What does the picture say?

Historic Architecture and Landscapes of Georgia: The Hubert Bond Owens and John Linley Image Collections at the Owens Library, a joint project between the College of Environment and Design, University of Georgia and the Digital Library of Georgia, contains 1500 images of important and representative architectural sites and landscapes in the state with an emphasis on Athens and Middle Georgia.

The intriguing part of this database is the Teacher Resources (on the left side, 4th link). How do you take the pictures, which are nice but still are just pictures of places I haven't been and have no connection with, and use them as a learning tool? This article, Creating Place Based Classroom Resources suggested that photographs:

Rather than serving merely as illustrations, the visual materials in each lesson are documents that help students achieve the lesson’s objectives. Because analyzing and extracting information from visuals are not necessarily skills students have developed, new lessons now include a Photograph Analysis Worksheet. The worksheet directs students to describe a photo after looking at it briefly and then again after careful examination. They might be surprised at the information they can gather, or at least surmise, about when and where the photo was taken, the reason the photo was taken, etc. Appropriate for analyzing both historical and modern photographs, the worksheet helps students learn how to “read” visual materials.

A picture is worth a thousand words. You do need to know how to read those 'words'. Use the resources available through the Digital Library of Georgia and GALILEO to expand your 'vocabulary'.

-kss

Our view is limited

From our door we see  the wooden wall that separates us from the construction. We hear pounding, sawing , and voices.  We can see workers moving through the doorway carrying debris out. It is a limited view.

A walk outside provides a view through the spaces that have been cut out for spacious windows. We can  see the open space that used to be an auditorium.  The plans we've seen, show the area lined with tables and chairs. The front entry is beginning to take shape. There will be a curved cover over the glass entry. The outdoor patio area  will be a welcoming space.

The contractors have made great progress since October. Rumor has it construction will be complete by April. I haven't heard when in April - just April!

The view from the library will change.

-kss

Subject terms

Ashes, ashes.... What do we have in our collection on Ash Wednesday. A subject search turned up one item. A word or phrase search turned up two items.

The people who catalog materials are extraordinarily detail oriented. They care about the size of the material, the authorship, the publisher, and the contents of the item. I was a bit surprised that Holy Wednesday [electronic resource] : a Nahua drama from early colonial Mexico by Louise M Burkhart has the subject 'Ash Wednesday-Mexico.' Identified only in 1986, the Nahuatl Holy Week play is the earliest known dramatic script in any Native American language. This play deals with the end of Lent (Holy Week) not the beginning (Ash Wednesday). I wonder what the cataloger was thinking?

-kss

Students may access all passwords by going to the CTC page
Select Quicklinks (upper right hand corner)
Select Library
Select Find Books
Put in your 900# and then your Banner password (6 digit birthday)
Select My Account (middle of the gray bar)
Select Off Campus Access link
Scroll down for the electronic book passwords

Ash Wednesday

Have you seen many 'dirty' foreheads today? Christians of the western liturgical churches are having ashes rubbed on their foreheads in the sign of the cross. Why?

Our online reference collection of 587 titles in Credo makes it a cinch to find the answer.

A search for 'ash wednesday' retrieved 235 entries. The left side bar tells you the number of entry types- 69 articles, 52 definitions, 51 events, 32 persons, etc. I wondered how there could be persons referred to by searching for 'ash wednesday'. Skimming through the results, they are poets, authors, actors, politicians, and clergymen who wrote or did something relating to Ash Wednesday.

The children's rhyme "Ring Around the Rosy...ashes, ashes, we all fall down" has been dancing in my head this Ash Wednesday. The poem has nothing to do with the day but it still is sticking in my thoughts. I wondered if Credo Reference would have a literary reference? A straight search for the phrase turned up a wealth of sources but the search engine had pulled individual words from the phrase rather than the whole phrase. A second search with the phrase in quotes only turned up two references. Neither were as informative as Wikipedia, which has 20 footnotes and 5 Reference books cited.

Sometimes you have to use the wild web to get the answer. Just make sure they note their sources!

-kss


Current students may now access all passwords by going to the CTC page
Select Quicklinks (upper right hand corner)
Select Library
Select Find Books
Put in your Student ID # and the Banner password (upper right hand corner)
Select My Account (middle of the gray bar)
Select Off Campus Access link
Scroll to the bottom for the electronic book collections passwords

Found it!

My question was about beads (throws) and Mardi Gras. I searched through four databases in GALILEO and found a history of how Mardi Gras started its rise in New Orleans. There was no mention of the beads.

A search in our catalog for Mardi Gras as a subject did not turn up any titles. A word or phrase search pulled up 15 titles. I looked through several electronic books searching for the word beads. It is so easy to search the electronic books.

