Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog

Once again, the American Film Institute(AFI)has issued another “best movie” list, this time it is the 10 Top 10 - an enumeration of the top ten films in ten separate genres ranging from animation to the western.(We are gratified to note that The Searchers heads the list for westerns. In our humble opinion, a best film list is not a best film list without the inclusion of The Searchers.) This new compilation joins others that the AFI has produced, such as the 100 and 400 lists. Of course, not everyone will agree with this newest entry in the field; after all, criteria for these lists are highly subjective or specific. Other efforts at determining the best films can be found at the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, IMDb’s Top 250 Movies, the decennial lists compiled by the British Film Institute(BFI), Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Movies, the New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, and Yahoo’s Top Rated Movies of All Time for example. And let us not forget the Academy Awards.  Did you know that the Guarini Library has over 3000 films in both VHS and DVD formats, and that they can be watched in our video viewing rooms?  The films range from the 52-part The Unfinished Nation to The Kite Runner to the original Bad News Bears. All you need to do is present a current NJCU GothicCard at the second floor service desk(the films are on the second floor), and you will be allowed to view the film in one of our air-conditioned viewing rooms which can accommodate up to fifteen people. How do you find what films the Library owns? You consult OSCAR, the Library’s online catalog, where underneath the six dialog boxes, you will see a “location” pull-down menu. Limit your selection to “Media(Videos),” enter the movie title in the “Title” dialog box, or look for movies by “Subject,” and the results you will see will be from our video collection. And yes, we do own The Searchers. “That’ll be the day” when we don’t.

 Bob Dylan, among others, were presented with Pulitzers on Monday, April 7. The Pulitzers have a long and distinguished history, and have rewarded mostly journalistic writings which is in keeping with the founder of the awards, Joseph Pulitzer, an immigrant from Hungary, a Civil War veteran, a famous newspaper publisher, and a member of Congress.  Online works dealing with Pulitzer are available, as is a profile in The New York Times which also includes excerpts from other papers.  Also, check OSCAR for additional monographs on him. However, the Pulitzers are not the only book awards, far from it. In the Library’s database by title section, you will see Books in Print which has an extensive awards area. We also suscribe to the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database which allows searchers to limit to award-winning works only. Other useful tools found on the Library’s homepage include the BookWire awards listings as well as the Database of Award-Winning Children’s Literature which allows the searching of 78 separate awards. An outdated but still useful database is Booklist Center which covers a plethora of awards. So if you are assigned a report that requires you to read only certain award-winning books, we have the resources to limit your search and produce useful results.