The Brandeis University Libraries own one of the largest collections of original Honoré Daumier lithographs. A gift of Benjamin A. and Julia M. Trustman in 1959, the 3,872 lithographs are part of the Special Collections of the Libraries. Due to their fragility, value and age, they remain locked away, safe from damaging dust and light. Thirty lithographs at a time are placed on a semester-long display in the main library, the only time the lithographs are easily accessible to the public. Some lithographs, because of their size and rarity, are never on display.

For years the Libraries have wrestled with the problem of protecting the lithographs yet making them accessible to the public, researchers, students and art enthusiasts alike. But through the use of technology and the Web, this will no longer be a problem. The Libraries have received one of the eighteen 2001 National Leadership Grants awarded this year by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for Preservation or Digitization. The two-year grant awarded was for the amount of $205,000. Through this funded two-year project, the Libraries will catalog and digitize their Daumier lithographs, and create a related Daumier web site that includes annotated bibliographies to Daumier and nineteenth-century France, as well as links to other Daumier web sites.

Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) was a French lithographer, painter, and sculptor who gained wide notoriety for his social and political commentary on the monarchy, politicians, and the middle class. Daumier was witness to three revolutions (1830, 1848, and 1871) that transformed France from a monarchy to a republic. He was an ardent Republican and used his artistic skills to comment upon the repressive regimes that ruled France during the nineteenth century (Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III) before the Republic was established. He endured censorship throughout his career and was even sentenced to six months in prison for his anti-monarchy lithograph titled Gargantua, published in La Caricature in December 1831. At his peak, Daumier was producing 8 lithographs per month, which were published in some of the most widely read periodicals of the time.

Daumier was one of the earliest users of the lithographic process, which was invented in Germany in 1798. Lithography had a difficult time being accepted as a legitimate technique, let alone as a "high" art form. It was commonly used for commercial and popular purposes like advertising posters. Use of the technique by respected artists of the nineteenth century brought some prestige and acceptance to lithography. In addition to Daumier, European artists using lithography included Goya, Delacroix, Degas, Whistler, and Toulouse-Lautrec; American artists included A.B. Davies, George Bellows, and Currier & Ives. In the twentieth century, lithography finally found a respected place among fine art techniques and is now seen as an important technique with unique expressive capabilities.

Honoré Daumier’s lithographs are studied for their artistic worth, their social commentary, and their value as a primary document to nineteenth-century France. In two years, when the digitization and cataloging of the Daumier lithographs is complete, an incredible resource will be available both for the Brandeis community and beyond.  

They hail from China, India, and Indiana. They study Health Care, International Finance, and Music (including a rash of composers over the past few years!). They are the graduate students who grace the Main Library's Information Desk.

The Information Desk Assistants at Goldfarb Library are the first line of contact with students, faculty, and staff who have all sorts of information needs, from the ubiquitous "where are the restrooms" to finding the Physical Quality of Life Index for Nigeria in 1972. The Information Desk Assistants "triage" the questions, answering directional or brief informational questions and passing complex queries that take longer to answer on to the Reference Librarian in the Research Consultation Office.

Information Desk Assistants can help you find a book in the library using LOUIS or can find a publisher's address from the Literary Market Place or from the Web. Their efficient handling of quick questions enables the Reference Librarians to spend uninterrupted time with an undergraduate student who is beginning a research paper or a patron who needs to track down hard-to-find data. This two-tiered model of reference service, begun in 1990, has become known in the library and information science literature as the "Brandeis Model."

Staffing the Information Desk with graduate students of diverse backgrounds is in the best interest of library patrons. Students sometimes feel more comfortable approaching a fellow student rather than a Reference Librarian. International students and students of color also might find the library a more welcoming place with varied faces and accents at the Information Desk. Many Desk Assistants chose to work at the Information Desk because they like helping people. As Cheryl Ciesielski, a first-year PhD student in Psychology stated, "I like working here. I get to see people and work with people; it’s not just sitting in front of a computer all day." Reena Gupta, a Master’s student in the Sustainable International Development Program concurred, "I’ve actually made friends ... I got my apartment through someone I met at the desk!"

The library staff is enriched by interaction with the Information Desk Assistants as well. We exchange cookie recipes, trails to hike, and the best financial web sites. "I learned a lot about doing my own research from the training I received," noted Cheryl Ciesielski. Reciprocally, Reference Librarians and patrons benefit from graduate student expertise when a question in their subject area arises.

After the recent terrorist attacks and ensuing war, Reference Librarians and graduate student assistants have shared their perspectives and feelings. If not from a graduate student, how might the librarians have known that a recent Brandeis graduate who wears a headscarf was afraid to leave her apartment in Waltham the week after September 11th? We received email from former Information Desk Assistants in New York and Cairo with wishes for global peace.

