American University Library continually acquires new electronic resources to support the research of scholars with the latest databases, e-books, and e-journals. This year’s acquisitions enhance AU’s commitment to interdisciplinary research and education, with resources that have utility across an increasingly wide range of subjects and fields. These highlighted titles reflect how evolving formats meet the current needs of our researchers, from online texts to streaming audio and video to downloadable sets of data.

Mergent Archive Sets: D&B Country Risk Reports, CRB Commodity Yearbook, and D&B Million Dollar Print Archive Collection

These three archive sets significantly broaden AU’s online access to global business and economic data. With more than 1,000 students, our highly ranked Kogod School of Business emphasizes rigorous research, real-world experience, and a global perspective. This resource will be a tremendous asset for these programs, as well as for students studying a variety of other disciplines from International Economic Policy to Organizational Development.

Baltimore Afro-American

Founded in 1892, the Afro-American is the oldest existing black owned and operated newspaper in the country. This database providing full-text coverage of this important regional resource from its first issue through 1988, was requested by members of the History faculty. This database was made possible by the Class of ’32 and Roger Brown gift funds.

Canopy Streaming Video PDA

This collection includes documentaries and feature films that may be useful for students and faculty of all disciplines. Offering recorded college-level lectures from Great Courses, educational social justice films and documentaries from California Newsreel, influential classic and contemporary films from the Criterion Collection, as well as the art house, world cinema, and often elusive films released by Kino Lorber, this rich film library is an important new resource.

Sage Local Stats

Increased interest in local-level U.S. research led the AU Library to expand our regional statistical offerings. Local Stats adds comparable data across all 50 states from U.S. counties, cities, and metropolitan statistical areas across 3,500 data series topics relevant to the social sciences, and supporting a broad range of disciplines.

Digital National Security Archive

Six new collections from this vital primary source database consisting of declassified documents, including modules on CIA covert operations and Korea, were purchased this past academic year. This resource is a terrific asset for scholars in fields such as Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, and Journalism.

Bill Gentile defines the term ‘backpack journalism.’ His approach: fill a backpack with as much equipment as you can carry, go into harm’s way and document what you observe, get out alive and tell the story. This past October, Gentile, an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker, donated his incredible photographic collection to the University Archives at American University Library.

The Bill Gentile Photojournalism Collection (1983–2002) is comprised of images from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru. These photos document scenes of daily life, as well as moments of crisis, such as natural disasters and periods of political turmoil. This collection includes photographs from his book, Nicaragua, which won the Overseas Press Club Award for Excellence.

Gentile's career began in 1977. He worked as a reporter for the Mexico City News and for United Press International, before going on to a position as Newsweek Magazine's contract photographer for Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the course of this exciting career, he covered the 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, the United States-backed Contra War in Nicaragua, the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s, the United States invasion of Panama, the 1994 invasion of Haiti, the ongoing conflict with Cuba, the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War, and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2007, Gentile introduced the idea of ‘backpack journalism’ to American University. As an instructor in the School of Communication, Gentile trains future film and documentary makers in the methodology that is a hallmark of his career. His enthusiasm as a teacher and mentor resonates with his students. Gentile even accompanied AU Abroad students on a trip to Cuba, during which he produced a ‘backpack journalism’ video for Time Magazine.

This collection is a tremendous addition to the University Archives; a resource that will support the work of students, faculty, and researchers in a range of disciplines, from journalism to history to international relations.

A student can spend as much as $1,200 each year on textbooks, and the newest edition of Nicholson’s Intermediate Microeconomics alone costs over $300. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index data shows that the prices of a textbook are 82 percent higher than they were in 2002, while the overall consumer price inflation has increased by only 28 percent. Students are asked to spend more each year on their reading materials for school, putting college even further out of reach for some.

Traditionally, Course Reserves held a passive role in connecting students to their course materials by waiting for professors to submit requests. Realizing that more could be done, the American University Library Course Reserves unit responding proactively, reaching out to professors to ask for their syllabi and encouraging students to submit course material requests on behalf of their professor. In 2009, the Library took an even more active role in these efforts, pledging to aid students with the rising costs of obtaining a college education. By that fall, the Library started an initiative that placed on reserve at least one copy of all required books for the University’s ‘General Education (Gen Ed) Textbook Initiative,’ procuring 435 texts, which circulated 2,639 times. The following spring 2010 semester, an additional 449 texts were acquired and circulated 3,458 times. Overall, the introduction of the Gen Ed texts increased the reserves circulation by 54 percent. Due to the 2 hour loan period of the books and public scanners allowing for the free transfer of specific chapters to an individual’s email, we increased the availability of these materials to students and saw the circulation numbers continue to grow.

After 6 years of building on the success of the ‘Gen Ed Initiative’, the Library shifted its focus to ensuring that students had access to the most expensive books required for their coursework. In 2015, the Library introduced the ‘$150+ Textbook Initiative.’ Library personnel compiled a list of all required texts that cost $150 or more from the campus store and then assessed which items the Library already owned and which needed to be purchased. Acquiring these resources meant that graduate students and students taking 300 or 400 level courses now had the opportunity to freely use textbooks that may have otherwise been prohibitively expensive.

