Archive for Justin Sovine

23 Oct 2011
To be Technical

Tales from the teche – Internet Librarian 2011

Brown pelicans at Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey

Brown pelicans at Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey

I just returned from Monterey California where once again librarians gathered from all over the country to discuss the latest in technology that affects our work and our world.

As in most years, there were a couple of hot topics that seemed to dominate the convention.  This year, the topics were e-books and Google (and other search engine issues)

E-books have been a hot topic at the HUC-JIR library too.  We’ve been exploring  the many challenges of adding e-books to our collection.  The number of options is rather mind-boggling.  I’m very curious if and how our readers read e-books.  Do you read them at the your computer? download to a reader? or a tablet? Buy from a bookstore? Checkout from your public library? Do you read fiction or non-fiction in a e-book? is it a different experience?  Enquiring librarians want to know!

But what I really learned the most about is news about Google; some fun, some scary.

Beginning with the fun stuff.  Google has a new feature called ngrams.  They taken their massive collection of digitized books and indexed many of the words over time.  You can map how word usage has changed over time.  For example, this graph shows how mentions of Jews, Hebrews, and Israelites have appeared in literature from 1800-2000.

Another interesting feature is public data You can access many different sets of data about population, retail, health, energy, economy, etc. and create charts and graphs to save and export.

Now onto the scary. Big Brother is not only watching you, he is selling data about you to many buyers.  Many different companies (including Google and Amazon) track your online activity; what you search, where you click.  One way to find out who is tracking you is by looking at www.Ghostery.com  The business model for google is that you are the product that they sell to advertisers.

This not only affects the advertising that appears on the sidebars, but your actual search results.  Google remembers your search habits and delivers results based on that history.  So if you and a dozen of your friends do the exact same search, you will get very different results. And probably, the first 100 or so results will have be sophisticated spam pushed to the top by companies that specialize in SEO (search engine optimization) companies.

Some options for “cleaner” tracking free searching are: DuckDuckgo, Scroogle, or Blekko.

I’m hoping to be able to implement some of the other tips and tricks I learned into the library website.

Sheryl

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14 Sep 2011
New in the Library

On the Cost of Scholarship, or: There is No Garage Sale @ Brill

I just initialed a purchase requisition for 14 books – not an uncommon act of an academic library’s director. The price tag: $3032.00 – less and less an uncommon price tag for scholarly publications. Why should you care? Because as I was excitedly reading the back-cover summaries and endorsements, pouring over their rich tables of content, and congratulating myself on once again putting our collection on the cutting edge of scholarship, it dawned on me that it may take a long time before anyone else gets excited over any of them, or over the total amounts that our library system invests in anticipating and meeting the needs of our faculty and students.

Why is that? I asked myself, and what can the library do to make you more aware, and to make the books more visible? But before I answer my own questions (not a Hokhmeh*, as my mother would say…), I am going to have you taste the titles, breath in the aromas of intriguing ideas, and hopefully, have you order from the menu:
Cover image of book
Studies in the History of Culture and Science: a Tribute to Gad Freudenthal. Edited by R. Fontaine, R. Glasner, R. Leicht and G. Veltri. Twenty two chapters on the history of science and the role of science in Judaism.

From Two Kingdoms to One Nation – Israel and Judah; Studies in Division and Unification. By Shamai Gelander.

Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein. Edited by A. Fantalkin & A. Yasur-Landau.

“From a Sacred Source”: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif. Edited by B.M. Outhwaite & S. Bhayro. Papers from the 2007 Cambridge conference

Spirituality in the Writings of Etty Hillesum: Proceedings of the Etty Hillesum Conference at Ghent University, November 2008. Edited by K.A.D. Smelik, R. van den Brandt & M.G.S. Coetsier.

The Same but Different? : Inter-Cultural Trade and the Sephardim, 1595-1640. By J. V. Roitman. The study challenges historiographical arguments that the Sephardim achieved their commercial success by relying on geographically dispersed family members and fellow ethnics.

Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides’ Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of His Geonic-Andalusian Heritage and Muslim Milieu. By M.Z. Cohen.

The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah, in Honor of Professor Louis H. Feldman.The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah, in Honor of Professor Louis H. Feldman. Edited by Steven Fine.

Legal Fictions: Studies in Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages. By S. D. Fraade

From Conquest to Coexistence: Ideology and Antiquarian Intent in the Historiography of Israel’s Settlement in Canaan. By K. van Kekkum.

Without Any Doubt: Geronides on Method and Knowledge. By S. Klein-Braslavy.

The Martyrdom of a Moroccan Jewish Saint.The Martyrdom of a Moroccan Jewish Saint. By S. Vance On the martyrdom of Sol Hatchuel, a Jewish girl from Tangier, that traumatized the Jewish community and inspired a literary response in Morocco and beyond.

The City Besieged: Siege and Its Manifestations in the Ancient Near East. By I. Eph’al.

History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy; v. 1: The Period of the Enlightenment. By Eliezer Schweid.

ARE YOU STILL READING THIS BLOG? WHY AREN’T YOU IMPATIENTLY TAPPING YOUR FINGERS ON THE CIRCULATION DESK SO WE CAN HURRY UP AND CHECK ANY OR ALL OF THESE BOOKS TO YOU?

Book cover for From conquest to conexsistence.Aha! Time to Jewishly answer my original questions – that is, with more questions – and make a few suggestions that will make such treasures more visible and accessible to you.

