Last year we surveyed the juniors and seniors about the library, getting their feedback on our facility, services and collections. Students indicated their desires to have more titles, especially more current titles, that offer specifically Christian perspectives on current topics.
This fall, we added a number of titles in Religion and Christianity. While this is not a comprehensive list, some interesting additions include the following:
- Christians, The Care of Creation and Global Climate Change edited by Lindy Scott, 2008, New Book Display BT695.5 .C473 2008
- Church, state, and citizen : Christian Approaches to Political Engagement edited by Sandra F. Joireman, 2009, New Book Display BV630.3.C49 2009
- Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back by Frank Schaeffer, 2008, BR1643.S332 S33 2008
- From Faith to Fun: The Secularisation of Humor by Russell Heddendorf, 2009, New Book Display BR115.H84 H45 2009
This summer Ramaker Library began creating subject guides for students. These guides, named LibGuides, are intended to help you begin researching in a topic. We understand that the library can be a confusing place at times; there are just so many online and print resources that it can be difficult to know where to look for information.
To see what is currently available, 
On the mezzanine (aka top floor) of Ramaker Library, we have a collection of works that faculty have contributed to and written. This fall, we are highlighting the works of two Northwestern faculty.
Professor Michael Yoder began teaching Sociology at Northwestern in 1982. While his work has explored many topics in sociology, one of his greatest scholarly accomplishments was completing a census of the Mennonite church. Having lived in both Brazil and Costa Rica, Dr. Yoder also has a heart for Latin American culture.
For those of you interested in music, we reorganized the Kooiker Music Collection. Everything is now arranged together for easier browsing and locating.
Is there really such thing as a 
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century–1951–in the middle of the United States–Des Moines, Iowa–in the middle of the largest generation in American history–the baby boomers. As one of the funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his all-American childhood for memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero . . . 
A tale reminiscent of “Hamlet” that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father’s death.
Two families awaiting the arrival of their adopted infant daughters from Korea meet at the airport. The families lives become interwined after the Donaldsons, a young American couple invite the Yazdan’s, Maryam, her son and his Iranian American wife 
As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guernsey–a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island.
The Rope Walk brings us the dazzling story of a pivotal summer in the life of Alice, a redheaded tomboy and motherless girl who is beloved and protected by her five older brothers and her widower father, a professor of Shakespeare. On Memorial Day, at her tenth birthday party in the garden of her Vermont village home, Alice meets two people unlike any she’s known before. Theo is a mixed-race New York City kid visiting his white grandparents for the summer. Kenneth is a cosmopolitan artist with AIDS who has come home to convalesce with his middle-aged sister . . . 
Karen Armstrong begins this spellbinding story of her spiritual journey with her departure in 1969 from the Roman Catholic convent she had entered seven years before—hoping, but ultimately failing, to find God. She knew almost nothing of the changed world to which she was returning, and she was tormented by panic attacks and inexplicable seizures . . . 
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the 
Despite being a straight-A student and voracious reader, nine-year-old Sandrine Miller is treated like a servant by her mother, who forces Sandrine to clean house, do chores and take care of her younger stepsister, Yolanda. On top of the despair of her life, Sandrine must confront the harshness of life in mid-1970s New Orleans, where older men prey on young girls and she is ostracized because she is a light-skinned black girl . . . 
