by which U.S. labor organization, after which the union's membership grew from less than 100 to approximately 30,000?
a) Teamsters
b) Congress of Industrial Organizations
c) United Automobile Workers

5) Born January 1, 1449, I was a scholar, writer, and poet, and was appointed ruler of Florence, Italy, at the age of just 21. Who am I?
a) Pico della Mirandola
b) Lorenzo De Medici
c) Dante Alighieri

6) Born Jan 1, 1986, I turned down football offers to play basketball and am now a power forward with the Boston Celtics. Who am I?
a) Glen Davis
b) Kevin Durant
c) Dwight Howard

7) Born January 1, 1767, my considerable writing talents were already obvious to my family by the time we moved from Britain to County Longford, Ireland, in 1782. Who am I?
a) Maria Edgeworth
b) Mary Shelley
c) Sarah Siddons

Find National Film Registry Titles on Cinema Image Gallery

2010-12-29T09:29:00.000-08:00

Lonesome - 1928

Yesterday the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress published the list of 25 films chosen for preservation in 2010.

Taking in documentaries, popular features, early talkies, silent shorts, and Academy Award winners, the list spans the period 1891-1996. The list takes in such well-known titles as All the President's Men, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Front Page, as well as more obscure movies like Lonesome and Make Way for Tomorrow.

H. W. Wilson's Cinema Image Gallery contains multiple records for most of the films on the list, including 153 records for The Empire Strikes Back, 47 records for McCabe and Mrs Miller, 13 records for Grey Gardens, and 36 records for Malcolm X. Whether your patrons are looking for images to use in a classroom discussion on movie preservation or just looking for more information after seeing the list, Cinema Image Gallery on WilsonWeb is the first place to come for comprehensive coverage and a wide range of images from the listed movies.

John Lennon quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2010-12-10T03:26:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, December 8 was the 30th anniversary of the shooting of the singer, sixties icon, and activist John Lennon, outside his apartment in New York. To mark this anniversary, today's Friday quiz is all about the man and his music.

As usual, you will find the answers to the quiz in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them. If you are a Biography Reference Bank subscriber, we particularly recommend you check out the biography of Lennon that appeared in Current Biography in 1965, for a flavor of how the Beatles were perceived at the very height of their popularity. For example:

"Originally regarded as a manifestation of good-natured protest of youth against the established order, the Beatles have since found their place within the Establishment, as evidenced by their designation, in June 1965, as members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire."

1) John Lennon's parents were named:
a) Alfred and Julia
b) Cynthia and Sean
c) Brian and Mary

2) John began performing with Paul McCartney in the late 1950s under a name derived from British Air Force slang. What was that name?
a) The Fox Cubs
b) The Nurk Twins
c) The Two Tommys

3) Which prominent American chronicler of the Sixties called John "one of the few Englishmen whom English literati have hailed as a genius of the lower crust"?
a) Gore Vidal
b) Hunter S. Thompson
c) Tom Wolfe

4) What was the name of the 1998 album containing previously unrecorded Lennon material?
a) Reimagined
b) Diamonds in the Rough
c) Wonsaponatime

5) What was the name of the single that was released a month after Lennon's death in 1980?
a) "Woman"
b) "Starting Over"
c) "Give Peace a Chance"

Courtroom Dramas on Cinema Image Gallery

2010-12-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

We recently expanded our genre categories on Cinema Image Gallery to include courtroom dramas, which means you can now pinpoint examples of this popular genre by simply choosing this option from the Genre dropdown list on the Advanced Search screen.

From modern courtroom dramas like The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Boston Legal to classic legal stories like Twelve Angry Men and Perry Mason, Cinema Image Gallery images can illustrate or inspire lectures and classroom discussions on law-related topics like:

How famous trials were conducted.
Realism in courtroom dramas.
Changing gender and racial profiles of courtroom players.
The effect of social media on the conduct of trials.
Presenting forensic evidence in the courtroom.
Public speaking skills.
Changing legal practices.

...and much, much more.

Whether you are involved in a law or legal studies program, a media or film program, or a drama or writing program, you will find a wealth of material within Cinema Image Gallery's courtroom drama genre to improve your presentations or projects.

December Birthday quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2010-12-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

December can be a difficult month to celebrate your birthday, because it sometimes gets mixed up in the holiday season. So today's quiz celebrates notable people with birthdays in December. You can find all the answers in Biography Reference Bank, (try a search using the date fields to get the results you want), or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them.

1. Born on December 19, 1906, my time as premier of the Soviet Union was marked by a detente in relations with the West, including the first United States-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.
a) Leonid Brezhnev
b) Aleksei N. Kosygin
c) Nikolai Khrushchev

2. I was born on Christmas Day, 1887, and later became known as the "No.1 innkeeper". Who am I?
a) Pancho Barnes
b) Charles Ballard
c) Conrad Hilton

3. Born on December 17, 1937, a Forbes list of the world's richest people listed me as the wealthiest person in Australia, 94th in the world. Who am I?
a) Kerry Packer
b) Rupert Murdoch
c) Geoffrey Bible

4. I was born on December 19, 1915, and when I sang on stage I usually went without makeup and wore a simple black dress. Who am I?
a) Edith Piaf
b) Alice Fay
c) Billie Holiday

5. I am a singer who was performing the national anthem at Pittsburgh-area sporting events before I was eight years old. I turn 30 on December 18. Who am I?
a) Britney Spears
b) Christina Aguilera
c) Josh Groban

6. I am a British actor who was nominated for a Tony award in 2010 for my portrayal of Hamlet. My birthday is on December 29. Who am I?
a) Tom Hardy
b) David Tennant
c) Jude Law

7. In 1961 I left a $1,700-a-week job writing for the Garry Moore Show to try my hand at standup comedy. I celebrate my birthday on December 1. Who am I?
a) Steve Martin
b) Steve Allen
c) Woody Allen

Thanksgiving quiz with Omnifile

2010-11-19T05:58:00.000-08:00

To mark the fact that Thanksgiving is almost here, today's quiz celebrates that holiday as well as giving you a taste of the variety of publications you can peruse if you have an Omnifile Full Text, Mega or Select subscription.

You will find the answers in Omnifile, or you can hang on until later today, when we will tweet them.

Our illustration comes from Art Museum Image Gallery, another key Wilson resource.

1) Which food company fields approximately 100,000 phone calls each November, and around ten years ago was consulted by President Josiah Bartlett (Martin Sheen) in an episode of the West Wing?
(from an article in Advertising Age)

a) Butterball
b) Epicurious
c) Food Network

2) Which ancient Greek word is usually understood by Christians to mean "to give thanks", although this was an uncommon concept in antiquity?
(from an article in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly)

a) Filotimia
b) Eukharistein
c) Gratitude

3) Why was Squanto able to interpret for the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621?
(from an article in Native Peoples)

a) A trapper taught him English.
b) He went to a missionary school.
c) He had already spent some time living in England.

