The Cards Are Shuffled

In a recent post, I noted that the Arizona (by way of St. Louis and Chicago) Cardinals won the NFL title in 1947. A diligent reader posted a reply stating that the Cardinals also won the NFL championship in 1925. This may depend upon who you ask, especially if they live in Pennsylvania. A summary of the situation can be found here.

Apparently, back in 1925, there were no playoffs. The championship was awarded to the team with the best record. That normally would have gone to the Pottsville Maroons of Pennsylvania, who finished with the best record in the league that year (similar to many soccer leagues). The Maroons also won a convincing victory over the Cardinals in Chicago during the season. However, the Maroons then went on to play a Notre Dam All-Star team in a non-league game. As a result, in part because the game was played in Philadelphia and violated the rights of another team in the league, the league stripped the Maroons of the trophy and awarded the championship to the Cardinals. According to some sources, the Cardinals refused to accept the championship.

Attempts have been made by Maroons fans over the years to have the championship restored to Pottsville. Pottsville fans claim that these attempts have been thwarted over the years by the Bidwell family, longtime owners of the Cardinals (although not in 1925), who want to see the Cardinals remain recognized as the 1925 champs.

It should be noted that the website of the Pro Football Hall of Fame notes that the Cardinals are the 1925 champions, without an asterisk next to their name.

JWF

Pollock

January 29th is the birthday of the late American painter Jackson Pollock. Pollock is noted for his unique style of painting, particularly the paint drop method he used primarily in the fifties. Many of his works from this time period are simply noted with a number and a date. Pollock's paintings sell for millions of dollars.

Google adapted its logo today to resemble one of Pollock's paintings to celebrate his birthday. A sample of Pollock's paintings and a biography are available in the Galileo database Oxford Art Online. Simply do a search, or an advanced search for 'pollock' or 'Jackson Pollock.' Remember, you will need a password to use Galileo off-campus. Contact the library to get the current Galileo password, or your local Georgia librarian.

JWF

Haunted Libraries in the South

Hello,

Encyclopedia Britannica recently did a series of Blog entries on 'haunted libraries' in the United States. They broke that same list down by region, including a list of 'haunted' libraries in the south (although one wonders if Texas is still truly a southern state), as well as a list of international haunts.

Interestingly, Britannica was unable to find any haunted Georgia libraries. One library that is supposedly haunted is in Tennessee, the Hoskins Library at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The Hoskins Library was the main academic library for many years until it was converted to a special collections library in the 1980's.

Encyclopedia Britannica is always doing many fine blog entries on history, society, politics, and health, among other subjects. Remember that North Metro Tech students can access Britannica through Galileo. Please contact the library if you need the current Galileo password.

JWF

And the winners are

For librarians and bibliophiles - the mid-winter meeting of ALA holds a particular pleasure - the announcement of the Newbery and Caldecott winners- along with others of note.

I no longer keep up with the Newbery but I do avidly await the Caldecott announcement to build up the Early Childhood collection. Yes, I've ordered the winner.

This year someone (sorry I can't remember who) noted the 2009 Newbery winner was available online as Neil Gaiman read aloud the The Graveyard Book over a 9 day book tour trip in October 2008. Delightfully the author has an easy voice to listen to and great expression as well.

I admit it starts off a bit gruesome for my taste but as I continued to listen I was drawn into the story. Mr. Gaiman has a very expressive voice (and an expressive face).

In GALILEO , Novelist K-8 has a book talk and several reviews to help one push this book!

Yes, get the password from your Georgia librarian to access Novelist through GALILEO.

-kls

RIP Rabbit writer

Hat tip to Titus One Nine for RIP John Updike.

I started looking for verification. I did a Google search, figuring there might be a news story. First on the results list was Wikipedia and they had the death date listed. I looked for a newsy source, skimmed fan sites which did not yet list the death date. In a box I saw the Bloomberg site. I read their news story on John Updike.

Now I'm curious- how fast will other sources update the information. Was the updated Wikipedia a fluke?

Went to GALILEO and looked in Encyclopedia Britannica for John Updike - not updated yet (3:10 EST). How long will it take? Should I send in an edit comment?

