June 2008 -- For current news, press releases and podcasts from Cornell University Library, please visit the Library Communications site.
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August 2007 -- The original Mann Library building reopened at the start of the fall semester, marking the near-completion of a 4-year renovation project and the end of 7 years of operation in the adjacent library addition. In contrast with the hot, dark and cramped quarters that prior generations of Cornellians may remember, the new and improved Mann is spacious and filled with light, exemplified by an airy, 5-story atrium and study areas that are roomy and, most importantly, air-conditioned.
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August 2007 -- The Cornell Law Library has launched a new Web site with easier access for students and faculty, as well as the public, to its resources and services.
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August 2007 -- Cornell University Library is partnering with Google Inc. to digitize materials from the library's collections and make them available online through Google Book Search. About 500,000 volumes from Cornell's collection of nearly 8 million books will be digitized over the next six years, including both public domain and copyrighted works.
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August 2007 -- Would Cornell allow a lion in any of its libraries? Perhaps, if it were like the kind-hearted lion brought to life by Michelle Knudsen '95 in her children's picture book, "Library Lion." Knudsen, who earned a degree in English and now lives in New York City, worked for the Cornell Library as a student and again a few years later after she graduated.
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July 2007 -- Cornell's Law School has given a collection of 13,000 volumes of American case law, duplicate materials from the Cornell Law Library, to the Cour de cassation--France's highest civil and criminal court. The only collection of its kind in France, it will be housed within the court as the Cornell Center for Documentation on American Law. The collection will be made available to French magistrates and to Cornell law faculty and students in the Paris summer institute.
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June 2007 -- "Men and women of Cornell, sons and daughters, all, of Ezra Cornell, welcome to the unfinished business." The surge of applause and ovations that pursued Cornell President Emeritus Frank H.T. Rhodes' Library address on June 7, during Cornell Reunion bode well not only for the speaker's legendary skills as an orator, but perhaps for the future of the university as well.
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June 2007 -- Each day, more than 450 new books destined for the 18 campus libraries on the Ithaca campus arrive at the loading dock behind Uris Library to begin a highly organized journey into the library system, a path followed by over 125,000 books each year.
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June 2007 -- If you read about a book in the New York Times, chances are Cornell University Library has it on its shelves -- or will in a few days. If you found a citation to an article in the Journal of Really Important Stuff, chances are the library has it, or at least can get a copy of the article.
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May 2007 -- From Cicero's Cat to Joe Palooka, and Wonder Woman to the Swamp Thing -- recent gifts of comic art from two members of Cornell's Class of 1992 are providing important new primary sources for scholars who study art and culture.
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May 2007 -- A digital collection that chronicles the founding of America's black colleges and universities will continue to expand, thanks to a $450,000 grant to Cornell University Library from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Cornell is sharing its expertise in digital imaging, preservation and management with librarians and archivists from the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Library Alliance to lay the foundation for an HBCU digital library. Important materials from the founding collections of 10 HBCU institutions will soon be available online in a digital collection, "Celebrating the Founding of the Historically Black College and University.
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May 2007 -- A Cornell Daily Sun alumnus who went on to a fruitful journalism career has made it possible for the university to add the student newspaper's earliest years to its digital collection. Keith Johnson '56, a former Sun editor-in-chief of the and longtime writer for Time Inc., made a major gift to Cornell University Library last fall to digitize the paper's first 50 years of publication (1880-1930).
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April 2007 -- A selection of rare and out-of-print historical materials at Cornell University Library is only a click away for readers using a new print-on-demand service. The Library is partnering with BookSurge, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, to make available some of its unique non-copyrighted holdings -- collections ranging from historical mathematics and agriculture texts to anti-slavery pamphlets. Anyone browsing Amazon.com can now access 3,500 Cornell titles available for sale, and other documents are being added.
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April 2007 -- The Friend of Man, a newspaper published for the New York State Anti-Slavery Society between 1836 and 1842, is now available online to scholars worldwide, thanks to Cornell University Library. Published by J.F. Bishop in Utica, N.Y., the paper documents the early anti-slavery movement in upstate New York.
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March 2007 -- More than one million visitors a year stream through the doors of Olin Library--whether it be for books, computers, or a quiet place to study. But, like any 46-year-old facility, the library needs an upgrade to meet the scholarship demands of a modern university and to resolve serious life-safety and environmental problems. So extensive renovations are planned, with work tentatively starting in two years.
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February 2007 -- The records of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights (LGBT) organization, are now available on a Web site in what is Cornell Library's largest online exhibit. The HRC collection consists of 84 cubic feet of faxes, strategic-planning documents, press releases, posters, campaign buttons and other print records that were donated to Cornell by the HRC in 2004. Since then, library staff have been scanning, cataloging, indexing and otherwise preparing the collection to be made accessible to the public online.
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February 2007 -- Cornell Library has a wealth of books, online resources and scholarly materials, but there are hidden treasures to be found in each of its 20 unit libraries. For example, the model train used in the Scottsboro Boys trials of the 1930s is on display in the Law Library's rare book reading room. A Fuller calculator and a Thacher slide rule can be found at the Math Library in Malott Hall. Until the advent of the electronic calculator, these cylindrical slide rules were the only easy way to obtain highly accurate calculation results. The Veterinary Library has a collection of plants that are poisonous to house pets...
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January 2007 -- The hands of Cornell librarian David Corson literally shook as he sorted through Cornell Library's most recent acquisition of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier materials. Here were the very books handbound in the distinctive style of Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier, the great French chemist's artistically gifted wife. Cornell's Lavoisier Collection is the largest set of materials on the French chemist outside of Paris. According to Corson, the collection's 2,000 books and manuscripts document all aspects of Antoine Lavoisier's career, most notably his crucial work not only with oxygen but also in developing modern chemical nomenclature.
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January 2007 -- Anne Kenney, a senior associate university librarian for public services and assessment, has been appointed interim university librarian at Cornell, succeeding Sarah Thomas, who is leaving the university to direct the University of Oxford's libraries.
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January 2007 -- To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Ezra Cornell's birth -- and to offer an insight into the man and how his visions for the university evolved -- this weekly column in the Cornell Chronicle explores the life of our founder.
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October 2006 -- Cornell University Library has signed a partnership with Microsoft Corp. that will add public domain books to its online collections, making "checking out" books even easier. Under the agreement, up to 300,000 books and other published materials will be digitized, making them freely available on the Web.
Materials in the public domain are those that either were never copyrighted or whose copyright has expired. They include all books published prior to 1923.
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