2022 Year in Review

Jan 1, 2023

As a new year begins, we thought it might be fun to look back on 2022 and highlight a few things to help you in the year ahead.

By the numbers

In 2022:

In case you missed it

Below, a sampling of recent purchases, news and new features and more from Wright Library.

Happy 2023! We look forward to assisting with your research needs and seeing you in the library in the new year.

New from BrowZine: Email Notifications

Dec 19, 2022

Create your own bookshelf of favorite titles and catch new issues/articles as they become available with email notifications from your free BrowZine account.

While BrowZine has always tracked new articles in journals saved to My Bookshelf, now it's possible to receive an automated email alert with a summary of which journals have new articles available, similar to the example on the right.

Notifications can be configured to be received daily, weekly, or "off" to receive no email notifications. The default is weekly.

With a weekly email notification, emails will be generated and sent out Monday morning Central US time. The email alert journals which have added new articles within the last 7 days.

With a daily notification, the email is delivered each morning (Central US time) and is based in the morning and is based on the previous day's new article additions.

Articles included in notifications are those which have been assigned to an issue. This specifically excludes "articles in press."

Q: What happens if there are no new articles in a selected notification period?

A: If no new articles are added to followed journals within the selected time period, no email alert is sent.

Q: I have BrowZine on my iOS, Android or Amazon Fire device... will this email link into the apps?

A: No, the links will go to BrowZine.com only which will render in a mobile optimized way on your mobile device with a similar look and feel as the mobile apps.

What about new books?

You can get email alerts through the library catalog about new books added to the library collection which match your searches.

Suggested viewing: Library Catalog: Saving your searches

When you're logged in to the library catalog, you can save searches with the click of a button, and mark any saved search to get email notifications about new titles in the collection that match your search.

Just log in, run a search, and click the button marked "Save as preferred search" on the search results page.

When you return to your patron record (My Account), you can click the "Preferred Searches" button to see your saved searches.

Click the box in the Mark for Email column next to any search you would like to receive an email notification about. Once a week, the library catalog system will check to see if there are any newly added titles in the collection that match your search. If there are any, it will send you an email. Make sure that your patron record information includes your current email address.

Christmas Break 2022 Library Hours

Dec 16, 2022

Merry Christmas and a healthy and happy new year from Wright Library!

There will be a pause in interlibrary loan (ILL) services from December 22, 2022 through January 4, 2023.

The library will close at noon (no entry after 11:30am) on Thursday, December 22, 2022 and reopen on Tuesday, January 3, 2023.

Also, the Brick Café will be closed starting next week until January 30.

New in Summon Library Search

Dec 12, 2022

Sierra via Summon

It is now possible to log in to your library account (My Account) via Summon.

Suggested reading: What is Summon Search?

Features

Once logged in, you can:

  • View what you currently have checked out from the library
  • Renew checked out items
  • Request In Process items (e.g. items on their way to the shelf)
  • Authorized users may also request items checked out to someone else (e.g. recall items)

To use Sierra (the library catalog) via Summon, click the Library Card icon in the upper right corner (center on mobile devices). It has a tool tip of Library Card also.

Log In / Log Out Options

  • Library Login (name, barcode, PIN)
  • Campus Login (as for library databases, etc.)

There are also two options for logging out: Everywhere and Library Catalog only.

Suggested viewing: Library Catalog Login (90-second screencast with transcript)*

Also New in Summon

Other recent additions to Summon include:

  • Search Options overlay (replaces the separate Advanced Search page)
  • Quick Look panel (includes at-a-glance journal coverage information) for search results

Questions

Contact the Discovery and Web Services Librarian

*This is a screencast about logging in to the library catalog directly, but contains relevent demonstrations of the two types of login.

Bonhoeffer's Luther Bible

Dec 2, 2022

Earlier this year, Brian Shetler, Head of Special Collections and Archives and Ryan MacLean, MDiv/MACEF Year 3 at Princeton Theological Seminary co-authored an article in Lutheran Quarterly about a very special Bible in the Wright Library collection.

It is a two-volume 1934 facsimile of Martin Luther’s German Bible from 1534 dedicated to Dietrich Bonhoeffer by his students and colleagues at a clandestine seminary in Germany in the mid-1930s.

