The Mabee Library Reference Blog

The Mabee Library reference staff will use this blog to inform our patrons about interesting reference resources. Questions and comments from the Washburn University community are welcome. Check back for new posts!

October 26, 2006

Nonpartisan Information About Candidates in the Next Election

In preparation for Election Day on November 7, here are some nonpartisan Web sites with information about candidates and campaign issues.

Compiling a Congressmember's Voting Record
This site from The Library of Congress shows you how to compile a congressmember's voting record.

Kansas Judicial Branch
This site lists the published opinions of the Kansas Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, rules adopted by the supreme court, and information about each of the justices. Although each justice is appointed by the governor, a justice is subject to a retention vote in the general election following the justice's first year in office. If a majority of electors votes to retain the justice, he or she remains in office for a term of six years. Justices are subject to a similar retention vote at the conclusion of each term.

Kansas Politicians on the Issues
See how current members of Congress and the governor voted, read quotes from the politicians, and learn about their background on issues like education, health care, and the environment.

Open Secrets
This is the Web site of the Center for Responsible Politics. The center creates an itemized list of campaign contributions for each congressional candidate. The list includes summary data, geographic data, and contributions from interest groups.

Project Vote Smart
Get biographical information, campaign finances, issue positions, interest group ratings, voting records, and public statements for congressional and gubernatorial candidates.

Vote Kansas
This site has a guide to voting, accessibility requirements for polling places, complaint procedures, and a voting machine demonstration among other information.

October 18, 2006

Accessing Materials from the National Libraries in Europe


The European Library web service offers access to the combined resources of the 45 national libraries of Europe. It offers free searching and delivers digital objects - some free, some priced. Full Participants are the national libraries of Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, and United Kingdom along with ICCU (the national central cataloguing institute from Italy) and CENL (the Conference of European National Librarians). The collections of the Full Participants are the first to be searchable on the European Library website. Basic Participants include the other 26 European national libraries. Their collections will be included at a later stage. The European Library has taken steps to ensure that all EU national libraries become full participants by the end of 2007.


October 11, 2006

Fiction Book Lists and Titles Available from Mabee Library

Here are some fiction suggestions from the experts(!), with call numbers next to listed books that Mabee Library owns:

Modern Library

Board's List

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce (
PR6019.O9 U4)
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald (PS3511.I9 G8)
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce (PR6019.O9 P6)
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov (PS3527.A15 L6)
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley (PR6015.U9 B7)

Reader's List

1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand (PS3535.A547 A94)
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand (PS3535.A547 F6)
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard (PS3558.U23 B3)
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien (PR6039.O32 L6)
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee (PS3562.E353 T6)

Time Magazine's Top 100 English-language Novels Since 1923

This list is in alphabetical order.

The Observer

1. DON QUIXOTE by Miguel De Cervantes (PQ6329 .A2)
2. PILGRIM'S PROGRESS by John Bunyan (PR3330 .A1)
3. ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe (PR3403 .A1)
4. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift (PR3724 .G7)
5. TOM JONES by Henry Fielding (PR3454 .H5)

The BBC's Big Read

1. THE LORD OF THE RINGS
by JRR Tolkien
(PR6039.O32 L6)
2. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen (PR4034 .P7)
3. HIS DARK MATERIALS by Philip Pullman (YA PUL Curric. Lib.)
4. THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams (PR6051.D3352 H57)
5. HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE by JK Rowling (ROW Curric. Lib.)

Guardian Unlimited's Top 100 Books of All Time

This list is alphbetical by author, but the judges named Don Quixote (PQ6329 .A2) as the top novel in history.


1. THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston (
PS3515.U789 T639)
2. BELOVED by Toni Morrison (PS3563.O8749 B4)
3. BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
4. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee (PS3562.E353 T6)
5. THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker (PS3573.A425 C6)

The Waterboro Library's Booklists and Bibliographies

The Waterboro Library in East Waterboro, Maine has an interesting page on its Web site that catalogues an extensive collection of booklists and biographies. The booklists and bibliographies are separated by genre and include: Chick Lit, Classics and Great Books, Crime Novels and Mysteries, Graphic Novels, Sports Fiction, Westerns, Young Adult, and Children. With each genre are links to Web sites with "Best-of" lists or lists with representative titles from the genre.

October 4, 2006

Locating Historical Information

One source for historical information, especially first-hand accounts of events, is a newspaper article. There are a variety of ways for locating newspaper articles, but here are a few worthwhile resources:

1. National Newspaper Index provides citations and abstracts from 1977 in one search to America's top five newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post in one search. It is updated daily.

2. Newspaper Abstracts provides citations and abstracts from 1989 from over 50 American newspapers and is updated weekly.

3. Custom Newspapers is a full-text database of over 160 U.S. newspapers and English-language foreign papers. It is updated daily.

4. The State Library of Kansas has clipped newspaper articles pertaining to the Kansas state government. The library is offering an online index to the 2006 newspaper clippings. You can view the index by its various subject groupings by clicking here. The different subject indexes vary from a few pages to hundreds of pages. The library will photocopy--within reason--articles requested from the index. Some of these articles are online at newspaper web sites.

5. The Kansas State Historical Society was established by the state's newspaper editors in 1875. A virtually complete collection of all Kansas newspapers published from 1875 to the present is available on microfilm or in original form. The Society also acquired copies of Kansas newspapers published before 1875. Selected out-of-state newspapers in our collections include the New York Times (on microfilm up to 1991 only) and the Kansas City Star, Times, and Star and Times (selected dates only.) All newspaper microfilm circulates through interlibrary loan, and some may be purchased from the society.

6. Google News Archive provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. Users can search for events, people, ideas and see how they have been described over time. In addition to searching for the most relevant articles for their query, users can get an historical overview of the results by browsing an automatically created timeline. Search results include both content that is accessible to all users and content that requires a fee. Articles related to a single story within a given time period are grouped together to allow users to see a broad perspective on the events. For more information, consult the News Archive Search Help Page.

7. The Richmond Daily Dispatch is available online for scholars researching the Civil War. There are currently 1,384 issues of the paper available, ranging in date from November 1860 through December 1865. There are also links to historical and chronological information about the Civil War written by historian Dr. Robert Kenzer and detailed background and technical information about the project.

Finally, here are two guides to assist you with locating newspaper articles:


A Guide to Locating Newspaper Articles

Locating Articles From Kansas Newspapers