Category Archives: Social Sciences

The Power of Persuasion at the British Library

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US Army recruiting poster by DonkeyHoteyA new exhibition opened at the British Library today examining the potent power of propaganda and its often insidious influence on modern human civilisation.

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.

Planeat for Free at Eden Flix

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Planeat_(film)Eden Flix presents the latest in their series of free environmental film showings tomorrow afternoon with a screening of the award-winning 2010 documentary Planeat.

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

World Press Freedom Day

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world press freedom day

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.

Get Documentary with Filmakers Library Online

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filmmakers library online

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.

Democracy in Action – UK Style

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secretlond123This Thursday the country goes to the polls as council elections are held in 35 local authorities in England and Wales, including Loughborough’s Charnwood Borough.

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.

Free Eden Flix Screening of ‘A Crude Awakening’

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crudeNext Wednesday (1st May) Dr. Andrew Watson from Loughborough’s Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering will introduce Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack’s hard-hitting documentary A Crude Awakening that delivers a grave warning about the oil industry. Andrew will also host a Q&A session afterwards.

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

Free Screening of ‘Thin Ice’ Climate Change Film

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thin iceThe Geography Department have arranged for a FREE screening of the climate change information film Thin Ice this coming Tuesday evening.

Thin Ice: The Inside Story of Climate Science – is a unique project: a film about climate science made by a scientist – geologist Simon Lamb. For over three years he followed scientists from a wide range of disciplines at work in the Arctic, Antarctic, Southern Ocean, New Zealand, Europe and the USA. They talk about their work, their hopes and fears with a rare candour and directness. This creates an intimate portrait of the global community of researchers racing to understand our planet’s changing climate, and provides a compelling case for rising CO2 as the main cause.

400 free tickets are up for grabs for this screening, which is being held in Room J104 in the Edward Herbert Building between 5.30-7PM. To register visit this link:

http://thinicelboro-estw.eventbrite.co.uk/

Preserving the Nation’s Digital Memory

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computers by jisc

An ambitious project has just been launched by the British Library to collect and preserve everything that is published online in Britain.

The archive will cover 4.8 million websites encompassing books and academic journals as well as alternative sources of literature, news and comment including popular blogs, web forums and social media sites including Facebook and Twitter.

Six ’Legal Deposit Sites’ led by the British Library and including the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford will be allowed to collect and store anything that is published online in the UK web domain. This archive will then be made available to future generations of social historians and researchers who will doubtless be looking to find some arcane meaning to our ‘Google’ age!

To start the ball rolling, the participating Libraries have come up with a list of what they deem to be the 100 most important and notable websites to archive – and they’re keen to get the British public in on the act too! So if you’d like to suggest your nominations, or just browse the list they’ve come up with, visit the British Library site here:

http://www.bl.uk/100websites/index.html

Computers image by Jisc, reproduced under CC License from Flickr. 

Ninety Not Out for BBC Radio

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Today is the 90th anniversary of the BBC’s first ever radio broadcast, and the occasion is being marked by a specially commissioned live simultaneous composition which will go out across the world at exactly the same time as the original broadcast.

Titled 2LO Calling in honour of the title of the transmitter that beamed that first broadcast, the 3-minute piece has been created by Damon Albarn, lead singer of the pop group Blur, and features a variety of different sounds, past and present, from the BBC Radio archives, including the celebrated time signal ‘pips’ that mark the arrival of an hour.

This will be followed by a range of special events and programmes across the network, as well as a new exhibition at the London Science Museum featuring historic items from the time, including a piece of the original 2LO transmitter.

The first broadcast, timed at 5.33PM on November 12th, 1922, was a news summary read by the Director of Programmes, Arthur Burrows, and included news of a train robbery, the sale of an antique Shakespeare folio, the condition of the London fog (!) and the latest billiard scores (!!).

If you want to find out more about the history of BBC radio, we have quite a range of books on the subject among our own collection, as well as a variety of audio CDs of shows and programmes from the BBC’s substantial archives.

Radio image by holdit, reproduced under CC License from Flickr.

World Space Week

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Today marks the beginning of World Space Week, an annual international celebration of the many benefits of the exploration of outer space.

This year’s theme for the event is “Space for Human Safety and Security”, which seeks to extol the virtues of how much Earth observation, navigation and telecommunication satellites are used everyday to protect humans and safeguard our environment.

Chosen specifically for this date by the UN General Assembly to mark the succesful launch of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite, on October 4th 1957, and the signining of the ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activites of States in the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’ on October 10 1967, World Space Week has been held every year since 1999, and seeks primarily to educate people about the positives of space exploration and encourage better public understanding and support for space programmes.

We’re very keen on space in the Library, and not just the kind students look for for studying in! We possess a large range of material about space flight and the history of astronautics, including access to NASA’s Scientific & Technical Information (STI) web site among our extensive array of Aeronautical databases.

For more information about World Space Week, including an opportunity to participate in a ‘Tweet-up’ with legendary Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, visit their website here:

http://www.worldspaceweek.org/wsw/