Ames Library News

Fall semester is done (mostly). Most of you are probably heading home for winter break and along the way you may even pass the time listening to music. Will you be using your favorite streaming service like Spotify or Pandora? Or do you download your own copies from iTunes, Amazon, or some other favorite option? How long have you been downloading music? Can you remember a time when that wasn’t always an option?

Because, yes – downloading music wasn’t always a thing.

Check out The Online Music Revolution which examines the explosion of legal music downloading and viral marketing, which have enabled enterprising bands and singers to distribute their own work rather than signing with major labels. Focusing on the success of Nizlopi, Arctic Monkeys, Internet marketing pioneer Simply Red, and other artists, the program also features commentary from John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry–who outlines the potential benefits that big corporations may one day reap from consumer downloading.

What is new media? We may begin answering this question by listing the categories commonly discussed under this topic in the popular press: the Internet, Web sites, computer multimedia, computer games, CD-ROMs and DVD, virtual reality. Is this all there is to new media? What about television programs shot on digital video and edited on computer workstations? Or feature films that use 3-D animation and digital compositing? Shall we also count these as new media? What about images and textimage (meme) compositions – photographs, illustrations, layouts, ads – created on computers and then printed on paper? Where shall we stop?

As can be seen from these examples, the popular understanding of new media identifies it with the use of a computer for distribution and exhibition rather than production. Accordingly, texts distributed on a computer (Web sites and electronic books) are considered to be new media, whereas texts distributed on paper are not. Similarly, photographs that are put on a CD-ROM and require a computer to be viewed are considered new media; the same photographs printed in a book are not.

Has this discussion of new media piqued your interest? Check out some of these books on gaming and how it integrates with cinema, marketing, and business.

Game on, Hollywood!: Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema

The 14 essays in Game on, Hollywood! take on several points of game and film intersection. They look at storylines, aesthetics, mechanics, and production. The book is about adaptation (video game to film, film to video game), but it is even more about narrative. The essays draw attention to the ways and possibilities of telling a story. They consider differences and similarities across modes of storytelling (showing, telling, interacting), explore the consequences of time, place and ideology, and propose critical approaches to the vastness of narrative in the age of multimedia storytelling.

The video games and film texts discussed include The Warriors (1979 film; 2005 video game), GoldenEye (1995 film), GoldenEye 007 (1997 and 2011 video games), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2000–2004, television show), Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds (2003 video game), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003 video game; 2010 film), the Star Wars franchise empire (1977 on), Afro Samurai (2009 video game), and Disney’s Epic Mickey (2010 video game).

Brands & Gaming: The Computer Gaming Phenomenon and its Impact on Brands and Businesses

The computer gaming industry is bigger than the film and music industries and is growing faster than both of them put together. The industry is also changing fast. The typical computer gamer is in his mid 20s and female gamers make up one of the faster growing parts of the market. New developments in sociability and interactivity are also transforming the industry. This is the first major study of brands and gaming and shows huge opportunities for brand development.

Games and Gaming: An Introduction to New Media

The computer games industry has rapidly matured. Once a preoccupation only of young technophiles, games are now one of the dominant forms of global popular culture. From consoles such as Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox to platforms such as iPhones and online gaming worlds, the realm of games and their scope has become all-pervasive.

The study of games is no longer a niche interest but rather an integral part of cultural and media studies. The analysis of games reveals much about contemporary social relations, online communities and media engagement.

Presenting a range of approaches and analytical tools through which to explore the role of games in everyday life, and packed with case material, Games and Gaming provides a comprehensive overview of this new media and how it permeates global culture in the twenty-first century.

No series on evolution would be complete without a discussion of dinosaurs, especially when you consider all the revolutionary theories about dino evolution.

Recently, fossils of early birds and their most immediate predecessors have been collected at an unprecedented rate from Mesozoic-aged rocks worldwide. This wealth of new fossils has settled the century-old controversy of the origin of birds. Today, we can safely declare that birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs known as maniraptoran theropods-generally small meat-eating dinosaurs that include Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame.

Evidence that birds evolved from the carnivorous predators that ruled the Mesozoic ecosystems is plentiful and it comes from disparate lines of evidence. Traditionally, the prime source of evidence in support of this scientific view was the similar shape of the bones of birds and a variety of maniraptorans but spectacular new discoveries have added other lines of evidence to the table.

What other evidence is there? See for yourself.