Did you know you can find out about our recent acquisitions when you log on to our website? Try: http://blog.huc.edu/aquisitions/LA/

Do you ever look at the bookstand at the entrance to our Joseph Reading Room? This serves as the “hot off the press” carousel to books that are even newer than the ones listed on the “New Books” page!

How about looking at the dust jackets’ displayed on our bulletin board? (Librarian lingo for book covers…) Everything up there is catalogued, shelved, and ready to go!

OK. Now it’s up to you to make me a true believer, allow me to complete the purchase request with a clean conscience and consider it money well spent.

Enjoy!

Yaffa

* Profound wisdom, in (sarcastic) Yiddish

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29 Nov 2010
Hanukkah

Gifts, Gifts, and more Gifts ?!

Yes, we’re approaching that most “consumerish” time of the year.  With my kids getting older and my house filled with “stuff” I’m wondering again at how to get through 8 nights of gift-giving.   A Different Light : the Hanukkah book of celebration by Noam Sachs Zions and Barbara Spectre has 8 great suggestions.

  1. Everyone gives/receives from everyone.  Assign each family member a night and have them give a gift to everyone at the table on their night.
  2. Homemade gifts. Arts, crafts, jewelry, personalized objects …
  3. “Secret Admirer” gifts.  Have everyone draw a name out of a hat to give a gift annonymously
  4. Gelt giving and Tzedakah.  Give each family member a gift of cash and invite them to donate a portion to tzedakah which you will match (or double or …)
  5. Grab bag. Have everyone bring a wrapped gift and then take turns drawing them out of a bag.
  6. Quality time gifts. Give certificates for spending time together doing a favorite activity.
  7. Edible food gifts. Bring homebaked (or not) goodies to a Hanukkah party, but also bring canned good to be donated to the homeless.
  8. Give of yourself.  Give certificates for services that you can do for family and friends (cleaning, shopping, cooking, etc.)

I’m sure that some of these ideas will help out at my house.  Wishing you all a wonderful Hanukkah filled with light!

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20 Sep 2010
New in the Library

Fall Harvest from Israel

With the new budget year come new books from Israel. The numbers and the topics of books being published in Israel never cease to amaze me. If you are interested the statistics, I invite you to log on to link to the statistics published annually by the Jewish National and University Library: http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/eng/lgd-statistics-2010.html

Here are some new arrivals to our library in no particular order:

המאבק על הזיכרון/ דן לאור. עם עובד, 2009

A collection of essays by one of the leading scholars of Israeli literature, discussing the works of David Shimoni, Avraham Shlonski, Shai Agnon, Haim Hazaz and many others.

(PJ 5021 L3.5 2009)

 

חרב פיפיות בידם: אקטיביזם צבאי בהגותה של הציונות הדתית / אלי הולצר. מכון הרטמן ואוניברסיטת בר-אילן, 2009

Military activism in the thought of Religious Zionism, discussing the ideologies of Rabbis Reines, Kook and Tamaret, with an extensive bibliography on the subject. (DS 150 R3.2 H6.4 2009)

 

חסד חילוני / דנה פרייבך-חפץ. רסלינג, 2009

A discussion of the possibilities of “secular grace”: a journey through the writings of Western philosophers such as Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, Buber, Levinas, as well as through the writings of contemporary Israeli authors. (BJ 1531 F7.4 2009)

 

מדרש במה: קבוצת התיאטרון הירושלמי / עליזה עליון ישראלי. ידיעות אחרונות, 2009

The story of The Jerusalem Theatre Group founded in 1982 to give a stronger voice to Jewish culture and to women in Israeli society. The participants created performance art based on their study of Midrashic materials and their investigation of the Hebrew language. The book includes four plays and the process by which they were created and staged: Beruriah, Esther, Sarah and Sotah. (PN 2919.6 J5 E5.4 2009)

מדרש נעמי: נעמי שמר – המקורות היהודיים בשירתה / אברהם זיגמן. יד יצחק בן-צבי, 2009 .

A study of the Jewish sources of Naomi Shemer’s songs: Biblical, Midrashic & Talmudic allusions in many of her songs are presented in annotated texts, including a broad discussion of Jerusalem of Gold and its roots in biblical verses. The book is illustrated by Ruth Tzarfati. (ML 345 I 8.5 Z5 2009)

 

השמיעיני את קולך: עיונים במעגל השנה ובפרשיות השבוע – ספר העשור ל”קולך” / עורכת רחל קרן. קולך וראובן מס, 2009

 A selection of readings in the Jewish calendar and Torah portions, celebrating ten years of publication of “Kolekh” – a forum for religious women. Each chapter in the book covers commentaries and other writings addressing the Torah readings of a specific month in the Jewish calendar. (BM 157 H3.8 2009)

 

In Her Voice: an Illuminated Book of Prayers for Jewish Women/ Enya Tamar Keshet. Maggid Books, 2010.

The book contains a collection of twenty eight prayers and tehinot exclusively recited by women, supplemented by texts of Jewish sources. Richly illustrated by the author in the style of Lisbon Judaica manuscripts of the 15th century. (S.C. BM 667 W6K4.7 2010)

 

Georiopolis/ Dror Guez. Petach Tikvah Museum of Art, 2009.

A catalog of an exhibition that introduces the voices and images of the Christian Arabs as an ethnic minority in Israel and as a religious-ethnic minority amongst the Muslim Arabs.

Georgiopolis, a.k.a. al-Lydd, Lydia, Lod becomes a symbol of the destruction and exile experienced by many Christian Arab inhabitants of Lod, following the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.  Hebrew, English & Arabic texts.

שנה טובה ומבורכת!

 

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