Propaganda: Power and Persuasion explores international state propaganda from the 20th and 21st centuries, encompassing the many ways posters, films, cartoons, sounds and texts have been used by world nations of every political & social creed to try and influence and persuade their citizens to their point of view.

Over 200 different items are on display ranging from recruiting material such as the famous 1917 ‘Uncle Sam’ US Army poster pictured opposite, to playing cards & board games and multimedia sources such as TV adverts, right up to the digital age with a section devoted to social media and Twitter in particular.

The exhibition runs from 17th May to 17th September. For further details, visit the British Library website here;

http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/propaganda/index.html

US Army recruiting poster by DonkeyHotey, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

Howard Jacobson has just been announced the winner of this year’s prestigious Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, the only annual literary award for humorous literature, for his novel Zoo Time, making him the first author to have ever won the award twice.

The competition celebrates books that are deemed to have captured the comic spirit of P.G. Wodehouse, author of the immortal Jeeves & Wooster and Blandings novels.

Jacobson won the first ever Wodehouse prize in 2000 for his novel The Mighty Walzer. His prize consisted of a Bollinger Champagne, a complete set of Wodehouse’s works, and - perhaps most fittingly for the spirit of Wodehouse – a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig will be named after after his book!

Although we don’t (yet) have a copy of Zoo Time in our collection, we do have other works by Howard Jacobson among our collection, as well as previous winners of the award among our Leisure Reading collection, including Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre (2003), Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (2007) and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (2011 – pictured above with his award). That’s in addition to a variety of contemporary and classic comic works by the likes of Terry Pratchett, Stephen Fry, Alan Bennett and, of course, P.G. Wodehouse. So if you’re stuck for something to lighten your exam mood, why not have a browse today?

Gary Shteyngart with his 2011 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award, image by Katie A3, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

Against a backdrop of colourful and delicious food grown by organic farmers and prepared in the kitchens of world-famous chefs, Planeat for the first time brings together the ground-breaking studies of three prominent scientists who have  between them explored the link between diet and disease, the use of nutrition to treat chronically ill heart disease patients, and how our food choices contribute to global warming, wasteful land use and lifeless oceans.

The screening is free and open to all staff and students and begins at 3.30PM in the Design Studio on the first floor of the Keith Green Building (West Park, Building 16 on the campus map). To register your place and for further details of the Eden Flix schedule, follow this link:

 http://cede.lboro.ac.uk/edenflix_planeat

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, the out-going commander of the International Space Station, returns to Earth today and decided to mark the end of his tenure by performing and recording an acoustic cover of David Bowie’s immortal 1969 inter-galactic hit Space Oddity – while floating in zero gravity around his very own ‘tin can’ inside the space station against the backdrop of outer space, 230 miles above the Earth, making it the first ever music video to be filmed in space. Beat that, Major Tom!

The video marks a triumphant culmination of a six-month tour aboard the station that has seen Hadfield become a global social media superstar through his Twitter account, which he began with the aim of raising awareness and reigniting enthusiasm for space travel, recording every detail of his stay in space backed by some stunning shots of the Earth from orbit. To date he’s amassed over 770,000 followers – doubtless now a few music promoters among them!

To view the video on YouTube, follow this link:

http://t.co/dWXTf8a8Jq

International Space Station over the Earth, courtesy of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre, reproduced from Flickr under CC License.

Today is World Press Freedom Day, UNESCO’s annual awareness raising celebration of the fundamental importance of the freedom of the press and the right to freedom of expression as enshrined in the Universal Declation of Human Rights.

The event, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is held on this date to mark the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of press freedom principles compiled by African journalists in 1991 which is regarded as a landmark in the ongoing battle for global press freedom as both a fundamental human right and an essential cornerstone of democracy.

In the UK press freedom has come into much scrutiny in recent years following the findings of the Leveson Enquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International hacking scandal which first came to light in 2005, and that has resulted in the closure of the News of the World paper in 2011 after 168 years in print, and several on-going high-profile court cases. The government and the newspaper industry remain locked in a bitter dispute about how to implement press reforms in the light of it.

We have a copy of the Leveson Inquiry in our High Demand section on Level 3. We also have many books on the subject of press freedom among our collection, as well as access to vast fund of electronic newspaper archives among our newspaper databases on Library Catalogue Plus, including the Times Digital Archive, the Daily Mirror Archive, and of course Nexis UK, which offers comprehensive coverage of UK, European and US newspapers.

