Bidding for what

Over the weekend various channels were running stories about the assassination of JFK 45 years ago.

Mike Huckabee interviewed Dan Rather for Saturdays show on Fox. Mr. Rather shared the story about the bidding for the film taken by Abraham Zapruder.



Who would bid today - with the ubiquitous news crews and the everyday person with a camera phone who may post to their blog, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr - providing immediate, unfiltered access to the event.

-kls

The Power of Art at the Library

Greetings,

Need a bit of art in your life to spice up the drab days of late fall and early winter? Look no further than the North Metro Tech Library.

We have just acquired the DVD edition of the BBC/PBS series 'the Power of Art' by Simon Schama. The series focuses on eight great works of art. Each episode takes the viewer back in time to the creation of the piece and examines the cultural and social context in which it was created. The episodes also look at the life of the artist and how that shaped the creation and style of the work. The episodes span several different periods in time and art.

We also have the companion book to the series, for those of you seeking further information. Both the dvd and book are reserve materials, which means that they are available for use within the library.

Schama is a writer well known for his works on the French Revolution and slavery, among other topics. You may recognize him from his tv series 'A History of Britain,' which aired on the History Channel several years ago. Schama is known for his distinctive delivery and narrative prose.

JWF

Get in Shape Georgia

The President's Challenge is a government program designed to get Americans into better physical shape. The website for the program is very interactive and has programs and activities geared toward children, teens, adults, and seniors.

You can create an account on the website and use your account to log your activity. At the adult age level, there are bronze, silver, and gold award levels. You achieve these awards by logging your activity in your account. The website tabulates up the amount of points you earn for each activity based upon time, distance, degree of intensity. The website keeps track of your points and will display the progress that you have made toward your goal. Once you have reached an award level, you are eligible for a certificate from the office of the President.

There are many great features on this website. It also saves you the time of having to keep track of your activity on paper. I am personally using the website. I have a goal of completing the bronze level before President Bush leaves office and getting a certificate from him, then getting a certificate from President Obama for the silver level. At present I am over 50% complete with the bronze level.

JWF

Cornhusks and the Electoral College

Greetings,

The eyes of the electoral world were upon the state of Nebraska for a brief moment on Friday. It was announced that Barack Obama had won one of the state's five electoral votes. This is due to a system of awarding some of the state's electoral votes based upon who wins in a particular Congressional district, not on who wins the popular vote statewide.

All fifty states have electoral votes. Each state has two for its US Senators, and at least one for the number of members it has in the House of Representatives. Example, California: 2+53=55, Wyoming: 2+1=3, Tennessee: 2+9=11. Remember, it is not the candidate who wins the national popular vote who becomes President, but rather the candidate who wins the most electoral votes. As a result, candidates fight to win individual 'swing' states to gain the most electors rather than run a campaing to pile up the biggest amount of votes nationwide. (Note: It is possible to come in 2nd in the popular vote but win the electoral vote and become President. Ex. Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and George W. Bush in 2000).

Forty-eight of the fifty states currently award all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote within the state. Some have argued the fairness of this system, as a candidate might win California by one vote (theoretically), but not pick up any of its 53 electoral votes. Colorado voters in 2004 defeated a statewide referendum that would have awarded their electoral votes on a proportional basis.

Nebraska and Maine are the two exceptions. These states award their electoral votes in a unique way. The two electoral votes for the two US Senators in each state are awarded to the winner of the statewide popular vote. As a result, McCain picked up two in Nebraska and Obama two in Maine.

Here's where it gets a bit trickier. The remaining votes are awarded based upon the candidate who wins the most votes in each of the Congressional districts in the state. Until 2008, there was nothing unusual about this as in both Maine and Nebraska the statewide winner also won in each state's Congressional districts. However, that changed in 2008. After the counting of mail-in ballots, it was determined that Barack Obama had won more votes than John McCain in the Nebraska 2nd Congressional district (the smallest district in the state, which includes the city of Omaha). As a result, one of the Nebraska electoral votes was awarded to Obama for a 4 to 1 McCain to Obama split in the state's electoral votes. (Maine awarded all votes to Obama). Also, the Republican candidate in the 2nd district won the Congressional election, which would seem to indicate that many voters in the Nebraska second congressional district voted a split ticket.