Flying dinosaurs: How fearsome reptiles became birds, by John Pickrell

Dinosaurs, by John H. Ostrom

The Princeton field guide to dinosaurs, by Gregory S. Paul

Greenhouse of the dinosaurs: Evolution, extinction, and the future of our planet, by Donald R. Prothero

Dinosaur data book: The definitive illustrated encyclopedia of dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles, by David Lambert and the Diagram Group, in association with the British Museum (Natural History)

On the fourth Thursday of November, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, a national holiday honoring the early settlers and their harvest feast known as the first Thanksgiving. The commercialized version of Thanksgiving suggests the Pilgrims and local Native Americans, the Wampanoag, sat down for a peaceful meal to celebrate the harvest season. The truth is far more nuanced, as it often is when victors write final version of events.

On this Theme Thursday, the last in our Native American Heritage Month mini-series, we take a look at library resources related to the Indian Civil Rights Act. This 1968 act made many, but not all, of the guarantees of the Bill of Rights applicable within Native American tribes in the U.S. It is one of many decisions made at a federal level that made efforts at making native lands more sovereign, but there is still much work to be done.

Read more about the act and related efforts with some of these resources, available to be checked out from Ames.

American Indian civil rights handbook by Michael R. Smith

Encyclopedia of American Indian civil rights, edited by James S. Olson; Mark Baxter, Jason M. Tetzloff, and Darren Pierson, associate editors

The Indian, America’s unfinished business, report compiled by William A. Brophy and Sophie D. Aberle, et al.

Native Americans, edited by Donald A. Grinde, Jr.

Native Americans have taken an active role in every branch of the US military since the country formed. In fact, War Department officials have stated, that during WWII, if the entire population had enlisted at the same rate American Indians did, Selective Service would have been unnecessary. According to the Selective Service in 1942, at least 99 percent of all eligible Indians, healthy males aged 21 to 44, had registered for the draft. The annual enlistment for Native Americans jumped from 7,500 in the summer of 1942 to 22,000 at the beginning of 1945.

Native American contributions to war efforts during World World II were numerous but they are most famous of code talking. The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by Cherokee and Choctaw Indians during World War I.

Check out some of these titles, available in Ames, to learn more about these efforts and contributions.

Navajo code talkers, produced by Triage, Inc. for the History Channel

Defending whose country?: Indigenous soldiers in the Pacific war, by Noah Riseman

This video, available through Alexander Street Press, reveals how strongly Navajo cultural identity and spiritual references correlated with traditional Marine Corps values and a passionate patriotism. The famous Navajo Code Talkers, memorialized by Hollywood in the feature film “Windtalkers,” were an integral part of the armed forces during World War II. Navajo veterans who fought in the Pacific in World War II, used their unwritten Native American tongue as an unbreakable code language, essential in the American military intelligence machine. Richard West, President, Museum of the American Indian, says, “Ironically, the U.S. military used the Native American language as a potent instrument of war although the government had prohibited [native] people from speaking their own language for almost a century.”Successive generations of young Navajo men who fought in the elite division of the U.S. Marine Corps, relate their stories in this film. Vincent and his brother enlisted in the 1970s; his brother died in Vietnam. Benjamin, Calbert and Michael are currently training as Marines in San Diego.

Google “Native Americans and Revolution” and almost all the results are related to Native American involvement in the American Revolution. Also known as the American War for Independence, many Native Americans sided with the Americans, but many sided with the British or tried to remain neutral. The Declaration of Independence accused King George III of unleashing “merciless Indian Savages” against innocent men, women, and children. The image of ferocious warriors propelled into action by a tyrannical monarch fixed in memory and imagination the Indians’ role in the Revolution and justified their subsequent treatment. But many Indian nations tried to stay out of the conflict, some sided with the Americans, and those who fought with the British were not the king’s pawns: they allied with the Crown as the best hope of protecting their homelands from the encroachments of American colonists and land speculators.

The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities This study is one of several available through Ames. This particular one presents the first broad coverage of Indian experiences in the American Revolution rather than Indian participation as allies or enemies of contending parties. Colin Calloway focuses on eight Indian communities as he explores how the Revolution often translated into war among Indians and their own struggles for independence. Drawing on British, American, Canadian and Spanish records, Calloway shows how Native Americans pursued different strategies, endured a variety of experiences, but were bequeathed a common legacy as a result of the Revolution.