Would you like the chance to have your creative work printed and published in a brand new short story collection AND win some fantastic prizes into the bargain? Then the You is for University contest is for ‘you’!

Run by the Student Wordsmith website and aimed at universities, students and young people thinking of coming to university,  the competition is inviting new poetry, short prose fiction, or short dramatic piece on university life. All selected entrants will have their work featured in the collection and receive their own signed copy of it to see their work in print, and prizes will be awarded to the best overall entries.

The Student Wordsmith is an online creative, literary platform, for budding writers, set up by creative writing Postgraduate student, Sophie-Louise Hyde. This year, it aims to print, and publish, its first collaborative collection – providing students with help and advice on university life and what to expect of higher education.

The closing date for this competition is Friday 14th June 2013. For further entry details and terms & conditions, visit the Student Wordsmith site here.

If your creative writing juices are a bit clogged up, though, don’t forget that we have a large number of books on the subject offering helpful hints and advice down among our literature section on Level 2 that should help stir your creativity back into action.

If you’re looking for something beyond the standard text resources among our social science and humanities database, the Filmakers Library Online offers a visual interpretation across the subject spectrum through nearly 900 globally acclaimed documentary films and videos.

Filmakers Library Online provides award-winning video documentaries that cover literature and the arts, race and gender studies, multiculturalism, human rights and criminal justice, psychology, globalization and global studies, the environment and bioethics, politics and current events, and much more. It presents points of view and historical and current experiences from diverse cultures and traditions world-wide.

Among the collection are works by noted independent film makers including Academy Award nominated documentarians Josh Aronson, David Bradbury, Christine Choy and Roger Weisberg, as well as films produced through studios and producers including the BBC, the Discovery Channel and the National Film Board of Canada.

All the films are indexed and easily searchable through multiple points of access including thumbnail images and synchronised transcripts, allowing you to find your point of interest in hundreds of hours of video within seconds.

All films are free to view on the website, and require nothing more than a Flash-enabled browser to play.

You can access it directly via http://flon.alexanderstreet.com/ or you can search for material through Library Catalogue Plus.

Between 1919 and 1938 Scott Fitzgerald kept a concise journal in a 200-page handwritten ledger encompassing a year-by-year record of his life and achievements including publication details of all his works and the income of both himself and his wife Zelda, revealing for instance that he made merely $2000 on The Great Gatsby on its first publication in 1925, but earned a more princely $16,666 on selling the film rights to the novel the very next year!

The ledger has been thoroughly digitised, including full-text access and is keyword-searchable. It occupies pride of place in the University’s Matthew J. & Arlyn Bruccoli Collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the most comprehensive research collection of the author’s life and work.

We have a large collection of works by and about Scott Fitzgerald among our own literature collection, including The Great Gatsby and his other novels, plus you can access a vast store of online articles and essays about the man through English literature databases such as Literature Online through Library Catalogue Plus.

F. Scott Fitzgerald portrait, circa 1920, reproduced under CC License from the Minnesota Historical Society.

These elections are of particular note for some areas which are undergoing significant boundary changes, which will result in a decrease in the number of seats on certain councils. As it stands, more than 2300 seats are being contested. The Conservatives and Labour are putting up candidates in most seats, with 2,263 and 2,168 candidates respectively. The Lib Dems have 1,763 candidates, closely followed by UKIP with 1,745 candidates and the Green Party with 893 candidates. Other parties standing include the BNP, with 99 candidates and the English Democrats, with 38 candidates. There are around 900 independent candidates.

The BBC have a handy list of all the political parties on their politics website here, including links to all the various government ministries and departments as well as the House of Lords, the Scottish & Welsh Assemblies and the European Commission.

We also have access to a broad range of national and international governmental and political information among our databases on Library Catalogue Plus, notably the Worldwide Political Science Abstracts and the British Humanities Index. Why not have a browse today?

Image by Secretlondon123, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

Eden Flix are a series of highly acclaimed, thought-provoking and inspirational documentaries on issues related to engineering, design and social consciousness. All staff and students at Loughborough are welcome to attend these screenings which are shown in the Design Studio on the first floor of the Keith Green Building (West Park, building 16 on campus map) and are sponsored by the Centre for Engineering and Design Education as part of the Engineering and Design Educators Network series of events.

For further information about the film, including a trailer, how to register your place, and further details of the Eden Flix schedule, follow this link:

http://cede.lboro.ac.uk/edenflix_crude