March 2007 - Posts
I thought I'd put this weeks site up a little early (oh, only about 3 days....) since I will be leaving quite early tomorrow morning for a conference. I have to go and learn so I can come back and say, "You'll never guess what we can do now!"
On with the site. This weeks site-of-the-week is Books for Soldiers.
http://booksforsoldiers.com/index.php
This website's goal is to send books to our soldiers who are fighting for our freedom overseas. Whether you support the war or not is not the point. The point is that there are soldiers who are far away from home without many of the comforts we take for granted. I will tell you that this website is a little extensive, you need to join the forum to learn about the project, then you fill out an application and get it notarized before you send it in. Once you've done that and been approved, you can send books, DVDs, games and relief supplies. You will also have access to the Pen Pal area (way fun!) and to the Post Card Jamboree (yeah, I have no clue).
I believe you can do this individually or as a group. You'll have to check it out before you decide. Do something nice for someone who's doing something really nice for you!
I've been busy reading some YA Literature in preparations for a presentation I'll be giving to some students in May. Needless to say, I've got a couple of books I can mention here!
Letters from Rifka
Grow with Rifka as she and her family escape from Russia to come to America so her brothers don't have to serve in the Army. (If you knew what would happen to them in the Army you'd leave too - being Jewish in Russia in the early 1900s was not pleasant.) Rifka is the youngest and only blonde child in the family. When her kindness to a strange girl on a train affects her dream to enter America you'll feel for the brave, bright, young girl (she's a bit of a smart-aleck too!). The story is told through Rifka's letters to her cousin Tovah back in Russia. We see Rifka at her most comfortable and vulnerable through these letters. She pours her heart out to her cousin. Will she make it into America?
Recommended For:
- History people
- Russian history people
- Those who like to be inside the 'writers' head
- Everyone!
Seven Spiders Spinning
I am a HUGE fan of Gregory Maguire's books for adults (Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Son of a Witch, Lost: A Novel, and Mirror, Mirror - I'm sure there are more). I was hoping this tale would delve a little more deeply into the Anansi stories from Africa, but, alas, it was not to be so. (His adult books that I've listed are basically fairy tales re-written. They're fantastic! -Lost is the exception to this trend. It is based on Jack the Ripper and who he really was.)
This tale starts out in the Ice Age and the birth of 7 baby spiders. The spiders become connected to the Tattletales, a group of girls (roughly in 5th grade I'm thinking) who are the rivals of the Copycats (the boys from the same class). Only Pearl remains neutral. Unfortunately, Halloween is coming up and that means the classes need to come up with a 10 minute skit for the school's program. The class divides into Copycats (with Pearl) vs. Tattletales. Unforeseen drama causes the students to have to try and work together to save someone they all care deeply about. Will a spider be able to bring them all together? Or will it drive them further apart? This is a great commentary on the whole boys vs. girls debate that has been waging in gradeschools for longer than I care to think about.
Oh, and you do learn about the spiders. They play an integral role in the story's development!
Recommended For:
- Students dealing with inclusion/exclusion
- Students who deal with a know-it-all (and boy is she something)
- Everyone!
Looking for Alaska
I would recommend this title for older, more mature readers. This book is gritty. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent book, but not what I was really expecting. Miles has decided to go away to boarding school because his life is just not that great. He has two friends. And they're more like acquaintances than friends. He's ready for his Great Perhaps that the dying poet Francois Rabelais spoke of. When he gets to school he meets the smart (and very good looking) Alaska Young and the Colonel. Miles becomes Pudge (even though he's probably the skinniest kid at school) and develops friendships that will affect him more than he ever dreamed of. One night of drinking together will cause this group of students to break apart in ways that they can't comprehend right away. The tragedy that strikes will break your heart, the aftermath is just as bad. How do we deal with something terrible that we feel partly responsible for? Read this book to find how these students worked through their grief and came to accept the things they can not change.
