Oxford University Press's Blog, page 847

Super Bowl ads and American civil religion

By Peter Gardella

The two most controversial, apparently contradictory Super Bowl ads—Bob Dylan’s protectionist, “American Import” Chrysler ad and Coca-Cola’s multilingual rendition of  “America the Beautiful”—show the breadth of American civil religion. As religion scholars have long observed, it belongs to the nature of religious language to self-destruct. An infinite God who chooses one people or takes flesh in one man; an eternal moment that includes all time; a Way that is the source of all action but does nothing itself: all these paradoxes and more exemplify how religious language evokes a reality that cannot be named, beyond all language.

Around major sporting events, which stand apart from government and so are not directly tied to civil religion, the language and rituals of American civil religion appear with more and more fervency. Religion, as the derivation of the word from the Latin ligare (to bind) implies, attempts to strengthen the bonds that hold things together, and events like the Super Bowl, the World Series, and any Nascar race seem to call for rituals that affirm that we Americans are in fact one country. More than most nations, we are many. We have no clergy of any traditional religions whose blessing would be acceptable to most of us, no food or language or ethnic heritage that is native to all of us. So, more than most nations, we need the huge flags, the singing of the national anthem. In the United States, churches and synagogues commonly have a national flag in the sanctuary, next to the altar or the pulpit. All nations have a civil religion, but the United States needs the most elaborate and powerful civil religion in the world.

Flag, religious icons, and holy water container. Photo by Mike Fisher, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

And American civil religion is nothing if not broad. Next to the Lincoln Memorial, which calls itself a “temple” and invokes God in the two speeches carved onto its walls, stands the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, which invokes no God and yet is regarded as sacred ground. Within a few miles of Mount Rushmore, where the heads of white men have been carved into a holy mountain of the Lakota, there is a National Park Service memorial where the Lakota who killed General Custer are honored alongside him and his troops. Arlington Cemetery holds Confederate as well as Union dead, and uses more than thirty symbols to designate religious affiliations of those who are buried there.

Arlington Cemetery. Photo by chrisjtse, CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr

The indignation of some that Dylan has “sold out” by endorsing Chrysler, or that Chrysler is hypocritical in using American patriotism to sell cars when it has lately sold itself to Fiat, is understandable but misplaced. Money spent on Chryslers will still employ more Americans and enrich more American bank accounts than money spent on Volkswagens or Hondas. In using “American Import” as a slogan, continuing the “Imported from Detroit” phrase that Chrysler began to use a few years ago, Chrysler is simply claiming that it has learned from the Germans and the Japanese how to build more efficient cars with higher standards of fit and finish.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As for the singing of “America the Beautiful” in many languages, while showing people of visibly different cultures in American settings, that Coca-Cola commercial expresses one of the most basic values or commitments of American civil religion, cultural tolerance. People have noticed this value since colonial days. Jamestown would not have survived without Pocahontas, and she became a Christian and gave birth to a child who became the ancestor of President John Tyler and Edith Bolling, the wife of Woodrow Wilson. A Jesuit priest visiting the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, decades before it became New York, counted eighteen languages spoken on the few streets that crowded the southern tip of Manhattan. Multiculturalism was invented in the United States, arguably by a World War Two veteran and Disney songwriter, Robert B. Sherman, who wrote “It’s a Small World” for the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1963 New York World’s Fair. The Cola-Cola commercial was a moving, worthy continuation of this tradition. Those who are offended by its use of many languages misread the history of the nation whose heritage they seek to defend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

American civil religion offers contradictions more profound than those of these two Super Bowl commercials. Although world peace is another one of its basic values, and Americans invented both the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations to secure world peace, the United States spends more on weapons than the next ten nations combined, and we have military bases or delegations in more than half of the nations of the world. But all this military spending and all of our wars are to secure world peace. As Walt Whitman, a great prophet of American civil religion, wrote in A Song of Myself, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

Peter Gardella is Professor of World Religions at Manhattanville College and author of American Civil Religion: What Americans Hold Sacred (Oxford, 2014). His previous books are Innocent Ecstasy (Oxford, 1985), on sex and religion in America; Domestic Religion, on American attitudes toward everyday life; and American Angels: Useful Spirits in the Material World. He is now working on TheWorld’s Religions in New York City: A History and Guide and on Birds in the World’s Religions (with Laurence Krute).

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The new DSM-5: changes in the diagnosis of autism and intellectual disability

By Martin J. Lubetsky, M.D.

What are the primary changes made by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in May 2013 in the new DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability?

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder, characterized by severe and pervasive impairments in reciprocal social communication and social interaction (verbal and nonverbal), and by restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. The current DSM-IV-TR describes Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) as the diagnostic umbrella, with five subtypes.

The first change is that there is a single category of Autism Spectrum Disorder instead of five subtypes.
The second change is that the three domains are combined into two: (1) deficits in social communication and social interaction, and (2) restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.
The third change is that there must be five out of seven criteria to make the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
The fourth change is that “restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities” expanded to include “abnormalities in sensory processing”.
The fifth change is the broadened age of onset criteria – “symptoms must be present in the early developmental period”.
The sixth change is the addition of “specifiers” to describe features such as “with or without intellectual impairment”, “with or without language impairment”, “associated with known medical or genetic condition”, and “with catatonia”.
The seventh change is the addition of “level 1, 2 or 3 as severity specifiers requiring supports”.

