Windsor & Downs Press

Commentaries on the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach

Hans-Joachim Schulze — 2024-03-28

Forthcoming title:

In 1990 Hans-Joachim Schulze, preeminent worldwide authority on the music of JS Bach, began a weekly series of radio broadcasts on all the cantatas by Bach then known to be extant. The series was quite popular, was repeated several times, and in 2006 Schulze published his scripts as a volume on all the Bach cantatas. In this digital edition hosted by IOPN, a companion to a printed volume of selected commentaries published by University of Illinois Press, James A. Brokaw II provides English translations of all of the essays on the Scalar platform with tools for searching, sorting and bundling the essays by date of composition, position within the liturgical church year sequence, secular patron and occasion, librettist and other parameters.

Funding Acknowledgment

Sponsored by the Ruth and Noel Monte Fund of the American Bach Society

Ruth and Noel Monte were deeply devoted to Bach and his music, sensing its great impact on the human brain and culture throughout the world. To them, Bach represents a bright planet appearing in the sky only once, requiring centuries for the human mind to observe and fully comprehend. The Monte Fund has the goal of supporting and promoting this living musical treasure for present and future generations.

A Bicentennial Crossroads

Matt Meacham — 2023-11-08

The Illinois tour of Crossroads: Change in Rural America, a Museum on Main Street exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Illinois Humanities, coincided with the Bicentennial of Illinois statehood. The intersection of those two events elicited contemplation and celebration of the significance of rural life over the 200-year history of Illinois as a state, as well as discussion of its ongoing evolution and the roles of individuals, institutions, and communities in shaping it. The six small-town organizations that hosted Crossroads created companion exhibitions and public programs illustrating how their local histories and cultures reflect themes addressed by the Smithsonian-produced exhibition and contribute to trends that it describes. Taken together, the contents of those locally focused exhibitions and programs form a remarkable survey of continuity and change over two centuries of rural Illinois’s existence. Additionally, the ways in which the host organizations conducted their work reflected and responded to ongoing change in rural Illinois, contributing to their communities’ and regions’ efforts to sustain and enhance their cultural vitality. A Bicentennial Crossroads examines what we can learn about rural Illinois’s past, present, and potential future(s) from what they produced and how they produced it.

Reading Social Science Methods

Ann Reisner — 2023-09-19

Science has great potential to benefit society, but this potential comes with risks as well. Directed at introductory level social science and humanities majors, this textbook teaches the rules and limits of social science methods. Reisner starts from the assumption that it is not necessary to be able to do research to read and judge the soundness of research publications. The chapters guide students through an explicit set of rules for reading research articles developed from three common research methods: content analysis, survey research, and experimental method.

Funding Statement

Work on this textbook was partially funded by the 2021 Faculty OER Incentive Program, funded by the University Library, Office of the Provost, and University of Illinois Student Government.

A Person-Centered Guide to Demystifying Technology, 2nd Edition

Martin Wolske — 2023-08-09

Digital technologies old and new are not objects that can be packed inside a box. They are a seamless, indivisible combination of people, organizations, policies, economies, histories, cultures, knowledge, and material things that are continuously shaped and reshaped. Every one of us innovates-in-use our everyday technologies; we just do not always know it. We are shaped by the networked information tools in our midst, and we shape them and thereby shape others. While many of the chapters in this book can be approached as standalone explorations, as many around the world have done, its full potential comes when collaboratively taken as a journey through twelve sessions. Each session in this second, revised edition includes two thematically linked chapters, one more socially oriented and one more technically oriented. Sessions are brought together into three larger generative themes that are built from three decades of participatory design in and with community, and from the teaching of these concepts and practices in courses and workshops. Approached within a community of practice, learning outcomes include discovering ways to advance power, both power within and power with others; advancing our technical skills, but also and even more, our progressive community engagement skills, our critical sociotechnical skills, and our cognitive, information, and social-emotional skills; and progressing our culturally competent collective leadership through social justice storytelling within a framing of reciprocity. In so doing, this textbook seeks to address the call placed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – to rapidly shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.

Writing for Inquiry and Research

Jeffrey Kessler — 2023-07-19

Writing for Inquiry and Research guides students through the composition process of writing a research paper. The book divides this process into four chapters that each focus on a genre connected to research writing: the annotated bibliography, proposal, literature review, and research essay. Each chapter provides significant guidance with reading, writing, and research strategies, along with significant examples and links to external resources. This book serves to help students and instructors with a writing-project-based approach, transforming the research process into an accessible series of smaller, more attainable steps for a semester-long course in research writing. Additional resources throughout the book, as well as in three appendices, allow for students and instructors to explore the many facets of the writing process together.

Drug Use and Misuse

Christy Bazan — 2022-05-11

With technical editors Janet Swatscheno and Heejoung Shin.

Drug Use and Misuse: A Community Health Perspective provides students with an introduction to the biological, psychological, and legal aspects of drug use and misuse through the lens of community health and discusses the impact of drug use and misuse on community health. The book contains eight distinct chapters addressing the background of drug use and misuse, including key terms, as well as an introduction to different categories of drugs including gateway drugs, opioids, and prescription drugs, and a conclusion that describes evidence-based prevention and treatment models. Originally developed for use in the popular undergraduate survey course “Drug Use and Abuse” taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the book is aimed at students learning about community health and the effects of drug use in a variety of contexts, such as survey courses for pharmacology, psychology, or public health.