And in a further peace of trivia, Nebraska is the only state government to not have an upper and lower house in its legislature. It operates on a unicameral system, one where there is only one house in the legislature and one in which the members are officially non-partisan.

JWF

A swift goodbye

The Official Michael Crichton site notes his passing. Blogs and news outlets have shared the information. Wiki Pedia has a complete list of his work with links.

At NMTC, we don't have many pleasure reading books - but in our netLibrary collection there is the 1996 edition of Michael Crichton : a critical companion by Elizabeth A. Trembley.

The summary notes: Until now, Michael Crichton's many readers have had nowhere to turn for more information on one of America's most popular novelists. This companion features clear analyses of Crichton's life and literary influences, as well as chapters on each of his 13 novels to date. It will help Crichton's readers to learn more about how significant events in his life affected the development of his fiction and literary style and how the heritage of popular fiction, including mystery, gothic, adventure, and science fiction, influenced his writing. This study provides close textual analysis of each of his novels in turn, focusing on plot, character development, theme, and critical interpretation.

You can check World Cat in GALILEO for the nearest library that owns a Michael Chrichton title. You may also do an Interlibrary Loan request through World Cat. We'll borrow the book for you from another library! Save on gas - let your computer do the searching.

-kls

Through the air with the greatest of ease

Just reading the news - and this story grabbed me - Pilot completes jetpack challenge ....Known as "Fusionman," he was aiming to follow the route taken by French airman Louis Blériot 99 years ago when he became the first person to fly across the English Channel in a plane.

Which reminded me of the Caldecott winner in our collection, The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot July 25, 1909 by Alice Provensen [TL 721.B5 P76 1987]

The pictures are gorgeous - which one would expect from a Caldecott winner. The story is inspiring as well. It wouldn't take long to read either.

New Native American Related Resources at the Library

Excelsior!

Greetings. Here at the NMTC Library we would like to inform you of two books we have recently received, both of which relate to Native American studies.

The first is a 2008 biography of noted Lakota chief Sitting Bull. This book is by Bill Yenne. The cover is interesing because it features a very stoic portrait of the man himself. Also, at the bottom center of the cover, you can see the autograph of the English version of his name that Sitting Bull learned to write. Just beyond the title page, the book quotes the Dictionary of Canadian Biography as follows: "the greatest Indian engima of his time, perhaps of all time."

A review of this work is available in Galileo . Go to Databases A-Z, then go to 'B,' then go to Book Index with Reviews. Search by title and limit the publication dates to 2008. Then you will find a review of this work.

We also have the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. The book deals with how the Native Americans lived prior to the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. (Although the Vikings got to North America before that and some say that English fisherman had contact with First Nations tribes off the coast of Newfoundland in the mid-1400's.) One area the book focuses on is the large cities that Native Americans constructed, such as Tenochtitlan in Mexico and Cahokia in Illinois.

A review is available of this work as well in Book Index with Reviews. Do a title search for 1491.

We are very pleased to have both of these resources available at the North Metro Technical College Library for your use. The 1491 book is considered one of the definitive popular books on Native American studies of the last few years.

JWF

To be or not to be

...that is the question posed in Hamlet. We're building our Shakespeare collection to support the growing number (and depth) of our English literature classes.

I'm fond of the No Fear Shakespeare series. It has 'regular' English on one side and 'Shakespearean' English on the other. The cover notes"the play plus a translation anyone can understand".

Quite handy. Check it out - you'll find our No Fear collection amidst the Shakespeare titles PR 2807 etc.

-kls

Election Day and the Fab Five

As Americans go to the polls tomorrow, our thoughts turn to New Wave.

