This may be refresher for some of you, but for many it will be a bit of NEWS! At all of our branches, we get several newspapers every day. Some newspapers, however, only come a few times a week or even just a few times a month.

We also have a steady supply of backdated newspapers available on microfilm at our Downtown branch, on the second floor. By clicking this newspapers link, you can see all of the newspapers that the AADL owns.

To search even more newspapers - including the Ann Arbor News, Detroit News, and New York Times, just to name a few - you can visit our newspaper database collection if you are have an AADL library card. Some of these newspapers go all the way back to 1831! You can always access this collection of databases and many others from the research tab, located at the top of aadl.org.

The Ann Arbor News, established in 1835, was Washtenaw County’s leading newspaper for 174 years. Much of its content is available at Ann Arbor District Library in the microfilm collection, or on the Old News section of our website, but did you know that AADL also has an Ann Arbor News database containing all the issues of the newspaper from July, 2003 onward? It’s true! Browse through the issues day by day, look at an exact date, or search for a particular topic. Check the scores on that game you remember. Print off an obituary, graduation announcement or wedding notice. It’s all there. AADL cardholders can even do all this from the comfort of your own home.

Access to this database is available at every branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, as well as off-site provided you have a valid Ann Arbor District Library card. Log in to your aadl.org account to obtain full access to the Ann Arbor News.

Old News Launch | Friday, October 21 | 7 pm | Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

Join us this Friday as AADL unveils Old News, a new, online product devoted to the digitization of newspapers from Ann Arbor's past. Old News features articles and images from Ann Arbor newspapers including selections from the clippings and photo files of the Ann Arbor News, as well as 18 years of issues of Ann Arbor's 19th century newspapers.

Old News opens with thousands of articles and images from Ann Arbor and the surrounding areas and is just a beginning to be added to as time goes by. In addition to the ever-growing collection of materials from the Ann Arbor News documenting the 20th century in Ann Arbor, Old News provides online access to decades of newspapers from the 19th century as well. Browse or search through full issues of the Ann Arbor Argus, Ann Arbor Courier, Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat, Signal of Liberty, and Michigan Liberty Press. Explore over 100,000 articles from 1880-1900 to learn about where Ann Arbor was 125 years ago.

This event includes a discussion of the importance of historic newspapers and digitization from Frank Boles, Director of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University; an introduction/demo to Old News by AADL staff; and post-presentation refreshments.

Eugene Robinson

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson will be speaking Friday, April 29th from 1:00 to 2:30pm at the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery Room. A former U of M student, Robinson was the first African American co-editor-in-chief of the Michigan Daily. He has since written for the San Francisco Chronicle and later the Washington Post as both foreign correspondent and foreign editor. Robinson was honored with a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Commentary for his work and insight on political and social movement. He currently appears on MSNBC as a Political Analyst. Sponsored by the University of Michigan's Center for Afroamerican & African Studies and The Michigan Daily, the event is free and open to the public. For the University's listing of the event, click here. For books by Eugene Robinson held by the AADL, click here.

triangle

Today (March 25) marks the 100-year anniversary of the deadly Triangle Waist Factory Fire in New York City which claimed 146 lives, mostly of young immigrant workers; and to this day, ranks as one of the worst disasters in labor history.

Located in the Asch Building, at northern corner of Washington Square,The Triangle Waist Company was in many ways a typical sweatshop - low wages, excessively long hours, and unsanitary and dangerous working conditions. Check out the story at the Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations archival and research resources that include eyewitness accounts, victim list, and photo images.

Over the years, the fire has been the subject for documentary filmmakers, historians and novelists. Best among them is award-winning author Katharine Weber's Triangle* * (2007).

Esther Gottesfeld is the last living survivor of the fire where 150 workers died in the sweatshop inferno. Even though she has told her story countless time, her death at the age of 106 leaves unanswered many questions about what happened that fateful day - the day she lost her sister and her fiance, the day her life changed forever.

Esther's granddaughter, Rebecca, and George, her partner, a prizewinning composer, seek to unravel the facts of the matter, while at the same time Ruth Zion, a zealous Triangle fire historian, bores in on them with her own mole-like agenda.

