The Elihu Burritt Library recently acquired a number of videotapes to complement the study of the humanities and social sciences. Faculty and students should note that these new titles, as well as most of the Library’s videotapes, are avail able for loan. The normal loan period for videotapes is fourteen days. (All of the following videotapes are shelved in the Library’s Curriculum Lab on the Library’s third floor). Expanding the Library’s holdings in literary biography are three new tapes. "Coming Through” is the story of the great love affair of writer D.H. Lawrence and Frieda Weekly. The settings are exquisite and the acting, featuring Kenneth Branagh as Lawrence and Helen Mirren as Weekly, is superb. It can be found in the Curriculum Lab under call number C733. A brief but concise biography simply entitled “Edgar Allan Poe” is shelved at 92 P743a. Another outstanding production is called “Samuel Johnson: Writer 1709-1784” (call number 92 J69). It always seems interesting to read a novel and then see the film -- or see the film and then read the novel. Either way, this can be accomplished at the Burritt Library. Readers of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles  will appreciate the cinematic incarnation “Tess” directed by Roman Polanski. The film, produced in 1990 and shelved at T338 in the Curriculum Lab is a noteworthy attempt by Polanski to remain faithful to the novel. The adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina receives a somewhat more abridged, yet nonetheless interesting, treatment. Its call number is A613. Film scholars are who are unimpressed by the glut of this decade’s action movies will definitely want to take a good look at John Huston’s “Moby Dick” (M687). Here Melville’s classic novel is turned into classic film. Have you ever had the feeling you’d been outsmarted? No one knows that feeling quite so well as Richard Burton in the VHS version of Christopher Marlowe’s ‘tragical history of Doctor Faustus.’ Burton plays the aging scholar who bargains away his soul for youth, knowledge, and a beautiful mistress. Viewers should be ready for a surreal screening; also, bring a Latin primer. “Doctor Faustus” is shelved at D637. The Library’s endeavors to expand its video collection have extended to the identification and purchase of several titles that Among the new titles that address the importance of cultural identity, and what constitutes it as well as what changes it, are: The Arab Americans 305.8 M961 volume3 The Chinese Americans 305.8 M961 v.5 The Japanese Americans 305.8 M961 v.10 The Mexican Americans
305.8 M961 v.13 The Polish Americans 305.8 M961 v.14 and The Puerto Rican Americans 305.8 M961 v.15.

The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film 

Both film director D. W. Griffith and novelist Joseph Conrad stated that what they wanted their audiences to do, above all, was “to see”. Given the differences in the genres of the novel and the film, it isn’t difficult to understand that they stand apart: one causes us to see with our eyes while the other forces us to conceptualize what we see in our minds. The film sometimes deviates from the novel at its own peril. Still, it is interesting to note that film adaptations amplify book sales, and five out of the ten top films of all time have been adaptations of novels.