Many times the bloggers are ahead of the curve but we need to verify the information with other sources. There's that carpenters adage - measure twice, cut once- which can be translated to check your sources!

-kls

Happy Australia Day!

Today, January 26th, is celebrated as a holiday called Australia Day in the nation continent of Australia. January 26th, 1788 was the date of the arrival of the First Fleet ,a collection of eleven British ships under the command of Governor Arthur Phillip, at what is Port Jackson/Sydney Cove/Sydney Harbour near the present day site of the Sydney Opera House . This marked the establishment of a permanent British presence on the eastern coast of the Australian continent and also began the series of events that led to the creation of the modern day state of Australia. Of interest is the fact that many of the colonists aboard the First Fleet were convicts.

The national holiday is also used to reveal the awarding of the Australian of the Year Award. The 1988 holiday was significant in that it marked the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the first fleet.


JWF

EB clarifies itself

Encyclopedia Britannica has a blog that covers a variety of topics. They must be hearing that folks aren't thrilled with the idea of EB turning into Wikipedia.

Britannica.com : new features

A “Suggest Edit” button allows a user to edit any section of an article and submit the changes to Britannica’s editors. Edits submitted by readers are suggestions to our editors that must be reviewed and approved by them before they’re posted. We’re eager for editorial suggestions from our readers, and we’ll review and act on them as quickly as we can, but no one can actually change a Britannica article except our editors.

That's good to hear!

-kls

Math on Sunday

The comics on Sunday, January 25, had a math pattern -
First there is Luann by Greg Evans


Then Foxtrot by Bill Arnend.

Math has never been my favorite subject. It is so rigid, so black and white, so right and wrong- so precise. It's easier to mush around in the Social Sciences. Yet, I ,along with LuAnn and Paige, - use math daily. I'm grateful that I was 'forced' to memorize the multiplication tables as I figure out how much several items will cost. I value being made to practice adding and subtracting in my head, quickly - as I look at a restaurant bill to see if it's correct. I appreciate being able to quickly figure percentages when faced with how much tip to leave.

We have several books in the Q's to help our students brush up on their math skills as they prepare for various standardized tests.

GALILEO has a search link for math. You may search Academic Search Complete - National Science Digital Library -
Research Library (at ProQuest) - and Science and Technology Collection - plus adding other databases.

Math is for everyday use!

-kls

Britannica to Look Like Wikipedia

Greetings,

A librarian at Chattahoochee Technical College set us the following link about Britannica attempting to model itself after Wikipedia by allowing users some ability to edit and add content.

Note: To access Britannica off-campus, you may need to get the current Galileo password from your local Georgia public and/or college librarian.

Britannica to Allow User Edits Like Wikipedia

Britannica is making a mistake with this one.

Britannica is attempting, whether they admit it or not, to become another Wikipedia. They should rather focus on what makes them unique from Wikipedia, which is existing as an authoritative, academic , online encyclopedia. Rather than try to copy Wikipedia, Britannica needs to strengthen what I feel are its weaknesses as compared to Wikipedia. These would include what I feel are poorer interfaces, layouts, and graphics when compared to Wikipedia.

Also, I don’t see how their new user-added feature will entice patrons away from Wikipedia. First, Britannica has it articles written by experts in a field. I find it hard to digest that Britannica will have a Classics expert on call 24/7 to vet a user submitted entry on the Alexander the Great article. Also, one appeal of the user edit feature in Wikipedia is that you can see your edits instantly, not twenty minutes later.

Wikipedia, because of its nature, is much more exhaustive than Britannica. You can find articles in Wikipedia on the novel adaptations of the different Star Trek television series. You won’t find that on Britannica. And you shouldn’t find that on Britannica , if Britannica continues to promote itself as an academic source.

Despite its level of acceptance by many of our younger patrons, Wikipedia is best viewed as a pop culture/quick reference resource, that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Britannica should recognize this and not try to copy them, but rather should play to its own strengths and increase its viability as an academic and referenced alternative.

