February 23, 2004

• Noted Violinist Sarah Chang to Perform at UA with Alabama Symphony Orchestra
• UA Professors Among Top 15 Most Prolific Authors in Accounting
• Talk and Book Signing Scheduled as Part of African-American Heritage Month
• Kronos Quartet Coming to UA: Tuesday, March 9
• New Program at UA Libraries Gives Public Easy Access to Librarians

Noted Violinist Sarah Chang to Perform at UA with Alabama Symphony Orchestra

Sarah Chang

One of classical music's most talented young performing artists, Sarah Chang, will join the Alabama Symphony Orchestra (ASO) in a concert presented by UA's School of Music under the direction of ASO's Richard Westerfield, on Sunday, March 14, at 3 p.m. in the Moody Music Concert Hall.

The ASO will open the concert program, sponsored by the Gloria Narramore Moody Foundation, with Bruch's lyrically beautiful Concerto no. 1 for Violin in G minor, featuring Chang.

Chang is a well-known classical recording artist. Her latest releases are Fire and Ice, an album of popular shorter works for violin and orchestra, with Placido Domingo conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. She performs with many of the world's most elite symphony orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, the San Francisco Symphony, and the National Symphony.

All ticket sales for the concert will benefit the UA School of Music. The concert is made possible by a donation of the Gloria Narramore Moody Foundation, founded in 1990 by Gloria Moody and her husband, the late Tuscaloosa businessman Frank McCorkle Moody, to support the arts and music. Tickets prices are $10 for students and $20 for general admission. To purchase tickets or for additional information, call 348-7111 or go to www.music.ua.edu.

UA Professors Among Top 15 Most Prolific Authors in Accounting

Two faculty members of UA's Culverhouse School of Accountancy are among the top 15 most prolific authors of accounting literature, according to a study published in Advances in Accounting, 2003. Dr. Robert W. Ingram, director of the School, was ranked 12th and Dr. Thomas A. Lee, emeritus professor, was listed 14th.

The authors of the study analyzed 40 journals for the 35-year period from 1967 to 2001 and identified the most prolific authors and their productivity records. Both Ingram and Lee received credit for 43 articles.

The study was done by James R. Hasselback, Alan Reinstein and Edward Schwan. The authors, in their introduction, said the demand for information about the research productivity of accounting faculty is increasing and that most accounting programs have placed added emphasis on research productivity.

The data base used contained all 4,890 faculty members who graduated from accounting doctoral programs during the 30-year period from 1968 to 1997. The researchers selected the 40 highest ranking journals, which included 30 academic, five professional and five business journals.

"The Culverhouse School of Accountancy has been ranked among the top accounting schools in the nation for many years," said Dr. J. Barry Mason, dean of the UA Culverhouse College of Commerce. "Much of that recognition has come because of the outstanding research efforts of faculty members such as Rob Ingram and Tom Lee. They not only are prolific authors, but their research brings new and relevant information to accounting education, and they set an example for other faculty members."

The UA undergraduate business program at the Culverhouse College of Commerce, is ranked 53rd nationally by U.S. News and World Report. The undergraduate accounting program at the Culverhouse School of Accountancy is ranked number 25 nationally in the latest Public Accounting Report rankings.

Talk and Book Signing Scheduled as Part of African-American Heritage Month

Dr. Tony Bolden, assistant professor of English at UA, will speak and sign copies of his new book, Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture, Wednesday, Feb. 25, at 4:30 p.m. in the W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library.

The event is part of African-American Heritage Month at UA. An exhibition of African-American literature and music-related materials will also be on display. The event will begin at 4:30 p.m. with the signing and a reception and will be followed by a 30-minute reading by Bolden at 5:30 p.m. Bolden will continue to sign books and answer questions, and the reception will continue until 6:30 pm.

In his book, Bolden traces the ways innovations in Black music and poetry have driven the evolution of a variety of other American vernacular artistic forms. The blues tradition, Bolden demonstrates, plays a key role in the relationship between poetry and vernacular expressive forms.

Through an analysis of the formal qualities of blues music, Afro-Blue shows that it functions as a form of resistance, affirming the values and style of life that oppose bourgeois morality. Bolden examines how poets extend and reshape a variety of other verbal folk forms in the same way that blues musicians play with other musical genres.

Bolden identifies three distinct bodies of blues poetics: some poets mimic and riff on oral forms, others fuse their dedication to vernacular culture with a concern for literary conventions, while still others opt to embody the blues poetics by becoming blues performers.

For more information, contact Jessica Lacher-Feldman, public outreach services coordinator for the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, at 348-0500 or archives@bama.ua.edu, or visit the website at www.lib.ua.edu/libraries/hoole.

Kronos Quartet Coming to UA: Tuesday, March 9

Kronos Quartet

Synonymous with musical innovation, the Kronos Quartet is known for its unique artistic vision and fearless dedication to experimentation. Since its inception in 1973, Kronos has assembled a body of work unparalleled in its range and scope of expression and in the process has captured the attention of audiences worldwide. Their recorded performances have been heard throughout the world on radio and television, in films and in live dance and theater performances. Of the 30 records released on Nonesuch, six have been Grammy nominees. Part of the 2003-04 Celebrity Series, the Kronos Quartet is scheduled for March 9, 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Moody Music Building. Single ticket prices are $22 and $15 for general audiences and $7 for students with valid IDs. For ticket information or an immediate credit card purchase call the School of Music Box Office at 348-7111.

New Program at UA Libraries Gives Public Easy Access to Librarians

The UA Libraries are participating in a program designed to give students, faculty, staff and the general public expanded online access to university librarians.

The "Ask-A-Librarian" live virtual reference service, which began on the UA campus in September 2002, allows anyone with access to a personal computer to communicate with a librarian one-on-one using an interface similar to Instant Messaging. With many of the Libraries' resources now available online, the service permits librarians to extend the same reference service to virtual users as they have traditionally offered to patrons at the reference desk.

The Libraries are now expanding the "Ask-A-Librarian" program by partnering with 10 other members of the Association of Southeastern Libraries (ASERL) in a consortium to provide group coverage for virtual reference. By fielding questions for each other, the consortium libraries can provide more timely and cost-effective information than any one library alone could offer. UA, which initially offered the service only on selected weekday afternoons, can now provide 84 hours of consortium- staffed service per week, including evening and weekend hours. The expanded program is open to the public as well as to affiliates of the participating universities.

For more information about this program, contact Jennifer McClure at 348-2806 or visit the project's website at www.ask-a-librarian.org. To access the service, click on the "Ask-A-Librarian" link on the University Libraries' website at www.lib.ua.edu.

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