From Huck Finn to Harry Potter: Banned Book Week

Each year at the end of September, Banned Book Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to read and emphasizes the importance of free and open-access to information. The books that make the list have been subjected to possible banning within the United States. However, due to librarians, teachers, and book sellers, in most cases these titles have not been banned.

In this day and age even if a book is removed from the shelves in a school library, there is a high chance you would be able to find this material in a bookstore or public library. Perhaps over the years there has been a hype made around Banned Book Week, which overshadows how challenging books decades ago, may have impacted availability of the title. For example, the Online Books Page notes that Ulysses by James Joyce was banned from the United States as obscene for fifteen years until 1933. The book was seized by U.S Postal Authorities during that time. However, perhaps this hype around BBW helps prevent banning and censorship by allowing people to acknowledge that books are still challenged today.

The top ten challenged books in the United States for 2010 were:

1) And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
2) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
3) Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
4) Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
5) The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins;
6) Lush, by Natasha Friend
7) What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
8) Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
9) Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
10) Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

For more information about Banned Book Week and why these and other titles continue to be challenged, please visit the ALA website.
For other general information on banned books visit The Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania.


-BCO

Archive vs Complete

ABI/INFORM Archive (at ProQuest)

contains a complete run of key business and management journals, providing a unique historical perspective on hundreds of topics, including corporate strategies, management techniques, marketing, product development and industry conditions worldwide, available in cover-to-cover full images, complete with illustrations and advertisements.

I clicked on ABI/INFORM Archive (at ProQuest) by mistake. I was really trying to get to ABI/INFORM Complete (at ProQuest). As long as I had both open, I thought I'd see what the difference is between them. Very intriguing. The Archive has limited runs of publications i.e. 1986-1990 for American Business Law Journal , while Complete has three sections of American Business Law Journal, 1971- present, 1963-1985, 1986-1990.

What's up with that, as the colloquial saying goes. I did a compare and contrast on the Winter 1986, vol. 23(4) issue. The Archive has 20 pdf files which include the cover, the individual advertisements, the table of contents and the articles. Complete just lists the 7 articles.

If you want to 'see' the publication, going to the Archive would be the best bet. Using the Archive might be helpful for advertising, marketing, and visual communication students.

You may access these databases in GALILEO.
..Select Databases A-Z
....Select A
......ABI/Inform Archive is first, ABI/Inform Complete is second

You may get the current GALILEO password from your Georgia librarian.


-kss

What do I say?

Writing a formal business letter makes me nervous. How picky will the recipient be if I put a comma in the wrong place? Will they notice my run on sentence? Should I put their address above the salutation? What do I say in the salutation? How about the closing? Is it Yours, Sincerely, Always, or just my name? That just the technical part, what about the content, the meaning, the tone of my words?

Preparing for an ENGL 1010 class where the assignment is to write a persuasive Business Letter, I ran across "The AMA handbook of business documents [electronic resource] : guidelines and sample documents that make business writing easy" by K.(Kevin)Wilson, K. [HF5726 ONLINE RESOURCE 2011]. It's an electronic book in our EBSCO (formerly NetLibrary) collection.

The AMA Handbook of Business Documents takes the guesswork out of preparing firstclass written pieces of every type. Packed with dozens of sample documents and practical tips, this handy guide is everything you need to create:
Proposals • Memos • E-mails • Press releases • Collection letters • Speeches • Technical, research and lab reports • Sales letters • Policies and procedures • Warning letters • Announcements • And much more
Suited equally to executives, entrepreneurs, managers, and administrative staff—anyone charged with putting a business’s intentions into words—The AMA Handbook of Business Documents is a versatile, powerful, and indispensable toolbox. [more]

Don't be afraid, there is help! You do need a login and password to use this title off campus. That information is available from your campus librarian.


-kss

Try me

Thanks to Lauren Barnes, Woodstock campus librarian, for creating the QR code!

-kss

E-book survey

One of our electronic book vendors has requested that we ask students to participate in a survey of electronic book use. This vendor did a survey in 2008. They'd like to compare the results from then till now. A presentation is planned for a November conference.

If you're a student and would like to tell a vendor what you think about electronic books - here's the link to the e-reader 2011 survey. It will remain open till October 7.


-kss

How do I fix that dish?

Finding a recipe online is so simple. A search with Google pulls up innumerable recipe sites. A plethora of resources! One can even type 'recipe : ingredient' and find more information about using that single ingredient than you can imagine!