I liken this situation to the current state of affairs at General Motors. One of their few bright spots the last decade has been Cadillac. They made the decision to make the line unique from Buick and other GM lines, and play to Cadillac’s strengths as a high end luxury line with lots of features. One area GM failed was its half-hearted attempts to copy Japanese/Korean successes in smaller cars without giving the same level of quality and fuel efficiency that the imports offered.

This is akin to Pepsi changing it can color to red and white because Coke is selling more product.


JWF

From way up high

A bit of news posted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on 14 Jan 2009. Google Earth and the Museo Nacional del Prado in Spain have joined to put art into Google Earth.

Open up Google Earth (you may need to install it on your computer but it didn't take me long to do that). When you search for Museo del Prado, click on the museum, 14 pictures appear, click on a picture and read about the painting. Fascinating!

I noticed in my glance at a Google Earth page, a mention of Shakespeare. When I went back after loading Google Earth, I couldn't find the entry. I was able to find the Google Earth Blog reference for Shakespeare. Many places mentioned by Shakespeare are noted on Google Earth. Click on a picture of Shakespeare and zoom in to see what the location looks like today.

Fascinating! It does remind me of my foray into Second Life - flying over the land- setting down to visit.

I've added the Google Earth Blog story to delicious and tagged it for ENG 193 and Humanities 191.


-kls

Feeding the info tiger

Really Simple Syndication is one way to get the news and commentary delivered to your desktop.

This morning I read on Titus One Nine the news about the WhiteHouse.gov site. The Obama team had their first blog posting at 12:01. Fast, very fast. I've created a feed to my Bloglines because I find it easier to check Bloglines than to go from site to site checking for a new post.

Various vendors in GALILEO offer RSS feeds for searches and publications. I like getting the latest publication delivered to my desktop (quicker than theUS Mail, cheaper than a print subscription. RSS really is simple.

Yes, the password to access GALILEO is available from your Georgia librarian.

-kls

Card-Pitt

Greetings,

This past Sunday, the last four remaining NFL teams competed for a chance to represent their respective conference in Super Bowl XLIII. The Pittsburgh Steelers eliminated the Baltimore Ravens to win the American Conference and the Lamar Hunt trophy, while the Arizona Cardinals defeated the Philadelphia Eagles to win the National Conferenc. Thus, the Cardinals and the Steelers will face off in neutral Tampa to see which team will hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy as the champions of the National Football League fo the 2008 season.

The Super Bowl matchup is quite interesting, for a number of reasons. The Arizona Cardinals are, according to their own website, the oldest pro football team in the country that has been in continous operation since their founding. The Cardinals were founded in 1898, predating the NFL itself, serving as one of the charter members of the league. Since the NFL began, the Cardinals have played in Chicago, serving as the city's south-side team, in St. Louis, and mostly recently in the Phoenix area. However, in their long history, the Cardinals have won exactly one NFL championship (the name of the league title prior to the Super Bowl), and were the last NFC team to make the conference championship game since 'modern' NFL history began in 1970 with the AFL/NFL merger. Now that the Cardinals have made both the conference championship and the Super Bowl, they leave only the New Orleans Saints, the Detroit Lions, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Cleveland Browns, and the Houston Texans as the teams that have never made it to the Super Bowl. Of those, only the Texans have never made their respective conference game.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are considered one of the NFL's premier franchises. According to the Steelers' official website, they are the fifth oldest NFL franchise, forming in 1933. The Steelers were one of the lowliest franchises in the league until the hiring of Coach Chuck Noll in 1969, who led the team to four Super Bowl titles in the 1970's. The Steelers have been to the Super Bowl six times prior to this appearance, winning five times.

The Steelers have been owned by the Rooney family since their inception. The Cardinals have been owned by the Bidwill family for most of their existence. During the World War II affected 1944 season, both teams combined to form the Card-Pitt team, which lost every game it played that year.

If you are interested in news and information about these two teams, try Galileo . Go to the 'search' page. Try using the 'Pittsburgh Steelers' and 'Arizona Cardinals' as your search terms. You might want to limit your search to full-text. You will get results from publications including Sports Illustrated. (Note: you may need to get the current Galileo password from your local Georgia librarian.)

JWF

What did that mean?