Confused? You shouldn't be if you are a fan of New Wave/New Romance. New Wave was a genre that emerged as both a response to and an extension of punk rock in the early 1980's. Heavy on the synth, New Wave is remembered for its flashy fashions and its lyrics that contrasted from light to brooding and angst ridden.

One of the artists that defined the New Romance expression was a group from Birmingham, England not Alabama, called Duran Duran. (Named for a character in the Jane Fonda camp classic Barbarella.) Made up of singer Simon Le Bon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, bass player John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor, and guitarist Andy Taylor, Duran Duran approached a Beatlesque level of popularity for a few years, leading to their nickname of the 'Fab Five.' Girls swooned at the sight of the band, and fans bought up their record in drove. Note that none of the Taylors were related.

The look of Duran propelled the band to stardom as much as their music. Duran was able to form a synergy between the two elements using the newly popular genre of the music video. Duran seized on the young medium of MTV to display what were then some of the most creative and innovative music videos on the airwaves. Duran videos captured the look and feel of 1980's New Romance as much as any other entry into the field. The videos were especially known for their exotic third world shooting locales. The band even cut the title track for the last Roger Moore James Bond film 'A View to a Kill.'

All things must come to an end, and Duran Duran's last performance in their original incarnation was at the Live Aid superconcert until they reunited in 2001. Just prior to Andy Taylor and Roger Taylor leaving the band in the late 1980's, the band formed two side projects. John and Andy helped form the Power Station, a group that had some commerical success with Robert Palmer as the lead singer. Nick, Roger, and Simon formed a group called Arcadia, which cut a studio album but never toured.

Arcadia's one hit from their one album was entitled 'Election Day.' The song features a spoken word moment by Grace Jones, who played an evil Bond girl in the film 'A View to a Kill.' So for true believers in Duran, the term 'election day' conjures up thoughts of music as much as votes.

Duran has a special meaning for me as well. My best friend and his father share names with two of the Taylors in Duran, and yes the two Taylors that I know are related. My friend was married back in the spring, with yours truly as best man, near the city of Gainesville, Georgia. During the drive down and back, I listened to the music of Duran, forming an association of Duran with that wedding weekend.

Andy Taylor, who left the band in the 1980's for a solo career, has left the reunited Duran Duran. He has recently released a book on his experiences in rock and roll. You can read a review of it in Galileo. Go from the Galileo homepage to 'databases a-z' then select 'b.' Then go to Book Index with Reviews. Type 'Andy Taylor' in the search bar and the fourth result will be for his book 'Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran.' Click on the result link to read a review of the book (the book has received mixed reviews).

Now isn't all that just as interesting as ballot boxes, dimpled chads, swing states, and red to blue/blue to red?

JWF

Another chance to vote

The old saying about Chicago is the party bosses want you to vote early and vote often....

Now that you're in the mood to vote - try out the GALILEO survey:

When you open the GALILEO website today, you will see an invitation to participate in the annual user survey. Don't miss this chance to provide your feedback on your experience with GALILEO and to enter the drawing to win an iPod Nano. The annual surveys, conducted since 1997, have provided valuable firsthand feedback from users about what they think about the GALILEO web site, as well as experiential feedback from library staff on how their patrons are navigating the site and finding the content they need. Be sure to encourage your users to complete the survey to be entered into the drawing. The survey will be conducted November 3-9, 2008. Just click on the GALILEO User Survey link on the GALILEO home page to participate....info from Karen Minton

The staff at GALILEO take this survey as seriously as a Presidential election. They really do want to hear from their users! So go vote.

-kls

Ooooooooo

Gregory McNamee on the Britannica Blog offers a link to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Very appropriate for today!

Thinking about Washington Irving led me to look in Credo Reference. When was he born, where did he live? Portraits, facts, information about Washington Irving are noted in reference works like the Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English.

Which led me to wonder about the number of Washington Irving titles available for children. I went to GALILEO to look in NoveList.

NoveList noted 40 titles in an author search for Washington Irving. There are many variations of the Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle stories, plus collections of ghost stories. I learned Mr. Irving wrote Bracebridge Hall, tales of a traveller, the Alhambra. That didn't sound otherworldly.

Clicking on the WorldCat link showed libraries that owned the print title. NMTC didn't show up.

I wondered if NMTC had any Washington Irving titles that were not listed in WorldCat. Searching the NMTC catalog turned up Bracebridge Hall as well as A Tour on the Prairies , both in our netLibrary collection. I started reading A Tour on the Prairies and was drawn in to his description of the west in 1832.

All this wondering and wandering around started with a scary story. Where does a story lead you? Don't be afraid - wander down that crooked path to a new adventure.

Get the password to use GALILEO at home from your Georgia librarian. Pick up the password to use Credo from the NMTC librarian.

-kls

Flying with the greatest of ease

Our Visual Communication department is hosting a Second Life presentation this afternoon. They want to show instructors, students and administrators what educational (and commercial) value might be found in Second Life.

I have created a newbie avatar. I'll be attending and learning. Flying is harder than it sounds. I keep bumping into the roof. I've got to learn to fly outside and not inside!

We've purchased several books to support the program. The first one that arrived, 'Second Life : A Guide to Your Visual World' by Brian White is chock full of interesting tips and hints for both the newbie and experienced SL resident. I have had the book at my side as I try to learn a bit about living in Second Life.

When the hard copies are checked out, we do have two titles in netLibrary on Second Life. I did a search in netLibrary itself limiting my search to the title and the phrase Second Life. 6 titles were retrieved. Two actually have to do with the virtual world. You'll notice they have current copyright dates.

- Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse
by Ludlow, Peter.; Wallace, M. Publication: Cambridge, Mass MIT Press, 2007.

- How to Make Real Money in Second Life: Boost Your Business, Market Your Services, and Sell Your Products in the World's Hottest Virtual Community
McGraw Hill Professional by Freedman, Robert.Publication: New York McGraw-Hill Professional, 2008.

We have a good collection in netLibrary. You may access our electronic books three ways: from our catalog, from GALILEO, and from netLibrary itself! You do need to create your free account (Library Card) on campus to use netLibrary off campus. A hint- you may create your account off campus by going the GALILEO. netLibrary will recognize you as a NMTC patron when you go through GALILEO.

Your Geogria librarian can give you the current password to access GALILEO at home.


Read - and learn to fly without hitting the roof.

-kls

Boo!

Just in time The Haunted Library series is back on the Encyclopedia Britannica blog:

...Each entry has been completely updated and about a dozen new libraries added. George has also included links to the websites of most of the libraries mentioned (as requested by a reader last year), as well as references to relevant entries in Britannica and other sources that have extra information.

I went to GALILEO and looked in NoveList for haunted library. Over 100 titles were found with haunted but the library part wasn't as clear. When I did a search with "haunted library" linked by the quotes only two titles were retrieved. Yet, these two titles seemed quite appropriate. The quotes made all the difference in narrowing my search.

You may get the password to use GALILEO at home from your Georgia librarian!


-kls

If it weren't for blogs

The blogs I subscribe to keep me up to date - Give 'em what they want : News for Collection Development and Readers Advisory Librarians noted today that Tony Hillerman has died. Nora Rawlinson offers links to USA Today and the NY Times for the obituaries.

I checked our catalog, being a tech school we don't have much fiction for fun. However in our e-book collection we have Tony Hillerman : a critical companion by John M. Reilly. The summary notes:

Edgar Award-winning writer Tony Hillerman has earned a reputation as a Grand Master of the popular mystery. This is the first full-length examination of his work. One of the most successful contemporary American writers, Hillerman has made his stories of Native American detectives instrumental in understanding modern American life. Through the creation of his Navajo detective characters, Hillerman has given new vigor to the popular genre of mystery with his treatment of the problems of order and identity in modern society. This study examines each of his 13 novels in turn and includes a biographical chapter and a chapter on his innovations in the genre of detective fiction.