"...The gift, to 'our dear Brother Bonhoeffer,' was given in honor of Bonhoeffer’s thirty-first birthday during the fourth course of study at Finkenwalde."

The Bible is on display in the Special Collections reading room until the end of January. Special Collections and Archives Hours

Shetler, Brian and Ryan MacLean. 2022. "Bonhoeffer's Luther Bible." Lutheran Quarterly 36 (3): 322-331. (open access PDF)

Wright Library subscribes to Lutheran Quarterly online via the Atla Religion Database with AtlaSerials PLUS and in print.

Advent and Christmas Selected Reading

Nov 28, 2022

Journey through the season of Advent (and Christmas) with devotionals, books, recordings and local worship services gathered together in a curated Wright Library guide.

Thanksgiving Break Library Hours

Nov 21, 2022

Wright Library will close early on Wednesday, November 23 and reopen on Saturday, November 26, 2022.

New Faculty Book: Innovating for Love

Nov 17, 2022

Innovating for love : Joining God's expedition through Christian social innovation by Kenda Creasy Dean has been cataloged – BV601.9 .D43 2022 – and added to the collection.

Summary from the publisher: "Author Kenda Creasy Dean writes that starting with why is the wrong place for Christian ministry to begin. Human decision-making starts in a different place. "Starting with why" assumes a rational relationship between human cognition and human action: if we understand someone's purpose, we will be persuaded to join them. What we do, writes Dean - buy an iPhone, join a cause, come to church, choose a side - has more to do with what we feel than what we think. Our model - and indeed, our power-source - for such a compassion-driven, grace-drenched version of humanity is Jesus. Our vocation always involves becoming more profoundly human, becoming more like Jesus, divinely wired and earthly-born, made from mud but bound for heaven, one with God and one with all the world. We are not called to build better churches. We are called to be better humans who reflect God's love.

This book argues Christians must enact a distinctive approach to social innovation. In short, we are called to participate in God's dream, rather than invoke God's blessing for our own. the task of Christian social innovators is the task Christ offers to every believer: to unbind one another as we stumble out of our tombs toward the new life Christ offers. We are not called to build a better church. We are called to go and tell about Who is doing a "new thing." God becomes human, death becomes life - it doesn't get any more innovative than that. The Bible both begins and ends with stories of God innovating, and records God delight in it.

Not since the Reformation, writes Creasy Dean, has so much energy gone into discerning what it looks like to be Christ's body in the world. If you leave these pages feeling a little bolder, a little lighter, a little more ready to risk making your life look more like Jesus' - you are already innovating, redeeming the wreckage for the next leg of your journey toward God."

Image description: Photo of the book displayed on a library bookshelf

Native American Heritage Month

Nov 1, 2022

November is Native American Heritage Month, sometimes called American Indian Heritage Month.

Part of the purpose of observing this heritage month is to increase the visibility of indigenous nations, tribes and individuals. There are three state recognized tribes in New Jersey: the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribe, the Powhatan Renape Tribe and the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation.

We invite you to browse a curated bibliography of selected titles from the Wright Library collection, find material in Cherokee, Delaware, Navajo, Ojibwa and other languages in the Theological Commons and engage with the websites, recordings and other material included in the guide linked below.

Among the resources highlighted you'll find links to the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries & Museums, and more.

New Faculty Book: A Gift Grows in the Ghetto

Oct 24, 2022

A gift grows in the ghetto : reimagining the spiritual lives of Black men by Jay-Paul Hinds has been cataloged – BL625.2 .H56 2022 – and added to the collection.

Summary from the publisher: "In his classic essay Of Our Spiritual Strivings, W. E. B. Du Bois asks, how does it feel to be a problem? This question has become a means of diagnosing the lived experience of Black men, particularly in America's most neglected and feared environment: the ghetto. What is often overlooked, however, is the vital role that spirituality has in remedying the problem. A Gift Grows in the Ghetto examines how not being in relationship with one's gift can lead to feelings of despair, entrapment, and abandonment, all of which contribute to Black men feeling as though they are nothing more than a problem.

By utilizing the biblical story of Ishmael's miraculous survival, growth, and giftedness in the wilderness, the book encourages Black men to embrace a life of faith that is dependent on the God who always sees, nurtures, and is in relationship with us and our gifts in the wilderness and the ghetto."

Image description: Photo of the book with the atrium of the library in the background