Warning: some of the content may not be suitable for a younger audience (I'm thinking 12 and under here, but it really depends on the reader). There is swearing, drinking and some "I have a crush on so-and-so" action.
Recommended For:
- anyone who has lost someone close
- a really good reality-style novel
- future teachers - never underestimate your students!
Alright, this site isn't 'bookish' but I still heart it!
Aboard the Underground Railroad http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/ugrrhome.htm
Have you ever wondered what the houses that were stops on the underground railroad looked like? Are you interested in taking a historic road trip? Are you fascinated with the story of the underground railroad? Are you a history buff who just wants to absorb as much as you can? If YES was the answer to any of these questions (and probably others that I missed) then you better click on that link up there right now (or you can wait until I tell you more)!
Okay, so if you click on the Map link you will see a map of the United States. The states are shaded by free state, slave state, and territories where slavery was decided locally. There are some arrows on the map that show the routes that slaves took. If you click on any of the free states it will take you to a list of the states with names of the people/houses that were a part of the underground railroad (you can also get there from the main page). You click on those links and you are given a picture of the house, a description of the house's history, plus an address or a link to the actual site with visiting hours and/or contact information.
The Learn More section of the site is a bibliography of internet and print resources to further your research/studies/reading for fun. Along the bottom of the site are links that will describe more about the slave trade, early antislavery, operating the underground railroad, and the Civil War.
I would highly recommend this site to any and all. We should all be aware of the past and how it shapes the future so we can learn! Yes, I am one of those who think that we should always be learning something new, so go forth and learn (on your own, not just school stuff)!
I had a beautiful post written and ready for you to enjoy and now it's gone! I guess you can't save and continue writing when your post has the same name as a previous posting. So I will try to be every bit as witty and charming in this post as I was in the post-that-is-no-longer. Sigh.
Alright, hold on to your seats people! Here we go!
- Constitution Finder - located under Quick Reference > Government Resources - Yup, this really does what it says. You select a country and it will bring up all versions of that country's constitution (as far as I can tell). The countries I've looked at have at least one English version, but there are other languages available too! This site has access to not only constitutions, but charters, amendments and other documents as well!
- Global Edge - located under Other Resources by Subject > Business & Economics - This site is for those of you with interests that dabble in the (hold on, you'll never guess) business and economic industry. GlobalEdge describes itself as: "a knowledge web-portal that connects international business professionals worldwide to a wealth of information, insights, and learning resources on global business activities." Oh, and did I mention you can register for FREE?
- How Products are Made - located under Quick Reference > Encyclopedias - This is a fun site that can satisfy those who are curious about everything. And I really mean pretty much everything! If you can't find your answer here, check out the site How Stuff Works just below it. The insatiably curious are now going to be lost in cyberspace for awhile (I apologize for finding yet another way to help you procrastinate:)
- Project Gutenberg - located under Electronic Books - Yup, you're totally right if you guessed that I love this site! This is one of those places where you go to find a book that is out of copyright, the library's copies are all checked out and you're flat broke (does it sound like I've been down that path?) There are 20,000 FREE books on this site. No, you're not going to find the new Harry Potter here, but hey, beggers can't be choosers! You'll find something here!
- MLA Citation Styles - located under Other Resources by Subject > Writing - So you're alone in your room, it's 4 in the morning and all you want to do is finish citing your sources so you can crash for an hour or two before your first class. All of a sudden you realize you have no idea how to cite that newspaper article and you borrowed your classmate your citation guide. NEVER FEAR! The Library is here! (Ha-ha, I couldn't help it) Check out the MLA citation styles...it can't hurt and you'll get to bed a lot faster!
- TRIALS - located under Journals & Articles at the bottom, the trial link will come and go from time to time. The library gets trials to see how students and faculty react to the resources provided. So what I'm saying is: If you love it, tell me! If you think it's easy to use, difficult to use, a great resource, something you'll never use, tell me! Your opinions on this really do matter! Right now we have quite a few trials going on that may interest quite a few of you! I'll just list them here then you can go and play!