The English language evolves with use. What a word means today is not what it meant 96 to 181 years ago. On LM_NET Sybil Finemel of Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828)supported by The ARTFL Project. Fun to type in a word and see what it used to mean!

GALILEO offers access to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (in Encyclopædia Britannica Online). It too is easy to search and includes the older meanings.

The grandaddy of dictionaries is the Oxford English Dictionary (also available through GALILEO)

The Oxford English Dictionary is the "accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium." The OED gives definitions, etymological analysis, and quotations to demonstrate the use of words in the English language over time.

The fun part of the OED is the timeline of use with dated quotes.

So many ways to find out what a word means yesterday and today!

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

-kls

We have a new name

North Metro Tech, Appalachian Tech and Chattahoochee Tech have been in the process of combining to create a new school since September. It has taken awhile to work out the new name. Dr. Sanford Chandler, president of Chattahoochee Tech, sent an e-mail announcing the new school would be known as Chattahoochee Technical College.

Read all about it in the various papers - Cartersville Daily Tribune and the Marietta Daily Journal.

-kls

Flickr Commons

Greetings,

Many of you may be familiar with the online photo sharing resource called Flickr . Flickr allows you to post and share photos online, while tagging them so that they can be searched more easily.

Flickr has created a new service that allows you to tag and describe older photos, many of which are from archived collections such as the Library of Congress. The stated mission of the project is to allow users (the public) to contribute information about these photos, and hopefully make them easier to find, and to increase the awareness of the existence of these collections.

Pay a visit to the Commons and explore what you find.

JWF

New 7 Wonders

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story on January 7th, 2009 about online voting for the 'new' 7 wonders of the natural world . This voting is being organized by a group that conducted voting last year for the 'new' 7 manmade wonders of the world. This time, voting is being limited to wonders that are natural.

The current phase of the voting is involves scaling down the nominees from over 200 to 77 for the next phase of the voting. The process seems to be well thought out, as each nominee must have an official sponsorship committee to be eligible to move into the next round.

A list of the winners of the 7 manmade wonders is available here . Note that the closest the USA came to getting an entry was the Statue of Liberty, which made the semifinal round.

Glancing at the nominees for the natural 7 wonders, I was interested to see how many I had not heard of, and that some things I had expected to be on the list were not, such as Arches National Park in Utah . (Although another arches park in Libya is present.) US located nominees include Lake Superior , the Grand Canyon , Niagara Falls , and Buck Island Reef in the Virgin Islands . Note that Lake Superior and Niagara Falls are shared with Canada.

It does appear that you have to provide your email in order to vote.

JWF

Making a comeback

Thanks to Sarah Hey at Stand Firm for highlighting this opinion declaration by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. Ms. Noonan happily shares her conviction that reading books will come back in style! She refers to several titles she's read this year. I was touched by the last sentence in her declaration:

that all can change, that a life—and a world—can be made better all of a sudden, out of the blue, unexpectedly. But you have to be listening. You have to be able to hear.

Ms. Noonan was referring to "Mother Teresa's Secret Fire" by Joseph Langford. This is a title I was not familiar with.

I went to GALILEO and selected Book Index with Reviews . Here I read the reviews, clicked on the link to World Cat and the link to EBSCO (which has access to digitized articles from thousands of magazines). WorldCat let me know the closest library that holds this title. The EBSCO link brought me an interesting article about this title.

Book Index with Reviews in GALILEO is the place to go for information about a book someone mentions - to use this source at home get the current password for GALILEO from your Georgia librarian.


-kls

Not so much the green maverick on Main Street

Associated Press writer, Jeff Karoub, penned an article referring to the annual list of words compiled by the faculty at Lake Superior State University. What fun to read the list and think about the popularity (or over popularity) of words in common use.

The Oxford English Dictionary ,which is available to Georgia residents through GALILEO, has examples of the changes in meaning that words go through over time.

Here's what the OED offers on maverick

2. An unorthodox or independent-minded person; a person who refuses to conform to the views of a particular group or party; an individualist. Also in extended use.

