Electronic Highways
Holiday gifts: Purely academic
Halloween is just around the corner, which means Thanksgiving and those December holidays are looming on the horizon. It’s time to begin contemplating where that “special” gift will come from —the one with a personalized meaning, providing not only a heart-warming gesture of caring and giving, but showing ingenuity and thought-filled giving.
David Bertuca and I are librarians in the Arts and Sciences Libraries. Several years ago, we compiled a very short list of “academically themed” holiday gift ideas (mostly neckties) for a library newsletter. The featured column came back the next year, with additional items (scarves, jewelry and novelty gifts) added. The article’s popularity spawned the Graduation Gifting Ideas: It’s Purely Academic website, leaving no discipline behind.
You can find a discipline-themed gift for your biology major roommate from Taylor Custom’s A To Zoo, an assortment of key chains, jewelry, zipper pulls, and drawer pulls. As the biological sciences librarian, my favorite is their animal cell key chain, a silver detail of an animal cell, including centrioles and ribosomes.
As one of Al Gore’s trained “climate messengers,” I am waiting for the Global Warming Mug from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild.
The Unemployed Philosophers Guild has one of the most eclectic arrays of gift ideas for the arts and humanities, providing soft dolls of your favorite poet or philosopher, a pillow of your most desired artistic work, a Dali watch, compact mirrors, magnetic personalities, scarves and ties, and much more!
As the map librarian for University Libraries, Dave is quick to highlight resources for cartographers, map and geography enthusiasts, who can find great gifts at Cartographic Associates. The site carries neckties and scarves depicting major world cities, Christmas ornaments, antique and facsimile maps from notable time periods (Civil War, World War II), and various places in the world, among many other ideas.
Would you like a pair of socks or stationery for the medievalist on your list? You’re better off getting deep into the resources of the Renaissance Store or the Pillaged Village for everything from armor to pirate pants, boots, chemises, gowns, helmets, swords, music, jewelry and a whole lot more.
There are scores of sites for T-shirts and related items covering every discipline from art to zoology. Explore and discover the riches. The selections are nearly endless and never again will you be the person who “gave me this stupid gift.”
—Fred Stoss, Arts and Sciences Libraries
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