- Literature Online
- ProQuest Historical NYTimes
- Film Index International
- American Film Institute Catalog
- Film Indexes Online
- FIAF - Film Journal Today
- Periodicals Archive Online
So that's the list. Some of the sites are combinations of the others (mainly the film sites) and others are just plain interesting! Type in some search terms in the Historical Newspaper database. You'll be amazed at what you can find!
(By the way, the first version of this post was a lot more fun. Sorry! I'll save better next time:)
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls is a story of love, acceptance and redemption.
Jeanette's earliest memory is from when she was three. She was making hot dogs on the stove. You may wonder why a 3-year-old was cooking her own hot dogs, but that's how it was done in her family. You learned by doing, and if you're hungry then take care of it.
As you can imagine, a 3-year-old cooking a hot dog by herself at the stove is practically begging for trouble, and trouble came. Jeanette's pink dress quickly caught fire. Her parents took her to the hospital where she had a skin graft and she got "delicious meals three times a day". After six weeks her father showed up to check her out "Rex Walls style" (his name). Can you guess how he checked her out of the hospital? Yup, that's right, he just picked her up and carried her out the door.
A few weeks later her dad woke the family up in the middle of the night to pack and head out of town. Leaving town becomes a habit for the Walls family. When the bills start to pile up, the family packs up and moves out. The children are all younger, so they sleep in boxes when they do have a place to stay.
Rex Walls is a man with a plan. His next invention is going to make the family rich. It's just too bad he spends the little money he has on booze while his kids go hungry. It's too bad that mom would rather have a chocolate bar for herself than to share with her hungry children. It's sad that neither mom or dad can hold a job.
For all the hardships that this family goes through, they stay together. As Jeanette and her siblings get older and attend school they root through the garbage to find some lunch. They work odd jobs to make a little extra cash. And Jeanette is always the one to go around to the local bars to find her father.
The Glass Castle is the name they have picked out for the house that Rex is going to build for the family as soon as he 'makes it'. It will be made entirely of glass and is just so fantabulous it sounds too good to be true.
Jeanette Walls is a storyteller that can place you right next to her whether she's in California, the desert, West Virginia or New York. You feel for the children in this family as you endure what they had to endure. You are also heartened at the lives of the three elder children in the Walls family. Lori becomes an artist, Brian's a detective and Jeanette has gone to college and become a journalist. The youngest, Maureen, is a mystery at the end. She left for California after she stabbed her mother (who survived) and the author hadn't spoken to her in three years. One can hope that they have since chatted and that all is well for Maureen.
I do have to say I was a bit disappointed in the end. I wanted more information on how she came to accept her past. I want to know how she was able to talk to her second husband about her family. The book suddenly leaps to Thanksgiving at her house and her family (sans dad and Maureen) shows up and her husband knows all about them and her past and everything is just hunky-dory. Maybe that's just me...
The book has short chapters that flow together well. From the first paragraph you are transported to all the places the Walls family lives. I think learning about other people's ways of life is a great way to learn more about yourself, and also it may make you stop and think that hey, my childhood was totally fantastic!
I would recommend this book to:
- biography readers
- fans of journalists
- anyone who had an interesting life growing up
- EVERYONE!
Do you have extra books laying around your dorm room/apartment? Do you lack the energy to even think about what to do with them? Never fear, BookMooch is here!
BookMooch is free to join. You just go to:
http://bookmooch.com/
to sign up. Once you're signed up, you enter the titles of the books you would like to get rid of. You receive points for every book you enter and you use them when you receive books from others (you can also donate your points to a charity that BookMooch is affiliated with.) The cost to you here is the shipping of the book. Period. I think this could be a great place to exchange textbooks. -Yes, this is an intense hint to share this website with your friends here, there and everywhere! Imagine how much easier (a.k.a. cheaper) it could possibly be to find the textbooks you need.....