1880 Galveston (Texas) Daily News 19 Aug. 4/5 We..will crush radicals, greenbackers and all other foes of democracy, especially those independent gentlemen, those political mavericks. 1892 R. KIPLING Life's Handicap 195 A very muzzy Maverick smote his sergeant on the nose. 1948 Chicago Daily News 11 June 16/7 One Republican Senator, and not by any means a conspicuous maverick, pointed out that the Senate might have acted. 1957 Oxf. Mag. 17 Oct. 22/2 The story is not just of local boy making good, but also, and more significantly, of maverick making friends. 1989 Money & Family Wealth Mar. 25/2 Although the Abbey National is one of the oldest building societies, in recent years it has cultivated an image as a maverick and a mould-breaker. 1994 Hypno 3 69/2 James is a maverick of disturbingly beautiful techno.

Yes, maverick has several meanings and a history to our understanding of what a maverick is!
What I noticed is the RSS feed that the OED offers to those who might like to add a word to their vocabulary. So here's to New Years resolutions- subscribe to the OED RSS feed and use that word twice before the next word appears in your feed reader. Amaze your acquaintances with the expansion of your vocabulary.

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

-kls

0-16

Part of being a librarian is having a familiarity with statistics. Knowledge of where and how to find statistics is part of the job description. Statistics are also a part of our everday lives, from the price of gas to stock prices.

One statistic that you have probably heard a lot about in the last week has been 0-16. This figure has been widely reported in all avenues of the news media, including on venues that are not sports related. 0-16 refers to the the record of the Detroit Lions football team of the National Football League. Losing Sunday, the Lions became the first team in league history to lose all 16 regular season games.

Several teams have had perfect losing seasons in the history of the league. Perhaps the best known is the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs went 0-14 that year. However, the Bucs had a bit of an excuse. That year the Bucs were an expansion team, not expected to compete. (Note that the NFL expanded its regular season to 16 games in the late 1970's.) The last pure 'defeated' season before the Bucs was during World War II.

Several teams have gone winless but have managed to get a tie over the course of a season. The Dallas Cowboys, in their first year, went 0-11-1. More common is the dreaded 1-15 season, a mark achieved by several franchises, including the Patriots, Colts, Dolphins, and Jets, all of whom currently or once played in the AFC East Division. The Miami Dolphins spoiled some fans idea of the ultimate season when they won their singular victory late last year, ending the notion of having one team go undefeated in the regular season, the Patriots, with another going undefeated. The Panthers once went 1-15, winning their first game and losing the rest. The 1989 Cowboys were perhaps the most famous of the 1-15 teams, winning the Super Bowl just three years later.

One great website for football statistics is Pro-Football-Reference.com. This website contains a plethora of information on coaching records, draft picks, and player stats. And most statistics are better than the dreaded 0-16.

JWF

Boxing Day

The last week of the year . . . A time for winding down, putting away all the Christmas decor, and figuring out where you put the free 2009 calendar that you got in the mail.

Speaking of calendars, you may have noticed on yours a little known and understood holiday on December 26th known as Boxing Day. But what in the world is Boxing Day?

Boxing Day is a holiday associated with the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries of the British Commonwealth. Boxing Day is celebrated on the 26th of December, unless that day falls on a weekend, in which case Boxing Day is often moved back to the next Monday.

There are several possible explanations for the origins of Boxing Day. The entry on Encyclopedia Britannica (available through Galileo , get the password from your Georgia Librarian) notes that Boxing Day may have started out of two possible traditions. The first was the giving of alms or donations to the poor, often collected in small boxes, at Christmas. The second was the later tradition of servants having the day after Christmas off. Servants were often given the day off and were given boxes of goodies (similar to care packages).

There are other origins of the holiday. The urban legends website Snopes.com notes that in all the origin explanations, the main theme is that of the poor being given something by the wealthy.

Boxing Day in Canada has evolved into something similar to the huge post-Christmas shopping day in the United States. Sales and returns at big box stores are often the theme of the day. Britannica also notes that, for whatever reason, English colonists in America did not carry the holiday over from England, perhaps explaining why Boxing Day is not an official holiday in the United States.

Now you can stare at December 26th on your calendar in 2009 and not be confused.

JWF