Q. Where does the rain that falls on the Agnes Scott campus go?
A. It depends.

Main and Rebekah are built on a ridge.  Rain that falls on the north side of the ridge (toward Decatur) eventually ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, via the Chattahoochee River.  Rain that falls on the south side of the ridge (most of the rest of campus) eventually ends up in the Atlantic Ocean.

The founders of Agnes Scott were quite proud of this fact.  In the 1889-1890 “announcement” for Agnes Scott Institute, the section on location begins “The Institute is located on a commanding ridge, the waters from which upon one side find their way to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the other into the Atlantic; the buildings being about 1050 feet above the sea level.”

Check out these links for more information about the Eastern Continental Divide

• http://www.gpsinformation.org/jack/Divide/Divide.html
• http://www.gpsinformation.org/jack/Divide/DivideCommunities.html
• http://home.comcast.net/~glennfrankel/
• http://airbornecombatengineer.typepad.com/decaturdekalb/eastern-subcontinental-di.html

Lake Claire Community ECD Mural Project

–Marianne Bradley, Administrative Coordinator & Archivist, McCain Library, Agnes Scott College

In 2007, McCain Library showcased its collection of Leila Ross Wilburn pattern books in conjunction with the City of Decatur’s Tour of Homes and the MAK Historic District’s Centennial. View the Wilburn pattern books online.

The City of Decatur web site provides this information about Leilia Ross Wilburn

“Leila Ross Wilburn, who attended Agnes Scott, was one of only two women registered as an architect in Atlanta in 1920. Ms. Wilburn designed and built a home in the neighborhood where she lived with her widowed mother and younger siblings. She published several popular planbooks that emphasized her status as a Southerner and a woman. Through these planbooks, she influenced neighborhood design throughout the Southeast during the 1920s.

In 1907 John Mason and Poleman Weekes purchased property that was to become Decatur’s first residential subdivision. The district, known today as the M.A.K. neighborhood is named for its main streets, McDonough, Adams and Kings Highway, and encompasses ten city blocks of varying size. Ms. Wilburn was employed by Mason and Weekes to design many of the homes for the new subdivision.

The MAK neighborhood retains many of the Wilburn-designed homes and offers excellent examples of Craftsman style homes that were popular during the first three decades of the 20th century.”

View Leila Ross Wilburn entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia

View Photos of Wilburn Homes in MAK Historical District

View a Gallery of two Leila Ross Wilburn Homes at AJC.com

Image from "Homes in Good Taste" pattern book by Leila Ross Wilburn

Suggested Reading from the New Georgia Encyclopedia

Jan Jennings, “Leila Ross Wilburn, Plan-Book Architect,” Woman’s Art Journal 10, no. 1 (spring-summer 1989): 10-16.
[Agnes Scott community members only]

Gerald Sams, AIA Guide to the Architecture of Atlanta (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993).

Google News Archive search provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. Users can search for events, people or ideas and see how they have been described over time. In addition to searching for the most relevant articles for their query, users can also see a historical overview of the results by browsing an automatically generated timeline.

News Archive Search searches across a large collection of historical archives including major newspapers/magazines, news archives and legal archives. Search results include both content that accessible to all users (such as BBC News, Time Magazine and Guardian) and content that requires a fee (such as Washington Post Archives, Newspaper Archive, and New York Times Archives). In addition to crawling content online, Google has also worked with newspapers to digitize materials via a News Archive Partner Program. Through partnerships with newspapers around the world, the News Archive Partner Program makes unique and previously-unavailable newspaper content searchable and browsable online.

Try it now!

Check out these results for a search on “loch ness” – note that the article from Time Magazine is from 1934!

The library database ARTstor is continually adding new material to its collections. Magnum Photos is no exception.

Screenshot of Magnum Photos in ARTstor

According to an ARTstor press release,

“this first launch of more than 73,000 high-quality photographs of major world events and personalities provides the academic community with access to a selection of Magnum’s iconic images. The ARTstor and Magnum Photos collaboration will showcase a total of 80,000 images by this world-renowned group of documentary photographers. The ARTstor community will now be able to access high-quality photographs from around the world, covering industry, society and people, places of interest, politics, news events, disasters and conflict, from the late 1930s to the present day. From the Spanish Civil War to the Gulf War, from Marilyn Monroe to Paul Newman, from John Updike to Toni Morrison, from Christian Dior to Oscar de la Renta, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the crisis in Chechnya, these images capture wars, celebrities, authors, fashion designers, and defining moments in our shared history.”

Check it out at: http://www.artstor.org/what-is-artstor/w-html/col-magnum.shtml

The library recently added LibGuides, interactive subject and course specific guides. The guides offer suggestions about how and where to start your research. You may leave comments, instant message a librarian, or make a research appointment. So far, we have 22 guides in over 20 subjects, and we’re adding new ones all the time. If you’re looking for help in starting your research, this is the place to go.

Each guide has suggestions for how to find books, articles, and web sites on your topic. They all contain links to citation guides and writing guides for specific subjects. In addition, many guides include short video tutorials about how to use databases or tools like RefWorks.

Check out all the LibGuides at libguides.agnesscott.edu

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

From American Libraries Direct 11/19/2008:

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.  “Some 97% of the photographs have never been seen by the public. The collection contains some of the most iconic images of the 20th century, including works from photojournalists Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith. The images can be found when conducting a Google or Google Image search. Users can also search through the LIFE collection directly.”

Search Tip: Add “source:life” to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. For example: Academy Awards source:life

Thanks to ITS, the library’s old laptops have been replaced with 10 new IBM ThinkPads.  Students may check one out at the main circulation desk for use in the library.  The checkout period is 4 hours.  Wireless is built-in, so they will work all over the building — on the terrace, in either reading room, in the group study rooms, or up in the stacks.   Library laptops cannot be taken outside of McCain Library. Students should login by hitting the Enter key at the first dialog box, then once you bring up Internet Explorer, you may login to Woof Woof Wi Fi.  If you wish to print something, please save it to a flash drive (also available for checkout at the circ desk) and print from a wired desktop later.

ASC faculty or staff may also borrow these laptops to use in the library.  They should ask for a purple network cable to be able to login to the campus network.  Data ports are available at the carrels in the reference area alongside the terrace.  Enjoy!

Image from flickr user computix under the Creative Commons license

Since November conjures up images of Thanksgiving turkeys and lavish spreads of deliciousness of all kinds, we have dedicated our exhibit this month the the mouthwatering subject of food. We are highlighting some of the great selections in our e-book library, including such titles as the Healthy College Cookbook, The Chopra Center Cookbook: Nourishing Body and Soul, The Bold Vegetarian Chef, Dueling chefs: A Vegetarian and a Meat Lover Debate the Plate, and more!

Search the library catalog for more e-books, or stop by our exhibit! Note: e-books come up just like regular books in the catalog. Just click the link that says “Click here to access this electronic book via the World Wide Web” and you’ll be there!

You must be an Agnes Scott College student, faculty, or staff member in order to access these e-books. To access them off-campus, just put in the appropriate password when prompted.

CQ Researcher, a library database, publishes weekly, unbiased, detailed reports on major issues in the news, such as the financial bailout. You will find in-depth coverage by experienced reporters, along with statistics, charts, graphs, lots of references and links to other reliable sources. In short, this is a great place to go to further your understanding of the financial bailout, and other national and international issues as they unfold.