Let’s Talk About It: Muslim Journeys

All of the Muslim Journeys events below will be held in Concordia University’s Buenger Education Center.

1.       September 26, 2013, 7:00 pm:  Immigrants and Spiritual Pluralism in America and The Experiences of a Muslim Immigrant. 

Dr. Butler, author of Religion in Colonial America, will provide us with historical background on the development of religion in America.  He reminds us that we as a people have always been religiously diverse; religious pluralism is a central part of what defines us as Americans.  As each new wave of immigrants settled in our communities, new challenges for understanding these new belief systems presented themselves.  The First Amendment and the unique protection it provides nurtured a “spiritual pluralism unlike that found in any society on either side of the Atlantic or Pacific” (Religion in America, p. 141). 

Dr. Bruce Corrie will then present a few demographic highlights of immigrants in our own community.  Dr. Corrie will then introduce Dr. Odeh Muhawesh, CEO and successful business leader from Plymouth, Minnesota, will then tell of his experiences as a new immigrant to the Twin Cities.  Over the past 26 years, Dr. Muhawesh has founded several very successful businesses and established a strong record of growing revenue and developing competitive products for software and service companies.  He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Theology from International Theological Seminary, specializes in theology and modern Middle Eastern history, teaches at the University of St. Thomas and is an associate of their Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center. 

The remaining programs will be book-talks based on the following titles.  Dr. Debra Beilke and/or Professor Theresa FitzPatrick will introduce the book with a short summary and a few readings followed by an opportunity for us to discuss the book.  When possible, this will be followed by the personal story of an immigrant from a Muslim county and/or a panel discussion by our students. 

2.       October 2,  10:30 am: In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar,

3.       November 12, 7:00 pm:  Persepolis:  The Story of aChildhood, by Marjane Satrapi

4.       February 11, 2014 7:00 pm:  House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East,  by Anthony Shadid

5.       March 5,  10:30 am:  BrokenVerses, by Kamila Shamsie

6.       April 8, 7:00 pm:  Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, by Fatima Mernissi

For more information, see this link: http://libraryguides.csp.edu/muslimjourneysbooks

 

 

Recent court decisions of interest to libraryland

Updates on some recent court decisions:

The Google Books lawsuit:  Years ago, Google started the “Google Books” project, an effort to scan 130 million books from libraries worldwide by 2020 (you can read more about it and its relevance to libraries here).  There was no controversy about Google scanning pre-1923 books no longer under copyright, but some objected to Google scanning out-of-print books that were still protected by copyright law.  Just recently, “a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said Circuit Judge Denny Chin prematurely certified a class of authors without first deciding if the ‘fair use’ defense under U.S. copyright law allowed Google to display snippets of books.”  (from Reuters)  John Dvorak, writing at PCMag.com, comments: “This is not over yet. The Author's Guild is going to sue Google over the fair use standard. This should, once and for all, give us some definitions of fair use that we can all benefit from. As far as the Author's Guild is concerned Google abuses its scans by letting people read snippets of the copyrighted books.” (link to his piece here)

Apple E-Book lawsuit:  Not long ago, Amazon.com had priced new e-Books at $9.99, and had a virtual monopoly on the e-Book market.  This led Apple to work with publishers so they could overcome this advantage using an “agency [pricing] model” (mentioned on this blog here).  Just recently, the U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan “sided with government regulators' contention that Apple joined five major book publishers to gang up [on] Amazon.com in a price-fixing conspiracy that caused consumers to pay more for electronic books.”  Words of the late Steve Jobs influenced the federal judge in determining that “Apple Inc. milked the popularity of its iTunes store to form an illegal cartel with publishers to raise electronic book prices.” (from the A.P.)  Apple denies any wrongdoing, and Ankur Kapoor, antitrust lawyer for the law firm Constantine Cannon, thinks Apple may win its appeal. He contends that Jobs may have simply understood the industry dynamics and cut smart deals – and that he did not necessarily get all the publishers to agree to raise prices, a practice known as "horizontal price fixing" (from A.P. article and Joab Jackson at Computerworld.com)  

Image credit:  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60588258@N00/3293465641 

Articles linked to in post:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/01/uk-google-books-idUKBRE9600MA20130701

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421377,00.asp

 

http://www.jsonline.com/business/national/ny-judge-apple-conspired-to-raise-ebook-prices66794269e4244c6f97d4a1fc1b7e68bf-214894741.html

 

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240704/US_antitrust_ruling_could_temper_Apple_39_s_revolutionary_zeal

Using PubMed? Enter From The CSP Library Site To Take Advantage Of Our Full-Text Holdings

PubMed is a great place to do research on medical and health sciences topics. The PubMed interface provides a lot of added value with its Related Citations area and its use of MeSH Subject Headings, which provide a controlled vocabulary that you can use to conduct more thorough and authoritative searches. But there are also many links that are unclear, difficult to understand, and which lead to dead ends or sites asking you to pay for content. You don't have to pay for the content! And now, the CSP Library offers integration with its full text holdings on every single PubMed citation in the form of our Get It button:

Look for the following button in the top right corner of your screen:

When you hit the Get It button, the citation you're interested in will be searched against our full text holdings for a match. When a match is found, a link to the article will be provided. When no match is found, use the "Request via InterLibrary Loan" link to place a request via a prepopulated form which our InterLibrary Loan staff will work to fill from surrounding libraries. InterLibrary Loan requires a one-time registration process the first time you use it.

Most importantly, in order to search in an environment which has this CSP-specific functionality, you must use the link for PubMed provided at the Library's Website!!! It is a custom URL which includes info which identifies us to PubMed and includes our Get It button. Find it on our Databases lists and in our Health and Science Subject Guides.

The direct URL is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?otool=mncustplib