Dear Friends,
We had a wonderful response to our first e-newsletter last month; thanks to everyone who took the time to contact us! We'll be sharing updates and new acquisitions, and invite you to suggest other features you'd like to see. Do you have a research question? A book to recommend? We look forward to hearing from you!
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What's Happening in the Library
Digitization
We've completed the first stage of a project funded by a grant from the New York State Library Association. Judith Kiely has mastered the finer points of scanning and creating metadata, and has posted a number of items on the New York Heritage Digital Collections website, including fully-searchable facsimiles of the American society's very first newsletter, "Anthroposophical Movement in America News Letter for Members," vol. 1, no. 1 (July 1927), and the first issue of the Journal for Anthroposophy, published in 1965. To view an entire document rather than single pages, select "download" or "print" rather than "view pdf & text."
Henry Barnes, introducing the new Journal, hearkened back to two earlier publications: "The Forerunner [1940-45], edited...by Virginia Moore, and Proteus [1949-1952], published and edited by Frederick Heckel. Both were bona fide magazines which presented Rudolf Steiner's work to the American public." The library has a complete set of each of these publications, and our next project will be to digitize their indexes, introducing a new generation of readers to their contents. Articles by such authors as Stewart Easton, Michael Wilson, John Gardner, Marjorie Spock, and Norman Macbeth are of more than historical interest.Online ResourcesYou'll find a growing number of electronic resources in our catalog: ebooks, lectures, journal articles, and curriculum guides. Simply type "online" into the search bar, then click on the title of the work you'd like to read. Voilá; immediate access. Now you can share your comments about specific titles in the library using a new function in our catalog. Search for and click on the title, then look for "Be the first to submit a comment & rating" in small green print just above the "record information" on the right-hand side of the next screen.
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New Books & More 
The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner: A Documentary Film. Jonathan Stedall, Cupola Productions, 2012, 2 videodiscs (total 3 hrs. 25 min.).
We've got it! This long-awaited documentary by veteran filmmaker Jonathan Stedall, filmed during the 150th anniversary year of Rudolf Steiner's birth, tells the story of Steiner's life and portrays contemporary examples of how his insights have influenced work all over the world in education, agriculture, medicine, finance, and the arts. Watch the trailer here.
Fighting Cancer: A Nontoxic Approach to Treatment. Robert Gorter and Erik Peper, North Atlantic Books, 2011, 368 pgs.
Anthroposophical physician Robert Gorter, and Erik Peper, a recognized expert on stress management and workplace health (both of whom have experienced cancer personally), introduce the Gorter Model, an effective, humane, nontoxic, and very successful approach to treating a wide range of cancers by focusing on support and stabilization of the immune system.
These are just two of the almost 50 new items added to our catalog so far this year! Check out the others on the homepage of the library's online public access catalog. |
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Farther Afield
Some recent news highlights the joys of low-stimulus childhood pursuits, including reading, and affirms the enduring value of books. Screen-Free Week (April 30-May 6) "is a national celebration where children, families, schools, and communities spend 7 days turning off entertainment screen media and turning on life."
A New York Times story features a 6th-grade class at the Gordon Parks School for Inquisitive Minds in NY that is part of the Morgan Book Project, which "aims to instill in children of the digital age an appreciation for books by providing authentic materials to write, illustrate and construct their own medieval and Renaissance-inspired illuminated manuscripts." Their teacher states, "As human beings we surround ourselves with things that help define who we are and books are one of those things - not just the narrative or story that is easily reproduced on the Kindle," she said. "It is those dog-eared pages, coffee-stained covers or where you signed your name in the front when you were 4 years old. That memory is attributed to a physical object. Books are really part of what makes us human."
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We need your help to keep moving forward! Special gifts, in addition to your already-generous support of the society's programs, will make it possible to continue to develop the Rudolf Steiner Library into a multidimensional 21st-century resource.
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Thank you!
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Thanks for your interest; please stay in touch!
Warm greetings,
Judith Soleil, library director |
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