In addition, the APA DSM-5 Committee response to concern of loss of services is that “all individuals with current diagnosis should not lose diagnosis or services or school placement.”

Also, the APA DSM-5 added a new diagnosis of Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder to describe individuals who have “difficulties in the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication” but do not have “restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities”, as a way to distinguish from ASD.

In addition, intellectual disability (ID) is the new diagnosis in the DSM-5 to revise mental retardation. The diagnosis of ID emphasizes the focus on deficits in adaptive functioning in three domains: conceptual, social, and practical. The diagnosis of ID is then confirmed by deficits in intellectual functions through standardized intelligence testing. Also, there are now level specifiers of deficit severity in adaptive functioning and intellectual functions defined as mild, moderate, severe, and profound.

Martin J. Lubetsky, M.D. is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and the Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Services and Center for Autism and Developmental Disorders at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, and Chief of Behavioral Health at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. Dr. Lubetsky is a past recipient of the Grandin Award from the Advisory Board On Autism and Related Disorders (ABOARD). He is co-editor and co-author of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

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Autism Sunday 2014: controversies and resolutions

By Mary Coleman

Finally, in 2014, we are beginning to resolve some of the long-standing controversies in autism and move research is a more fruitful direction.

Controversy: Autism is one gigantic disease entity, with variations in the intensity of clinical expression, so it should be called ‘The Autism Spectrum’.

Resolution: As established both by clinical observation, metabolic testing and genetic protocols, autism is in fact more than one single disease — as first shown by a very large double-blind study as early as 1976. Autism symptoms are seen in many, many separate diseases — the same pattern as seen in the multiple forms of intellectual disability (ID). Just as in intellectual disability, each disease entity so far defined in autism is separate and distinct, each disease has its own separate mechanisms of action. The word ‘spectrum’ used in autism should only refer to the different degrees of clinical expression within one of the defined disease entities.

Controversy: Autism is a genetic disease and a gene causing autism will be found.

Resolution: After more than a decade of genetic testing on large groups of individuals with autistic symptoms, it is now known that autism is not a single genetic disease. In fact, it is not a disease at all, but rather a syndrome of many different diseases. That many of these diseases will be found to be associated with a genetic mutation is highly likely, but even this is not fully established at this time. We already know that there is no unique ‘autism gene’. In fact many of the genetic mutations found in children with autism overlap with other brain diseases, such as intellectual disability, epilepsy, ADHD, schizophrenia, etc. Besides genetic mutations, autistic symptoms also can be associated with in utero infections, drug exposure, toxic chemical exposure, and endocrine syndromes, as well as postnatal infections.

Controversy: How much work-up is indicated in evaluating a patient with autistic symptoms prior to being admitted to a genetic study?

Resolution: Each child needs a full work-up of history (including family history), physical and neurological examination, and a laboratory ruling-out of known etiologies of autism. There are now a number of disease entities separated out of the huge pool of patients with autistic symptoms, most of them encompassing a genetic mutation. Each individual with autistic symptoms needs to have the benefit of a ruling in of such disease entities, so they can have the long-term benefit of any research (knockout/knockin rodent studies, experimental therapeutic trials, etc.) currently ongoing for patients with that particular genetic error plus contact with established parent support groups for that single disease.

Controversy: Is autism inherited?

Resolution: Although the disease appears to be highly heritable in some families and may span generations with different patterns of Mendelian inheritance, a slight majority of genetic mutations documented to date have been de novo.

Controversy: Why do the majority of patients with autism remain undiagnosed in 2014?

Resolution: This issue is not resolved and is the main problem to confronting us in 2014. This failure likely has several main sources.

More than a decade of focus, money and resources were partly wasted trying to study autism as if it were one gigantic disease.
A search for the mutations of DNA itself leading to errors in its protein may, in the end, account for only a small percentage of genetic errors found in individuals with autism. There are already indications of an important, perhaps quite a major, role for epigenetics in autism. One of the problems is that copy number variation is so diverse in humans that separating the normal determinants from the disease determinants is extremely time-consuming and challenging. Besides the problem of finding specific genetic/genomic etiologies, there is also the problem of risk factors. For example, already there is a finding that small deletions impacting only one or two genes possibly may add to the risk of autism.
Laboratory procedures are constantly improving, including the cost of whole exome and whole genome sequencing that thankfully are steadily decreasing with time. Nevertheless there remain constant, new, unexpected discoveries about gene behavior, a number of unresolved technical questions and any sequencing studies involve very experienced sophisticated interpreters.
There is now good reason to believe that there may be many hundreds or even thousands of different genetic errors to be found in individuals with autism; this makes for an challenging overwhelming task for researchers. Unlike intellectual disability, where there are large numbers of patients with the same genetic (chromosomal) error such as Down syndrome, no such large number of individuals with the same genetic error have yet been located in the autism population; the largest identified diseases to date are in the 1% range.

We have been learning how to teach children with autism leading to an improvement in the quality of their adult life. Now we must enter a new paradigm and learn how to accurately medically diagnose them, which possibly could someday lead to medical amelioration of their condition.

Mary Coleman is a pediatric neurologist specializing in neurodevelopmental disorders. She has published over 100 papers and nine medical books, five of which are on autism. She was educated at the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University with neurology training at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Children’s Hospital in D.C. She is the co-author of The Autisms, Fourth Edition with Christopher Gillberg.

