Remember reading for fun? School's out, and we've chosen a slew of books for your summer reading pleasure. Check out the Diversions bookshelf or our online display for a selection of recent fiction, graphic novels, and Northwest trail guides to get you through the summer. Image of Miss Piggy and Kermit reading from Awesome People Reading

We know it's the end of the semester, and you're busy. REALLY busy. But check out this prestigious award that the library gives to the two best E&D research projects. It's easy to apply for the award, and you've already done the work! The deadline to apply is May 18.

Watzek Library is proud to announce the James J. Kopp First-year Research Awards. Two first-year students who submit research projects produced in the spring 2013 semester of E&D, which exemplify excellence in the discovery and use of library and scholarly resources, will win this award. We will also award an honorarium of $200 each to the winners.

Find out more about the award and apply right here.

Need some evening research assistance? Watzek librarians will be available at the Reference Desk, from 7 to 9 pm, April 28-May 1 and May 5-9.

For more information about getting help from our research experts, check out all the ways to contact a librarian for assistance right here.

Don't let the stress of Reading Days get you down. Come to the library classroom for a spread of treats and diversions to help get you through the weekend: 8-10 pm, Saturday May 4 & Monday May 6. The details:

• savory & sweet snacks and lots of caffeine

• coloring and games galore

• screening movies

• free 10 minute massages (sign up at 8 pm sharp-limited availability)

These events are organized by the Watzek Library Student Advisory Committee (SAC), and are made possible by the Student Initiatives Fund.

William Stafford: An Annotated Bibliography, by James W. Pirie & our own Special Collections staff, is the authoritative bibliography of Stafford's writings. It coincides with the centennial celebration of Stafford's birth in 2014.

William Stafford (1914-1993) was one of the most prolific and important American poets of the last half of the twentieth century. Among his many awards, Stafford served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and received the National Book Award in 1963 for his poetry collection Traveling through the Dark. During his lifetime, Stafford wrote over sixty books of poetry that still resonate with a wide range of readers. Stafford's perspectives on peace, the environment, and education serve as some of the most articulate dialogues by a modern American writer.

James W. Pirie (1913-2002) was the author of Books for Junior College Libraries: A Selected List of Approximately 19,700 Titles (1969) and Typology of Institutions of Higher Education (1974). As the well-respected Director of Aubrey R. Watzek Library at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, from 1966 to 1982, Pirie worked closely with his friend and colleague William Stafford to maintain an accurate bibliographic record of Staffords numerous publications. Following James Piries death in 2002, the Lewis & Clark College Special Collections staff expanded and updated Pirie's bibliography for this volume, the only comprehensive bibliography of William Stafford's writings.

April's Diversions features a selection of British spy novels and their film/television adaptations from the twentieth century, selected by library director Mark Dahl. The genre is one that is simultaneously dark, entertaining and complex and often offers insights into the geopolitical zeitgeist.

John Buchan’s work provides an early example of the international espionage thriller from the pre-WW I era. The Thirty Nine Steps was adapted to film three times, perhaps most famously in 1935 by Alfred Hitchcock. The works of Graham Greene and Eric Ambler appeared during and after World War II and added a new realism to the genre with an anti-imperialist outlook. Works of John le Carré, Len Deighton, and Joseph Hone from the sixties through the eighties center around anti-hero protagonists in Cold War settings. Le Carré, who’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has been dramatized as a mini-series and a recent feature film, develops narrative tension through intrigue within the bureaucracy of the ‘service’ as opposed to the glamorous international exploits of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. The Sandbaggers, an obscure, low-budget 1970s British television series about a under-resourced unit of the British SIS offers exceptionally taut plots and train crash endings set in the geopolitical hotspots of the time such as East Berlin, Cyprus, and Iran.

This month check out Diversions in the library or online for a selection of books that support the themes of L&C's 32nd Annual Gender Studies Symposium. This year's Gender Studies Symposium will bring together pressing issues of gender and religion: from recent evangelical Christian politics attacking reproductive health, to theological questions about women in ancient texts, to ongoing controversies over institutional hierarchy and authority. Join with scholars, students, community organizers, and religious leaders in exploring national and global gender issues related to faith, practice, and spirituality.

The full schedule of events for the Gender Studies Symposium, which runs March 13-15, can be viewed here.

Join us at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, March 6 in Miller 105 for a panel discussion on the values and disciplinary norms that structure academic writing.

Academic writing in most disciplines has changed drastically over the last century. Some changes may be for the better, others for the worse, but either way, these changes restructure our thinking, our writing, and our teaching. Why have thesis statements and “road maps” become a standard expectation in so many fields? Why do we emphasize clarity and efficiency more than beauty or profundity? Have we become more comprehensible to non-experts or less so? How did the scholarly essay turn into the research article, and at what price? When future ages look back on our work, what will they say?

To help answer these and related questions, the panelists have been asked to compare academic writing in their fields with that of earlier generations and explore the hidden cultural factors — social, political, and economic — that have influenced the way we work and teach.

Panelists:

• Lyell Asher, English Department, Lewis & Clark
• Jan Mieszkowski, German Department, Reed
• Liz Safran, Geological Science Department and Environmental Studies Program, Lewis & Clark
• Peter Steinberger, Political Science Department and former Dean of the College, Reed

Moderator:

• John Holzwarth, Director, Writing Center, Lewis & Clark

Co-sponsored by the Writing Center and the Office of the Dean of the College.

In this last week of February, we invite you to browse our collection of African-American writers, poets, and historians. This selection is devoted to the thematic focus of LC’s Black Heritage Month, "Frames of the Black Experience: A Retrospective Through Film, Photography and the Arts." The books are located on the Diversions bookshelf in the library atrium, and you can also find them on our Pinterest board.

For more info about the full slate of events commemorating Black Heritage Month, visit the LC Multicultural Affairs web page.