Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Interesting reading (seriously) on freight, shipping, supply chains, and logistics.

Listed below is a sample of titles that relate to containers and freight shipping. All are available through the Sawyer Library.

The "Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics" is a scholarly reference book, but the others (especially the three print titles) are interesting and relatively quick to read in their entirety.

All of the titles should awaken respect for those who work to transport the items that are at the center of the consumer economy.




Ninety Percent of Everything :
Inside Shipping, The Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate.

By Rose George
Sawyer 4th Floor
HE571 .G465 2013

The Box :
How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.

By Marc Levinson
Sawyer 4th Floor
TA1215 .L47 2006

The Container Principle :
How a Box Changes the Way we Think.

By Alexander Klose ;
translated by Charles Marcrum II
Sawyer New Books
TA1215 .K5813 2015




Box Boats:
How Container Ships Changed the World.

By Brian J. Cudahy
E-BOOK

Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics:
Making Global Supply Chains Effective.

Edited by Chung-Yee Lee, Qiang Meng
E-BOOK

Development of Containerization:
Success Through Vision, Drive and Technology.

By Hans van Ham, Joan Rijsenbrij
E-BOOK


Monday, April 20, 2015

New Database: Films on Demand



Films on Demand (FOD) is a comprehensive collection of high-quality educational videos. The Sawyer Library has unlimited access to over 17,000 videos covering a wide range of topics. Featured producers include American Experience, BBC, Films for the Humanities and Science, Ken Burns, Frontline, PBS, NOVA, Meridian, Royal Opera House, TED, and much more.

Individual segments subdivide each video creating separate shorter units. Films may be searched by title or by keywords in segments. In addition, the user may browse titles alphabetically or browse or search within subject areas. Films on Demand offers closed captioning in many videos.

Users can create custom playlists of selected clips and share them or embed playlist URLs in Blackboard or syllabi. In addition, users can create personal accounts and save films or segments in folders for easy access and organization.

All films have public performance rights and no copyright infringement worries. Proper citation formats are provided with each video so that students can cite correctly.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

New Online Resource:
Oxford Islamic Studies Online




Oxford Islamic Studies Online is comprised of "over 5,000 A–Z reference entries, chapters from scholarly and introductory works, Qur'anic materials, primary sources, images, maps, and timelines." Core content titles include:
  • The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics
  • The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture
  • The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World
  • The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World
  • The Oxford History of Islam
  • Two versions of the Qur'an:
    • M.A.S. Abdel Haleem's The Qur'an, a prose translation
    • The Koran Interpreted, a verse translation by A.J. Arberry
  • Hanna Kassis' Concordance of the Qur'an


Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Have you heard about "Bitcoin"?
Are you curious about virtual currencies?
Are you looking for a paper topic relating to technology and society?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then have a look at this new book:

"Wildcat Currency: How the Virtual Money Revolution is Transforming the Economy," written by Edward Castronova, published by Yale University Press, [2014].



The publisher has provided this synopsis:

"Private currencies have always existed, from notes printed by individual banks to the S&H Green Stamps that consumers once redeemed for household items. Today's economy has seen an explosion of new forms of monetary exchange not created by the federal government. Credit card companies offer points that can be traded in for a variety of goods and services, from airline miles to online store credit. Online game creators have devised new mediums of electronic exchange that turn virtual money into real money. Meanwhile, real money is increasingly going digital, where it competes with private currencies like Bitcoin. The virtual and the real economic worlds are intermingling more than ever before, raising the possibility that this new money might eventually replace the government-run system of dollars, euros, and yen. Edward Castronova is the leading researcher in this field, a founder of scholarly online game studies and an expert on the economies of virtual worlds. In this dynamic and essential work, he explores the current phenomenon of virtual currencies and what it will mean legally, politically, and economically in the future. In doing so, he provides a fascinating, often surprising discourse on the meaning of money itself-what it is, what we think it is, and how we relate to it on an emotional level"