The authors would like to thank Sara Benson and the University of Illinois Library for providing the funds and guidance to support this project.

Please cite this book using the DOI: 10.21900/wd.16

Instruction in Libraries and Information Centers

Laura Saunders — 2020-11-17

"A dream come true! Filling a significant gap in the literature, this textbook provides a thorough introduction to instruction in libraries. It builds on solid theoretical foundations, focuses on best practices, and encourages a critical and reflective professional approach to all aspects of instruction. This should be mandatory reading for current and future librarian instructors."

Heidi Julien, University at Buffalo, SUNY

"This. This is the book. This is the book we need. I needed this book two decades ago when I was teaching the introduction to library instruction course in library school. This is the book I needed ten years ago when I was helping to design the ACRL Immersion Assessment program. This is the book I needed last year when I was helping a new librarian find their way as a teacher. This is the book we needed. And, now we have it."

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, University of Illinois, "Foreword"

This open access textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to instruction in all types of library and information settings. Designed for students in library instruction courses, the text is also a resource for new and experienced professionals seeking best practices and selected resources to support their instructional practice.

Organized around the backward design approach and written by LIS faculty members with expertise in teaching and learning, this book offers clear guidance on writing learning outcomes, designing assessments, and choosing and implementing instructional strategies, framed by clear and accessible explanations of learning theories. The text takes a critical approach to pedagogy and emphasizes inclusive and accessible instruction. Using a theory into practice approach that will move students from learning to praxis, each chapter includes practical examples, activities, and templates to aid readers in developing their own practice and materials.

Please cite this book using the DOI: 10.21900/wd.12

A Person-Centered Guide to Demystifying Technology

Martin Wolske — 2020-10-07

With special contributions by Betty Bayer, Henry Grob, Sara Rasmussen, Dinesh Rathi, Stephanie Shallcross, and Vandana Singh.

“Martin Wolske’s A Person-Centered Guide to Demystifying Technology rebalances the human side in our encounters with digital technologies. It helps students to see that facility with the hardware and software of computers and networks must be embedded within a critical approach to their impact on our lives. Technologies need to be used, even redesigned in ways that serve community needs. The innovative approach of the book makes technologies less of a forbidding mystery, but it also challenges us to use them in ways that meet human needs."

Bertram (Chip) Bruce, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois

In support of this shift, each session of the book begins first with a social chapter with background knowledge probe, conceptual introductions, and a lesson plan for the session. A technical chapter follows with technical introductions and hands-on activities, and a concluding wrap up and comprehension check. The technical of the Orange Unit especially focuses on electronics and physical computer components; the Blue Unit highlights software through a series of introductory programming activities, with possibilities for alternate pathways for those who bring in some existing programming experience; the Rainbow Unit then brings the hardware and software together into networked systems, concluding with a final design adventure.

The general learning outcome objectives of this book are to help readers:

Develop a clear hands-on working understanding of the physical and software layers of computers and networks;
Evolve a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the sociotechnical artifacts we use as a daily part of our professional lives;
Develop a critical approach to sociotechnical artifacts to counter systemic injustices related to race, class/caste, gender, and other cultural dynamics; and
Advance community agency in appropriating technology to achieve our individual and community development goals through a reconsidered digital literacy learning and practice.

Please cite this book using the DOI: 10.21900/wd.7

The Sweet Public Domain

Sara Benson — 2020-02-17

The Sweet Public Domain: Celebrating Copyright Expiration with the Honey Bunch Series is a celebration of the reinstatement of public domain day on January 1, 2019, after a twenty-year hiatus due to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This digital collection features a republication of the children’s book series Honey Bunch, which began publication in 1923, supported by essays on the book series, copyright and the public domain. The Honey Bunch series follows the adventures of four-year-old Honey Bunch, along with cat Lady Clare and doll Eleanor, as the child encounters a succession of firsts—her first visit to the city, her first days on the farm, her first little garden, her first visit to the seashore, and more. Accompanying essays provide an introduction to and history of the series, exploring its themes of domesticity, materialism, and childhood bliss within the context of the Great Depression, girls’ series books, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The collection is rounded off by essays on copyright and the public domain in celebration of the impact of the end of extended copyright terms on the collective imagination.

Illinois 150

Kevin Hamilton — 2019-09-26

This book commemorates the Illinois 150 conference, a celebration of interdisciplinary research at Illinois on the occasion of the university's 150th anniversary. Across six disparate themes, leading scholars from at home and abroad reflected on what research is most needed today to sustain our world. For this publication, a few outstanding students contributed reflective reports on the conference's six parallel symposia. Also included are abstracts and other visual documentation of the event.

Please cite this book using the identifier 10.21900/wd.8

Claude Monet

Georges Clemenceau — 2017-02-22

In 1928, the former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau published Claude Monet: Les Nymphéas (The Water-Lilies), a memoir of his longtime friend. Bruce Michelson has produced a new English translation, presented here with useful notes and illustrations.

Michelson’s translations of three short essays on art by Clemenceau, originally published by La Justice in the late XIX c., are included as appendices.

Please cite this book using the identifer doi:10.21900/wd.1