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Image credit: A hand writing the word Autism on a chalkboard under colorful puzzle piece drawings. Image by sdominick, iStockphoto.

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Going local: understanding regional library needs

By Anne Ziebart

As a marketer you spend a lot of time hidden behind your screen. At least it feels like that sometimes. Conferences and the occasional external meeting offer a welcome excuse to step into the picture and finally meet the people you market to. So I was excited when there was talk of setting up regionally focussed “library advisory councils,” and a German-speaking was one under consideration. Being a German in “self-exposed exile,” to phrase it dramatically, it provided me with a chance to organise and participate in a German-speaking meeting.

Oxford University Press (OUP) already works with an international “library advisory council” — a group of librarians with whom we are in an ongoing dialogue. Member librarians are from a range of different types and sizes of institutions to ensure the width of different customers can be represented as adequately as possible. Meetings and communications with this group are conducted in English as the librarians come from different countries globally. We regularly consult with its members on a range of topics and questions related to industry developments, trends, and general feedback to name a few. The communication stretches from personal meetings to other forms of dialogue which are beneficial to both sides. It helps us to remain in touch with our customers and learn about ongoing changes – on both sides.

The regional library advisory councils are another step closer. Whilst acknowledging regional differences means looking at more than linguistics, starting an ongoing conversation in local language seems a good starting point.

As we were looking to create our German-speaking library advisory council we obviously had the DACH countries (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland) in mind. Since we’re working in an acronym-obsessed industry the project was accordingly nicknamed DACH LAC (LAC=”library advisory council”). There are a number of German-speaking colleagues working here at OUP so we knew we would be able to plan and conduct the meeting in German. We were tied into the project and following a lot of planning, a string of emails, and some phone calls, we had a number of interested librarians from all three countries. In order to meet everyone and give members a chance to get to know each other we decided to hold a first meeting. Since many librarians come to Frankfurt Book Fair anyway it seemed a good idea to time our event around this. Hence we gathered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 8 October 2013, the day before the start of the book fair.

On the day we were pleased to welcome participants from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland for our half-day event. We met in conference facilities at a hotel which is located right next to the exhibition grounds of book fair and therefore easily accessible. Following short welcome coffees we got started with a brief introductory round. The main topic of the day was eBooks business models which gave us a lot to talk about. Despite the fact that some had a very early start on the day, to make the journey to Frankfurt all the way from places like Zürich and Vienna, we had lively discussions.

As expected, the mix of participants from different types and sizes of institutions made for an interesting conversation. The agenda consisted of a mix of presentations, including one from participants from the University of Vienna, and discussion time. It was nice to get to know people and we got some interesting insights not all of which were about eBooks business models. For example, we learnt that most of the librarians now developed a dislike to questionnaires. It seems these have become a favourite way of gathering information in the industry and as a result they receive so many surveys currently that the majority of our group wasn’t in favour of them anymore. The consensus was that they’d prefer different means of communication although the question what form this should take was subject to debate. Another interesting insight was language preference amongst library users, students in particular. Even though students are being encouraged to read in English, it seems most still prefer to use German titles rather than English books. That’s with the exception of Switzerland where it seems English titles are more popular. Overall user behaviour appears to change at PhD or post-doc level when many refer to English titles also. Other influencing factors are subjects and international focus of the institutions.

Altogether it proved a very informative event and we’re already planning another one this year. In the meantime we’re working to establish more regular communication and hope to foster an open dialogue as we navigate through a changing industry going from print to pixels.

Anne Ziebart is a senior marketing executive in the institutional marketing team at Oxford University Press promoting academic online publications to librarians in Central, North- and South Europe and North Africa. Originally from Frankfurt, she has lived in the United Kingdom for over five years.


 

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Image credits: (1) Image credit: Photograph of Steacie Science and Engineering Library at York University by Raysonho@Open Grid Scheduler. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2-3) Frankfurt and portrait images courtesy of Anne Ziebart. Do not reproduce without permission.

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A day in the life of the Music Hire Library

By Miriam Higgins

My friends always ask me: what do you do all day?!

Well, every day Bethan, new manager Guy, and I make sure orders for music are present and correct to be sent around the world. We also update the website, look at which titles need re-engraving next, work with our agents (who are worldwide), and answer customer enquiries either over the phone or by email.

In the morning, I check for any orders that have come in overnight and get them booked on. Our post is collected twice a day and it can often be a mad dash to get all the orders ready for despatch for when the postman arrives. He will also put parcels in our returns room for us to sort through and organise. This includes parcels from our printer with new material of Walton Sonata for Strings which needs to be loaded on to our management system and the material put onto the shelves. A set is also due to be sent out to our agent in Germany.

We had a visit from one of the music editors to discuss the orchestral score and parts for a choral work which is soon to be published. We were able to look through various examples of other works by the same composer to compare. We discussed what would be the best course of action for the piece they were working on and agreed a production timetable.

Over the last month we have dealt with a number of phone calls about Easter concerts and lots of vocal scores have been booked and sent out. Our shelves are starting to look a bit empty! I had a phone call today asking about repertoire suggestions for similar forces to another piece they were doing. This was really interesting and I was able to help to give plenty of information about a number of our titles. Surprisingly, I also provided several quotes for Christmas carols. Christmas is all year round for us!

