Baruch College Campus High School – Reference at Newman Library

Bridge Assignment from Baruch College Campus High School

As discussed this week on our internal mailing list, we’re seeing students from the Baruch College Campus High School asking for help finding books on bridges. I’ve now helped a few students here at the ref desk and have a better sense of what they are doing. They are building bridges out of popsicle sticks and need to research different bridge types and construction methods. In the past year, we had students researching specific bridges. Now, we’re seeing them ask about things like truss bridges and suspension bridges.

One resource that you might want to steer them to is Gale Virtual Reference Library, where are entries in engineering and general science encyclopedias about different kinds of bridge construction. You’ll need to get the students a guest login for the computers so they can search in Gale Virtual Reference Library. They may also find some titles in ebrary.

For off campus research, these high school students can use the library ID number on their Baruch ID card to access CUNY-wide databases from CUNY OLS.

They may also have better luck at NYPL’s SIBL finding works on bridge construction.

Some additional sources re bridges

The book Silent Builder …about Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge is now available in the stacks at TG25. W53 W45 1984. About 30 pages in the book, written in rather large print, are on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. A subject search for Roebling brings up several other titles.

The book Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture, TH 845.S33 1980 has a chapter on the Brooklyn Bridge construction that has some illustrations.

A subject search for Othmar Ammann, who designed the George Washington bridge, brings up several books.

A keyword search for Verrazano bridge brings up several titles, but one is in archives, which won’t help the high school students if they need to check a book out.

We have electronic access to a book published by the UN about Ben Van Berkel, a Belgian, who designed the Erasmus Bridge (brug) in Rotterdam. It has helped identify the city in recent years. The design has been copied the world over. We also have a book about Santiago Calatrava, another famous architect of bridges.

A possible subject search is Bridges–New York.

Other possibilities:

The Bridge over the River Kwai, by Pierre Boulle. PQ 2603.0754 P613 1954. It is a fictional account of the construction of the Kanchanaburi bridge by POWS and Asian slave laborers during World War II. (Thousands died constructing the bridge under orders of their Japanese captors; and it was bombed by the Allies.) The book was made into an award winning film.

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan. D763.N4 R9. Describes the battle in Arnhem, the Netherlands during World War II. The Allies lost many men trying to capture this bridge and in the battle for Arnhem.

I have a book at home that I can bring in. It is The Bridge at Remagen, a book about the battle for this railroad bridge during World War II. It was the first intact bridge that the Allies captured in Germany in 1945. This enabled them to move equipment and men over it, before it was bombed. When I lived in Nebraska it was a very popular book as Karl Timmerman, who led the assault over the bridge, was from West Point, Nebraska, where I lived. Unfortunately he had died of cancer at an early age There is also a movie about this battle and bridge.

Books about Bridges

As Randy noted recently, we’re seeing Baruch College Campus High School students working on an assignment about bridges. Here are some book sources to use:

Run a “keyword in subject” search in the catalog for “bridge” to find books. There will be a lot of ebooks and online government docs in that search, but there will also be print books like:
Browse the architecture books on the 4th floor (call numbers beginning with NA)
Browse the bridge engineering section on the 5th floor (call numbers beginning with TG 20)
Look in the The Encyclopedia of New York City for entries on various bridges (available in print and as an ebook)
Gale Virtual Reference Center
- A search for bridges yields entries from the Gale Encyclopedia of Science, the Historical Encyclopedia of American Business, West Encyclopedia of American Law, etc.

If anyone else has further ideas about this assignment and sources to recommend, please add them as comments on the original blog post so that chat reference staff at other colleges have access to these suggestions as well. I found some suggestions from last year after searching the archives of the LIBSDL list. If anyone wants to post that info here as a comment, that would be awesome and make the info more accessible to all.

Baruch College Campus High School Students

After seeing Arthur’s email that we are now letting Baruch College Campus High School use the library again, I started updating the reference wiki page about students from the school to indicate what specific privileges they have. I need some help getting all the details straight. Please log in to the wiki page for the Baruch College Campus High School and answer any of the open questions (you’ll see them in red).