Through the efforts of the teaching faculty, the ‘General Education’ and ‘$150+ Textbook’ initiatives, the course reserves staff was able to make available 1,500 of the required textbooks for the fall 2015 and spring 2016 semesters—comprising more than 50 percent of the complete listing of required textbooks for those same semesters. Now, the Library is working toward making available the rest of these costly textbooks on reserve. The cost of acquiring the remaining required materials is $50,000. As we look to the future, the Library continues to assess the situation and respond to the economic needs of our student body, and we hope that our supporters will contribute to our efforts.

The winner of the 2015–16 W. Donald Bowles Award for the Study of Productivity, Income, and Poverty in the United States is Rebecca Lassman, a senior majoring in Economics and currently interning at the U.S. Department of Treasury Office of Economic Policy. Ms. Lassman is being recognized for her project on gaming revenue as a poverty reduction driver for Native American and Alaskan Native Tribes, living well below the poverty line. Her research involves conducting “historical case studies and quantitative data analysis of gaming revenue distribution policies compared to alternative welfare policies for poverty reduction and economic growth.”

The W. Donald Bowles Endowment was established by Professor Emeritus Donald Bowles to support an undergraduate or graduate student conducting research or other scholarly or artistic efforts to understand the relationships between productivity, income, and poverty in the United States. In Dr. Bowles’ own words: “Widening income disparities and deep inequalities of wealth holdings highlight a classic source of friction in our democratic republic—namely, the need for continual reassessment of balancing collective government efforts to improve the human condition relative to private efforts toward the same end. How to achieve this appropriate balance is a question dating to our very founding as a nation.”

The importance of this program and Ms. Lassman’s research may be more deeply understood through this excerpt from her report:

Many tribes see gaming policies as a driver of poverty reduction and economic development. A significant and growing portion of their annual revenues are generated by gaming. According to the GAO [Government Accountability Office], in 2013 Indian gaming revenue totaled $28 billion. Gaming sector policies also have wide reaching affects across U.S. Indian country as nearly half of the 566 federally recognized tribes have gaming operations spanning 28 states. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act set requirements for net gaming revenue use, however tribes can decide how to allocate the funds within the parameters which include: government operations/programs, improving welfare (per capita payments), promoting economic development, charity donations and funding local government agencies.

The applications for the award were exceptional, representing a wide range of disciplines and research concepts. As ever, the American University Library is proud of the high level of scholarship, creativity, and interest in social justice exhibited by the participating American University students. The Library was pleased to have such an extraordinary and scholarly pool of applicants and is pleased to recognize Ms. Lassman as the 2015–16 recipient.

This year’s awards were coordinated by Social Sciences Librarian, Nikhat Ghouse, judging the applicants with Olivia Ivey, SPA Librarian, Thomas Husted, Professor in the Department of Economics, and Taryn Morrissey, Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Policy.

The Exploring Social Justice Series, a program cosponsored by the American University Library, the Center for Diversity & Inclusion, and the Kay Spiritual Life Center, brings to campus exemplary leaders from diverse backgrounds who have advocated for various human rights and social justice issues. All events in the series are free and open to the public.

Early in the fall semester, Alexander Moore, DC Central Kitchen's Chief Development Officer and author of The Food Fighters, shared more about the practical and philosophical struggles faced by an iconic organization as it took on a series of generational challenges. His presentation “Fighting for Food Justice in a Recession” explained how DC Central Kitchen, a front-line charity in the basement of a homeless shelter, turned the economic crisis of 2008 into a chance to develop some of the country's most respected social enterprise solutions to food injustice.

Melvina Ford came to campus in October to present “Testing: An Evidentiary Approach to Advancing Modern Civil Rights.” Ford, the Executive Director of the Equal Rights Center in Washington, DC, discussed how her organization uses civil rights testing–where "real people" are trained as testers and placed in situations to see how they are treated in comparison to someone else–to identify and remediate discriminatory practices.

In March, Women's Prison Association's Executive Director, Georgia Lerner participated in this series, presenting “Justice without Jails: Building Community-Based Alternatives to Incarceration for Criminal Justice-Involved Women.” Lerner spoke about the organization’s unique, home-based alternative to incarceration (ATI) program, JusticeHome, and how it differs from other common ATI models. Lerner identified the components of the JusticeHome model that help women achieve sobriety, increase family stability, and reduce the risk of recidivism, while avoiding incarceration and remaining in the community. 

During the spring semester, we were also joined by Paul Butler, Professor of Law at Georgetown University. His April presentation, “Race, Violence, and the Police” centered on race relations, cutting edge law, sociology, and legal theory on race and crime. This important and timely discussion about race and crime post-Ferguson attracted an audience of enthusiastic and engaged students. The response to this presentation illustrates the need students have to explore these complex and emotional issues.

Each event in this series was well-attended by AU students, faculty, and community members, and the feedback received was overwhelming and positive. The success of this program set the groundwork for another year of inspiring speakers. For more information on upcoming ESJ programming, visit our website.