First Impression: An Interview With Author and Bibliophile Nicholas A. Basbanes

Nicholas A. Basbanes did not publish his first book until he was 52 but, in the ten years since, the former literary editor at the Worcester Sunday Telegram has given bibliophiles and librarians five books about books. The first, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (Holt, 1995), was a landmark commentary on book collecting that has sold 100,000 copies. The second, Patience & Fortitude (HarperCollins, 2001), named for the pair of lions that guard the entrance to the New York Public Library, explored the ways librarians and collectors have protected and housed their treasures throughout history, while describing libraries and book culture in general. Next came Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book-Hunter in the 21st Century (Holt, 2002), a spin-off book from the first book. Arriving after that was A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World (HarperCollins, 2003), an expanded section intended for Patience & Fortitude that looked at how books are preserved for succeeding generations. Borrowing from Ranganathan's third law of library science, Basbanes' recent book, Every Book Its Reader (HarperCollins, 2005), allowed him to draw on numerous taped interviews conducted for A Gentle Madness that were never used. His next work will be a centennial history of Yale University Press. The Lowell, Massachusetts, native spoke at Indiana University as a guest of its Medieval Studies Institute in October 2005, when William F. Meehan III sat down with the author at the Grant Street Inn in Bloomington

Ben Franklin, Printer: Selections From the Indiana University Lilly Library Collection

Ben Franklin’s career as a printer occupies an important part of a life distinguished by remarkable accomplishment. Often overshadowed by his scientific inventions and civic activity, Franklin’s pursuits as a printer reveal an industrious, clever, and resourceful business owner whose sway affected printing throughout colonial America, particularly from Philadelphia to Charleston. His work as official printer for Pennsylvania, beginning in 1730, demonstrates his gift for winning friends and influencing lawmakers, as well as his ability to deliver quality work. Typical of printers in Colonial America, Franklin also sold books, and the title page of his imprints is a clarion call to bibliophiles still today: “Printed and Sold by B. Franklin.” The second printer to set up shop in Philadelphia, Franklin became one of the trade’s leading members, his venture combining roles as type founder, papermaker, binder, and woodcut artist

The Importance of Cosimo de Medici in Library History

Cosimo de Medici, the aristocratic banker and statesman who enlivened philanthropy in Renaissance Florence, might have made his greatest contribution to the arts through his patronage of humanist libraries. Cosimo himself accumulated a superb personal collection, but his three major library initiatives were charitable activities and included Italy’s first public library, which made its way to the magnificent library founded generations later by one of his descendants

Voter apathy: why does it exist and what can be done to overcome it?

The purpose of this study was to ascertain why the stakeholders in the educational process do not participate in the annual school election and to identify and implement techniques that would motivate these stakeholders to go to the polls. The population of this study consisted of the direct stakeholders in the annual school elections of the Washington Township School District. A disc containing a listing of the individuals who voted in the April 15, 2003, school election was obtained from the Gloucester County Board of Elections. A disc containing a listing of employees who share one of the six zip codes assigned to Washington Township, Gloucester County, New Jersey, was obtained. These two files were then matched up to ascertain how many school district employees who live within the boundaries of the township actually voted. An interview was requested from everyone who did not vote in the last election and from the PTO Presidents\u27 Council. However, further study is needed to ascertain which strategy brought the voters to the polls

Joint demodulation of low-entropy narrowband cochannel signals

Introducation to cochannel signals: many receivers today operate in an interference-limited environment. In a dense signal environment, the performance of a receiver is limited by interference from multiple signals at the receiver rather than signal-to-noise ratio. In the interference-limited environment, there is a diminishing return from investing additional resources into improving traditional receiver parameters such as noise figure. Advanced processing techniques exist that can help recover information that would otherwise be lost using a single-channel receiver. This work investigates some of these techniques. Interference may originate from many sources, such as users on the same or adjacent frequency band, unintended emissions, and intermodulation. This work investigates interference from cochannel information bearing signals. Cochannel interference is commonly defined as the reception of two or more signals at the receiver overlapping in frequency and in time.USA