The fun thing about the netLibrary books - one can read them from your desk, a few pages at a time. Create your free account (get your netLibrary card) on campus. Explore the wide variety of titles available through our catalog.

-kls

"Our subject is not death or evil .....

our Subject is the law. "

And that is how “Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain” begins. The print version has arrived and is on the shelf- maybe not for long since Jeff told the faculty about its existence.

The Afterword, which is subtitled "Why Three Stodgy Academics Wrote a Comic Book", has a sentence that made me smile broadly:

"For some strange reason, none of our intended audiences seem eager to read scholarly law review articles."

In fact, I laughed as I finished reading the afterword - the law is serious but this book makes copyright understandable and even enjoyable. I might even enjoy these academics law classes if they teach the way they share copyright information.


-kls

Boy and dogs = great story

The latest Oprah's Book Club book arrived this week- The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.

The summary from our catalog : “A tale reminiscent of "Hamlet" that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father's death.”

I will confess – I borrowed this book the day it was processed and read very late- the tale does catch you and grab you….

We have 25 titles from Oprah’s list-
Look in our catalog
On the left side (blue column)
Look for Browse
Select Recommendations
You’ll see lists we’ve compiled for Award winners, the Doran Fuller Horticulture Collection, and Oprah!

-kls

What is the answer?

Libraries are using Instant Messaging, e-mail, Ask A Librarian links, phone reference, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, wikis and text messaging as life lines for the sinking researcher- the person who is overwhelmed by resources and just wants an answer.

netconnect, the supplement to Library Journal, has an interesting article titled "Mobile Delivery :Information Anywhere". (neither Ebsco nor Proquest have posted the Fall 2008 Net Connect issue - but they will - so you will be able to read this article in GALILEO - you can set up an RSS feed in both databases that will alert you when the new issue is posted).

Back to my point - throwing out the lifeline, getting the answers - the other librarian shared this with our faculty:

Kate and I came across an article pointing out that reference information services are now often available for cell phones. Cell users can text a question to one of several services and have the question answered within a few minutes.

The two services I used in a test run were Google and ChaCha (google.com/sms) and (chacha.com). I asked both services ‘what is the capital of Canada?’ The google service responded very quickly with the correct answer, as did the chacha service. Chacha uses live humans to answer their questions while google’s service is automated to some degree.

Google-466453 and ChaCha-242242. Please note that if you have to pay for texts or other cell fees then the cost of that will show up on your cell bill. Otherwise the services are free.

This should come in handy for when you are broken down on the side of the road and need to know the name of the British Prime Minister (Gordon Brown).

Now there's another way to get the answers.....

-kls/JWF

to get the password to use GALILEO at home, ask your Georgia librarian

Using Galileo for Book Reviews

One useful feature of Galileo that you might not be aware of is finding book reviews. You can find reviews of fiction books through a database entitled NoveList. If there is a particular title that you are interested in, you can look up the book in NoveList. The listing for the book in this database will give you publication information, as well as a few books reviews from various sources. This will help you in making selections when reading for pleasure.

What to do if North Metro Tech does not have the book you are interested in? Simply use another Galileo database, entitled WorldCat, to find libraries worldwide that own the book. If you are interested, contact the library and we will request the book for you from a library that owns it through a process called interlibrary loan.

I used NoveList to find a review on a book I just read entitled Three Day Road. The listing in NoveList contained several reviews on the book. The novel tells the story of two Cree/First Nation Canadian snipers during World War II as well as the experience of their aunt, one of the last Cree to live according to very traditional values. A good story if you are into Canada, First Nations, World War I, and/or snipers.

JWF

Canadian Election Update

Greetings friends.

The 2008 Canadian federal election was last night. If you read my posting from a few days back, you got a bit of a preview of Tuesday night's action. Some of you may have even watched the election feed from the CBC, via CSPAN, last night in prime time. (You actually might have seen more than some Canadians did as the USA received the feed when it kicked on in Atlantic Canada. The rest of Canada did not get the feed as early.)