I found success with Creating the Big Easy [electronic resource] : New Orleans and the emergence of modern tourism, 1918-1945 by Anthony J. Stanonis. The 5th Chapter, A City that Care Forgot, The Reinvention of New Orleans Mardi Gras, on page 187 contained the tidbit I was looking for. In 1921 the Krewe of Rex started throwing beads! Prior to 1921, Krewe members had blown kisses but not given any tangible items away.

There you go. 90 years of bead throwing started with businessmen trying to get tourists to come, stay, and spend money. It seems to have worked.

-kss

Ebrary does require a login.
Current students may now access all passwords by going to the CTC page http://www.chattahoocheetech.edu
Select Quicklinks (upper right hand corner)
Select Library
Select Find Books
Put in your 900# and then your Banner password (6 digit birthday)
Select My Account (middle of the gray bar)
Select Off Campus Access link
Scroll to the bottom for the electronic book collections passwords.

Throw me something, mister

Viewers along the Mardi Gras parade routes stand with arms raised, shouting for the costumed benefactors on the float, to share the wealth. How did Mardi Gras, as we know it, get started in New Orleans?

A search in multiple GALILEO databases is pretty easy to do. The Search tab (5th tab over) provides steps to complete the search.
- Step 1 Enter search keywords. There are three search boxes with drop down limiters for title, author, subject, etc.
- Step 2 Select Search Options. You have three choices- full text, peer reviewed, and dates. I suggest selecting full text and peer reviewed. Full text to make sure you get the entire article and not an abstract. Peer Reviewed so the articles aren't from People magazine.
- Step 3 Choose Databases to search. Academic Search Complete (Ebsco) and Research Library (Proquest) are the two displayed. There is a Show more databases link that opens a long list of options.

To answer my questions about Mardi Gras,
Step 1. I entered Mardi Gras as a subject search.
Step 2. I limited my search to Full Text. I'm looking for articles with information not acadamic treatises.
Step 3. I added the two Religion databases. Mardi Gras is the last day before the Christian season of Lent.
I clicked on the Search 4 databases button
The results are in date order.
There is a box on the left that tells me Results by Source. Interesting that Ebsco's general database has no articles with Mardi Gras as a subject but Proquest has 596.

The article from ProQuest that shared some early history of Mardi Gras was published in 2002, in the New Orleans magazine, The men who made Mardi Gras. There isn't any information about the bead throwing. I need to go back and look some more. Meanwhile, I can think of the folks lining the streets of New Orleans with arms waving!


-kss

This Glorious Struggle

This Glorious Struggle : George Washington's Revolutionary War Letters [E 203 .W298 207] by Edward G Lengel is available at our North Metro campus. The reviews and summary that are part of the catalog help inspire the reader to dip right into the book.  Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) noted "Many readers of this collection of Washington's letters probably will experience some surprise: he was not, as history texts have often maintained, always the unflappable leader. Lengel (history, U. of Virginia) has extracted many of the jewels from the roughly 140,000 letters Washington wrote to family, friends, Congress, and fellow soldiers during the war to present a picture of a man given to depression and doubt as well as a good joke and a bountiful table". Richard Fraser, M.I.L.S., Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC wrote, "This selection of General Washington's letters constantly reminds us that the course of the American Revolution need not have gone as it did and that when "history" happens, there's no knowing how it will turn out". Booklist said, "In topical range and variety of recipients, the collection conveys the types of problems that came to Washington's attention and captures aspects of his personality as he dealt with them"

Learn more about our first President by reading his own words.

-kss

POTUS

If you watch enough political dramas on television, you know POTUS means President of the United States. On the third Monday in February, we celebrate the office of the Presidency with Presidents Day.

It seemed appropriate to use a CTC resource for information. I went to  Encyclopedia Britannica for the story behind Presidents Day. The first time I searched for Presidents Day, I missed seeing it at the top of the results column. I scrolled through the listing and wondered where this information might be. The front page didn't have a large (or even small) story about the commemoration. At the bottom of the screen, there was a set of icons for 'spotlight'ed stories. George Washington's picture was there. That link did take me to Presidents Day information. A second search for Presidents Day had the link to the holiday information at the top of the list above a yellow line. Was the link there the first time and I missed it?

Of course, the quick and favorite research site, Wikipedia did have a fairly easy to see link to On This Day with a Washington's Birthday/Presidents Day link.  At the bottom of the Wikipedia article there were references that could be checked.

It would be nice if vendors would think like novice searchers and make results clear and visible!
-kss

Students may now access all passwords by going to the CTC page
Select Quicklinks (upper right hand corner)
Select Library
Select Find Books
Put in their student ID and use the Banner password
Select My Account (middle of the gray bar)
Select Off Campus Access link