SSHA Professor Next Faculty Author Series Speaker

Faculty Author Series Set for Dec. 1

The second installment of the Faculty Author Series will feature Professor Karl Ryavec, who will present on his book, “A Historical Atlas of Tibet,” published in 2015 by University of Chicago Press, will take place from 2 to 3 p.m. Dec. 1 in the Chancellor’s Conference Room (KL 232).

A product of 12 years of research and eight more of mapmaking, Ryavec’s book documents cultural and religious sites across the Tibetan Plateau and its bordering regions from the Paleolithic and Neolithic times all the way up to present day. It covers five main periods in Tibetan history and offers introductory maps of each followed by details of western, central, and eastern regions. The book visualizes the history of Tibetan Buddhism and traces its spread throughout Asia, with thousands of temples mapped within Tibet and across North China and Mongolia, all the way to Beijing.

The University of Chicago Press lauded the book, calling it “extraordinarily comprehensive … this volume will be a cornerstone in cartography, Asian studies, Buddhist studies, and in the libraries or on the coffee tables of anyone who has ever felt the draw of the landscapes, people and cultures of the highest place on Earth.”

Print and electronic versions of the atlas are available at the UC Merced Library. Meanwhile, details regarding the Faculty Author Series details are available at Library Events.

New Request Feature Now Available

When placing multiple requests in a single search session, users no longer have to re-enter their information such as their UCMnetID. The California Digital Library (CDL) implemented this enhancement on Nov. 7. More details are available at CDLINFO News.

New eBooks in Engineering and Computer Science (Synthesis Series)

The Synthesis Series, from Morgan & Claypool Publishers, is a collection of ebooks that synthesize and analyze important research or topics in the areas of engineering and computer science. The editors of each ebook are prominent researchers in the field. These ebooks can be particularly valuable to researchers and students who are new to a specific research area and can be used as textbooks. Sample series include Quantum Computing, Computer Vision, and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. The publisher is offering its seventh collection of lectures, and 24 new titles are available to download in PDF format. All ebooks in the series are available through Melvyl and through the Synthesis Digital Library of Engineering and Computer Science Collection in our database listing.