Communicating during this time, and during more normal times, has built friendships and community, which is integral to the Brandeis experience. As Reena Gupta put it, "It's just been a great experience. We've formed a small community among the students who work here."  

Several years ago when introducing undergraduates to the Web of Science in their Library Intensive courses, I noticed that their eyes would glaze over when I discussed the beauty of entering a citation to a journal article and with a click finding all the authors that had subsequently cited that article. For them it’s not personal -- they can’t find themselves in the database. But inevitably, as the students filed out of the classroom, the professor would fall back behind the group, and in a casual but passionate way ask me if I could please show them how to trace their own works through the Web of Science. Now when I teach this tool to undergraduates, I enter the faculty member’s name into the database. The energy generated from the back of the room, as the faculty member enthusiastically asks questions, is often sufficient to rouse the undergraduates as well.

The Web of Science first began as a print source in the 1960s under three separate titles, Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Even then, this tool generated excitement and controversy. At its best, the Web of Science illustrates the conceptual relationships between scholarly documents and provides unique insight into the process of scholarly communication. Controversy arose, however, when these citation indexes were used to evaluate scholarly work and provide data for institutional and departmental decision making. One study found that 35 percent of biochemistry departments and 60 percent of sociology departments surveyed had used citation data from this tool for decisions regarding hiring, promotion, and salaries.¹ Appeals of tenure decisions have sometimes been based on comparing citation data between those awarded tenure and those denied tenure.² Data from the Web of Science has also been used to compile the annual Journal Citation Reports. This publication influences journal prestige and library purchasing decisions, and it indirectly affects scholars, who are sometimes judged by the prestige of the journals in which they publish.

Tracing Citations, sure, but what the heck is "bibliographic coupling" and is it safe?

A citation index allows you to enter a known journal article into the database, and it identifies subsequent articles that have cited that article. The Web of Science indexes more than 8,000 scholarly journals, along with the items in the bibliographies of each of these journals. With its evolution onto the Web, this tool now provides users with the ability to perform "bibliographic coupling." Better than a dating service, bibliographic coupling identifies and then ranks articles in the database according to the number of references they have in common with your article.

The Web of Science is also beginning to link citations to full text articles. Though many librarians and scholars are calling for a universal citation database with full text links to all electronic journals, this vision is still just that. We are several years away from a more comprehensive compilation of full-text electronic journals linked together through their cited references, but the ability to go to full-text articles directly from the Web of Science is one of the first steps in this long process. More information about which journals Web of Science currently links to in full text can be found here, and information about links to patent data and GenBank (not for the faint of heart - everything you wanted to know about the Web of Science) can be found here.

¹ Hargens, Lowell L and Howard Schuman. "Citation counts and social comparisons: Scientists’ use and evaluation of citation index data." Social Science Research v. 19 (Sept. '90) p. 205-21.

² Wade, Nicholas. "Citation analysis: A new tool for science administrators." Science, 188(4183):429-432, May 2, 1975.  

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Robert D. Farber University Archives &
Special Collections Department,
Brandeis University Libraries

2nd Floor, Main Library Building
October 2001 through January 2002
Mondays through Fridays 9:00 to 5:00

For more information please call 781-736-4701

Julian Brown has been the University Photographer at Brandeis since 1983. This exhibit displays a sample of Julian's favorite images. Some images capture the essence of Brandeis as an institution of higher education. Other images capture a side of the campus seen only by those who acknowledge the simple beauty found in the shadows of it's buildings and trees. But all the images represent Brandeis University as seen from a photographer's view.  

The library has changed since you were in school. This regular column from the Reference Department provides you with a tachydidactical way to increase your library I.Q. in these busy times.

Test your skills! Name that tool!

What electronic tool would you use to answer the following questions?

1. I’m working as a consultant for Oliver North (darn these University salaries ...). He swears he gave some papers to his secretary that were a handwritten record of his January 22, 1986 meeting in London with Dick Secord and Manucher Ghorbanifar on some sort of arms for hostages arrangement. He wants me to find a transcript of that meeting. Can you help? Give up? (The answer will appear in a pop-up window.)
2. My mother swears she saw my name mentioned in the New York Times - but she can’t remember if it was last week or last year. The only other publication she reads is the Korea Times, so it’s possible she got them confused. How can I find my name in the New York Times going back a few years, not to mention the Korea Times? Give up? (The answer will appear in a pop-up window.)

Leslie Stebbins, Reference Librarian and Coordinator of the Library Intensive Instruction Program in the Main Library has just published Work and Family in America: A Reference Handbook (ABC-CLIO, 2001). This reference book offers a comprehensive overview of the overlapping worlds of work and family, and includes bibliographies, statistics, recent legislative and legal information, relevant internet resources, a directory of work- family organizations, and other useful information.