After lunch we have a production meeting with the Head of Production, the Music Contracts Manager, and Promotions to discuss new titles that will be coming into the Music Hire Library. It can be really exciting seeing titles change and develop and eventually be printed and sent out for their first performance. After the meeting I will speak to Mike, our printer, to make sure the schedule is up to date and arrange to send the next batch of masters for printing.

Shakespeare is big on our priority list this year (2014 is the 450th anniversary of his birth) so we have been looking through old sets seeing what we should replace. Top of our list are: Henry V, Richard III, and Serenade to Music.

In the afternoon, Bethan and I will be trying to find 420 vocal scores needed for a concert of Haydn The Creation in New Zealand. We’ll start with what we have here then ask our European agents to return any they do not need. Hopefully we won’t have to ask our American agents as well!

Our promotion department have just let us know about three video blogs made by OUP composer, Howard Skempton. We thought we would watch one at the end of the day to find out more about how he works .

So it’s been a varied day and all begins again tomorrow …

Miriam Higgins is Music Hire Librarian at Oxford University Press. The 8th of February is National Libraries Day (UK).

The Oxford University Press Music Hire Library is one of the largest commercial music hire libraries in the world. Our hire catalogue contains thousands of individual titles. We have especially strong representation in twentieth-century British music, classic choral editions, and opera choruses. We also own the largest Christmas carol orchestration library in the world.

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UK National Libraries Day 2014: “Why we love libraries”

Today is National Libraries Day in the United Kingdom, and hundreds of activities and events are taking place in public libraries of all shapes and sizes — from the multi-million pound Library of Birmingham, to the tiniest local libraries run by volunteers — in order to celebrate our wonderful librarians, and the libraries they run. To celebrate National Libraries Day, we asked a few of our staff what they love about public libraries.

“I have loved libraries since I was a little girl and my dad would take me to the library every couple of weeks; I would take my maximum quota of books out and devour them before the next visit. I always had a teetering pile of library books next to my bed and would stay up late at night reading. My parents couldn’t come close to affording to buy the amount of books I could get through. Even now walking into my local library gives me a frisson of excitement and anticipation at the prospect of being able to take out any books I like – for free!”


— Sarah Brett, Digital Development Editor for Online Products


 

“What I want to read can vary hugely, depending on how I feel, and as such the library is completely invaluable. From losing myself in Anna Karenina, to a thriller that I’ll read quicker than I can turn the pages, or from browsing through a hefty book of Lucian Freud’s paintings, to using the online Oxford English Dictionary to look up obscure words, the library has it all.

“My library also allows me to indulge my many phases of reading that I can’t currently afford, such as reading 4 books a week, or reading the entire works of Kingsley Amis. The library is also the best guide for where to go next, not solely because, reading Amis, I discover his life-long friend, poet, and librarian Philip Larkin, but also for the unexpected juxtapositions. While looking for Amis, I discovered Margaret Atwood next door. (I’m now in my Margaret Atwood phase. In fact, because I have my wonderful library card, I could just work my way through the alphabet until I eventually get to Émile Zola.)

“Recently, my Kindle broke right in the middle of an un-put-down-able Jo Nesbo thriller (I was fully in the midst of a Nordic Crime phase) and I could have cried, I was so upset. Thankfully I pulled it together and headed down the road to the library, where the book was quietly waiting for me.”


— Alice Graves, Marketing Executive


 

“Why do we, at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, love UK public libraries? With the help of libraries across the country we’re able to make the ODNB—the national record of people in British history—a truly national resource, available free to anyone, anytime, anywhere. By tapping in your nine (or so) digit library card number you get to meet the 60,000 people whose biographies appear in the ODNB. Just who you choose is up to you: historical figures who share your birthday, who wrote the novel you’re reading, who just appeared on that programme you were watching, who share your love of cats (or dogs), and so on.

“We especially love libraries, and librarians, who see the possibilities for using the Dictionary for local and family history: promoting the ODNB to discover the people who lived in your county, city, town, village or street; who went to your school; or who were baptized or buried in a local church (and much else besides).

“And we really, really love (almost to distraction) those librarians—from Aberdeenshire to East Yorkshire—who ask us for bespoke pages to promote national figures important to them and their users. If you’re a librarian, and you’re looking for love, let us know.”


— Philip Carter, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Research Editor


 

“As a child, I never viewed going to my local public library as a treat or as some kind of special trip. But before you misunderstand me, that’s because I used to go all the time. I was lucky in that I lived about five minutes’ walk from it (certainly by the time I was old enough to make the trip on my own) and it was the best in the region, the envy of all of the others. I would frequently borrow up to the maximum number of books that you were allowed, so often when I did go, I would just be there to take in the hushed atmosphere, and the smell of the books since I couldn’t borrow any more. The mystique was also intriguing. Who might have read this book before me? Why was I the first person in over a year who wanted to read this book? And then there was the excitement of reserving a book and waiting impatiently for the postcard to come through to tell me it was there for me.

