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Library Newsletter Fall 2002 In This Issue:
It has been another exciting Summer and Fall here at the James Earl Carter Library. Over the summer, we added several electronic databases to the Library web site including two American Institute of Physics journals (accessible on-campus) and a selective listing of Library business resources. We also added the Library's FY02 Annual Report which gives a fairly detailed description and analysis of the Library's activities during the past year. We introduced our first adaptive technology workstation as described in this issue's article, "Library Obtains Kurzweil Software!" The approach to the Library was included in this summer's renovation of the main walkway between the campus' two "anchors": the Administration Building and the JEC Library. As a result, the approach to the Library now includes a lovely patterned brick and concrete walkway and an inviting plaza with attractive benches and landscaping We have made a little progress in developing a GSW Historical Collection but continue to appeal to all our readers for information and materials by people connected to GSW (including alumni, former and current faculty, presidents, students, staff, friends and supporters of GSW) and about GSW. If you have any information or materials, please contact the Library. We appreciate your support for this important Centennial project! Speaking of matters historical, this issue includes the first installment in a series of articles describing the history of libraries which we trust will be of interest to our readers. If there are any specific topics you would like to see addressed in our Newsletter, we encourage you to submit your ideas to the editor. We welcome your interest and suggestions! Again, the Library wishes to extend its thanks and appreciation to the Library's supporters whose donations and gifts permit us to enhance and improve our collections and services.
The James Earl Carter Library is pleased to announce that it now has a computer workstation loaded with the Kurzweil software to assist our visually impaired and learning disabled patrons. We were able to obtain this software through a joint grant with GSW's Student Support Services. Kurzweil 1000 is an advanced scanning and reading solution for people who are blind or visually impaired. Scanned or electronic text is read using human sounding synthetic speech and words are highlighted as they are spoken. Additionally, Kurzweil 3000 provides scanning, reading, and writing assistance for people with learning disabilities or reading difficulties. It contains study skill tools which help students increase their learning potential. A unique "Read the Web" feature allows access to the millions of Internet pages opening up a world of research. Spell checking, word prediction, word definition and word pronunciation tools are also available. The Kurzweil software was developed by a team led by Ray Kurzweil, a remarkable inventor who is credited with many innovations that have aided people with disabilities. His interest in the field of pattern recognition dated back to high school when he won first prize in the International Science Fair. He had programmed his computer to analyze the patterns in musical compositions by famous composers and then compose original new melodies in a similar style. This interest continued and in 1974 he started his first company, Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. Kurzweil's team created the first "omni-font" (any font) Optical Character Recognition (OCR), the first CCD flat-bed scanner, and the first full text-to-speech synthesizer. These three technologies were combined to create the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. Ray Kurzweil went on to create three more companies. A friendship with Stevie Wonder resulted in Kurzweil Music Systems being created in 1982 with Stevie Wonder as musical advisor. The fourth company, Kurzweil Education Systems was sold to Lernout & Hauspie in 1998 and continues as the Kurzweil Education Group with Ray Kurzweil providing leadership as a consultant. All of the four companies that he founded, built and sold, created entirely new technologies and markets and continue today as leaders in those markets. The Kurzweil workstation is available any time during regular hours at the Library. We are very excited about providing this opportunity to our patrons needing assistance due to visual impairments and/or learning and reading difficulties.
Selective List of New Titles/Acquisitions in July 2002 Applied Wetlands Science and
Technology Scientific Computing with
Mathematics Scheduling Strategies for Middle
Schools Theatre As The Essential Liberal
Art In The American University The history of libraries goes hand and hand with the history of writing as far back as 5500 years ago. People have recorded their ideas, their relationships with others, and the world around them. They have kept their records on a variety of materials -- bone, clay, wax, wood, papyrus, silk, leather, parchment, paper, film, plastic, magnetic tape and computer software. **Ancient Libraries of Clay** The ancient libraries of clay tablets began in ancient Mesopotamia, a region which now covers part of Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The people would mark on wet clay and allow it to dry before baking it. Thousands of clay tablets still exist, but scholars have not yet learned the meanings of the markings on all of them. The Sumerians lived in southern Mesopotamia and made some of the oldest clay tablets to be discovered. The tablets are more than 5000 years old and 30,000 clay tablets have been found at the site of the ancient city of Nippur. In 1850, British archaeologists discovered thousands of clay tablets near Nineveh, which was the capital of ancient Assyria, which occupied northern Mesopotamia. The tablets formed part of a library in the palace of King Sennacherib of Assyria, who ruled from 704 to 681 B.C. **Ancient Libraries of Papyrus** During the time that Mesopotamians wrote on clay, the Egyptians were writing on papyrus, a writing material made from papyrus reed. Papyrus grew in marshlands along the Nile River. The Egyptians would cut its stems into strips, press them into sheets and join them to make scrolls. Even though papyrus is extremely perishable, some of the writings on papyrus have survived. The oldest is the Harris Papyrus 1 which is in the British Library - it dates from 1100's. The most famous library of ancient times was the Alexandrian Library in Alexandria, Egypt. It housed more than 400,000 scrolls. Not a trace of the library remains today and no one knows for certain what became of it. **Ancient Libraries of Animal Skin** Scholars of the ancient world wrote on leather when papyrus was not available. During the 1940's and early 1950's, hundreds of leather scrolls were found in caves near the shore of the Dead Sea. These Dead Sea Scrolls probably belonged to the library of a Jewish religious group called Essenes who lived near the Dead Sea about 150 B.C. to A.D. 68. Parchment, made from thin layers of animal skin, enabled scribes and librarians to create books. Parchment sheets did not easily join into rolls and so scribes and librarians began to fold several sheets of parchment down the middle and sew them into books. By the A.D. 400's, parchment had largely replaced papyrus in Europe
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