4) Which three native birds do Texas chefs recommend trying as an alternative to turkey at Thanksgiving?
(from an article in Texas Monthly)

a) meadowlark, blackbird, cowbird
b) chicken, goose, wrentit
c) dove, duck, quail

5) Which little known event is known by some people as "the real first Thanksgiving"?
(from an article in School Library Media Activities Monthly)

a) October 1615: Lost French trapper Jean Baptiste Charbonneau celebrates his rescue by sharing his food with the Shoshone tribe.
b) November 25, 1620: Native Americans at the English court demonstrate their Thanksgiving feasts.
c) September 8, 1565: Admiral Pedro Menendez and Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales share a meal with the Timucua tribe in La Florida

6) Which astronomical phenomenon occurs close to Thanksgiving?
(from an article in Astronomy)

a) Sun spots
b) The Leonid meteor shower
c) The Hale-Bopp comet

7) Which Disney movie took just $16.6 million over its opening Thanksgiving weekend in 2002 to become one of the studio's least successful animated features?
(from an article in Variety)

a) Pocahontas
b) Treasure Planet
c) Lilo & Stitch

Thanksgiving ideas from Omnifile on WilsonWeb and WilsonWeb Mobile

2010-11-17T05:05:00.000-08:00

Wilson Omnifile is certainly a key resource for academic research, but it contains a wealth of material from popular publications also. Using either your office version or your WilsonWeb Mobile account, try a search for Thanksgiving, then choose Recipes from the document type dropdown list. This will turn up a host of articles that include holiday offerings from Rachael Ray, Emeril Lagasse, and more, as well as articles with recipes designed for children to help with, and handy ideas for leftovers.

Remember that if you choose to listen to the recipes using ReadSpeaker, you can play them back at the speed that suits you, and you can select only the parts of the article you need to hear. Language translations also makes these articles available to anyone who is working on their English skills.

Thanksgiving menu 1905 by George Elbert Burr

For other ideas for the holiday, keep Thanksgiving as your search term, choose All from the document type list, and select Education from the list of subject areas. This will return articles on fostering gratitude among school children, as well as craft ideas for the occasion, which could be useful for art classes in school, a project in the library, or to give parents inspiration for keeping kids occupied between now and the holiday.

(The pictures in this article were taken from Cinema Image Gallery and Art Museum Image Gallery, two more excellent sources of art and craft inspiration for Thanksgiving or any other holiday.)

Bruce Conner resources on Wilson Art Suite

2010-11-15T08:29:00.000-08:00


31 Variations on a Meal: Eaten by Bruce Conner,	by Daniel Spoerri

New York's Film Forum movie house is currently running an exhibition of the work of the film maker and artist Bruce Conner.

Conner, (1933-2008) was an important American artist whose works defied easy categorization within either the art or film worlds. He used manipulations of structure and narrative to create an enigmatic sense of time in both his films and his overall career, and he was as much a collector and editor of the world as he was a creator.

Whether you are attending the exhibition or just intrigued by Conner's work, you can find a variety of perspectives on his life and career in the databases of the Wilson Art Suite. Art Full Text has profiles and obituaries of Conner as well as commentaries and reviews covering his work from distinguished publications like ARTnews, Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne, and Artforum International.

The Rose by Jay DeFeo

Thanks to the seamless links built into Art Museum Image Gallery, you can also see Conner's technique in action. One of his films records the seven-year process involved in making Jay DeFeo's "The Rose" in Defeo's apartment. This film is an important Conner piece because it was filmed by him rather than being composed of found footage.
You can find this film, complete with Conner's voiceover, in the Related Multimedia section of Art Museum Image Gallery's comprehensive record for "The Rose".

Movember mustache quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2010-11-12T05:37:00.000-08:00

In recent years, men from Australia to the U.S. have taken on a new challenge in the month of November: to grow a mustache in order to raise awareness of the cancers that specifically affect men.

To mark the Movember effort to raise both awareness and funds, today's quiz celebrates well-known mustache wearers. You'll find the answers to all these questions in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them.

1) Almost single-handedly responsible for turning his sport into mass entertainment, this prominent mustache wearer studied under the trainer Hiro Matsuda, and gained his popular nickname because of his resemblance to a popular television character of the late 1970s. Who is he?

a) Mick Foley
b) Carl Weathers
c) Hulk Hogan

2) This mustachioed actor appeared in over 50 television commercials in the 1970s, until Universal Television offered him a part in a series that was intended to replace Hawaii Five-O.

a) Burt Reynolds
b) Tom Selleck
c) Sam Elliott

3) Famous for his painted-on mustache, among other things, this actor, writer, and comedian started his stage career as a member of the Messenger Boys, singing in various city restaurants to raise money for the victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Who was he?

a) Charlie Chaplin
b) Oliver Hardy
c) Groucho Marx

4) Known as a suave, mustache-wearing actor, this man originally planned to be a fashion illustrator. He attended the National Academy of Design in New York, where he was spotted by a CBS casting director and began to take acting roles to pay for his art supplies. Who is he?

a) Billy Dee Williams
b) Sidney Poitier
c) Lou Gossett Jr.

5) This wearer of the classic pencil mustache held the first ever screening of his movies in the 1960s--three black-and-white shorts--in the Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Who is he?

a) David Simon
b) John Waters
c) Barry Levinson

6) When Congress declared war against Spain in 1898, this bristly mustache-sporting president of the U.S. organized a regiment of cavalry volunteers known as the Rough Riders. Who was he?

a) William H. Taft
b) William McKinley
c) Theodore Roosevelt

7) Known as a child as "Sosso", this famous mustache wearer also used the aliases "David" and "Koba" early in his political career, and first joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party in Tiflis in 1898. Who was he?

a) Joseph Stalin
b) V. I. Lenin
c) Leon Trotsky

The World Series on WilsonWeb: San Francisco Giants and more on Biography Reference Bank

2010-11-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

Today's quiz marks this week's World Series victory by the San Francisco Giants, using profiles and details from Biography Reference Bank. If you or your patrons are sports enthusiasts, you will find a wealth of material to suit you in our acclaimed, comprehensive, and trustworthy biographical resource.

Find out about the influences, inspirations, and early experiences of some of our most popular sporting figures, often in their own words. Read about their victories, setbacks, and career experiences, or listen to all or part of their profiles using our ReadSpeaker text-to-speech converter.

You'll find all the answers to the quiz in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait until later in the day when we will tweet them.

