Images have been added to the Image Collection website focusing on photography of the 20th Century.

Photographers featured include:

• Ralph Gibson
• Mary Ellen Mark
• Margaret Bourke-White
• Robert Frank
• Cindy Sherman
• Edward Steichen
  

For more information about the Image Collection, or for assistance in locating images, contact the Image Collection staff.

More content has been added to the Image Collection website. 

Artists include:

• Lucas Cranach, the elder   
• Andy Warhol
• Joseph Cornell

Over the next few weeks, look for additional images of Islamic art, African art and Latin American art of the 20th Century to be added to the collection.

For more information about the Image Collection, or for assistance in locating images, contact the Image Collection staff.

Got a case of tip-of-your-tongue syndrome? The Reverse Dictionary might be an effective remedy, allowing you to describe a concept and get results about it. Let's say you're telling someone about the penalty Tomas Holmstrom got in the Stanley Cup playoff game the other night for interfering in the ... the ... you know, that part of the ice right in front of the goal. Reverse Dictionary to the rescue: entering "hockey goalie area" nets me (pun fully intended) the word "crease" and 100 other related terms that I can browse.

For your academic work, there are other tools the library offers that can help with this kind of thing, too: a thesaurus (Roget's and lots of other options at R. 423.1), a visual dictionary (R. 423.1 M167C1992), a thematic dictionary (Descriptionary, LPC R. 423.1 M133D), or a reference e-book collection like Credo for more substantial research.

But when you're trying to think of a term that you might not have dropped into casual usage since that philosophy class two years ago, it's nice to type in "German worldview" and be pointed to multiple definitions of "weltanschauung". And while I can neither confirm nor deny that it may be useful for crossword puzzles (a seven-letter word for hungry: p??ki?h) and Scrabulous, this may be a tip you want to keep to yourself.

Check out 2 of the recent additions to the Oxford English Dictionary, a recognized authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium.

girlcott, v.

Of a woman or group of women: to boycott.

1884 Argus (New Philadelphia, Ohio) 3 Apr. 3/7 The young women..have resolved to girlcott any young man that smokes or goes out of the theatre between acts. 1943 Kingsport (Tennessee) News (Electronic text) 12 July, The Cabinet wives girlcotted Peggy and lobbied at Jackson until the Secretary was forced to resign. 1987 K. LETTE Girls' Night Out (1989) 215 Julia wears no make-up, always meets her journalistic deadlines, girl-cotts products from South Africa. 2001 F. POPCORN & A. HANFT Dict. Future 192 Female tennis players have considered, but have not yet girlcotted, Grand Slam events that award more prize money to men.

hellzapoppin, adj.

Hectic, chaotic; extremely eventful, action-packed, exciting; ostentatious, flashy.

1945 Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune 27 Dec. 5/8 The Detroits floundered hilariously into the world championship in seven hellzapoppin' games. 1982 K. A. MARLING Wall-to-wall Amer. ii. 120 Their fields fairly crackle with the hell's-a-poppin' energy of great machines that reap and grind. 1994 Sight & Sound Oct. 49/2 As dull-witted and straitjacketed by cliché as it is visually hellzapoppin, the film may be a watershed moment. 1998 Time 23 Feb. 94/1 Bratby, the Kitchen Sink school leader of the 1950s, had a hellzapoppin love affair with a much younger Diane Hills, to whom he wrote letters.

The Oxford English Dictionary can be located in the DePaul Libraries' A-Z database list.

A great deal of content was added to the Image Collection website during the month of April, much of it focused on the art of Africa.  Images added cover:

• Christian Art of Ethiopia
• Art of the Baule (Western African)
• Art from Zimbabwe and South Africa, including work by members of the Ndau, Tonga and Tsonga cultures.

We have also added images of work by American artist Robert Rauschenberg and photographer Robert Frank.

For more information about the Image Collection, or for assistance in locating images, contact the Image Collection staff.

 

There’s a room on the third floor you may not know too much about. You know the one I am talking about, room 314. You’re not sure you are allowed to go in, yet you see other students in there but have no idea why they get to use that space with a whole desk to themselves, getting the materials brought to them instead of hunting through the stacks, and pillows - for their books. Or maybe you have come across a book located: “Lincoln Park Special Collection (3rd fl.) –non-circulating” with a call number that started with the prefix SPC, SPCN, or ARDFAC and asked “what does this mean?” or thought “why bother if I cannot check it out?”

This is why: the Special Collections and Archives, or SpCA as I fondly abbreviate it, is one of the hidden treasures in the John T.  Richardson Library. Special Collections refers to the books with rare or unique content, format, or subject focus. Our Special Collections contains over 21,000 volumes, including unique collections like the Lemke Napoleon Collection, the Bradford Dickens Collections, the Vincentiana Collection, or Faculty Publications. The Archives contain documents and materials from different organizations or institutions- including those of DePaul University- arranged in an orderly manner to aid patrons in their research. 

Now that you know the way to this hidden treasure here is why you should check it out (even though you can not check out the material). The books and materials you find here are great ways to boost your bibliography. There may be information or illustrations that are not found in the circulating collection. You can bring your laptop and digital camera to take notes and photographs of illustrations to insert into your paper. The overall experience of  appreciating books and the work that goes into them is well worth it.

And finally, gone will be the days of aimlessly wondering the stacks thinking “where is this book?” We will bring it to you!