Monday, February 25, 2013

New Database: Roper Center iPOLL database

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research iPOLL database is now available through the Cannavino Library website.  iPOLL contains over half a million questions and answers from polls conducted by the major polling organizations from 1935 to the present.  They also have large datasets available for downloading.

Video tutorials for iPoll are available.  iPoll also provides a Teaching Tools section with sample assignments.

The scope of the questions reported in iPoll cover almost all disciplines taught at Marist College.
  • Economic Issues/Policies :Business; Economy; Personal Finances; Social Security; Taxes; Work 
  • Education
  • Elections, Political Parties/Figures
  • Government Institutions : Congressional Approval;  Presidential Approval;  Role of Government; The Presidency; The Supreme Court 
  • Health Issues/Policies, Science, and Nutrition:  Health Care; Medical Research; Smoking
  • International Affairs/Crises/Wars:  Afghanistan; Europe;  Iraq; Latin America; Terrorism
  • News Media/Coverage
  • Personal Characteristics, Beliefs, and Lifestyles:  Evolution and Creationism; The Elderly; Family; Homosexuality; Leisure & Recreation; The Mood of America; Patriotism; Religion; Retirement; Sports; Science & Technology; Internet; Privacy; Space Exploration
  • Social Issues: Abortion; Alcohol; Crime; Energy; Ethics; Global Warming; Human Rights; Illegal Drugs; Immigration;Poverty; Race Relations; Women & Work; Youth  
  • US Defense & Foreign Policy: Defense Spending; Role of the United States in the World
From the Topics section of iPoll, you can click on  a sub-topic and see the relevant questions and responses.  We have added links to iPoll to the following Subject Guide Pages:

Business Administration Communication Criminal Justice
History Political Science Psychology
Public Administration Social WorkA-Z List










Friday, February 15, 2013

Recent Ebook Purchases

The Library recently purchased over 60 ebooks to add to our Ebrary database.  A sampling of the titles include:

   book cover    Born Together Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study by Nancy Segal

 book cover      Birth (and Death) of the Cool by Ted Gioia

book cover     Environmental Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing by Frank Spellman

  book cover   Handbook of Youth Mentoring edited by David DuBois and Michael Karcher

 book cover    Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas edited by J.K.Holzgrefe and R. Keohane

book cover    Online Social Networks: Identity, Community, and Culture in the Digital Age         edited by Z. Papacharissi

  book cover   Philosophy and Love: From Plato to Popular Culture by Linnell Secomb

 book cover   Sacred Matters: Religion and Spirituality in Families by Wesley Burr, et. al.

book cover   Social Media Reader edited by Michael Mandiberg

   book cover  Theatre Censorship: From Walpole to Wilson by David Thomas, et.al.

 book cover   Visions of the Land: Science, Literature and the American Environment... by Michael Bryson

book cover   Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Couples and Family Relationships edited by G. Karantzas and P. Noller



Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Jstor Register & Read now cover 1,200 journals



Jstor has expanded the Register & Read  program we wrote about last October.  That pilot program covered 75 titles, and allowed anyone with a free Jstor account to read and add to a reading shelf up to 3 items in journals not under subscription by Marist College.  The program has now been expanded to cover 1,200 out of Jstor's approximately 1,600 titles. To learn how to use Register & Read, please view this Jstor Video.

Friday, February 1, 2013

New Exhibit - Hidden Treasures

The Archives and Special Collections is mounting a new exhibit in the Steel Plant Art Gallery.  "Hidden Treasures: Photographers and the Lowell Thomas Papers" will be on display from February 7th through March 2nd.  Please join us for the opening reception on February 7th from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.  Light refreshments will be served.

This exhibit displays the work of four photographers from the Lowell Thomas Papers. Frank R. Roberson was a prolific early travel lecturer. Lowell Thomas’s “With Allenby in Palestine and With Lawrence in Arabia” made him world famous. Harry Chase was a pioneer photographer whose innovations enthralled audiences. Lowell Thomas, Jr. was one of only a few to take photographs of Tibet and the Dalai Lama before the invasion of Communist China. The remarkable photography within the collection is truly a hidden treasure.


Lowell Thomas’s remarkable life began in the gold mining boom town of Cripple Creek, Colorado.  An ambitious term of collegiate study earned him two Bachelor’s degrees from Valparaiso University in two years and then a Master’s degree from the University of Denver while he worked as a newspaper writer. From there he moved on to the Chicago Kent College of Law, and then to Princeton University, where he taught while pursuing his law degree. In Chicago he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Evening Journal and gained notoriety for exposing a man attempting to blackmail a number of wealthy Chicago industrialists – men who provided the capital for the Lowell Thomas Travelogues.


In 1917 his fledgling career obtained him ambiguous support from the U.S. government to create war propaganda. In August he married Frances Ryan and left for Europe where he toured the Western Front and found it insufficient for a travelogue. When he heard of General Allenby’s campaign in Palestine he jumped at the opportunity and sped off to the Middle East where he met T. E. Lawrence in Jerusalem in February 1918. Fran Thomas stayed in Italy where she worked with the Red Cross, was shot at while touring the front and arrested as a spy for taking photographs.


Thomas returned to America in 1919 where he gave his travelogue performance at the Century Theater and Madison Square Garden in New York. British theater promoter Percy Burton brought him to London where “With Allenby in Palestine and With Lawrence in Arabia” became an enormous hit. Thomas then took his travelogue on tour through Australia and New Zealand while others performed the lecture throughout Canada. Keen to build upon his early success, Thomas returned through Malaya, Burma and India where he and Chase gathered material to create “Through Romantic India.”


Lowell Thomas is remembered mostly as an American radio news broadcaster from 1930 to 1976, first on the NBC and then the CBS radio network. He was also an author of more than 50 books and countless newspaper and magazine articles, a noted speaker who for much of his life traveled widely on the national lecture circuit, a world traveler, filmmaker, entrepreneur and friend and associate of many of the most influential people of the 20th century.

Lowell Thomas in Petra, 1918.