On April 17, WKU’s graduating art students opened their Senior Show in the Kentucky Library and Museum’s third floor gallery. This exhibition features the work of 30 students presenting a representative body of work in the areas of graphic design, painting, ceramics, sculpture, art education, printmaking and weaving.
Under the direction of faculty member Kristina Arnold, the students arranged and installed the exhibition of their work. The show will run through May 17th.
Authors and creators want to tell, to see through words, and to be seen and heard. A new exhibit “Pages from the Past to the Present” focuses on the tools used to create those symbols, and offers some rare examples of papyrus and cuneiform, and other very early illustration and printing examples. The exhibit features the work of noted Kentucky authors Robert Penn Warren, Jesse Stuart, and Janice Holt Giles and includes antique typewriters and writing instruments.
More information.
TopSCHOLAR® is a now registered trademark of Western Kentucky University. The name is ours alone and signifies both a permanency and priority for The Research & Creative Activity Database of WKU. The process and the results indicate nearly a two-year effort by the Dean of Libraries Mike Binder and Associate Vice-President Sadiq Shah, with legal counsel. We appreciate the effort and are proud to have the library’s first registered service. TopSCHOLAR® continues to grow daily with the deposit of new content and the creation of new communities and series to house the content. Researchers around the world have used these resources. If you have any questions or want a series created for your department or unit, we will do it for you and upload your content! Call Connie Foster at 745-6151, or email: connie.foster@wku.edu. Thanks.
Connie Foster, Head
Library Technical Services
March 9, 2009
WKU Libraries has access now to the 20th edition of the Encyclopedia of Social Work through Oxford University Press. Go to TopCAT and click on the Linked Resource which takes you to http://www.oxford-naswsocialwork.com/. This e-resource provides access to all WKU students and faculty. It is part of Oxford Digital Reference Shelf and provides a quality resource for our growing online collections.
Connie Foster, Head of Library Technical Services
The Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education (AORE), the Wilderness Education Association (WEA), and the Western Kentucky University Research Foundation (WKURF) launched the Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership (JOREL) earlier today in San Diego, California at the 22nd Annual AORE Conference on Outdoor Recreation and Education. The three organizations have teamed together to create and manage this new peer-reviewed publication located at http://www.ejorel.com/. This announcement included the inaugural “Call for Papers.â€
The journal’s mission is to improve outdoor recreation, education, and leadership through the publication and dissemination of peer-reviewed manuscripts centered on professional practice, research, and theoretical discussions. Manuscript submissions are encouraged from authors inside and outside of academia to help improve research and practice with a goal of reducing the disparity between the two in the represented disciplines.
Relevant topic areas (centered on outdoor recreation, outdoor education, or outdoor leadership) for the journal include, but are not limited to: outdoor recreation, adventure recreation, outdoor education, outdoor leadership, pedagogy, administration, programming, risk management, wilderness medicine, certification, participant behavior, trends, diversity, training, and outcomes. Manuscript submission guidelines are found on the journal’s website.
The founding journal advisory council (representing AORE, WEA, and WKURF) includes: Raymond Poff, Ph.D., Western Kentucky University; Tom Stuessy, Ph.D., Green Mountain College; Eric Frauman, Ph.D., Appalachian State University; Marni Goldenberg, Ph.D., Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo State University; Bruce Martin, Ph.D., Ohio University; and Connie Foster, MLS, Western Kentucky University.
The Editor-in-Chief is Aram Attarian, Ph.D., of North Carolina State University. Raymond Poff, Ph.D., Western Kentucky University will serve as the journal’s Managing Editor.
The journal, hosted at WKU, uses resources available through TopSCHOLARâ„¢ http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ a University-wide, centralized digital repository dedicated to scholarly research, creative activity and other full-text learning resources that merit enduring and archival value and permanent access. TopSCHOLARâ„¢ uses the Digital Commons platform from Berkeley Electronic Press http://www.bepress.com
The Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education (AORE) http://www.aore.org/ provides opportunities for professionals and students in the field of outdoor recreation and education to exchange information, promote the preservation and conservation of the natural environment, and address issues common to college, university, community, military, and other not-for-profit outdoor recreation and education programs.
The Wilderness Education Association (WEA) http://www.weainfo.org/ promotes the professionalism of outdoor leadership through establishment of national standards, curriculum design, implementation, advocacy, and research driven initiatives.