1) I was drafted into the San Francisco Giants straight out of high school in 1982, but then accepted an athletic scholarship to Arizona State University, where I hit 23 home runs in my junior season. Who am I?
a) Will Clark
b) Barry Bonds
c) Michael Young

2) I was a member of the New York Giants' team that beat the Washington Senators in the 1933 World Series, and finished my career by hitting .316 as a part-time player for the Giants in 1934. Who am I?
a) Lefty O'Doul
b) Hank Sauer
c) Danny Murtaugh

3) A player for the New York Mets, I was named NL player of the month in June 2006 after hitting .327 with 20 runs, four doubles, a triple, 10 home runs, 29 RBIs, and three stolen bases, while collecting two home runs in two contests, against San Francisco and Cincinnati. Who am I?
a) Jake Peavy
b) David Wright
c) Xavier Nady

4) I was the only Oakland A's regular not to homer in the 1989 World Series, which was notable for the major earthquake that hit Candlestick Park on the day of Game 3. Who am I?
a) Craig Counsell
b) Ricky Henderson
c) Mark McGwire

5) A player for the San Francisco Giants, I was nicknamed "Seabiscuit" by major league scouts because of my small size. Who am I?
a) Joe Mauer
b) Jose Reyes
c) Tim Lincecum

6) I made my major-league debut with the Atlanta Braves in 1968 as a part-time player, but was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972. I made the All-Star team in 1981 and also won my first Golden Glove that year. Who am I?

a) Dusty Baker
b) Felie Alou
c) Bob Brenly

7) A member of the Giants' pennant-winning team of 1962, I began to experience fainting spells and periods of nervous exhaustion in my later career. Who am I?

a) Willie Mays
b) Gaylord Perry
c) Zoilo Versalles

The 2010 midterms: Newsmakers in Biography Reference Bank

2010-11-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's elections brought changes to Congress, including a new Speaker of the House, likely to be Ohio Republican John Boehner. If you want to know more about this key figure in the 2010 elections, you will find a detailed profile of him in Biography Reference Bank, including a selection of photographs.

You will also find a profile of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has represented Nevada in the Senate since 1986.

Reading the two profiles side by side could be valuable, particularly for younger patrons, because it shows that public representatives can start out with different backgrounds, different skill sets, and different career paths, but still end up serving their country in the highest seats of power.

These profiles are also useful for classroom quizzes, as project starting points, or just for general, reliable reading either in the library or on the move with WilsonWeb Mobile.

Remember that you can also listen to all, or just your highlighted sections, of these profiles with ReadSpeaker, and that those who are learning English can translate these profiles into a selection of languages to make their research easier. You can also find many more profiles of politicians and public representatives, searching either by name or using the Profession/Activity search box on the Advanced Search screen to find senators, politicians, legislators, or political leaders, depending on the individuals you are looking for.

New content for Cinema Image Gallery

2010-11-01T05:51:00.000-07:00

The vast range of images available in Cinema Image Gallery continues to grow this month, with the addition of 5597 new images to the database. These new images come from recent popular movies like Sex and the City 2, Prince of Persia, Robin Hood, The Karate Kid, Inception, Iron Man 2, and Salt, as well as adding to the roster of images from TV shows like Glee, and classic movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Color Purple.

As well as publicity stills from these movies and television shows, Cinema Image Gallery includes lobby posters, behind-the-scenes shots, and candid shots of characters and stars, all rights-cleared for use in an educational setting.

Use these images freely to illustrate a lecture, kickstart classroom discussions, provide inspiration for homework, projects, or plays, or as supplementary materials for patrons who check out movies and TV shows from your library.

Also remember that Cinema Image Gallery can be searched in conjunction with any other WilsonWeb database, and using keywords other than movie titles, so patrons could turn up unexpected treasures as part of a larger search.

Halloween Horrors from Art Suite

2010-10-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

If you are already an Art Suite subscriber, you can find a host of Halloween ideas and activities to liven up your library at the scariest time of the year. If someone is checking out Hitchcock's Pscyho from your movie library, for example, you could point them to Garry Leonard's article in Film International, which examines the relationship between horror movies and the economic climate with specific reference to that classic movie.

Art Full Text also has a lot of Halloween resources for younger patrons, like a craft project such as a paper bag haunted house, as described in the October 2007 edition of Arts & Activities. Or, from the same volume, you could try "Awesome Autumn Cut-Ups" for schools or groups where Halloween is less of a focus.

You can also use the resources in Art Suite to create a Halloween quiz for your patrons or staff, like the one below. All the pictures and posters come from Cinema Image Gallery and, as usual, you can find the answers there or you can wait until later today when we will tweet them, in the scariest manner possible, of course.

Because the quiz features movie posters, we are looking for the country where the film is set, rather than the name of the film (which would be too easy, even for a Friday).

Happy Halloween from Wilson Omnifile

2010-10-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

Whether your library patrons are looking for learning or light reading around Halloween, Wilson Omnifile can provide it.

An article from the International Journal of Regional and Local Studies examines a festival similar to Halloween, that of Hop tu naa, which takes place on October 31 on the Isle of Man, a dependency of the British crown that lies off the coast of Great Britain. The festival sees children going around the neighborhood with a turnip and candle lantern, singing a song and soliciting donations to buy fireworks for Guy Fawkes Night. The article also discusses the similarities and differences between Hop tu naa, modern Halloween, the Celtic festival of Samhain, and the Christian festival of All Saints or All Souls Day, so it makes an interesting starting point for class discussion, a writing assignment, or an imaginative art project.

Parents looking for tips on feeding trick or treaters more healthy alternatives to candy bars might find something to help them in an article from Supermarket News, Fall 2009, which talks about the efforts that parents and some retailers are making to move kids away from unhealthy choices on the spookiest night of the year.

The popular topic of a healthier Halloween is continued in an article from Men's Health, 2009, which contains several recipes for satisfying your sweet tooth without sabotaging your diet.

Remember that you can download these articles for later listening, like when you're putting together your shopping list for this weekend, or when you're actually in the supermarket picking up those all-important Halloween treats.

Remember also that many of the articles are available as PDF page images, so if you are using Omnifile for craft, recipe, or art project ideas, you should look for the PDF icon to find pictures where they are available in the original article.

(Our image is a Library of Congress poster from Art Museum Image Gallery, another essential source of Halloween inspiration.)

October is American Archives Month

2010-10-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

Fashion Week Quiz with Biography Reference Bank and Art Museum Image Gallery

2010-09-24T06:06:00.000-07:00

It's Fashion Week season in London, New York, and Milan, and to mark these colorful displays, our Friday quiz this week is about fashion. It comes to you from two different databases: Art Museum Image Gallery, which has thousands of museum-quality images from all around the world, all rights-cleared for educational use; and Biography Reference Bank, a trusted source of biographical profiles, obituaries, articles, links, and images of prominent individuals from all walks of life.

You can find the answers in these two databases, or you can wait till later today when we will tweet them.