Darwin Scott, Creative Arts Librarian, recently sent off to the Italian publisher Libreria Musicale Italiana the camera-ready copy of his 307-page edition of For the Love of Music: Festschrift in Honor of Theodore Front on His 90th Birthday. This book contains twelve articles (including one by Brandeis Professor Emeritus Robert L. Marshall) to celebrate the life and career of the noted and still active music antiquarian who founded Theodore Front Musical Literature, Inc. in Los Angeles.

Vera Lampert Deák, Music Catalog Librarian, recently completed two chapters of the 20th-century volume in the series History of Music of Hungary focusing on Béla Bartók’s activities and accomplishments as an ethnomusicologist. These chapters include an account of Bartók’s discovery of the rich, and then practically unknown, musical tradition of the Hungarian countryside, his folksong collecting trips, his method of organization and analysis, and his transcriptions and folksong publications. Vera is also presently working on a critical edition (prepared form manuscript sources) of Bartók’s 85 folksong arrangements for solo voice and piano for the new Complete Edition of Bela Bartók’s Compositions, to be published by the Budapest Bartók Archives.  

• Anne-Marie Cantwell and Dianna diZerega Wall. Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. Yale UP, 2001.

Under the teeming metropolis that is present-day New York City lie the buried remains of long-lost worlds and remnants of nineteenth-century New York that reveal much about its inhabitants and neighborhoods. The authors weave Native American, colonial, and post-colonial history into an absorbing, panoramic narrative. Cantwell and Wall raise interesting questions about the nature of cities, urbanization, the colonial experience, Indian life, the family, and the use of space.

• Gerald W. McFarland. Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918. U of Massachusetts P, 2001.

Before it came known as a center of bohemianism, Greenwich Village was a mixed-class, multiethnic neighborhood where Villagers often clashed on their differing expectations about what constituted proper behavior in public spaces. McFarland describes the major groups living in the Village between 1898 and 1918 - Italians, African Americans, Irish, well-to-do Protestants, among others - and connects the changes that took place in the neighborhood to transformations taking place in American society at large.

• Edward T. Linenthal. The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory. Oxford UP, 2001.

Linenthal’s book is both poignant and provocative, an unforgettable look at how Americans have responded to one of the darkest days in our history. The author explores the ways Oklahomans, and American culture at large, have tried to make sense of this horrific event. It contains over 150 personal interviews with survivors, family members of those murdered, and rescuers, and it portrays the aftermath of the bombing that extended from Oklahoma City across the country and throughout the world.

• Nicholas Orme. Medieval Children. Yale UP, 2001.

Orme presents a history of children in England from Anglo-Saxon times to the sixteenth century, revealing their central importance for medieval society. By looking at the significance of birthdays, the misfortunes of childhood, the oral culture of medieval children, play, and the process of coming of age, he challenges the traditional view that childhood did not exist in middle ages.

• Robert G. Watts and A. Terry Bahill. Keep Your Eye On the Ball: Curve Balls, Knuckleballs, and Fallacies of Baseball. Revised and updated. Freeman, 2000.

Even people who don’t follow baseball will enjoy this book. The authors make physics fun. Or if you want to skip the science, just read Chapter One, "The Game of Baseball: A Little History," and browse the rest of the book for the illustrations.

• G. Calvin Mackenzie, ed. Innocent Until Nominated: The Breakdown of the Presidential Appointments Process. Brookings Institution Press, 2001.

In this book, commissioned by the Presidential Appointee Initiative, a project of the Brookings Institution, scholars with wide-ranging acquaintance with the presidential appointment process examine its history and recent evolution. They explore the problems faced by presidents in recruiting presidential appointees, the special burdens of presidential transitions, and the ever-expanding array of forms, questionnaires, and background checks that nominees now face.

• A. F. Robertson. Greed: Gut Feelings, Growth, and History. Polity, 2001.

Noting in his introduction that keyword searching for "greed" in library databases shows that the term appears frequently in the vocabulary of journalism and rarely in scholarly discourse, Robertson sees this gap as an indication that something is wrong with the way professional intellectuals have come to explain the world. He seeks to draw attention to the visceral power of greed, which Western philosophy often ignores in its explanation and justification of expansive desires as "rational self-interest."

• Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada. The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup. Perseus, 2001.

In The Spark of Life, biologists Wills and Rada explore theories on life’s beginnings, from Aristotle to Freeman Dyson. The authors speculate about the source of materials for the primordial soup from which protobionts, the first living, self-replicating structures, came to be. Debris from outer space and hydrothermal vents are two such theories. Life may have appeared more than once in the history of our planet, yet only the fittest, in a Darwinian sense, survived and evolved.

• Jeffrey Toobin. Too Close To Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. Random House, 2001.

A political and legal analyst, Toobin writes of the events of the thirty-six anxiety-filled days that culminated on one of the most stunning Supreme Court decisions in history. Packed with news-making disclosures and written with the force of a legal thriller, Toobin’s book highlights the most extroardinary political drama in American history.