Looking for ideas for your paper? Or background information?
Looking for quick explanation of a theory or theorist?
Looking for company history? Or demographics?
Need it fast?

Try the online database, Gale Virtual Reference Library

The Gale Virtual Reference Library is a collection of full-text encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources in every discipline taught on this campus. The collection is made up of more than 1,700 volumes of college-level reference sources, including fields of arts, biography, business, education, environment, history, law, literature, medicine, multicultural studies, nations and the world, news, political science, religion, science, social science, technology and more.

This database includes an intuitive three-box search engine that makes it simple to narrow your search and focus on the information you need. Search results are all full text and full image. They can easily be emailed, printed, downloaded or saved to your mp3 player.

The topics covered are useful for undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty.

This is a fast way to warm-up to your research and get things going.

Give it a try.

To find the Gale Virtual Reference Library; start at the Library home page, then click on Databases and enter in Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Use the "Databases" tab on our home page tabbed search box.

The Pollak Library is pleased to announce that it has expanded library building service hours!

Both Library North and Library South are now open from 7:45 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

In fall 2009 — as part of a cost-savings move — we began closing the Library at 9:00 p.m., keeping the first floor of Library North open until 10:30p.m. for studying and computer use. We are happy to be able to offer this extended building access, along with our new Sunday hours, to students and patrons of the Pollak Library.

Circulation staff will be on duty during these new extended hours, to answer general library questions and to assist patrons wanting to check out and renew materials, retrieve course reserves, retrieve holds, and locate library materials. The Circulation Desk is located on the first floor of Pollak Library South. Please refer to our Library Hours calendar to confirm daily staffed hours at our other service desks.

Looking to catch up on research, studies, or group projects over spring break next week? Both the Pollak Library and the Irvine Campus Library are open during the Spring Recess!

Classes and normal library hours resume on Monday, April 8th.

Pollak Library Hours

• Sunday, March 31st: 10:00am – 6:00pm
• Monday, April 1st: Closed (Cesar Chavez Day observance)
• Tuesday, April 2nd: 7:45am – 6:00pm
• Wednesday, April 3rd: 7:45am – 6:00pm
• Thursday, April 4th: 7:45am – 6:00pm
• Friday, April 5th: 7:45am – 5:00pm
• Saturday, April 6th: 10:00am – 6:00pm
• Sunday, April 7th: 10:00am – 6:00pm

Irvine Campus Library Hours

• Sunday, March 31st: Closed
• Monday, April 1st: Closed (Cesar Chavez Day observance)
• Tuesday, April 2nd: 9:00am – 6:00pm
• Wednesday, April 3rd: 9:00am – 6:00pm
• Thursday, April 4th: 9:00am – 6:00pm
• Friday, April 5th: 9:00am – 1:00pm
• Saturday, April 6th: Closed (normal closure)
• Sunday, April 7th: Closed (normal closure)

Shipping manifests in and out of U.S. Ports are public data. Unfortunately, this data is only available at the ports. Fortunately, for people who wish to know who can import or export their goods, there are companies that sift through these records and make the information available online to the public. Import Genius is one of these companies and we now subscribe to their database. Users must sign up for an account and are allowed up to 80 searches per day.

Search is by keyword only, but includes many different fields. So, for example, if I want to find out who shipped socks from China to the Port of Long Beach, the search would look like this.

Sample Search: who shipped socks from China to the Port of Long Beach. Click on the image for a larger view.

The results include a chart, which may be downloaded to Excel, of the product sent, who shipped it, who received it, date, port of entry, port of exit, and more.

Sample search result set. Click on image for a larger view.

Clicking on the magnifying glass icon (see above: far left column) provides a complete text description of that specific shipment.

Shipment description. Click on image for a larger view.

Import Genius can be accessed from our home page “Databases” search tab, or directly from our Find Databases tool.

Search for "Import Genius" from our home page Databases tab.

Search for "Import Genius" from our Find Databases tool.

It seems like we hear stories about meditation in the news with increasing frequency but for many of us the practice is still a mystery.  If you would like to learn more about meditation, join us at the Pollak Library for Mindful Mondays. You will have the opportunity to learn and practice meditation. Meditation can help you manage stress and you provide the opportunity to rejuvenate. There is a growing body of evidence documenting the benefits of meditation and companies like Google are even training there staff in meditation techniques.