1) Based on her clothes, what century do you think this woman lived in?

a) 13th
b) 16th
c) 19th

2) What century do you think this woman's clothes are from?

a) 18th
b) 20th
c) 15th

3) What century did these men live in?

a) 17th
b) 18th
c) 19th

4) Who is the man in this photo?

a) Phillip Treacy
b) Jean Paul Gaultier
c) Karl Lagerfeld

5) Who is the woman in this photo?

a) Anna Wintour
b) Elizabeth Arden
c) Donna Karan

6) Who is the woman in this photo?

a) Coco Chanel
b) Mary Quant
c) Diane von Furstenberg

Women in politics quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2010-09-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

Our web team recently added the list of new biographies to the newsmakers section of our website, so you can see who's new in Biography Reference Bank, and whose profile has been updated. Because the featured biography this month is Iveta Radicova, prime minister of Slovakia, this week's quiz is all about women in politics.

1) I became president of my country in the late 1980s, I died in 2009, and I was Asia's first elected female head of state. Who am I?

a) Sirimavo Bandaranaike
b) Indira Gandhi
c) Corazon Aquino

2) I served two terms as prime minister of my country, I was assassinated in 2007, and I was the first woman to become a democratically elected head of state (in modern times) of an Islamic country. Who am I?

a) Benazir Bhutto
b) Sonia Gandhi
c) Gayatri Devi

3) I have served Florida's Third Congressional District since November 1993, despite controversies and the redrawing of my district's boundaries. I was cleared of charges of ethics violations in 1999, and I temporarily lost my House speaking privileges in 2006 for accusing the Republicans of "stealing" the 2000 election. Who am I?

a) Ginny Brown-Waite
b) Muriel Brown
c) Corrine Brown

4) A conservative Republican, I was Florida's first female senator and the first woman to be elected to a full term in the U.S. Senate whose career was not based on my relationship to a husband or other male relative. Who am I?

a) Marcy C. Kaptur
b) Paula Hawkins
c) Katherine Harris

5) After spending a year at Oxford University, Great Britain, I joined the Verejnost proti nasiliu (Public Against Violence), and went on to teach sociology, political science, and began to teach sociology, political science, and social work at Comenius University. Who am I?

a) Lilli Gruber
b) Iveta Radicova
c) Micheline Calmy-Rey

6) In 2007 I followed in my husband's footsteps and became president of Argentina, but I would remind people that I was elected senator before he was president. Who am I?

a) Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner
b) Isabel Peron
c) Mireya Moscoso

All the answers are available in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait till later this afternoon when we will tweet them.

Don't forget that you can find lively and informative profiles of plenty more female political leaders in Biography Reference Bank, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, Tanzanian member of Parliament Gertrude Mongella, and Irish president Mary McAleese.

New full-text titles added recently

2010-09-14T06:11:00.000-07:00

We add new content to H. W. Wilson databases all the time, not just at fixed times of the year, so your subscription becomes more valuable all the time.

As an example of the kind of content we add on a regular basis, here's some of the full-text journals we have added since the end of August 2010:

Index to Legal Periodicals Full Text
Griffith Law Review--indexed by Wilson since 1994, this refeered journal from the Socio-Legal Research Center, Griffith Law School, Griffith University, Australia, publishes interdisciplinary, social, and critical legal research.

Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal--created and managed by students, this journal focuses on the legal issues facing entrepreneurs, small business owners, and venture capitalists.

Pace International Law Review--provides a forum for legal debate within the international community and serves as an authoritative periodical source of reference for the international scholar; also includes Online Companion of the Pace International Law Review.

Art Full Text
Journal of Artists' Books (JAB)--indexed by Wilson from 1997-2003, this journal works to engage with the field of artists' books by means of critical discourse and creative exploration of the intersections of book arts, artists' books, poetry, photography, experimental literature, printmaking, graphic design, and other book-related creative endeavors.

Library Literature and Information Science Full Text
Journal of Information Literacy (JIL)--an international, peer-reviewed, academic publication that aims to investigate information literacy within a wide range of settings.

Social Sciences Full Text
Revista Latina de Communication Social--a refereed professional journal, founded in 1988, that fosters inquiry into social communication for researchers and media professionals to create a forum for sharing research findings.

You can visit our Journal Directory for a full list of the publications in any database, and remember that all the full-text journals added to the databases named above are also included in Wilson Omnifile.

Information on the go quiz with WilsonWeb Mobile and Cinema Image Gallery

2010-09-10T06:31:00.000-07:00

This week saw the formal announcement of the launch of WilsonWeb Mobile, which gives you access to your WilsonWeb databases and features like ReadSpeaker and language translations on your smartphone or other handheld device.

To mark this development in mobile communications and information, we've built this Friday's picture quiz around information on the move. You'll find all the answers on Cinema Image Gallery, or you can wait till later today when we will tweet them.

Back to school Quiz with WilsonWeb and Cinema Image Gallery

2010-09-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

Get the new school year off to the best possible start by signing up to WilsonWeb Mobile and get a range of WilsonWeb content and functionality with all the convenience of your iPhone, Blackberry, Android phone, or other handheld device.

To mark the start of the new school year, today's Friday quiz is all about schools and education. All the answers can be found in Cinema Image Gallery (where all images are rights-cleared for use in educational settings), or you can wait until we tweet them later on today.

H. W. Wilson continues to be COUNTER compliant

2010-09-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

WilsonWeb has yet again been certified as compliant with the Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) Code of Practice for Journal and Database Reports. According to a recent annual audit by media auditing firm BPA Worldwide, WilsonWeb's usage reports meet the latest standards in both content and format, so librarians and administrators can be confident that they are getting the highest quality statistical information when they consult WilsonWeb reports.

In addition to Wilson’s selection of “standard” International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) compliant usage reports, the online COUNTER usage reports listed below are also provided to its customers, including Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) capability.

DB1 = Database Report 1: Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Database

DB2 = Database Report 2: Turnaways by Month and Database

DB3 = Database Report 3: Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Service

JR1 = Journal Report 1: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal

CR1 = Consortium Report 1: Number of Successful Full-Text Journal Article or Book Chapter Requests by

Month (XML only)

CR2 = Consortium Report 2: Total Searches by Month and Database (XML only)

SUSHI

The SUSHI protocol standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2007) defines an automated request and response model for the harvesting of electronic resource usage data utilizing a Web services framework. It is intended to ease the collection of various vendor usage reports for libraries, through the defined formatting of usage data reports. WilsonWeb’s Usage Statistics Module now includes a “SUSHI Settings” page, giving libraries the ability to access their WilsonWeb Usage Statistics using the SUSHI protocol. Also on that Settings page, administrators will enter a Single IP or range of IP addresses for connecting to WilsonWeb SUSHI service.

Miniaturization Quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2010-08-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

To mark the forthcoming launch of WilsonWeb Mobile--which gives library patrons all the search power and content of WilsonWeb in the palm of their hand--our Friday quiz this week is all about putting good things in small packages. See if you can identify these films that feature miniaturization.

All images come from Cinema Image Gallery, a repository of thousands of images from film and television, all rights-cleared for educational use. You can find the answers to the quiz there, or you can wait until later today, when we will tweet them.

