Want to see some great scary images for Halloween? Check out ARTstor, the fantastic digital image library that you have access to from the Baylor Libraries.

First of all, check out the Farber Gravestone Collection, provided by the American Antiquarian Society. It contains “more than 13,500 images documenting the sculpture on more than 9,000 early American grave markers, mostly made prior to 1800″ like this one:

According to the ARTstor blog,

“You can also do a search for “Day of the Dead” to find images of calacas, skeleton toys from Mexico. There are also some artists who were great at portraying the dark side: You may be familiar with Henry Fuseli’s famous “Nightmare,” but a simple search of his name leads to several equally scary works, including a different version of the painting and several prints with the same theme; a search for “caprichos” will lead you to Francisco Goya’s legendary series of prints, rife with witches, demons, and gloomy owls, and a search for “Goya witches” to a set of his most unsettling paintings and etchings; similarly, search “Baldung witches” to see a number of the German Renaissance painter Hans Baldung’s ghoulish drawings, or search for his name to see his famous “Death and the Maiden”; and a search for Jose Guadalupe Posada will result in the Mexican artist’s famous “Calaveras,” satirical engravings of skeletons popular during the holiday.”

Check out some of those searches and try some other Halloween-y type words – witches, pumpkins, candy - and see what ARTstor has to offer!

"Ya es hora." by Francisco Goya y Lucientes, 1799

Day of the Dead figurine, skeleton dog, ceremonial, Mexico, 2002

On March 28, 2011, the New York Times implemented a new policy regarding access to articles from their website, www.nytimes.com.  That policy restricts access to 20 articles/month, unless you have a personal subscription to the paper New York Times or unless you set up a digital subscription.

Because of questions we’ve received from Baylor faculty, students, and staff, we contacted the New York Times to see if they have a subscription model so libraries can set up a digital subscription for their constituents.  They responded to us that they did not have such a model in place.

However, if people currently enrolled at or employed by Baylor University want to set up a personal digital subscription, they will receive a 50% discount because of their affiliation with Baylor University.  To receive that discount, do the following:

1. Login to or create your account at the NYTimes website.  Note:  Make sure this account is associated with your Baylor e-mail address.
2. Go to College Readership Digital Subscription.
3. Complete the form on that page (select your status at Baylor and provide the name of the university (Baylor University).
4. The next screen will indicate that a message has been sent to your Baylor e-mail account.
5. When that message appears in your e-mail account (check your junk mail if you don’t see it), click on the link provided in that message.
6. The screen that displays will be a form to complete to set up your personal digital subscription.  Near the top, slightly right of center, you should see the weekly subscription rate (at a 50% discount) , which will be billed to your credit card every 4 weeks.

Alternatively, the Baylor University Libraries do provide access to the New York Times from a number of our databases, which are listed below:

• from 1851 to 1922 in Freely Accessible Journals
• from 09/14/1857 to 12/31/1922 in ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Legacy Platform)
• from 01/01/1923 to 12/31/2007 in ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Legacy Platform)
• from 06/01/1980 to present in LexisNexis Academic
• from 01/01/1985 to present in Academic OneFile
• from 01/01/1985 to present in Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context
• from 01/01/1985 to present in InfoTrac Custom Newspapers
• from 01/01/1995 to present in Access World News
• from 01/01/2008 to 3 months ago in ProQuest Digital Microfilm (Legacy Platform)

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Thanks to the New Electronic Resources @ BU blog for this info!

This morning, the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature was announced; the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa is this year’s recipient.

If you would like to find out more about this acclaimed author, the Baylor Libraries have a number of great resources where you can find quality information. Remember that while we are showing you these resources searching for info about Vargas Llosa, you can use these to find info about any writer you may have to research for a paper or project.

First of all, if you would like to research Vargas Llosa’s biography and background, the electronic resource called the “Dictionary of Literary Biography” is absolutely key. If you search for Mario Vargas Llosa’s name, you will find a biographical and critical essay written about him by an expert scholar. Included are a detailed list of his works and a bibliography of further readings – all helpfully in one place!

Now that you’ve found some helpful background information, you might want to find his books – both in Spanish and English. BearCat Plus will be our next stop. If you search for “mario vargas llosa” you will find every record we have in our catalog that mentions his name.

If you look to the right side of the results, you can use three of the limiters to find specific types of books.

“Language” will let you limit the results to find books that are just in English, or just in Spanish.

“Subject (Name)” will let you limit the results to find books about the person you are searching for. You will find many books of literary criticism about Vargas Llosa here.

“Author/Contributer” will let you limit the results to the books written by the person you searched for. Used in conjunction with the Language limiter, you can find all the books written by Vargas Llosa in whatever language you want to read him in!

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Lastly, on our swing through helpful resources, you might want to search in the MLA International Bibliography. Searching through this database will bring you critical articles about the author’s works, published in scholarly journals.

There you have it! A great way to find out great quality information about any author – and particularly Mario Vargas Llosa, this year’s Nobel Laureate.

So, the long Labor Day weekend is coming up and you’d like to go somewhere, visit someplace. But you’re a student, you don’t have much money or much time to do that, maybe. Consider a virtual visit to some of the world’s best museums and collections using the ARTstor database. You could visit New York City by going to the Architecture and Design Collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA):

Gunta Stölzl, (Artist), Design for Textile, 1920-1924

or take a “trip” to the bridges and canals of Venice by exploring the photographic collection of Sarah Quill (the Architecture of Venice collection within ArtStor):

Ponte Maravegie (bridge), 2003, Photograph copyright © Sarah Quill

or make a Chicago-style pizza and wander through the world art at the Art Institute of Chicago:

The actor Matsumoto Koshiro III, Ippitsusai Buncho (artist), 1770, woodblock print

You can go back in time to medieval manuscripts (the illuminated manuscript collections of Princeton University and manuscripts and early printed books of the Bodliean Library, Oxford are in ArtStor):

Roman de la Rose, Princeton Garrett 126, mid-14th Century,

Book of Hours. Use of Sarum. Folio #: fol. 001r, MS. Douce 231

or check out community murals from around the U.S.:

Bomba y Plena, 2004, Betsy Casanas (artist), Tim Drescher (photographer)

To get to any of these collections, enter ARTstor, and then click on “Browse by Collection.” There are hundreds of different collections from museums, colleges and private collectors. So, gather some friends, fire up the oven, put some popcorn in the microwave, pull up your laptop and go for a visit to someplace you’ve never been before.  No traffic, no lines, no tickets required .  Happy and carefree.  Enjoy the holiday weekend!

I just learned about PubMed-EX, a new Firefox Addon which performs text-mining on any record in PubMed and provides additional background information on key terms in little pop-up boxes. A great feature if you regularly search PubMed, and especially if you sometimes get overwhelmed with all the scientific terms you find as you search PubMed.

Below is a screenshot of what this great addon can do as you search PubMed: