The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections celebrated its move to new quarters on the fourth floor of the McLennan Library with the launch of an exhibit called The Brownie World of Palmer Cox. Cox wrote books for children based on the Scottish folktales he heard as a child which featured the Brownies, fairies who helped with household and farm chores while families slept.

Although first published in the 1880s, the Brownies achieved the kind of success and market recognition we think of as a recent phenomenon. In fact, Cox's Brownie characters were used to market more than 40 commercial products from toys and games to wallpaper and dinner sets. Kodak's Brownie camera was named to appeal to children because it was so easy to use. Many of the original drawings and manuscripts on display were recently donated to McGill by Mrs. Phyllis Buchanan, Cox's great-niece. The exhibition, curated by Friend of the Library Mrs. Sheila Bourke, a noted collector of children's books, runs to December 23 on the main floor of the Redpath Library Building.

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Lloyd Axworthy was at McGill last month to give a talk on Canada's foreign policy and human rights.

He discussed new threats to human security brought about by the widening gap between the have and have-not countries. The government is responding to international realities, says Axworthy, by engaging "a whole range of foreign policy levers." He says Canada is "encouraging the international financial institutions to look at issues of good governance in their programs" and that short-term aid to countries like Rwanda and Haiti is turning into long-term development strategies when nations are willing to move "from conflict to peace or from authoritarian to more democratic forms of government."

While outlining his government's actions, he also acknowledged the efforts of individuals from McGill's law faculty like the late John Humphrey who wrote the first draft of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. Axworthy added that his own ministry "turns to Dean Stephen Toope to train our diplomats in international human rights law and to provide expert advice, particularly on rule of law issuesÉin Sri Lanka, South Africa and elsewhere. Professor Irwin Cotler, through Inter-Amicus and the Human Rights in Canadian Foreign Policy project has provided an invaluable perspective on how human rights fit into our foreign policy agenda."

The English department's Drama and Theatre Program opens its season next week with an unusual and provocative production from South Africa called Tooth and Nail. The play was created rather than written in 1988 when members of Johannesburg's Junction Avenue Theatre Company, both black and white, began to explore how apartheid affected their lives and their art.

Although events in South Africa have been momentous, the Junction Avenue company's director reports that at the same time very little has changed. Tooth and Nail explores the schizophrenia of the "new" South Africa while it challenges its audience to understand the brutal and complex experience of apartheid. Tooth and Nail, directed by Professor Myrna Selkirk runs November 12-15 and 19-22 at 8 pm in Moyse Hall. For tickets and more information, call 398-6070.

The escalating cost of journal subscriptions over the last decade has played havoc with university library budgets. Electronic access and storage have been a boon to scholars, and McGill's Director of Libraries, Frances Groen, says there are a couple of new services available.

McGill has become a member of the JSTOR (for journal storage) project, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As of September 1, McGill scholars have been able to search the JSTOR database for back issues of a variety of journals. To protect current subscriptions, recent issues are not available.

Something called Project Muse (not to be confused with McGill's MUSE database of library holdings), an initiative of Johns Hopkins University, offers the full-text electronic version of more than 40 important journals. The titles include Human Rights Quarterly, The Review of Higher Education, American Journal of Mathematics and The Yale Journal of Criticism. In this case, only journals from the current year are offered.

JSTOR and Project Muse can be accessed from the McGill Libraries homepage: www.library.mcgill.ca.