More news on WilsonWeb Mobile

2010-08-23T04:46:00.000-07:00

For WilsonWeb subscribers who access the Internet using an iPhone, an Android phone, a Blackberry, an iPad or some other mobile device, we have developed WilsonWeb Mobile as a way of accessing trusted information on the go. Although this new interface is not a replacement for the traditional desktop version, it will certainly duplicate the quality search results that librarians and patrons have come to expect from their WilsonWeb databases.

The WilsonWeb Mobile application will include the following features:

A separate database selection screen
Basic and Advanced Search screens
Cross-database searching (search multiple databases at the same time)
Wilson's renowned All-Smart Search
Relevancy ranking of results
Record indicators/icons, including Full Text, Peer-Reviewed, Non-Peer Reviewed, WilsonLink (link resolver), holdings, and InterLibrary Loan
ReadSpeaker text-to-speech converter (HTML Full Text Audio)
Language translations of both the interface and articles
Images from Biography databases, Art Museum Image Gallery, Cinema Image Gallery, and more
Email
Record navigation and linkable fields
Co-branding icons or graphics for libraries
Customization in the Adminstrator's Module
Referring page authentication (created by each library)
Searching results included in library's usage statistics (COUNTER and WilsonWeb's "Standard" statistic reports)

This service will be launching very soon. For more information, check out our website, or follow us on Twitter for updates.

People on the Phone Quiz with Cinema Image Gallery

2010-08-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

Wilson will soon be launching WilsonWeb Mobile, bringing you fast and flexible access to library resources in the palm of your hand. To mark the launch, we look back over the life of the phone with Cinema Image Gallery. See if you can name the people in the photos below.

You can find the answers in the database, or you can wait until we tweet the answers later today.

Astronomers Quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2010-08-13T02:23:00.000-07:00

In honor of this week's Perseids peak viewing, our Friday quiz is all about astronomers.

1) Named British Astronomer Royal in 1835, I calculated the density of the Earth, the mass of the planet Jupiter, and the orbits of comets. Who am I?

a) Lancelot Hogben
b) William Albrecht
c) George Biddell Airy

2) A Dutch astronomer who worked at Harvard University in the early 20th century, I initiated radioastronomy at the university and became known for my work on the small dark nebulae which bear my name. Who am I?

a) Bart Jan Bok
b) Andreas Cellarius
c) Vesto Melvin Slipher

3) Born in Co. Cork, Ireland, in 1842, I wrote the book Popular History of Astronomy, a standard work for many years, and in 1903 became one of the few women to be made a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Who am I?

a) Sandra M. Faber
b) Agnes Mary Clerke
c) Maria Geha

4) My book, The Starry Messenger, caused a sensation on publication and made me famous, but my Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems saw me on trial for the ideas it expressed. Who am I?

a) Copernicus
b) Galileo
c) Kepler

5) An American astronomer, I developed a now-standard classification system for galaxy types, and the law that is named for me shows that galaxies are moving away from us with a speed proportional to their distance. Who am I?

a) Andrew E. Douglas
b) Fred Hoyle
c) Edwin P. Hubble

All the answers are available by searching in Biography Reference Bank. Just enter astronomer in the search text box and choose Profession/Activity from the dropdown list. Or you can wait till we tweet the answers later today.

Outstanding content with 200 new full-text journals

2010-08-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

H. W. Wilson has added 200 new full-text journals to its databases since January 2009, making your library an even more useful research center for your patrons without adding any more paper to your shelves.

These substantial additions have been made to the following full-text databases: Art, Applied Science & Technology, Biological & Agricultural Index Plus, Wilson Business, Education, General Science, Humanities, Index to Legal Periodicals, Library Literature & Information Science, Readers' Guide, and Social Sciences.

Subscribers to either of our Omnifile Full Text databases benefit from every one of these updates.

Click here for the full list of new journals, (in PDF format) or you can click here for our Journal Directory, which gives you a complete list of journals covered by every database.

Supreme Court Justices Quiz with Biography Reference Bank

2010-08-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

To mark the confirmation of Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court justice, our Friday quiz this week is all about the Supreme Court.

1) Named to the Supreme Court by President Nixon, I later wrote an opinion that forced Nixon to surrender White House tape recordings and papers relating to the Watergate scandal. I am...

a) Warren E. Burger
b) Samuel A. Alito
c) David Davis

2) Sworn in as the 107th justice in August 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first Jewish justice since...

a) David von Drehle
b) Erwin N. Griswold
c) Abe Fortas

3) Named an associate justice of the Supreme Court in June 1941, I also served as chief prosecutor for the U.S. in the trials of European Axis war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany. I am...

a) Robert H. Jackson
b) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
c) W. M. Kunstler

4) What body is generally considered to be the most powerful federal tribunal in the country, after the Supreme Court?

a) Federal Court of Appeal
b) California Supreme Court
c) Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia

5) As a Supreme Court justice, I was called "the worst enemy of free speech" by political columnist William Safire in 1985. I am...

a) Edward T. Sanford
b) Antonin Scalia
c) Clarence Thomas

You'll find the answers to the quiz by searching for Supreme Court justices in Biography Reference Bank, or you can wait until we post them on Twitter later today.

Lewis and Clark Quiz with Omnifile

2010-07-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

Summer is a time for exploration, discovery, and travel. We continue this theme with this week's Friday quiz by delving into some articles in Omnifile about Lewis and Clark's landmark "Expedition of North Western Discovery".

1) What were Lewis and Clark's first names?

a) Thomas Jefferson and Alexander
b) Meriweather and William
c) George Washington and James

2) Which member of the expedition team is depicted in 23 statues nationwide?

a) Toussaint Charbonneau
b) The Shoshone guide, Toby
c) Sacagawea

3) From which city did the Expedition of North Western Discovery set off?

a) St. Louis
b) Philadelphia
c) Springfield

4) Representative of which Native American tribe guided the expedition down the Snake River to the Columbia?

a) Nez Percé
b) Shoshone
c) Blackfoot

5) The most arduous stretch of Lewis and Clark's expedition took them through which mountain range?
a) The Salish Range
b) The Columbia Range
c) The Bitterroot Range

You'll find all the answers to these questions in one of the many articles about Lewis and Clark to be found in Omnifile, or you can read them in the answer tweet we'll be sending out later today. The picture--"Floyd's Grave, Where Lewis and Clark Buried Sergeant Floyd in 1804", courtesy of the Smithsonian--comes from Art Museum Image Gallery.

Moon landing quiz with Omnifile

2010-07-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

The 41st anniversary of the Moon landings may not seem like a particularly special occasion, but in the year that the Obama administration decided to cut funding for any more manned space flight (at least in the near future), the anniversary of one of the world's greatest technological achievements takes on more poignancy.

Our Friday quiz features questions about the Moon landing. You can find the answers in Omnifile by searching for moon landing, or you can follow us on Twitter, where we'll be giving out the answers toward the end of Friday, July 23.