“Things have changed now, but one thing remains constant. The public library gave me the chance to discover books that I might never had tried otherwise, not wishing to spend money on it just in case it wasn’t my cup of tea. If the cover looked appealing, why not give it a go? I could just bring it back the next day if I didn’t like it. And then there were the times when I would wonder about trying one of books that I always used to see because it was right next to an author that I always made a beeline for. I never did borrow that book by Anne Christie. Perhaps I should try my local library…”


— Fiona McPherson, Senior Editor, The Oxford English Dictionary


 

“I have happy memories of many hours spent at the public library in my hometown. I grew up in the Midwest, and the library was the first place I learned that the world was bigger and more exciting than I had initially suspected. I loved reading about foreign countries and scrutinizing books of house designs and floor plans. In high school I felt important and serious writing my term papers in the library’s glass-encased study carrels, and I checked out CDs by artists no one was playing on local radio stations. At university, I grew to love the rare books held in library collections. I remember poring over eighteenth-century county records in the British Library, hoping to find undiscovered information and generally just being thrilled that someone was letting me handle something so old. The library at the Courtauld is a beautiful vaulted underground space, and my friends and I would study together around a big table in a central alcove. I love the underground stacks of the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum; the scale alone reminds me that there is always much, much more to learn about art. And I love libraries because of librarians. They make all of this possible, and they are knowledgeable, patient guides through the mountains of information available in print and online.”


— Alodie Larson, Grove Art editor


 

“I grew up going to the library every week. We moved around a lot, but no matter where we lived – a small town in Connecticut or central London – the library was always there. It wasn’t a thing I did. It was a thing I was. Every week I checked out the maximum number of books they allowed and read them one by one. Each one was like trying on someone else’s life. If you liked that life, you could renew it for another week. If you didn’t? No big loss. Just take it back and try another. The possibilities were endless – an infinite number of doors into worlds I hadn’t yet seen. Years later, as a professional researcher, I still feel the same way. While my research has become a lot more focused with search engines and keywords, there’s still no substitute for browsing the stacks of the library, for finding something you weren’t looking for that was nevertheless exactly what you needed. We talk a lot these days about the service libraries provide for their communities, and this is very important. But maybe even more important is the service they do for our souls – the magic potential of an open door.”


— Anna-Lise Santella, Editor, Oxford Music Online/Grove Music Online


 

“What I love most about public libraries is that they are community resources and gathering places. The library, on any given day, becomes a workspace, a play space, a learning space, and a space for quiet reflection for its patrons. Although when most people think of libraries they think of the books within, libraries are more than that. They adapt to patrons’ needs and provide computers, printers, copiers, fax machines, journals, news sources, online resources, audio, ebooks, videos, etc., to those who would not otherwise have access to them. They provide community events, like readings, lectures, film screenings, performances. They welcome everyone to gather, learn, and share. I’m proud to be a library-card holder!”


— Molly Tranberg, Grove Art Online editorial


 

“The smell of old books.”


— Kandice Rawlings, Associate Editor, Oxford Art Online


 

“I remember as a kid my parents taking my sister and me to our local library on a fairly regular basis, which to my childish eyes seemed a place of resplendent grandeur (it is a very nice building, in a south Florida kind of way). We would walk to whichever section we’d taken a shine to at that particular time, pull some books off the shelf, and sit at the huge tables reading and making notes. The quiet and the copious sunshine felt like heaven to me (hello, Jorge Luis Borges), and we could even rent VHS tapes there! When we weren’t geeking out about Egyptian dynasties or fangirling over Liszt and Chopin, we were renting yet again that video where Glenn Gould performs Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. I still remember the thrill of getting my own library card. No library, no matter the amount of marble or oak, will ever compare to that one for me.”


— Meg Wilhoite, Grove Music Online editorial


 

“Imagine a place where you can visit anywhere you want, travel to any time in the past or present, meet incredible people, or learn something new. It sounds incredible, but this is why I love libraries. They are a building full of books where you can let you mind wander, escape, discover, or learn! Whether you want to read in print, as an e-book, or online, libraries disseminate knowledge and let imaginations run free, and what could be better than that?”


— Hannah Charters, Senior Marketing Executive

“I come from solid library-loving stock: my grandmother, Florence (Flo), was the adult-services librarian at the Scarsdale Library for more than thirty years, only recently retiring. My parents are two-books-at-a-time, book-club-on-Saturday types. And of course, I’m a lifelong reader — true of most editors, I think! The Phantom Tollbooth was an early favorite. Milo, the protagonist, barters for words and letters in the marketplace of Dictionopolis, and I think I was probably doing the same thing at age seven or eight, turning over the words I struggled with again and again. It is easy, and pleasant, to think of libraries in that vein — full of quiet children, and adults, privately immersed in the author’s world, learning and growing. But libraries are also communal spaces. I remember getting hooked on author readings at my middle school library, when Brian Jacques recited a chapter of Redwall from memory as we followed along, amazed that he hadn’t missed a word. Libraries provide such a range of community services, and meeting a favorite author, if you are lucky, is just one small part of the spectrum. For instance, my mom recently helped found a program called LatinoU College Access, to help boost college enrollment and completion among Latino students in Westchester, New York. They needed space for student tutoring, so who did they partner with? Two local libraries, Ossining Public Library and Mt. Kisco Public Library.”


— Max Sinsheimer, Editor, Reference

As part of the National Libraries Day celebrations, we’re offering free access for the whole day to our entire range of online resources for public libraries. If you’re based in the United Kingdom, simply visit our National Libraries Day site, and click on the images for your free access. Happy National Libraries Day!

90% of all UK Public Libraries have access to the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionaries Pro, Oxford Reference, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and many have access to more of our online resources too. Visit A Library in Your Living Room, our dedicated site for UK Public Libraries, for more information.

