It's a Blues Day

Today is Lee National Denim Day a fund raiser for Breast Cancer Research. At NMTC we have two Denim Days a quarter but ours are Blue Jeans for Babies and we raise money for the March of Dimes.

How did denim become the cloth of choice for comfort and relaxing? It started as the working mans cloth - sturdy, long wearing, virtually indestructible! The Oxford English Dictionary notes the word first appeared in usage in the late 1600's. Encyclopedia Britannica notes Levi Strauss made denim pants a trademarked item (levi's) in the gold fields of California.

So how did the denim pant morph into leisure wear?

Looking for biographies

A basic Nursing class is doing quick research on well known nurses. The quick way to find information is through Google. Some sites pulled up by Google are very authoritative, others- not so authoritative.

GALILEO offers different resources to search for information about these nurses.

Ancestry.com (available only on campus) offers interesting insights to the people being researched. Where they lived is only one bit of information offered in the census.

Florence Nightingale is noted in the 1901 census in England as "living on own means".

Clara Barton is in the 1910 Maryland census

Lillian Wald is in the 1930 New York census (index notes her as Lillian D. Wold)

Harriet Tubman is in the 1880 and 1910 New York census.

Sojourner Truth is in the 1860 and 1880 Michigan census.

Margaret Sanger in 1880 New York as child (Higgins) and in 1910 New York census.

Mary Breckinridge 1900 Arkansas census with mother

Virginia Henderson 1930 New York census

Martha Rogers 1930 Tennessee census with parents

Using GALILEO Quick Search and limiting the search to Medicine and Health pulls up articles by and about some of these nurses.

Digging deeper than Google will provide that hook to catch your reader.

Schedule?

Lindsey Holzman said: “How to print your schedule” directions have been placed at each computer in the Student Success Center (room 120).

Scary reading

Getting ready for the Fall Quarter. The English lit classes will be reading "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving.

The instructor and I spent time looking for a full text version for students to use on-line. Our efforts turned up two in GALILEO and 1 on the web:

Net Library (accessed through GALILEO or through NetLibrary.com not through the NMTC catalog) has a full text version.

LION has a full text version but we struggled to find it. We did basic searches with the title and weren't having any success. We "knew" it had to be in LION.

Here's how we found it- the instructor looked in an anthology to see where the original story was published - A book of the Hudson -(yes, we resorted to a print resource to get the clue).

In LION we

Selected Texts

Then selected Prose

Typed Irving, Washington for the author

And there was the full text book - A book of the Hudson - selected it and scrolled through the chapters list to find the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Something fun we discovered - there is a PDF image as well as the HTML text version - click on the tan >> (link says Cross Reference), when the text appears - click on page image and there is the PDF of the original book!

Oh, yes, Bartleby.com has the full text online.

Librarians like to search but we also like to find.

Get the current password to use GALILEO at home from your Georgia librarian.

How many legs?

On NPR this morning there was a quick interview with Joe Peragine, the artist who installed the marching ants exhibit (known as Brute Neighbors) at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

In the GSU article,Every Day Art by Beth Flannigan, she notes the exhibit is "Just a few feet above the heads of bustling travelers, a swarm of 16-inch-long red ants marches silently over Delta Air Lines’ international baggage carousel at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport."

In the interview broadcast today, Joe said ants only had 6 legs but there is an ant figure at Hartsfield that has 5 legs! He laughed and said it would give travelers something to look for!

You'll notice the only GALILEO resource I was able to use was Encyclopedia Britannica for the ant picture. Using Google turned up the information based on the clues I had from listening while driving.

Finding information sometimes means using multiple resources.

News from EBSCO

EBSCO sent an e-mail announcing:

"We have recently upgraded the Book Collection : Non-Fiction database to display:

Geographic terms in citations

Publisher information on the Publication Details screen

Related series information in citations"

These new features are available on Book Collection: Nonfiction through GALILEO.

Ebsco also said:

"Please visit EBSCO's Support Site to learn about new features, search among thousands of FAQs, download Flash tutorials, Help Sheets or User Guides, or communicate with Technical Support at any time, using the EBSCO Support Form .

The password to access these Ebsco products through GALILEO is available from your Georgia librarian.

Romance online

Listening to NPR this morning I heard that Harlequin Books are making their romance novels available as e-books.

And their reasoning: "There are lots of reasons to love eBooks—they're instant, portable, always available and you can find exclusive editorial like SPICE Briefs, Minis, Bundles and much more. Plus, we've added Gold Eagle, to our World Wide Library. Enjoy!"

Yes, electronic books are convenient. NMTC has over 40,000 NetLibrary books. Check out e-books - you'll find they aren't as clunky as they used to be.

Free People Read Freely ® (ALA)

Banned Books Week - Sept 29-Oct 6, 2007

From the ALA (American Library Association) site:

The "10 Most Challenged Books of 2006" reflect a range of themes, and consist of the following titles:

"And Tango Makes Three" by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;


"Gossip Girls" series by Cecily Von Ziegesar for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language;


"Alice" series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language;


"The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things" by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;


"The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;


"Scary Stories" series by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity;


"Athletic Shorts" by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language.


"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group


"Beloved" by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group;


"The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence.