In an effort to highlight the new material that comes into Special Collections every week, Special Collections staff will begin to post brief summaries of some of our recent acquisitions. These highlights may include new items from our Bafford Photography Collection, University Archives, Regional or Personal Manuscripts, the Center for Biological Sciences Archives, or one of our many book collections centered on photography, science fiction, artist books, Maryland and Baltimore history, radical thought, alternative presses, or faculty/staff publications. These materials are open to researchers; please contact Special Collections staff or see our website for more information on all of our holdings.

Collection 85: Television scripts

A unique collection for UMBC! Fifteen boxes of television scripts dating from 1954 to 1978. Includes classics like Batman (scripts from 1965-1967), The Beverly Hillbillies (1961-1964), The Brady Bunch (1970-1972), Mission: Impossible (1968-1972), The Mod Squad (1968-1972), and The Partridge Family (1970-1971).

UARC 2010-026: University Photographs

These four color photographic prints were donated by former Library Director Jonathan LeBreton. The prints show the construction of the Library tower in 1993.

UARC 2010-027: University Photographs

7700 digital images documenting the Office of Student Life, Student Government Association, UMBC's 40th Anniversary, Homecoming, and other campus groups and events. We're working to upload these images into our Digital Collections very soon! So far, only the set from the 2003-2004 acdemic year are available online. The image to the right is from the Winter 2004 Welcome Pep Rally in the Commons Main Street.

Thanks to Wikicommons.

About that mess in the Gulf… US sues British Petroleum over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Friends at last? Senate passes bipartisan tax bill showing glimmers of hope for Washington gridlock.

Freedom to openly serve? The House of Representatives votes to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell but it must now face the Senate.

Thanks to Wikicommons.

You may not know this… but we at US Democrazy are doing pretty well for ourselves.

In a couple years we’ll have finished paying off the loan on our office/van. PLUS we have all of the potatoes we could ever want for dinner (as long as that number is one).

Apparently though there are some in America who are doing even better.  In fact, the wealthy are doing so well that Paul Krugman, after watching James Bond, remarked

(incomes) that were once viewed as impressive numbers, the kind of thing only arch-villains might demand, now look trivial. Or maybe the other way to look at it is that we have a lot more arch-villains around than we used to.

Is it true are the wealthy doing so well that they’ve become arch-villains in their own right?  Analyzing modern American income distributions in a NY Times Op-Ed Nicholas Kristof notes

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976.

and angrily states that

we’ve reached a banana republic point where our inequality has become both economically unhealthy and morally repugnant.

Some though are questioning whether inequality is actually an economic problem.  Over at Economix, Edward Glaeser comments that he doesn’t

like inequality any more than the next person, but that doesn’t mean that inequality is responsible for every bad thing that has happened to America.

Whether good or bad, income inequality is probably here to stay.  Tyler Cohen analyzing inequality and its causes notes that many “cultural critics” think Americans

should be less harried, more interested in nurturing friendships, and more interested in the non-commercial sphere of life.

…those same critics have basically been telling us, without realizing it, that we should be acting in such a manner as to increase measured income inequality. Not only is high inequality an inevitable concomitant of human diversity, but growing income inequality may be, too, if lots of us take the kind of advice that will make us happier.

Which got us wondering, do we really want more than our blog, our van, and our potatoes?  What are your thoughts on happiness, money, and the ultra rich?  Would this blog be any better if read on a solid gold computer?

So Google has started up Chrome for a cause, a new Charity push for December 15-19 whereby their donation amount is determined by how many tabs you open!  Sure its a little gimmicky, but hey, your contributing to a good cause by just hitting Ctrl + T.  So for those Chrome users out there, come download the extension here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cause/#tnc