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The genesis of computer science

By Subrata Dasgupta

Politically, socially, and culturally, the 1960s were tumultuous times. But tucked away amidst the folds of the Cold War, civil rights activism, anti-war demonstrations, the feminist movement, revolts of students and workers, flower power, sit-ins, Marxist and Maoist revolutions — almost unnoticed — a new science was born in university campuses across North America, Britain, Europe. and even, albeit tentatively, certain non-Western parts of the world. This new science acquired a name of its own: computer science (or some variations thereof, ‘computing science’, ‘informatique’, ‘informatik’).

At the heart of this new science was the process by which symbols, representing information, could be automatically (or with minimal human intervention) transformed into other symbols (representing other kinds or new information). This process was called, variously, automatic computation, information processing, or symbol processing. The agent of this process was the artifact named, generically, computer.

The computer is an automaton. In the past, this word, ‘automation’ (coined in the 17th century) was used to mean an artifact which, largely driven by its own source of motive power, performs certain repetitive patterns of movement and action without any external influences. Often, these actions imitated those of humans and animals. Ingenious mechanical automata had been invented since antiquity, largely for the amusement of the wealthy though some were of a more utilitarian nature (such as the water clock, said to be invented in the 1st century CE by the engineer/inventor Hero of Alexandria).

So mechanical automata that carry out physical actions of one sort or another form a venerable tradition. But the automatic electronic digital computer marked the birth of a whole new genus of automata, for this artifact was designed or intended to imitate human thinking; and, indeed, to extend or even replace humans in some of their highest cognitive capacities. Such was the power and scope of this artifact, it became the fount of a socio-technological revolution now commonly referred to as the Information Revolution, and a brand new science, computer science.

But computer science is not a natural science. It is not of the same kind as, say, physics, chemistry, biology, or astronomy. The gazes of these sciences are directed toward the natural world, inorganic and organic. The domain of computer science is the artificial world, the world of made objects, of artifacts — in particular, computational artifacts. Computer science is a science of the artificial, to use a term coined by Nobel laureate polymath scientist Herbert Simon.

A fundamental difference between a natural science like physics and an artificial science such as computer science relates to the age old philosophical distinction between is and ought. The natural scientist is concerned with the world as it is; she is not in the business of deliberately changing the natural world. Thus, the astronomer peering at the cosmos does not desire to change it but to understand it; the paleontologist examining rock layers in search of fossils is doing this to learn more about the history of life on earth, not to change the earth (or life) itself. For the natural scientist, understanding the natural world is an end in itself.

The scientist of the artificial also wishes to understand, not nature but artifacts. However that desire is a means to an end, for the scientist of the artificial, ultimately, wishes to alter the world in some respect. Thus the computer scientist wants to alter some aspect of the world by creating computational artifacts as improvements on existing one, or by creating new computational artifacts that have never existed before. If the natural scientist is concerned with the world as it is, the computer scientist obsesses with the world as she thinks it ought to be. For computer scientists, like other scientists of the artificial (such as engineering scientists) their domain comprises of artifacts that are intended to serve some purpose. An astronomer does not ask what a particular galaxy or planet is for; it just is. A computer scientist, striving to understand a particular computational artifact begins with the purpose for which it was created. Artifacts are imbued with purpose, reflecting the purposes or goals imagined for them by their human creators.

So how was this science of the artificial called computer science born? Where, when, and how did it begin? Who were its creators? What kinds of purposes drove the birth of this science? What were its seminal ideas? What makes it distinct from other, more venerable, sciences of the artificial? Was the genesis of computer science evolutionary or revolutionary? A ‘big bang’ or a ‘steady state’ birth? These are the kinds of questions that interest historians of science peering into the origins of what is one of the youngest artificial sciences of the 20th century.

Subrata Dasgupta is the Computer Science Trust Fund Eminent Scholar Chair in the School of Computing & Informatics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he is also a professor in the Department of History. Dasgupta has written fourteen books, most recently It Began with Babbage: The Genesis of Computer Science.

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Image Credit: A reflection of a man typing on a laptop computer. Photo by Matthew Roth. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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                Related StoriesReflections on war, past and presentIs smell for the dogs?Homophobia as extremism: The cost to freedom of choice 

Homophobia as extremism: the cost to freedom of choice

By Amos N. Guiora

As has been repeatedly and thoroughly documented, Russian President Vladimir Putin is, for lack of a better word, a homophobe. Putin’s incessant drum-beating targeting homosexuals and lesbians led President Obama, Chancellor Merkel, and President Hollande to publicly announce that they will not attend next month’s Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Boycotts are tricky, raising legitimate concern regarding effectiveness and consequences. The Carter Administration’s decision to boycott the 1980 Moscow Games in response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan failed to gather widespread international support, and the Soviet led boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games seemingly served to only punish spectators and Eastern bloc athletes who had trained for years.

However, the Sochi Games address a profoundly distinct paradigm: the decision by Obama, Merkel, and Hollande is directly related to Putin’s disturbingly homophobic statements, policies, and actions. Putin’s words have the potential to cause harm. That is very different from the motivations of previous boycotts.

President Vladimir Putin, Red Square, Moscow, 2005. Photo by ITAR-TASS (Kremlin.ru). CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The decision to send two openly gay American athletes, retired tennis star, Billie Jean King, and hockey player Caitlin Cahow, as members of the US delegation is an important message to Putin, the LBGT community, and the world regarding the essentiality of tolerance. However, it still begs the larger and more important issue.