Date: Beginning Monday, February 28th and continuing through the Spring 2013 semester

Time: 11:15 to 11:45

Location: Pollak Library in PLN 130
*If a room scheduling conflict occurs, we will do walking meditation and meet outside the Pollak Library atrium art gallery. A known conflict is on March 25th so make sure to bring your walking shoes.

Contact Information:
Natalie Tran (natran@fullerton.edu ) or Will Breitbach (wbreitbach@fullerton.edu)

With the spring semester almost one month over, and midterms drawing near, we would like to welcome all our new students to Cal State Fullerton!  The Pollak Library is here to help you, and we would like to share a few tips as you continue to acclimate to a new setting:

1. Please make sure you obtain your TitanCard on the first floor of the Pollak Library south wing.
2. Your CSU Fullerton Portal username and password allows you to login to the Pollak Library’s computers and is your key to connecting to many of the Pollak Library’s online resources from off campus, including its research databases.
3. Speaking of research, please remember that research assistance is available in person and also online.
4. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the helpful resources and information available to you on the Pollak Library’s new website.
5. Finally, please ask us if you have questions, especially during this time of transition.  There are a variety of service points available in the Pollak Library, and we are here to help you throughout your academic journey at Cal State Fullerton!

Today the Pollak Library launched our brand new website!

Styled to match the look and feel of the new website theme that is rolling out campus-wide, the Pollak Library’s site has been redesigned and updated from the ground up. All content on our new site addresses five specific informational needs:

• Library Research
• Library Services
• Visiting the Library
• About the Library
• Giving to the Library.

As we move towards the start of the spring semester, we will highlight key features on the new site, so that our students, faculty, staff, and extended campus community have as smooth a transition as possible into using the Library’s new website.

NOTE: At this time, one of our new features on our new website, called “Library Web” search, temporarily does not work right. This is the search box that allows you to search the main part of our website (i.e., for study rooms, computers, exhibits, etc.). Since we have a brand new site on a brand new server, it may take a couple of days for the Library’s Google Search Box — and public Google.com — to accurately re-index our new site so that our new web pages show up in your search results.  All other research search tools work just fine though, and behave exactly as they did before giving our website this new facelift.

The "Library Web" search tool might take a couple of days to fully work, since we need to allow our Google Search Box to re-crawl the site and index our new web pages. All other search tools work just fine!

If you need help finding anything on the new site, or run into any technical issues, please Ask For Help at: http://www.library.fullerton.edu/services/ask.php

The Pollak Library is pleased to once again help students out by extending our hours during final exams this semester.

All floors of Library North — excluding the basement — will stay open late for studying and computer use beginning Monday, December 10th and ending Thursday, December 20th. This includes being open the Sunday in between finals weeks!

• (Monday – Thursday) December 10-13, 2012: 7:45am – Midnight.
• (Friday) December 14, 2012: 7:45am – 8pm.
• (Saturday) December 15, 2012: 10:00am – 10:00pm.
• (Sunday) December 16, 2012: 12pm – 10:00pm.
• (Monday – Thursday) December 17-20, 2012: 7:45am – Midnight.

The Library will resume normal business hours on Friday, December 21st (7:45am – 5:00pm).

Library South will close at 9:00pm the Monday through Thursday of both finals weeks, and at 5:00pm the Friday and Saturday of both finals weeks. Library South will also be open from 12pm – 5:00pm the Sunday (December 16th) between finals weeks.

Can’t remember this all? Check our Library Hours page each day you plan to visit the Library!

We have expanded our help services to include a searchable knowledge base of frequently asked questions (FAQs).

Now if you are having difficulty finding articles or books for an assignment, experiencing a technical problem with our website or a database, or have a comment or suggestion you can visit our LibraryAnswers page. For questions, you can simply search the FAQ. If you don’t find what you are looking for, a question submission form is available. Feel free to be one of the first to use our new system by typing your question into the box below. We look forward to hearing from you.