UB Knightlines Fall/Winter 2016

The UB Knightlines newsletter for fall and winter of 2016. This issue contains articles discussing winners of the UB Alumni Association's Distinguished Alumni Award, Alumni Association Scholarship winner Mendel Murray, professor Jeongkyu Lee’s Young Data Science program, president emeritus Richard Rubenstein and this book After Auschwitz, UB receiving a National Institutes of Health grant to expand research, SASD students winning third place in the Sherwin-Williams STIR Student Design Challenge, the opening of the new dorm University Hall, student Michael Asmerom a National Association of Black Accountants, professor Marsha Matto and SASD students work with couple to design beach home, faculty news, alumni news, books published by alums and faculty, and other campus and sports news

Sports Holdings in the Southeastern Conference University Libraries: Football as a Case Study

Of the twelve National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision conferences, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) has attained prominence. But how do the SEC’s university libraries fare when evaluated for their football holdings? While university libraries develop their collections mainly to support research and teaching functions, according to accepted collection development practice, the extent to which sports of local importance are represented in their collections is a subject given little attention in the professional literature. In order to help close the gap, this study evaluates the football holdings of the 12 SEC university library systems using the checklist method of each library’s Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) system from a remote location. The evaluation is meant to serve as a case study of sports holdings in the SEC libraries by using an authoritative checklist consisting of the best fiction and nonfiction football books. The checklist method, which compares a library’s holdings to an authoritative list, is an effective means of identifying collection strengths and weaknesses

Controlling Influence of Phosphocitrate In Vitro and In Vivo on Calcium Oxalate Crystal Formation and Growth

Calcium oxalate (CaOx) crystallization in the presence of phosphocitrate (PC) was studied by both in vitro and in vivo techniques. Crystals of the monohydrate (COM) and the dihydrate (COD) forms were generated under controlled conditions in a silica gel matrix. Our data indicated only COD crystals formed when PC was present, inferring that the COD to COM transformation was being impeded. COD crystals were smaller in size than controls and there was evidence of interpenetral twinning. An in vivo study using a rat bladder implant model noted similar findings. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed that implants recovered from PC treated rats had primarily COD crystals deposited, whereas both the surface and inner layers of encrusted implants from normal rats contained predominantly COM crystals. Infrared (IR) analysis confirmed the visual findings indicating quantitatively that there was a higher proportion of COD present on the implants recovered from the treated rats than in the controls. It is concluded that although total CaOx crystallization cannot be eliminated by PC, its action could assist in reducing the harmful nature of such crystallites in the urine

Does prospective mental imagery predict symptoms of negative affect and anhedonia in young people?

Adolescent depression is associated with unhelpful emotional mental imagery. Here, we investigated whether vividness of negative and positive prospective mental imagery predict negative affect and anhedonia in adolescents. 111 people from Israel completed measures of prospective mental imagery, negative affect, and anhedonia at two time-points approximately three months apart. Using three cross-lagged panel models, we showed once ‘concurrent’ (across-variable, within-time) and ‘stability’ paths (across-time, within-variable) were estimated, there were no significant cross-lag paths between: i) T1 prospective negative mental imagery and T8 negative affect (i.e., increased vividness of negative future imagery at Time 1 did not predict increased negative affect at Time 8); ii) T1 prospective positive mental imagery and T8 negative affect (i.e., reduced vividness of positive future imagery at Time 1 did not predict increased negative affect at Time 8); and iii) T1 prospective positive mental imagery and T8 anhedonia (i.e., reduced vividness of positive future imagery at Time 1 did not predict increased anhedonia at Time 8). Given high levels of attrition, future research should aim to explore these associations in a larger, more diverse population, as such data could inform on whether modifying earlier prospective mental imagery may influence later time/context-specific effects of prospective mental imagery on negative affect and anhedonia