Legislative and judicial decisions in the United States regarding same sex marriage, the banning of gay marriage in Nigeria, and the outlawing of homosexuality in many countries suggest fear of the “other” is pervasive. Differences in values, principles and lifestyles are the essence of vibrant and robust societies; the responsibility of leadership is to ensure the safety and security of those who, seemingly, are outside what may be perceived as the traditional mainstream of society. However, the true test of leaders, opinion-makers, and the public is the degree to which alternative lifestyles will be at least accepted, if not embraced.

President Putin’s aggressive and offensive comments regarding homosexuals manifest intolerance of the “other” with the obvious potential to endanger those whose lifestyle he finds objectionable. Differences of opinion are legitimate; stigmatizing and castigating with the intent to delegitimize the “other” is playing with fire.

In many ways, the question revolves around the freedom of speech, for there is extraordinary tension between words spoken and their consequences, intended or unintended. Much of the discussion regarding free speech/hate speech and what limits, if any, should be placed depend on the relationship between the speaker and the audience. In analyzing the harm in hate speech Professor Jeremy Waldron makes the following cogent observation:

Hate speech undermines this public good, or it makes the task of sustaining it much more difficult than it would otherwise be. It does this not only by intimating discrimination and violence, but by reawakening living nightmares of what this society was like—or what other societies have been like—-in the past. In doing so, it creates something like an environmental threat to social peace, a sort of slow-acting poison, accumulating here and there, word by word, so that eventually it becomes harder and less natural for even the good-hearted members of society to play their part in maintaining this public good.

In advocating for restrictions on hate speech Waldron writes:

I want to develop an affirmative characterization of hate speech laws that shows them in a favorable light—a characterization that makes good and interesting sense of the evils that might be averted by such laws and the values and principles that might plausibly motivate them. (The Harm in Hate Speech, Jeremy Waldron, Harvard University Press, 2012)

Waldron is right to highlight both the need to engage in conversation regarding limiting speech and its inherent difficulty and controversy. However, given the power of speech the discussion is essential. The adage “words kill” is not an ephemeral concept devoid of content and history. Quite the opposite; examples of the harm caused by words are bountiful and tragic. The harm is not only to specific individuals targeted by extremists or individuals who belong to particular ethnic and religious communities but to larger society which tolerates hate speech in the name of free speech.

Is Putin an extremist? Perhaps. Do Putin’s words have the potential to cause great harm? Absolutely. Does the decision by Obama, Merkel, and Hollande send a sufficiently powerful message to Putin and others who lash out at homosexuals? Perhaps, perhaps not. Can Putin’s words be legislatively restricted or banned? Realistically, no. However, that limitation need not be applied to others who incite, explicitly and implicitly, against homosexuals. That, perhaps, more than anything else should be our “takeaway” from the hate-filled language that characterizes the Russian President.

These lines are written on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. His words at his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964 serve as powerful reminder of both the danger of extremism and the power of the human spirit:

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice, I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement, which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice… I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

It is, then, to the “at risk” that we owe a duty and it is for their protection that we must seriously consider limiting the free speech of those directly responsible for the harm and danger in which they live. Western society’s obligation to protect the vulnerable is no less sacred than Western society’s obligation to ensure freedom of speech.

Amos Guiora is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for Global Justice at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, the University of Utah, where he teaches Criminal Procedure, International Law, Global Perspectives on Counterterrorism, and Religion and Terrorism. He is the author of Tolerating Intolerance: The Price of Protecting Extremism, Legitimate Target: Criteria-Based Approach to Targeted Killing, Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security, and Constitutional Limits on Coercive Interrogation.

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Nations and liberalism?

By Steven Grosby

Nationalism and nations have understandably been associated with the most illiberal treatment of human beings. History is replete with well-known examples of the murder of innocents in the cause of some nation. It continues today, for example, in Syria, Kurdistan, the Kashmir, and other places. But is there an additional consideration here that should complicate, or at least qualify, the otherwise understandable outrage over the illiberal discrimination of one human by another?

One of the principles of liberalism is the unhampered ability of individuals to govern themselves. This liberal hallmark of  the right of self-determination or self-government, promulgated in 1918 by the politically progressive American President Woodrow Wilson in his “Fourteen Points”, is today one of the guiding principles of The United Nations (see Article 1.2 of the 1945 United Nations Charter and the UN’s Resolution 1514 of 1960). Although liberalism may be a confusing and shifting combination of ideas, if it means anything then it surely means that individuals are entitled to determine their own affairs in contrast to being ordered what to do, how to behave, and what to think.

But here is the rub: just what or who is the “self” in the liberal idea of self-determination and self-government? Whatever the group of individuals to which this “self” in self-determination and self-government refers, however it is understood and however it has been formed, it necessarily implies a boundary that distinguishes a member of the group from someone who is not a member of the group. More often than not, we understand this “self” to be a nation.

We thus appear to have something of a paradox. On the one hand, the liberal principle of self-government usually requires the existence of the “self” of a nation that asserts or seeks to assert its right to determine its own affairs, for example, the Kurds today. On the other hand, the existence of the nation implies a boundary that distinguishes one human from another, a member of the nation from someone who is not. Moreover, that distinction may not be in accord with the liberal principles of human equality or recognition of merit through achievement, for example, the location of one’s birth as the determining factor of whether or not one is a member of the “self” in the term “self-government”. So, we seem to have a paradox of a liberal principle resting upon an illiberal foundation; and it seems intractable.

