Happy Birthday King Library!

It's the first day of Fall Semester, so naturally the Bookcharmer is feeling festive.  The beginning of the Academic Year has all sorts of reasons for giddiness--the clean slate, the new faces, the return of familiar faces, and we are somewhat rested for the summer and ready to meet new challenges.  I have an extra and extra special reason to be feeling festive at the beginning of this particular Academic Year:  it is the 10th Anniversary of the merged Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, a partnership between the San Jose State University and the City of San Jose Public Library.

We're going to be celebrating in fine style.  All the events are listed here:

http://www.sjlibrary.org/10th

When you visit this website, you'll likely notice right away the lovely watercolor of the building in the background.  One of the inspired ideas of the planning committee for the 10th Anniversary was to ask students of Art Professor Gale Antokal to paint their visions of the library.  Their creative output has delighted us.

You can see all the works online at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/sets and we'll also be featuring a selection of the paintings in our new 4th floor exhibit space in September.

What I find so pleasing about these watercolors is how they illustrate the artists' individual visions of the light and energy and captivating scenes that are part of this building.  This is my library, but this is your library, too.  Anyone is free to come in the doors, and that foundation of openness and equality is one of the reasons I am proud to be a librarian here.

Now, lest you think I've abandoned my soapbox about subject headings, before we turn to our calendars to start writing in the dates of all the festive events listed on the 10th anniversary website, it is time for a brief but iconic example of the power of subject headings.  Ready?

Curiosity piqued, we click on Watercolor Painting as a subject heading and are rewarded with, my favorite, subdivided subject headings!

Happy Birthday, King Library!  Celebrating your past, present, and future is a very festive beginning to the semester.  

Free Topic: Roberts, Helen M., 1896-

Greetings, readers and hopefully researchers in need of a topic. I shall write of how I came upon this author presently, but first the discovery:

Helen M. Roberts, born 1896. Author of at least 30 and possibly as many as 40 unique titles, many of them with the subject heading:

Indians of North America -- California -- Fiction.

She evidently wrote a series, Mission Tales. The bibliographic evidence reads:

[Mission tales : stories of the historic California missions / Helen M. Roberts ; illustrations by Muriel Lawrence
Imprint Stanford, Cal.] : Stanford Univ. Press, [1947-48]
Edition Preliminary ed. distributed for special educational use

Stanford UP? In the late 40's? Distributed for special educational use?

The bookcharmer offers this author up to researchers in search of a topic, because a. she is supposed to be focusing on CEL anyway, not topic shopping herself, b. because she found this author and this potentially shocking/hair raising series of titles (how were California Indians portrayed in this series for children???) while preparing a list of subject headings for a class she is co-teaching Monday and should be finishing that instead of even writing this blog post.

A few hints, if you want this topic:

Link+ does not provide evidence of a monograph, so check worldcat. Then check, oh, let's say the Proquest dissertations database, a good biography index like Biography and Geneaology Master Index, then its off to Book Review Digest.