The Western Kentucky University Research Foundation (WKURF) http://ored.wku.edu/ is organized to support Western Kentucky University efforts to promote the development, implementation, and coordination of extramurally sponsored programs involving research, instruction, public service, and to legally protect, manage and commercialize intellectual property resulting from research, scholarship and creative activities on behalf of Western Kentucky University.
For information, contact Dr. Raymond Poff at (270) 745-2498.
The Libraries celebrate the U. S. Constitution on Constitution Day, September 17. Follow the links on the web site to the National Archives and the Library of Congress for Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers, dates of ratification by the states, an interactive Constitution and a time line, among others.
TopSCHOLARâ„¢ surpassed the 1,000th mark today, reaching 1004 papers in The Research and Creative Activity Database of Western Kentucky University. What else? Over 12,000 downloads to date, graduate theses being routinely uploaded and the SelectedWorks personal researcher sites being created to increase the accessiblity of faculty works.
Do you want your productivity published in TopSCHOLAR? Do you need to publish and cannot find the right outlet? Tired of bad links and want permanent URLs? Check out digitalcommons.wku.edu and contact Connie Foster soon.
Posted Sept. 12, 2008
Connie Foster, Head
Library Technical Services
Locate the TDNet (Find e-journals and more) link on the left-column of the WKU Libraries Home Page (www.wku.edu/Library):
Does the library have the electronic version of Journal X? The database I used referred me to Journal ABC. Does WKU have it? My class has a group project this semester on stem cell research and public ethics. Can we get weekly email updates on the latest developments? And the answer is …YES.
TDNet, a powerful electronic journal management system has four features: the A-Z list of journal titles to which we have access and links to the databases where they are found; links to publisher web sites; a link to TOPCAT for additional information; and My TDNet, an alerting service for use by individuals or classes to track subject or journal specific contents weekly.
Create your own user profile by journals or subjects for which you want table of contents alerts with links to the articles as they are published.
What is this button? TOUR, an Open URL resolver, links a citation found in an indexing or abstracting database directly to the full-text access if available. The TOUR button signals a click to check for full-text access. 
As if that is not enough, Google Scholar displays WKU Link! Researchers can now “FindFullText@WKU†for Google Scholar hits when WKU has the cited work, thanks to TDNet and Google Scholar linking software.
Questions? Contact Connie Foster, Head, Library Technical Services (connie.foster@wku.edu)
Haiwang Yuan’s new book Princess Peacock: Tales from Other Peoples of China has been published!
China, the most populous country in the world, is also a nation of great diversity. In addition to the majority population of Han Chinese, there are 55 officially recognized national minorities–including Tibetan, Mongol, Manchu, Zhuang, Dai, and Gaoshan. The folklore of these minorities is often obscure and difficult to find in the English-speaking world, as is information about the people, their cultural histories, and their traditional customs. This book fills a gap by offering more than 50 representative folktales from China’s minorities, as well as background information on each of the ethnic groups.
Princess Peacock is a companion to Yuan’s The Magic Lotus Lantern and Other Tales of the Han Chinese, published in 2006. Carefully selected from the fathomless reservoirs of Chinese folklore, the tales from the books combined give the American reader a glimpse of the richness and diversity of a folk literature from an ancient and yet fast-modernizing China, which will definitely play an increasingly important role in world fairs, particularly after its successful hosting of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
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| Chinese Students in ethnic costumes |
Listed in Marquis’s 2009 edition of Who’s Who in America and currently working on his two-volume encyclopedia on Chinese ethnic groups, Yuan is also serving on the editorial board for and contributing to the five-volume Berkshire Encyclopedia of China.
Every year Dr. Brian Coutts, Head of Public Services at WKU, reviews the Best Reference Books of the past year. But not only does he review reference works, he also writes and contributes to reference works.
The Encyclopedia of 
Latin American History and Culture, is a monumental work and represents the best of scholarship on Latin America. It includes over 5000 articles, and over 3000 biographies inclusive of all periods from prehistoric times to the present. It features over 100 full-color photographs in addition to hundreds in black-and-white. 
Dr. Coutts, who has a PhD in Latin America History, wrote the main country article for Belize, and the article for the capital of Belize – Belmopan. In addition, he wrote biographies for the first three Prime Ministers of Belize – George Price, Manuel Esquivel and Said Musa – as well as shorter articles on New Orleans, Spanish Louisiana and other topics.