1. Why did NASA seat the Apollo 11 takeoff spectators three and a half miles from the launch pad?

a) They didn't want anyone to take photos of the takeoff
b) In case of protesters
c) In case the Saturn rockets exploded on takeoff

2. The airtight lining of the space suits and the ship's computer ROM chips were made...

a) By hand
b) In Germany
c) Of gold

3. The command pilot was Neil Armstrong, the lunar module pilot was Buzz Aldrin, and the command module pilot was...

a) Charlie Duke
b) Michael Collins
c) Bruce McCandless II

4. What job did the "simsup" do?

a) Lead simulation supervisor
b) Lead symmetry superintendent
c) Lead simplification supervisor

5. Who served as Neil Armstrong's backup for Apollo 11?

a) Buzz Aldrin
b) Jim Lovell
c) Charlie Duke

All the answers are in Omnifile Full Text. The picture of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon is from Art Museum Image Gallery.

"World Leaders" is the Topic of the Month on Biography Reference Bank

2010-07-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

Fresh from the G20 summit in Toronto in June 2010, we are profiling world leaders on the Advanced Search screen of Biography Reference Bank. Why not take this quick quiz and see how good your knowledge is?

All the answers can be easily found within the profiles.

1) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy is primarily known for his interests in what business?

2) Mexico's President Felipe Calderon first entered politics at what age and in what capacity?

3) Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is president of which South American country?

4) Who became the first directly elected president in the history of Indonesia in 2004?
a) Megawati Sukarnoputri
b) Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
c) Mohamed Suharto

5) Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan was mayor of which city before becoming president?

You'll also find profiles of people Born on This Date, as well as other suggested key profiles on the Advanced Search screen, if you or your library patrons are looking for interesting or inspiring life stories.

Alice in Wonderland and more added to Cinema Image Gallery

2010-06-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to announce that from today, Cinema Image Gallery subscribers can access more than 5,200 brand-new images from movies and television shows as diverse as Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, City Island, Shutter Island, and Jersey Shore.

In all, more than 350 new films and shows have been added, with a total of more than 2,200 new images between them. We have also added images to movies and shows already in the database, including Book of Eli and the Star Trek movies.

Don't forget that Cinema Image Gallery also links to your catalog's video collection, making it more easily accessible by your patrons. It's also an ideal resource for summer art projects, quizzes, costume party ideas, and pure entertainment for your library's patrons.

If you don't already subscribe to Cinema Image Gallery, click here to find out how to get a free trial.

Kite Activities for Summer with Omnifile

2010-06-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for summer activity projects for primary grade children, check out "Let's Go Fly a Kite," an article from the March/April issue of Instructor, available in full text on Omnifile. In this article, the writer suggests a number of activities that help with art skills, basic geography, and math, as well as providing a good starting point for discussing Chinese culture, an opportunity for shared learning, and a chance for kids to have fun.

The article "Kite Explorations," in the September 2006 edition of Science and Children, also offers recommendations for books that can be used to harness children's excitement about kites and connect that excitement to investigations relating to wind, technology, and the design of experiments.

You can find the full text of these articles, as well as many more ideas for summer activities for children of all ages, in Omnifile.

You can also find many more pictures of kites and other flying machines in Art Museum Image Gallery.

Dissertations added to Omnifile

2010-05-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

We have greatly expanded Omnifile's academic range by including abstracts and indexing to over 18,000 dissertations in the field of art. These will be included in Omnifile to begin with and then rolled out to the Art Full Text database. Patrons can also access the full text of any of these dissertations using the OpenURL link on each one.

We will be updating these dissertations on a monthly basis and will add more subjects as time goes on.

We hope that your patrons find this new feature of Omnifile useful, and that it will help with their research.

New resource: Links to full-text public-domain books and other materials

2010-05-13T04:14:00.000-07:00

Our Essay & General Literature Retrospective, Short Story Index Retrospective and Book Review Digest Retrospective databases now feature links to the full text of public-domain books and other materials available through the HathiTrust digital library.

HathiTrust is an inter-institutional repository of digitized books, which currently "houses" more than 4.6 million volumes, approximately 15 percent of which are public domain works.

H.W. Wilson Director of Product Management Ron Miller says, "Wilson's precise and granular indexing provides valuable discovery of individual stories and essays from the public domain books available through the Hathi Trust repository. Using Wilson's analytical indexing adds a new level of search and retrieval precision not found elsewhere."

You'll find some 3,700 links to full-text works on Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1905-1982; Short Story Index Retrospective: 1915-1983 features more than 1,330 links; and Essay & General Literature Retrospective: 1900-1984 features more than 3,320 links to full-text materials.

We hope these additional resources prove useful for your library and its patrons.

Happy Star Wars Day

2010-05-04T04:14:00.000-07:00

The enduring appeal of the original Star Wars trilogy is summed up very well in an article from Scientific American, February 1998, which reviews a Star Wars exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington. D.C.

The article highlights George Lucas's genius in creating a universe that featured "gleaming metal and overfriendly machines", but was also "ancient and battered, filled with characters drawn more from the imagery of medieval romance than from science fiction". The strange creatures with which Lucas populated this universe were also more "familiar from a trip to the zoo", all of which "remind us that what we are seeing is really not so implausible".

This article is available in full in Readers' Guide Full Text Select, and a range of images from the Star Wars movies can be found in Cinema Image Gallery.

May the Fourth be With You.

New podcasts!

2010-04-15T05:02:00.000-07:00

As promised in an earlier post, we have now added podcasts to our science databases. These podcasts, which take in a variety of subjects from black holes to bats and global warming to science in education, are also available to Omnifile and Readers' Guide database subscribers.

You'll find 198 podcasts on Applied Science Full Text, 276 on General Science Full Text, and 221 on Biological and Agricultural Index Plus, from such reliable sources as the Museum of Science, Boston and Earthsky.

Whether your patrons are interested in ocean currents, meteorites, or advances in making energy from waste, they are sure to find something to catch their ear among these excellent podcasts.

Art Museum Image Gallery adds historical political cartoons

2010-04-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Art Museum Image Gallery subscribers can now access a total of 571 high-quality images of political cartoon prints from the Library of Congress's American Cartoon Print Filing Series.

This series of images covers the years 1766-1876, taking in a range of topics from pre-revolutionary America through the presidency of Chester A. Arthur. The prevailing theme of the collection is the growth and development of the political process and its role in the governance of the United States. It takes in some of the great events in U.S. history, such as Secession, the Civil War, and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, as well as presidential elections, political scandals and gaffes, and more.

The Library of Congress suggests that the prints in this collection

"were used to advance political candidacies, attack individuals and ethnic groups, cast aspersions, promote ideas, and to introduce symbols, such as the eagle as a national emblem... and Uncle Sam... to a growing population, both literate and illiterate."

