Freshmen students are encouraged to submit a research project of any length or format, along with a one page essay summarizing how they used library resources to complete the project. Students should submit only one project that reflects their best work of the year.

The winner will select one from the following prizes:
$250 Gift Certificate to JetBlue
OR
30 GB iPod
OR
$250 iTunes Gift card

All submissions must include:
Application Cover Sheet - Due May 4, 2007
Research Project - Due May 4, 2007
Research Essay - Due May 4, 2007
Faculty Support Form - Due May 11, 2007

Submissions can be delivered to the Eckles Library service desk or emailed to eckles@gwu.edu. Email submissions should include all of the above information.
The winning project and research essay will be made available to the public.

The Application Cover Sheet and Faculty Support Form will be available from this site later this week as will a complete Selection Criteria Matrix. If you have any questions please contact Sarah Palacios Wilhelm at palacios@gwu.edu.

Have you heard about SJT’s House Party? It’s going to be quite the blowout and it concludes with a massive gathering on the Mount Vernon Quad. Don’t miss your chance to send SJT out with style while enjoying food and fun and a free t-shirt. I know it will be hard for you to leave the cozy happiness that is Eckles, but it is just for a few hours and then you can come back to you favorite study spot!

Those final paper due dates are looming and hopefully you’ve already started tracking down your resources. But, how would you like to refine your skills and boost your results? Lucky for you, we’ve got your back. You can find strategies for finding books and articles here:

Books: www.gwu.edu/gelman/catalog/tutorial/
Articles: www.gwu.edu/gelman/database/articles/

Of course, you could always IM EcklesInfo or GelmanInfo…

It is hard to walk away from the powerful exhibit of photographs taken in New Orleans by the participants in this year’s Alternative Spring Break and not have some questions about Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath. We’ve brought together a few books for a book display about New Orleans’ past, the impact of Katrina and plans for the future. Here are a few I thought looked the most interesting:

Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability
by Henry Giroux
In his newest provocative book, prominent social critic Henry A. Giroux shows how the tragedy and suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina signals a much larger crisis in the United States. Questions regarding who is going to die and who is going to live are driving a new form of authoritarianism in the United States. Within this form of “dirty democracy” a new and more insidious set of forces – embedded in our global economy – have largely given up on the sanctity of human life, rendering some groups as disposable and privileging others. Giroux offers up a vision of hope that creates the conditions for multiple collective and global struggles that refuse to use politics as an act of war and markets as the measure of democracy.

New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus
by Samuel Charters
In December 1950, Samuel Charters first journeyed to New Orleans in search of its jazz sources and its musicians. In December 2005, he returned to his beloved city to find what still was left of this musical heritage after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina.
In this highly personal portrait, Charters decribes staying with his son’s family in their small, temporary apartment, as he explores the new music scene in the undamaged French Quarter and revisits old haunts like the celebrated Preservation Hall.
Amid the inevitable destruction and chaos, he found hope. Clarinet player Pete Fountain sums up the feelings of many fo the New Orleans musicians, old and new: ‘I have two of my best clarinets. I can still toot.’

Federal Disaster Programs and Hurricane Katrina
Editor: Douglas D Syzerhans
Preface: Federal disaster programs kind of sit there and gather moss after all the expenses of running the government agencies responsible for rendering assistance to the disaster victims are spent on staff salaries, computers, travel and all the accompaniments of perceived power. Hopefully there will be no disasters. Otherwise, let them be small disasters which might not inturrupt lunch. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the federal disaster programs were themselves disasters which were limp responses to the thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and entire sectors of America destroyed. This new book tries to examine the initial disaster programs, recovery disaster programs designed to cover-up for the initial flaws and the programs planned to prevent more disastrous disaster programs.

Thanks to the quick work of your faithful Eckles Crew, 35 new movies are sitting on the shelf just waiting for you to check them out. Hurry in and be the first in your residence hall to see them!

Even more Flix are on the way including all 5 seasons of 24!

Do you wonder what New Orleans looks like today, more than 18 months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? Well, parts of it look like this:

But thanks to the hard work of 45 GW students from Alternative Spring Break and the good people of Habitat for Humanity, parts of it also look like this:

Come in to the First Floor Gallery space at Eckles Library and view more of the extraordinary photographs of New Orleans taken by the participants in Alternative Spring Break!

Did you know that you can customize Google Scholar? Wait, let me back up - did you know there was a Google Scholar search engine? Google Scholar allows you to search through scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, and professional literature. Now, there are limitations to Google Scholar, the main one being that you don’t always have full access to the information you find on Google Scholar. However, you can customize Google Scholar to include the resources available to you through Gelman to maximize your search power.

Here’s how:

Go to www.scholar.google.com
Select *Scholar Preferences* (to the right of the search box)
In the *Library Links* section, search for *George Washington University* and add GW to your library links

** Bonus Tip: In the *Bibliography Manager* section you can also set Google Scholar to export to bibliographic management software, such as Refworks or Endnote.**

Now select *Save Preferences*

Now every time you use Google Scholar you will notice a “FindIt@GWU Libraries” link. Select this link to see if you have access through Gelman Library and then, when possible, Google Scholar will link you directly to the resource. However, don’t let this be the starting and ending points of all of your research, if you can’t find something find a librarian! We’ve got special research powers, if its out there we’ll help you track it down.

ttyl - Sarah