One possible way to break through this paradox is to eliminate all such boundaries in the name of equality. However, in this case, we would have the principles of liberalism resulting in an imperial, world government with, needless to say, a truly monstrous bureaucracy that would, in turn, make impossible any meaningful self-government. Thus, seen in this light, is it the case that nations, however formed, may be necessary for the realization of the liberal principle of self-government?

Steven Grosby is Professor of Religion at Clemson University and author of Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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Image credit: Kurdistan. By Ferhates (Own work). CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Ronald Reagan Day

By Gil Troy

When running for president in 2008, Barack Obama infuriated both Bill and Hillary Clinton by saying he dreamed of being a transformational leader like Ronald Reagan — and unlike Bill Clinton. Insulted by this challenge to their legacy, the Clintons accused their opponent of endorsing Reagan’s policies, when Obama was assessing impact not ideology.  Indeed, Obama hopes to make as big a presidential footprint as the 40th American president, who was born 103 years ago today on 6 February 1911. Yet, as California celebrates “Ronald Reagan Day,” and as Barack Obama begins his sixth year in office, even Obama’s supporters would have to admit that the Democrat from Illinois who was born in Hawaii does not measure up to the Republican from California who was born in Illinois — at least so far.

Of course, measuring presidential footprints is always complicated, and is especially difficult in mid-tenure. In fact, in 1982, when Reagan’s Revolution was stalled by a Democratic surge during the first midterm elections since Reagan’s 1980 victory, many pundits pronounced Reagan a failure — and doubted he would even win re-election. Moreover, Reagan’s presidency was much more volatile than most remember, with nasty political fights, complaints about legislative gridlock, constant controversies, and, believe it or not, wild fluctuations in Reagan’s public approval ratings.

Still, when Ronald Reagan retired after eight tumultuous years in office in 1989, he — and many others on both sides of the aisle — declared his presidency a success. Ronald Reagan’s Revolution helped change Americans’ attitudes toward their country, their government, and the world, as the United States emerged from the demoralizing, dispiriting, inflation-scarred, crime-ridden, 1970s. Reagan had entered the White House in January 1981 promising to restore Americans’ faith in their nation and themselves, to shrink “Big Government,” and to defend America more aggressively, especially against the Soviet Union. Reagan’s American restoration delivered the three Ps of patriotism, prosperity, and peace. American pride revived as the economy soared and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe collapsed. “All in all,” Reagan said in his 1989 farewell address, “not bad, not bad at all.”

Ronald and Nancy Reagan during the Inaugural Parade in Washington, D.C. 1981. White House Photographic Office. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, part of Reagan’s great skill was taking credit for phenomena that were not necessarily under his control. Reagan himself admitted that by pointing to the euphoria surrounding the Space Shuttle Columbia’s landing in April 1981, just months into his tenure, as proof that the desire “to feel proud and patriotic again” emerged spontaneously. Still, leaders have to know how to take advantage of the times in which they govern — and that is where Reagan has been besting Obama.

To be fair, Obama has been unlucky where Reagan was lucky. Reagan came in just as the harsh anti-inflation medicine Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve had administered was starting to work — and he left just as the oppressive regime the Soviet Communists had developed was starting to implode. By contrast, Obama entered office facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and confronting a range of enemies worldwide at a time when the American appetite for international confrontation had diminished, thanks to George W. Bush’s overreach. Moreover, Obama has had some successes, most notably, the Affordable Health Care Act, which he is banking on to shape his legacy.

Yet, as president, even though the cultural transformations America is currently experiencing will probably define his legacy, Obama has often appeared ambivalent about them. He fears being caricatured as president of the Newly Multicultural States of America, or, worse, McGovernik America. Therefore, this president has been a Culture War wimp.

America today is bigger, browner, more open to gays, less committed to traditional marriage, more open to gun control, and less committed to the Drug War than ever before. Many of these transformations not only predated Obama’s tenure, they made him president.

Since his election, Obama has helped mainstream those changes. The reversal in the politically safe position on gays probably represents America’s sharpest political U-turn since the 1960s. In 2008, Obama and most Democrats opposed gay marriage publicly while approving it privately; now, mainstream Republicans increasingly support gay marriage publicly – or duck  – muting their disapproval.

Yet on these cultural changes, Obama usually plays Hamlet not Richard the Lionheart. Obama dodged the gay marriage issue until Vice President Joe Biden pre-empted him. Even then, Obama endorsed gay marriage in a safe, folksy, interview, not a daring political address. More recently, Obama surrendered half-heartedly in America’s Drug War too, casually talking about going “forward” on decriminalizing marijuana in a New Yorker interviewer.

Such gingerliness is mistaken. True, riding cultural waves feels craven, like taking credit for good weather. But good leaders are good surfers, turning random lucky breaks into their good fortune. Obama, the multi-cultural family man, has the potential to forge a Third Way culturally, finding a new synthesis beyond the red versus blue polarized Culture Wars. Obama’s Cultural Third Way can be a values reclamation project, articulating the enduring moral standards that persist in a changing America. If he succeeds in that realm, he truly will be Reaganesque.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University, and the author of eight books on American history, including The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction and Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to only Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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