Images depict

numerous national and regional issues, including slavery, Reconstruction, U.S. economic and monetary policy, and more
Abolitionism and Anti-Abolitionism
stereotyping of ethnic groups such as Irish-Americans and African Americans, including text mimicking speech patterns
the Bank of the United States
the Catholic Church
the Constitution of the United States
Jack Downing (the original symbol of the American people)
political campaign symbols
tarrifs

This collection promises to be invaluable for researchers in media studies, American studies, U.S. history, political studies, graphic design, art, and art history.

It features etchings, engravings, lithographs, and wood engravings by artists and publishers such as

James S. Baillie
H. Bucholzer
John Childs
Edward Williams Clay
Currier & Ives
Nathaniel Currier
John L. Magee
Louis Maurer
Henry R. Robinson

Like all the other images in Art Museum Image Gallery, the images in this collection are rights-cleared for educational use, so you can use them freely in lessons, presentations, or projects in the classroom.

For more information or to sign up for a free trial of Art Museum Image Gallery, visit our website.

Oscar results added to Cinema Image Gallery

2010-03-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

We've updated Cinema Image Gallery to take account of the results of this year's Academy Awards. So if you're looking for pictures for a class quiz, topical slideshow, or montage of war movies that have won Best Picture, you'll find all the right labels in the database, ready to go.

Cinema Image Gallery has images from all of this year's nominees in the following categories:

Best Picture
Best Director
Best Actor/Actress
Best Supporting Actor/Actress
Best Costume Design
Best Original Screenplay/Best Adapted Screenplay

We have multiple images in each category, too, so you can find the one that best suits your needs.

Don't forget that all the images in Cinema Image Gallery are licensed for use in an educational setting, so use them liberally in art, history, drama, and social studies classes, as well as in your film and media classes.

A Decade on from the Bursting of the Dotcom Bubble

2010-03-10T05:23:00.000-08:00

According to some publications, today marks the tenth anniversary of the bursting of the dotcom bubble, when the price of tech stocks began to tumble and many companies went under.

A quick look in the archives reminds us that business and computing publications were aware of the impending crash: this article in Maclean's, 24 January 2000, says

...firms whose stock is overvalued because of the current mania for all things Internet should use those shares as currency to buy other companies while they still can. Otherwise, there's a risk they may "lose it" if and when the Internet bubble bursts and stocks like eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon.com return to earth.

Of course, we know that all three of these companies survived the crash and have gone on to be three of the most stable names in the era of Web 2.0. Other companies were not so long-lived. Despite the headline "No Bubbles Bursting Here", this article from Advertising Age, November 6, 2000, lists several information-exchange websites that no longer exist, had their domain names bought out by other companies, or exist in a completely different form today.

Although some articles, such as "The Next Bubble", from Technology Review, July/August 2008, suggest that "to the individuals who lived through the last Web bubble, this year's Web 2.0 ventures seem painfully reminiscent of the online companies of 2000", others take the view expressed in the name of an article from Computerworld, March 26, 2007, that "Consumer Demand Should Prevent Web 2.0 Bubble, Say Users, Analysts".

The articles cited and quoted in this post can all be located very easily in Omnifile Full Text, either the Mega Edition or the Select Edition.

Kathryn Bigelow wins the Oscar for Best Director

2010-03-08T09:09:00.000-08:00

What better way to mark International Women's Day than to celebrate the work of movie director Kathryn Bigelow, who yesterday became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director?

Bigelow was born in San Carlos, a rural suburb of San Francisco, on November 27, 1951. At an early age she loved horses and art, and initially studied art at the San Francisco Art Institute. She moved to New York City in approximately 1972 on a scholarship to the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum, and stayed in New York for the next 12 years. She crossed over into film-making when the artist Vito Acconci hired her to film a short piece to accompany a performance piece. Bigelow then won a scholarship to Columbia University's Graduate Film School, where she saw Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, as a double feature. She describes these movies as "a turning point in my film consciousness," and indeed, she describes herself as being interested in "high-impact, high-velocity movie-making."

Her movies include The Loveless (1982), Near Dark (1987), Blue Steel (1990), Point Break (1991), Strange Days (1995), and, of course, the 2010 Oscar winner for Best Picture, The Hurt Locker (2008).

This profile of Kathryn Bigelow comes from Biography Reference Bank, and the photos (and more like them) can be found on Cinema Image Gallery.

Listen and Learn!

2010-03-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

We're excited to announce the addition of 241 podcasts to our Arts and Humanities databases. These podcasts cover a variety of topics in fine art, music, architecture, film, writing, the classics, and more. Obviously we at Inside Wilson haven't listened to every single one yet, but we're particularly enjoying the series on Vermeer and the podcast "Balinese Music and Dance: Gamelan Mitra Kusuma," (because gamelan is a lot of fun to learn about).

So, if you have a subscription to any of these databases

you can browse the podcasts available to you by choosing "podcast" from the "document type" dropdown menu at the bottom of the main search screen. If you just want to see video podcasts, choose "video" from the "physical description" menu.

Science subscribers: don't worry. We will be adding podcasts to our science databases soon.

We really hope you enjoy this new learning tool.

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss

2010-03-02T05:17:00.000-08:00

Born in Massachusetts on March 2, 1904, Theodor Geisel was the only son of a prosperous German-American brewing family. He was intended to take over the business eventually, but Prohibition intervened and the family business was closed in 1920.

Geisel’s father took a job as the Superintendent of Parks, including the city zoo, and young Theodor was a frequent visitor to the animal enclosures, an experience that was to come out later in his cartoons featuring fantastical-looking animals.

After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1925, Geisel (who was by now signing his cartoons with his middle name, Seuss) toured Europe, then returned to the U.S. where he began his cartooning career in earnest. By the end of World War II, he had moved into writing and illustrating children’s books at a rate of about one per year.

The combination of bright pictures, simple and humorous rhymes, fun characters, and moral messages, have ensured that his work remains beloved by children and their parents all over the world, although he remained a private man throughout his life.

Ted Geisel died in 1991 at the age of 87. In 2004, the 100^th anniversary of his birth was celebrated in his hometown of Springfield with the unveiling of a memorial sculpture garden.

On his birthday each year, the National Education Association sponsors Read Across America Day, when adults and children engage in read-aloud activities.

Biography from Junior Authors and Illustrators, also available in World Authors, and Biography Reference Bank.

Just in time for awards season: new additions to Cinema Image Gallery

2010-02-26T08:06:00.000-08:00

If your library is planning any activities to tie in with this year's movie awards season, H.W. Wilson is here to help. Cinema Image Gallery is already bursting at the seams with posters, photos, and movie clips, and now we're adding 8,082 new images to the database.

Among the additions are

100 images from Twilight: New Moon

59 from True Blood

60 from Couples Retreat

47 from Avatar

47 from Where the Wild Things Are

47 from Sherlock Holmes

41 from Men Who Stare at Goats

39 from Invictus

39 from Nine

39 from Zombieland

36 from The Informant!