As we acknowledge the thirtieth anniversary of Banned Books Week, we celebrate the freedom to read. However, we’re also provided the opportunity to reflect upon the times and motivations that drove individuals and groups to censor books and to learn from those who worked the front lines, keeping publications available to their constituency.

Like many locations across the United States, censorship affected Orange County. What follows are the recollections of two Orange County librarians whose own experiences with banned books are documented in their oral histories held by the Center for Oral and Public History.

Elva Haskett, Anaheim Public Library

Elva Haskett. Photo courtesy of the Center for Oral and Public History.

Elva Haskett, who joined the staff of the Anaheim Public Library in 1925—and for whom the Elva L. Haskett Branch was named—recalled some of the opposition she encountered during her tenure: You can’t work with the public without having some complaints no matter what position you’re in, and so it has been with books. So, when the parents complained, we re-read it and tried to re-evaluate it. If we felt that it was justified, why, it was taken off the shelves. Religious motives often were the things that the parents considered, and if it had a value that didn’t slant the way they believed, then they would complain about the book. Even Tom Sawyer had some words parents might complain about, so you had to read the book and see if the word really was something that the child wouldn’t know. And, we’ve had objections even to Call of the Wild, a literary masterpiece.

However, censorship wasn’t always because of religious or moral reasons. Often times, it was politically-driven as well, as Ms. Haskett explained: [During World War I]I, there were complaints about books written in German and some of the music books that had some of Wagner’s compositions were moved off the shelves for a little while. You know, we were friends with Russia just after the war and a great number of books came onto the market in which there was a leaning towards Russia, and it was those books, I think, that we had the most complaints about. It was all so unnecessary and very pathetic.

Dorothea Wilson Sheely, Newport Beach Public Library

Dorothea Wilson Sheely. Photo courtesy of the Center for Oral and Public History.

Veteran Newport Beach librarian Dorothea Wilson Sheely, interviewed in 1987, spoke of more drastic measures disgruntled community members took to getting books removed from the shelves. For instance, in 1961, there was an effort to ban The Last Temptation of Christ in Los Angeles and Orange Counties and the following year, it was Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Ms. Sheely recounted: The Last Temptation of Christ was the first book in our area to be criticized. It didn’t arouse the public’s attention too much because the book quickly disappeared off the shelf. It was requested but it disappeared. The catalog cards were in the files, so they knew we’d had it in print. Now, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the first time I saw that book was when I was overseas in the library. It was purchased when I returned here because it seemed very mild. It was requested in the 1950s; we were not criticized at that time because the book was kept in back of the charging desk on the reserve shelf along with sex education titles.

In 1963, a Pasadena group calling themselves the Network of Patriotic Letter Writers began a campaign to remove the Dictionary of American Slang, believing it too obscene and demanding that it be removed from high school and public libraries. Not only did they want it removed, they wanted it destroyed. Initially, a small editorial in the Ensign, a Newport Beach weekly newspaper, asked its readers, “Are you willing to read this book to your children, to your neighbor, and members of your club? It is the wrongful use of taxpayers’ money to purchase books of such degrading influence for our public libraries.”

A resident of Balboa, who had no library card, came in and asked for the book. She was given the book, and then rushed out of the library and that was the end of the American Dictionary of Slang. She started a petition and canvassed the shops on the peninsula with a petition opposing the filthy books that we had in the library. At the very time, every newspaper became interested in this situation.

Because of the incident, Ms. Sheely considered resigning. It was such an uncomfortable, unhappy, and unfortunate situation. It’s unbelievable that this could happen in such a broadminded city as Newport Beach.

Censorship in Orange County Libraries

At the time, there were eight public libraries in Orange County plus the Orange County Library System and the nine directors would meet each month and discuss their mutual problems. All the libraries were unanimous in concern on the censorship problem. It was a like a rash. It seemed to go through every library. Censorship, I would say during the sixties, early sixties, was our greatest problem.

Learn More

For more information about these oral histories and others, contact the Center for Oral and Public History at coph@fullerton.edu or (657) 278-3580.

An Oral History with Elva L. Haskett
conducted by Annette Moon
on 13 May 1968
OH 55

An Oral History with Dorothea Wilson Sheely
conducted by Shirley Stephenson
on 14 September 1982
OH 1698