"As in a symphony, the true story of what happened at the Triangle factory is declared in the first notes - yet it is fully revealed only when we've heard it all the way through to its find chords."

* * = Starred reviews

Financial Times

What will 2011 bring in politics, business, and finance? Will it bring inflation or deflation? A combination of each? And how will this impact the U.S. economy? With the stock market dominated by HFT, how can the retail investor navigate the current conditions? Many governments are prescribing fiscal austerity to address serious budget deficits. How will austerity impact economic recovery? What's the cause in the recent surge in the price of commodities and what does it mean for the cost of goods and services here in the U.S. as well as globally?

The Financial Times newspaper can help sift through these issues and others by providing commentary and analysis in international news, business, finance and economics. Based in London, it publishes several international editions. The U.S. edition is published Monday through Saturday and is now available at the Downtown location on the second floor. It's easy to spot since it's printed on salmon-hued newsprint.

Other titles available at AADL that cover international, business, and investment news include: Barron's, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Economist, Investor's Business Daily, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

For more business and investment magazine titles, click here for print titles, and here for online magazine databases.

Click here for online business databases, and here for Value Line and Morningstar investment databases.

(Note that in order to access the online databases from outside the library, you will need an aadl.org username and password.)

Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas, long-time White House Press correspondent and recent columnist for the Washington Post, announced her retirement today. Last November we had the opportunity to talk with Ms. Thomas about her career when she came to town to promote her 2009 book, Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do.

You can listen to the interview or watch a video of her presentation.

The Pigeon with Peas

According to an article from CNN, five paintings were stolen last night at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in Paris, France.

CNN also said that officials did not name the paintings stolen, but the press put out their own listing:

"'Le Pigeon aux Petits Pois' (Pigeon with peas) by Picasso
'La Pastorale' (The Pastoral) by Matisse
'L'Olivier pres de l'Estaque' (Olive Tree near the Estaque) by Braque
'La femme a l'eventail' (Woman with Fan) by Modigliani
'Nature morte aux chandeliers' (Still Life with Candlesticks) by Leger."

We have many books here at the library on art theft, including The Rescue Artist : A True Story Of Art, Thieves, And The Hunt For A Missing Masterpiece, which discusses the 1994 theft of "The Scream" by Edvard Munch, The Gardner Heist : The True Story Of The World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft, which examines the 1990 heist of $600 million worth of paintings from Boston's Gardner Museum, and Museum Of The Missing : A History Of Art Theft, which discusses art theft throughout history. Though, perhaps the most interesting is the true story of the theft of the "Mona Lisa" in 1911, which you can read about in Vanished Smile : The Mysterious Theft Of Mona Lisa

Perhaps this is a good time to do some brushing up on your art and art thievery knowledge. Who knows, you may find the missing paintings with a little help from some reading.

BUCC
Among articles called out in the recent “Proposed Fourth and Fifth Avenues Historic District Study” is Grace Shackman’s Old West Side Story: The Germans in Ann Arbor. In this article, Grace carefully traces the longstanding German influence, back to 1825 when Mannheim baker Conrad Bissinger apparently became the first German to set foot in town. Reading this article, you can see why some people want an historic district that might include Bethlehem United Church of Christ and nearby historic homes. Click here to read a news story from AnnArbor.com. The actual report about the proposed historic district is here.

jump!

Do you enjoy being one step ahead of the game? Name dropping and looking cooler than your friends? Then this month's teen magazines are for you!

Wizard Magazine starts off this party with the "Wizard 20" -- a list of games, movies, artists, authors and comics that you should probably already know about. We are lucky enough to have many of these pearls of awesome here at the AADL -- such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer graphic novels. Not to be missed in this edition -- the ten worst superhero girlfriends of all time!

This month's issue of Rolling Stone Magazine features two old school masters of awesome -- Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, two of rock music's most amazing guitarists. Also in this issue, comedian Tracy Morgan discusses his hard-knock life, and Matt Taibbi tells us how Wall Street is setting the entire country up for a fall. Good times.

For the awesome girls out there, Justine Magazine features bios of Elissa Bernstein, author of the scrumptious blog 17 and Baking and 17-year-old tennis star Melanie Ouden. And, talk about being one step ahead of your friends, this issue also features a ten-step prom countdown and a guide to job hunting, from resume to interview.