If you click on the About tab at the top of the screen you can learn all about how BookMooch works. You can even search within Amazon from BookMooch's website to find titles that you want.
*I have not personally used this site. I have a problem with books. I can't seem to get rid of them. EVER. But if I could/did, I would be using this site in a heartbeat. Seriously, getting rid of books I have multiple copies of in exchange for something I don't have would be bliss. Sheer bliss!
Do you ever wonder what the library has added to its collection? Never fear, the time is here!
In the Faculty Resources box on the library's webpage we have added a link to our New Materials Report as well as to our New Juvenile Materials. You will have to enter your campus id and password to access the spreadsheet and then you can browse away! Both reports have the call numbers, titles, and author. The New Juvenile Materials report includes the subject area and classification (fiction or nonfiction) and the New Materials Report tells you the format of the item (book, DVD, etc.) and the collection (general or reference). The New Materials Report is also alphabetized by call number to make looking for your subject area easier. Not sure where your subject area is located? Check out:
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/
This is a complete listing of the Library of Congress's classification system.
- Books in Print - This is a service that will help you locate books, audio and video. You can search by keyword, title, author, ISBN and limit your search to in print, out of print and forthcoming titles.
- CHOICE Reviews - This service "reviews significant current books and electronic resources of interest to those in higher education." I'm pretty sure you get the idea.
- RCLWeb - This is a service offered by ACRL's CHOICE and Bowker. You can browse here for books that would benefit the your personal collection or the library's. There's a link to help you find appropriate course materials and much more. Take a few minutes and check it out!
The Reserve Request Link which I now see is titled "Interlibrary Loan Reserve Request Form" after you click on it, but it's actually a link to place your Course Reserves Online. (The only inaccurate item is the title, the rest is correct). I'll get that fixed ASAP.
The Library Material Request Form is correct and it will allow you to enter information that you're interested in the library acquiring and you can submit it electronically.
A few weeks ago I posted about some new resources that the library had added to our webpage. I'm going to continue that post today with a few more things you may be interested in knowing:
- The Encyclopedia of Death and Dying can be found at the bottom of the library's webpage under "Other Resources by Subject." Once there, select the Health link and you will see it - it's the third one down. There's a lot of information on the subject, much more than I had anticipated. The articles are very informative and helpful, but I think the main reason I really like this page is because of the bibliography's that are at the end of the articles. That's where I would start my research if I was doing a paper that involved some aspect of death. Hint Hint
- Another new resource that's been added to the library's webpage is a former site-of-the-week. Can you guess what it is? Hint: Music Give up? It's MusOpen! This site will be found in the "Other Resources by Subject" category, then select the Music link. I don't have much to say here, other than: FREE public domain music (mainly classical). Yup, that's what I thought. You're going there right now, aren't you?
- We've also added a Thesaurus to the library's webpage. You can find it in the "Quick Reference" section under Dictionaries.
Over Spring Break, your campus librarians did a little moving of furniture. Our goal was to create more individual and group study areas to utilize the space we have.
My question to you is: How do you like the new arrangements?
While I am not in love with this weeks site (it's not literary), I do think it's a site that needs to be brought to your attention.
This week's site is Recalls.gov
http://www.recalls.gov/
You can look up recent recalls, you can search for them, you can sign up for e-mail and they also offer the information in Spanish.
If you select recent recalls you will be brought to a page with categories for Environmental, Meat & Poultry, Boats and Boating Safety, Consumer Products, Foods, Medicines and Cosmetics, as well as Motor Vehicles and Car Seats. There are also tabs across the top of the main page to easily search within these as well.
There's much to be learned here! Quite frankly I was amazed at the number of recalls on the site. The most recent were from last Friday (March 9th).
Take a gander and be proactive!
