This site presents diverse opinions regarding Affirmative Action topics; rather than taking a singular pro or con position, it is designed to help lend many different voices to the debates surrounding the issues of affirmative action.

Information taken from publisher web site:

Black Studies Center brings together essential historical and current material for researching the past, present and future of African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself. It is comprised of several cross-searchable component databases.

Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience

At the heart of Black Studies Center is Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience. This unique database examines interdisciplinary topics on the African experience throughout the Americas via in-depth essays accompanied by detailed timelines along with important research articles, images, film clips and more. The essays are contributed by leading academic experts who have surveyed and analysed the most important existing research literature in their respective fields.

International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP)

IIBP includes current and retrospective bibliographic citations and abstracts from scholarly journals and newsletters from the United States, Africa and the Caribbean, and full-text coverage of core Black Studies periodicals. See this journal title list (Excel format) for periodicals included. Most IIBP records in the current coverage contain an abstract, and additionally many IIBP records contain the corresponding full text of the original article. Coverage is international in scope and multidisciplinary, spanning cultural, economic, historical, religious, social, and political issues of vital importance to the Black Studies discipline. The journal list was prepared with the guidance of an advisory board including librarians specializing in Black Studies: Carol A. Rudisell, Associate Librarian, University of Delaware Library and Dorothy Ann Washington, Librarian, Black Cultural Center, Purdue University.

The Marshall Index was compiled by Albert P. Marshall, an African-American librarian at the State Teachers College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and first published as a quarterly magazine, A Guide to Negro Periodical Literature, from 1941 to 1946. It was the first index to black serials ever compiled and covers 42 of the leading African-American periodicals between 1940 and 1946. The Marshall Index was published in a revised single-volume print edition by ProQuest in 2002, edited by James Danky and Richard Newman, and is now made available online through Black Studies Center.

The Chicago Defender

BSC provides the full text backfile, from 1910 to 1975, of the influential black newspaper The Chicago Defender. Robert Sengstacke Abbott founded the Defender in May 1905 and by the outbreak of the First World War it had become the most widely-read black newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago. When Abbott died in 1940, his nephew John Sengstacke became editor and publisher of the Defender, which began publishing on a daily basis in 1956.

Black Literature Index

Black Studies Center includes the electronic index to the Black Literature microfiche collection. This index allows users to search over 70,000 bibliographic citations for fiction, poetry and literary reviews published in 110 black periodicals and newspapers between 1827-1940. For citations to content from the Chicago Defender for which full text is available in Black Studies Center, a link is included directly to the relevant article.

Review by Carrie Lewis, Drake University Assistant Director of International Admission, of The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick.

blueREVIEWS - The Ugly American from Cowles Library on Vimeo.

In the comments section, you can tell us what you thought of the item reviewed!
Also: if you are a part of the Drake University community and are interested in briefly reviewing a book or media item for blueREVIEWS, please contact Mireille Djenno at mireille.djenno@drake.edu or 515-271-2862.

So you can search Google…

SO WHAT?

• Do you know how to form a research question?
• Do you know you have access to 150 better search resources than Google?
• Do you know how to distinguish if information you have found is accurate or useful?
• Do you know how to analyze the information in order to help produce useful answers?
• Do you know how to properly cite the information you use?

You will do better at Drake if you know the answers to these questions. And Cowles Library is here to help you!

The home page of the journal, Diverse (Formerly - Black Issues in Higher Education). Includes a variety of information on diversity-related topics, including a forum area, resource guide, and career center. Username: drakeu ; Password: bulldogs

The home page of the journal, DiversityInc. Includes a variety of information on diversity-related topics, including a forum area, resource guide, and career center.

Full-text of approximately 35 scholarly journals published by Duke University Press.

Full-text of 170 publications providing in-depth perspective on gender studies. Also includes Women's Studies & Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender studies.

Collection of web resources related to multicultural topics

SEE African American Studies Center.

Tuesday 15 Sept. 2009

I was met at customs by Ibrahim, the Fulbright “expediter” who took charge, showed me where to buy my visa ($15 handed to a teller in one of a row of several kiosk-style banks secured an official-looking piece of paper) which Ibrahim then handed, together with my passport, to the customs official in his booth. Once he had stamped my passport, he passed it to a woman in headscarf who was seated behind him. She appeared to enter some sort of data into a computer and then returned the passport to me. With that, we were outside in fresh air (for me the first time in 18 hrs…) and into Ibrahim’s car. It took both of us to heave my 85 lb. suitcase into the trunk… A pleasant evening for late Summer in Cairo. The air was moist, smelled of city and traffic, but not terribly hot. We set off for the Hotel Safir in a section of Cairo called “Dokki,” one of the newer suburbs in the western part of the city. I was totally disoriented until we crossed the Nile and I asked Ibrahim in which direction we were traveling. He replied, “gharbi.” West. That meant toward the Red Sea, generally; Alexandria was off to our right, north down the Nile and on the Mediterranean. The streets were full of people and cars; we had to stop several times as heavy traffic crawled to a halt and then began flowing again. I was startled to see pedestrians crossing the main streets-four or six lanes of traffic-wherever they chose. Most were invisible until we were right on top of them because they were wearing dark clothing. Glad I wasn’t driving…

It’s the holy month of Ramadan and that means that observant Muslims fast from sunup until sundown. Not an easy feat when the month falls in the long hot days of Summer. Work hours are customarily shortened during Ramadan and people tend to shift their active lives to night time. Shops and restaurants are open and doing brisk business; the many mosques are full of light, the minarets marked with green lamps along their lengths. The windows of the mosques, covered with geometric designs in masonry glow warmly in the darkness. Ibrahim points out some of the landmarks along the way: the central train station, President Mubarak’s residence, city hall. Familiar green and white street signs bear both Arabic and English place names. We turn off the main thoroughfare and down a narrower, darker, quieter side street. A neighborhood with people standing and talking with one another outside shops, drinking Coca Cola, smoking cigarettes. Ibrahim pulls up in front of the Safir Hotel, brightly lighted and marble lined. Sleek, modern (Recently renovated” says the marketing literature.) and efficient. We lift out my suitcase, he summons a hotel employee to take it and we shake hands. “Alf shukr,” I say to him. Many thanks. We’ll see each other again in three days, when he drives me to my apartment in Alexandria. Check in. A mixture of Arabic and English spoken with the desk clerk and the “bell boy,” who is summoned to trundle my heavy bag upstairs to my room. The elevator is remarkably quiet and smooth. I hardly notice its motion at all. The bell dings and we’re on the twelfth floor. Key card inserted into the lock on the door. A quick introduction to the room’s features—TV, AC, mini-refrigerator (no booze in it…), lights. A tip to the young man in dollars (I haven’t yet had time to exchange money for Egyptian Liras) and I say good night to him, “Tisbah ala khayr.” May you awaken well. A forward-looking valedictory. A quick shower to remove the travel grime and off to a surprisingly restful sleep.