Halloween Horrors from Art Suite

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

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

Since 2006, the Society of American Archivists have been marking American Archives Month by providing free resources for their members so that they can make visitors more aware of what archives have to offer.


Previous years' resources are available to download here.

The H. W. Wilson Retrospective Collection is an excellent set of resources that will bring out the best in any library's 20th-century collections, making them easy to locate and easy to make use of. Several of our retrospective databases also include links to full-text stories, books, essays, and more, expanding your library's resources without adding any extra volumes to your shelves.

Contact a sales representative if you are interested in any of these comprehensive, precise resources that greatly enhance the search capabilities of any type of library:

Applied Science & Technology Retrospective: 1913-1983
Applied Science & Business Periodicals Retrospective: 1913-1983

Art Index Retrospective 1929-1984

Biography Index Retrospective: 1946-1983
Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1905-1982
Business Periodicals Index Retrospective: 1913-1982
Education Index Retrospective: 1929-1983
Essay and General Literature Retrospective: 1900-1984
Humanities Index Retrospective: 1907-1984
Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984
Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981
Library Literature & Information Science Retrospective: 1905-1983
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982
Short Story Index Retrospective: 1915-1983
Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1983

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

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

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

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

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.