Engineering and Science Library Newsletter

March 2005

Welcome to Mike White

Please join us in welcoming Mike White as Public Services Librarian for Research Services.

Mike is a graduate of Boston University and the University of Michigan's School of Library and Information Studies. He brings a wealth of experience to QUL including over 10 years of science and engineering library experience.

Mike comes to us from his most recent position at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office where he provided specialized research and reference services as well as training programs for library staff and users of the USPTO collections and service. He will be an exceptional addition to the Queen's community.

BOOKS

Journeys of women in science and engineering : no universal constants / Susan A. Ambrose
"Thirty-six women in engineering, six women in computer science, and forty-six women in science narrate their professional and personal histories, experiences and lessons in the book. Many of these stories underscore the various factors that have been described in the literature as reasons for women choosing and staying in engineering. Q130 .J68

Lessons
"After I was kicked out of school in East Africa (for demonstrating against apartheid!), I was working on an old bike and a friend of mine offered me a job in his workshop... He had an incredible background in metallurgy and was a brilliant engineer, really ingenious, with not a lot of formal training. I began working in his workshop and learned a lot of practical skills such as welding, milling, turning, elementary design and drafting, and then began to segue into the more ‘science-y’ approaches to problems that I would use later in my career. ...we would be heat-treating metals. There would be all these mysterious quenches which he knew by the look of things, by family-based empirical learning. One day in the streets of Nairobi, I came across a physical metallurgy textbook......"
Gretchen Kalonji,
Material Scientist Professor
University of Washington

From: Journeys of women in science and engineering : no universal constants by Susan A. Ambrose

New Books

Ancient Wine: the search for the origins of viniculture, by Patrick McGovern . "McGovern shows the central role of wine in human history, with insights drawn from archaeology, chemistry, gastronomy, and the arts
TP559.M53 M34 2003

Self-portrait with turtles : a memoir / David M. Carroll The author "brings to life the crucial moments that have shaped his passion and his talents: his early years in the Old Swamp; the teacher who told him contrary to everything he had heard, that art is the only thing that matters".
QL666.C5 C369 2004
Excerpt from the book from American Scientist

Pastoralism on the Margin by John Markakis
"Pastoralism is a culture, an ancient mode of livestock production and a way of life, which makes extensive use of grazing in the lowlands of eastern Africa and the Horn. However ... it has reached a critical point. Its demise would be a human rights tragedy and a major loss to Africa's and humanity's cultural heritage".
SF140.P38 M37 2004
Read full text (pub. by Minority Right Group)

Read a good Engineering and Science Library book? Send us the title and a sentence or two describing the book. We'll post our favourites next issue and send a prize to a lucky winner.

International
Women's Day
BOOKS .. cont'd...