18 from Up In the Air

14 from District 9

Admittedly, some of these movies and shows are more award-worthy than others, but that just proves how all-encompassing the database is.

These new additions will be available to subscribers very soon. If you are already a subscriber, look out for them. Images like these are invaluable for patrons doing project work, looking for costume or interior design ideas, or just browsing for fun.

If you want to be a subscriber, why not try a free trial?

Presidents Day for Omnifile subscribers

2010-02-10T12:51:00.000-08:00

Although Presidents Day was originally designed to pay tribute to George Washington, it has often been expanded in recent years to include other presidents, and some states have officially included Abraham Lincoln in Presidents Day.

An article in Scholastic Update, Teachers' Edition, from January 1998, suggests that alongside Washington and Lincoln, the holiday should honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In your library:

Public libraries could run a poll to see which president their local community would like to see alongside Washington and Lincoln in the Presidents Day honor roll. One starting point for this project could be "A Leader From the Start," an article in U.S. News and World Report, June 2009. In this article, the writer discusses five presidents who have had the most far-reaching first 100-day periods in U.S. presidential history.

Elementary school libraries could take ideas from an article in the January-February 2007 edition of Instructor, in which teacher Trina Gunzel describes four of her favorite ideas for students to share what they have learned about Presidents Day.

And for other school libraries, the February 2008 edition of Arts & Activities has an article in which the writer outlines an activity that teaches mainstream and learning-disabled students and adults about the creation of busts throughout art history. The writer points out that holidays like Presidents Day are often over looked by art teachers, when in fact there is a wealth of presidential art material available.

Groundhog Day

2010-02-02T04:25:00.000-08:00

Although Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania enjoys one of the country's best-known Groundhog Day celebrations every year, other towns and communities around the nation have also made the day their own.

For example, since 1988, when Lieutenant Governor Bill Nichol officially proclaimed Unadilla the Groundhog Capital of Nebraska, the stuffed groundhog Unadilla Bill has been proferring his annual weather prediction on the main street of that small town, and has become the centerpiece of the Groundhog Festival.

Unadilla's festival usually takes place on the first weekend of February every year.

According to an article in the February/March 2005 edition of National Wildlife, however, the idea that groundhogs, or woodchucks, emerge in early February to check the weather might be incorrect. A biology professor in Pennsylvania has suggested that instead, male groundhogs wake up in February to initiate bonding sessions with potential mates prior to emerging from hibernation completely in March.

The information in this article comes from Omnifile Full Text Select and General Science Full Text. The photo is from Cinema Image Gallery.

Happy birthday Baryshnikov

2010-01-27T10:45:00.000-08:00

Russian-American ballet dancer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov is 62 years old today. Although he started studying ballet at the relatively mature age of 12, Baryshnikov attained high status as a dancer in a short space of time. In his late teens he became a soloist in Russia's acclaimed Kirov Ballet, and was one of its leading dancers by the time he was 20. Unhappy with the restrictions placed upon him by Soviet authorities, however, Baryshnikov defected to the U.S. in 1974, along with other prominent Soviet dancers of this time.

He is widely regarded as the best ballet dancer of his day, is a star choreographer, and has also achieved acclaim as an actor. His leading role in the Broadway play Metamorphosis (1989) earned him a Tony award nomination, and he recently appeared in several episodes of the HBO comedy Sex and the City.

The content of this post is from Biography Reference Bank, and some of the photos are from Cinema Image Gallery.

Sundance Film Festival

2010-01-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

Today marks the start of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Now an established part of the independent cinema calendar, there have been doubts about the festival's ability to turn up a box office winner in the past. An article from Variety, January 12-18, 1998, reminds us that

"all of the films picked up during the 1997 festival were commercial disappointments",

and that the only two commercial successes to come out of that year's festival--In the Company of Men and Kiss Me Guido--were picked up after the festival had ended.

By 2009, however, things had certainly turned around. According to an American Cinematographer article in April, last year's festival turned up such critical and audience favorites as Sin Nombre, directed by Adriano Goldman; An Education, directed by Lone Scherfig; and Push (now Precious): Based on the Novel by Sapphire, directed by Lee Daniels.

Articles come from Omnifile Full Text, Mega Edition and photos from Cinema Image Gallery.

ALA Midwinters Past

2010-01-16T12:46:00.000-08:00

To commemorate the ALA Midwinter Conference in Boston this weekend, we took a look through our databases to see how library journals have covered the event in the past.

An article cited in ERIC reminds us that in 1981 the technologies under discussion were

"microcomputers, videodiscs, and other forms of the newer technologies in school library media centers."

Twenty years later, Midwinter 2001 began to address an issue now familiar to librarians: how to position libraries as the information providers of choice when the Internet appears to offer so much. According to the symposium "Building the Virtual Reference Desk in a 24/7 World,"

"libraries must adapt traditional strengths of acquiring, describing, and serving information to an environment that is not bound by time or physical place, the virtual library without walls."

Now, in 2010, we can see that libraries and companies in the library sector have responded to this challenge with enthusiasm and inventiveness. Library patrons can now text a librarian, and will soon be able to tweet a librarian when they have a query.

Our own services have expanded to include a search widget that librarians and patrons can embed in their own Facebook pages, bringing the social networking and research worlds even closer together.

So why not make this Midwinter doubly social and twice as networked? If you don't already have a Twitter account, sign up for one now and follow conference news at #alamw10.

You can even follow us at HWWilsonCo.

Cinema Image Gallery makes the Booklist list of best reference sources, 2009

2010-01-08T07:26:00.000-08:00

According to Booklist's review,

"Researchers and fans wanting access to more than 152,000 high-quality film stills and related images copyright-cleared for educational use—as well as linked biographies and articles on actors, directors, films, and related topics—could do no better than Cinema Image Gallery."

You can read the full list on the Booklist website. It's a highly impressive list of resources. Cinema Image Gallery is in excellent company.

Katherine Paterson becomes the latest National Ambassador for Young People's Literature

2010-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Paterson will take over the role of National Ambassador for Young People's Literature from Jon Scieszka, who has held the post since 2008.

Did you know that Katherine Paterson was born in China? And that she is a two-time Newbery medalist and a two-time winner of the National Book Award?

You can read more about Katherine Paterson, and see more photos of her, in her autobiographical profile on our Junior Authors and Illustrators database.

Happy New Year from H.W. Wilson

2009-12-29T06:11:00.000-08:00

Soon it will be a new year here at the Bronx lighthouse, and we are working hard to bring our subscribers fresh content, new functionality, and special offers.

Did you know that the 10th edition of our acclaimed Junior Authors and Illustrators is on special offer through January 31, 2010?

Or that we will be adding a brand new database--Careers--to our Current Issues series in 2010?

Or that we have great prizes on offer when you participate in one of our events at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston, January 15-19?

If you want to learn more about these and other developments, please feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, or sign up to our Facebook page.