Check out this map of the results that has been released into the public domain. Note that the darker the shade of one color a province is, the stronger the share of the vote for the party that received the most votes was in that province.

The results were not much of a surprise in some respects. Canada will have its third straight (one Liberal, two Conservative) minority government as the ruling Conservative party failed to gain over 50 percent of the seats in the House of Commons. The reason the Conservatives had called for an election was because polls in the late summer showed that they could very well gain enough seats to get a majority, which would have been their first since 1988 when they were known as the Progressive Conservatives. Analysts are saying that their failure to do so can be blamed on two things. First, they ran a poor campaign in Quebec, managing to hold their seats in that province, failing to make any real headway against the Bloc Quebecois. Second, the provincial Progressive Conservative party in Newfoundland and Labrador ran an 'ABC' (Anybody But Conservative) campaign against the federal Conservatives. The ABC campaign was a result of the provincials feeling that the federal party was too conservative in the American mold and was too far adrift from the 'Red Tory' philosophy of the Atlantic provincial conservatives. As a result, the Conservatives lost all three of their seats in Newfoundland and Labrador. Still, three more seats would not have given them a majority.

However, while Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives failed to gain a majority, they did pick up a net of 17 seats, giving them a total of 143 in the new house. Despite the results of ABC in Newfoundland, the Conservatives/Tories picked up seats in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They even picked up a seat in Prince Edward Island, their first in the province since 1988, when they held three of the current four PEI seats (the one they picked up being the one of the four they didn't have in 1988 naturally). All in all, Atlantic Canada was a win for the Tories and saw Liberal losses, which was unexpected.

Quebec saw the Bloc Quebecois stiffle any dreams of Conservative majority. They lost one seat to the Liberals, to the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and they gained one seat from the Tories. This demonstrates a problem the Conservatives seem to have. When the Tories make gains in Quebec, as in 2006, they don't seem to make headway in Ontario. Gains in Ontario, as in 2008, are not accompanied by gains in Quebec.

Ontario was a score for both the Conservatives and the New Democratic Party. Both parties took seats from the Liberal party. The Liberals lost 16 seats in the province. The Liberals poor performance has many questioning if Liberal leader Stephane Dion will make it through an upcoming leadership review. He may find himself replaced by a fellow Liberal MP as Opposition Leader. The New Democrats as a whole made gains in most of Canada, not quite approaching their best ever performance in 1984 under Ed Broadbent.

The Prairies and Alberta saw little change. Conservative strength was solid here, as expected. One surprise was the Conservatives losing their complete hold on Alberta when the NDP candidate won by less than 500 votes in the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona. Still, it is difficult for any one party to hold all the ridings in any province and the Tories typically do not hold one of the Edmonton ridings. The Tories now control all but two of the ridings in Alberta and Saskatchewan combined.

British Columbia saw the Tories make headway against the Liberals. They performed better than they did in 2006. The three northern/arctic ridings are now split among each of the three main parties. The Conservatives won the seat in Nunavut from the Liberals. Commentators have suggested that this may be due to the increased focus on Arctic Canada by the Conservatives.

One election down, one to go with the US election coming up in early November. Political pundits are in a bit of heaven right now.

JWF

Paddington Bear is 50

Check out the Google logo for Monday October 13.

I went to GALILEO and selected from the Subject list Literature, Language and Literary Criticism, then I selected Literature and Literary Criticism.

There are 5 databases offered for searching:

• Academic Search Complete
• LION (Literature Online)
• Literary Reference Center
• Literature Online Reference Edition
• Research Library (at ProQuest)

I was able to add NoveList and Book Index with Reviews to the list

I searched for Paddington bear. Delightful articles came up.

Remember that NoveList has curriculum guides that help extend a story!

You may get the current password to use GALILEO at home from your Georgia librarian.

-kls