This is a little tardy as the good Dr. Seuss's birthday was Friday, March 2nd. I was going to post about this then, but since there was no school it made that process a little difficult. This isn't last weeks site-of-the-week, but it's really fun!
Okay, so Dr. Seuss's major claim to fame is The Cat in the Hat. Did you know that The Cat in the Hat has a vocabulary list of only 236 words? There are only fourteen words with two syllables and one word with more than two syllables. How crazy is that? The imaginative use of words in this book has made it an endearing classic. Children (and adults) still enjoy the way the words in Dr. Seuss's books just play with your tongue and the zany happenings that occur within the pages of his books keeps the readers wondering just what EXACTLY are Thing 1 and Thing 2 up to? And how on earth is that mess going to get cleaned up?
On this first website, select either high or low bandwidth and in you go! You'll see the Cat in the Hat holding onto a cake, select the "click here to send the Cat in the Hat a Birthday wish" link. You then get to color in a picture and send it on to the Cat! The best part about this is that if you click on the "Official Rules" icon you can learn how purchasing a Random House published Dr. Seuss book can help First Book. The gist of this game is: if you buy an acceptable title and mail in the receipt to the address provided, Random House will donate up to 1,000,000 books to First Book. Oh, and if you have children, they can make a card and send it on! (Only one entry per household and the children's contribution is also on the rules page.)
http://www.seussville.com/
Here's the link to First Book if you would like to check it out:
http://www.firstbook.org/site/c.lwKYJ8NVJvF/b.674095/k.CC09/Home.htm
The following sites contain teacher resources. Use your best judgment when going through the materials. I've only briefly glanced at what's on these, but there is some fun and interesting stuff here!
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/seuss.htm
http://www.abcteach.com/directory/seasonalmonths/3_march/dr_seuss/
http://www.teachingheart.net/thedrsuesspage.html
Dr. Seuss in History: These two sites are for the adult who likes to learn something new. One site features political cartoons Dr. Seuss did during WWII and the other features advertisements
Dr. Seuss Goes to War:
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/
The Advertising Artwook of Dr. Seuss:
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dsads/index.shtml
This next site is a link to the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden at the Springfield Museums in MA. (Just in case you're traveling that way...)
http://www.catinthehat.org/
The Center for Seussian Studies is this last link. This site hasn't been updated since 2000. It's a little behind, but it's one of those things that could actually be an undiscovered treasure trove of fun!
http://www.seuss.org/
Have you had enough Seuss yet? I know, never, right? On that note, here are some Seuss quotes for you!
"A person's a person, no matter how small."
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrond end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
And from The Lorax I will leave these parting words:
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
Radio-Locator
http://www.radio-locator.com/
It seems that we have quite a few students here at Bethany who are not from the area. I suppose finding a decent radio station to listen to that fits your taste can be somewhat challenging, especially if you don't know what styles of music are available.
The Radio-Locator is a really fun tool that can work anywhere. You can find a radio station by location, call letters, internet streaming radio or world radio. Those are just the drop-down and search boxes. Then you get into the links that allow you to search by station format, U.S. State, Canadian province, city or location and an advanced search feature.
When your results come up you are given the call sign of the station, the frequency, the distance from the signal, the city, the name of a school if it's located on their campus and the format of the station. You're also given a lightning bolt symbol if the station broadcasts on the internet and an info. icon that will take you to a website link for the station. It's a fast, simple way to find the kind(s) of music you enjoy listening to.
Even if you are from the area go on over and take a look. You never know what you might find out!
There will be no inter library loan service from today, March 1 - Saturday, March 10. We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause.
The library will be open during spring break. The hours for that week are as follows:
Friday March 2 8 am - 4:30 pm
Saturday-Sunday March 3-4 CLOSED
Monday - Thursday March 5-8 8 am - 5 pm
Friday March 9 8 am - 4:30 pm
Saturday March 10 CLOSED
Sunday March 11 4 pm - 11 pm