A Treasury of Du Bois' Writings

As we begin this last week of Black History Month it is with great excitement that I blog about one of the library's most recent acquisitions. The Oxford W.E.B. Dubois is a 19-volume collection of writings by one of the great minds of the 20^th century. These works are on display in the library foyer, and all of these volumes are now available for checkout.

One thing I learned about this author and scholar while working with these books over the past week is that he was also a fiction writer. I have always associated Du Bois with titles such as The Souls of Black Folk, yet five books in this group are works of fiction.

Here's the complete list of works that comprise the Oxford Du Bois collection:

• The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1896)
• The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (Harvard Ph.D. thesis, 1896)
• The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
• John Brown (1909)
• Quest of the Silver Fleece ( 1911)
• The Negro (1915)
• Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920)
• The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America (1924)
• Dark Princess: A Romance (1924)
• Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (1935)
• Black Folk, Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race (1939)
• Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940)
• The World and Africa; and, Color and Democracy (1945, 1946)
• In battle for Peace: The Story of my 83^rd Birthday (1952)
• The Ordeal of Mansart (Volume I of The Black Flame trilogy, 1957)
• Mansart Builds a School (Volume II of The Black Flame trilogy, 1959)
• Worlds of Color (Volume III of the Black Flame trilogy, 1961)
• The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of its First Century (1968)

Check out a few photos of the Du Bois collection, as well as our main Black History Month display, on our Flickr.

Photos by Tiffany Walker

Gale Databases

As you may already know, we've been experiencing problems with our gale databases. The databases themselves are readily accessible, but when you click on links to content, print, email, etc., you are often taken to a logged-off screen.

We're trying to get this issue resolved, but until we do, please know that you have on-campus access to most of these databases through the Alabama Virtual Library. Click here to go to the AVL's list of databases.

(Gale databases include: Gale General OneFile, Gale Virtual Reference, Professional Collection, LegalTrac, General Reference Center Gold, Informe, Student Edition, Expanded Academic ASAP, Opposing Viewpoints, Academic OneFile, Literature Resource Center, Business & Company Resource Center, Contemporary Authors, Scribner's Writers Series, Twayne Authors Series, Biography & Geneology Master Index, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Health & Wellness Resource Center, Kids InfoBits, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Business Index ASAP.)

Notes on a Refrigerator Door

We've recently acquired a magnetic poetry kit for the library's staff refrigerator, and it is providing a great deal of amusement and inspiration. Some of the profound and not-so-profound creations to date include:

She illustrated volumes
beneath the curly sea.

Discovering language
is difficult
but haunting

Teach a dog to smell a man
as if to judge character

Question truth &
use wisdom.

We're collecting these gems and will post further selections here from time to time.

New Browsing Book: Haunted Halls

If you've been tracking the new additions to our Browsing Collection you may have noticed this one, Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses. This new volume by author and folklorist Elizabeth Tucker mentions one of Montevallo's most famous ghosts, Condie Cunningham.

Notwithstanding the tragedy of Ms. Cunningham's death, we were proud to see one of our own make it into this fascinating book. It's now available for checkout at your campus library.

Also available on our blog, Alan May's 2006 series of ghost-related posts and more.

Valentine's Day Book: My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekov to Munro

Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex, The Virgin Suicides) has recently compiled an anthology of 26 short stories by authors such as William Faulkner, James Joyce, Guy de Maupassant, Mary Robison, Eileen Chang, and Alice Munro. In an interview, Eugenides remarks, "The first thing you confront when you compile an anthology like this is the painful obligation to exclude wonderful work. The only way I could sleep at night was to remind myself it was for a good cause (the proceeds go to a non-profit organization, dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write). How did I choose? the way people choose their mates: for intelligence, beauty, humor, and a sense that they'll be around for the long haul."

He regrets that he was unable to get permission to include Annie Proulx's famous story, Brokeback Mountain. As one reviewer of the book states, "I recommend this collection with the notice that one not expect happily-ever-afters...some of the stories are disturbing, thought-provoking, and heartbreaking."

The title of the collection is taken from a poem by the Latin poet Catullus, 84 BC. A suitor jealously contemplates his lover's devotion to her pet sparrow and her period of mourning its death.

Carmichael Library owns many sources of Valentine inspiration. Several books titles that might motivate you to celebrate the day:

The Fifty Greatest Love Letters of All Time PN6140.LZ.A15
The Book Of Love: Writers and Their Love Letters PN6140.L7 B58
The Faber Book Of Love Poems PN6110.L6 G67

Or take a look through our dvd collection...West Side Story, Brokeback Mountain, A Man and a Women, Annie Hall, Last Tango in Paris...many choices representing the uplifting, poignant, sentimental, outrageous, sad experiences in which we humans get entangled.