But what if, what if you were in a waiting area, perusing a magazine and you read the perfect recipe for a meal you were planning. Do you rip out the page? I hope not. Do you ask the office staff if they would copy the page for you or let you borrow the magazine? This is a viable option (and gracious towards others who use the waiting area). Yet, there's another option!

ProQuest has a search limiter for recipes.
Go to GALILEO
Get the current password from your Georgia librarian.
...Select databases A-Z
....Select P
......Select ProQuest
.........Select Advanced Search (link just above the right side of the search box)
....Change the drop down to Publication
....Type in the magazine title. If you aren't sure if ProQuest has the title you're looking for- go to the Publications link and search for the title. Click on the title and you can search within it! I found Southern Living, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and Gourmet. There are thousands of other magazines.
....For the next search box, leave it Full text
....Type in the recipe title or ingredients
.....Scroll down to Document type- select recipe
...Search

All the recipes in that magazine with the specific ingredient or title are retrieved.
You can limit your search by year or issue, as well.

Happy hunting and cooking and enjoying.

-kss

Black Forest Cuicine

What do you immediately think of when you hear Black Forest cuisine? I thought of the cake.

Black forest cuisine : the classic blending of European flavors [TX721.S73 2006X ]by Walter Staib is available at the Mountain View campus.

From Publishers Weekly - For the uninitiated, this collection of recipes makes an apt introduction to the cuisine of southwest Germany. Inflected with French, Swiss and Italian traditions, Black Forest cookery goes beyond the sauerkrauts, wursts and späetzles we associate with German food—though there's plenty of that here, too. In his introduction, the chef/owner of Philadelphia's historic City Tavern reveals that there are many similarities between the postwar eating habits of his native Black Forest and the 18th-century American dishes he now serves on a nightly basis ....[more]

Now I know what to borrow for the weekend so I can create my own Oktoberfest at home!

-kss

An app for that

Temperature changes create an opportunity for a seasonal illness. When the symptoms appear and someone suggests you try a certain over the counter drug, can you research that drug while out and about?

Now you can - Micromedex 2.0 has mobile access to the complete database for iPhone/iPad, Blackberry, and Android Devices! Check with your campus librarian for the app directions. Don't let a little sniffle get you down.

-kss

Ooom pa pa

It is the first Monday of Autumn. This past weekend, the mountain town of Helen, Georgia held their Oktoberfest. I missed the event. Could I create the dishes of Oktoberfest at home?

Chattahoochee Tech has a Culinary program based at the Mountain View campus. The Library Guide for Culinary Arts is in the Program and Special Topics area.

The wonderful thing about the Library Guides is their versatility. Each tab for our guides designates one type of resource, Books, Articles, and the Internet. Jeff Fisher, the author of the Culinary Arts Library Guide has created drop down pages for various countries. This creates an 'at a glance' venue which includes books available through CTC and specific databases with information on the country.

Yes, there's a page for Germany noting various cookbooks of German food. I think I can do this!


-kss

Rethinking

The images photographers produce make picture taking seem so effortless.

There is a new title on the Mountain View campus shelf, Rethinking digital photography : making & using traditional & contemporary photo tools by John Neel, that might help the struggling picture taker.

The catalog record abstract offers clues to the content : Demonstrates how to create innovative photographs through the use of digital cameras, current software, and such unconventional methods as homemade lenses made with household items or parts from obsolete cameras.

The weekend is coming up, the fall colors beckon, maybe I'll take pictures that illustrate exactly what I mean when I mention autumn.


-kss

What does it look like?

Still thinking about finding visuals. There is a database in GALILEO just for Images [EBSCO].

The images consist of a wide array of photos and maps, with an emphasis on world news and events. Other areas of coverage include contemporary and historical photos of people, places, and the natural kingdom.

The nice thing about using the EBSCO product is they'll create a citation for you. I don't see the cite link on the page but when I click on the email icon, there is the citation format. I tested it by e-mailing myself. A citation and a permalink arrive with this helpful disclaimer

NOTE: Review the instructions at and make any necessary corrections before using. Pay special attention to personal names, capitalization, and dates. Always consult your library resources for the exact formatting and punctuation guidelines.

This resource makes it easier to find and cite pictures to illustrate a presentation.

-kss

For access to Images [EBSCO] in GALILEO get the current password from your Georgia librarian.

Finding and citing images

Yesterdays thoughts about autumn, fall, color, led to searching for appropriate images. This search led me to our Library Guides where we have a specific guide to help students find just the right visual for their project.

Those who use visuals in their work must give credit where credit is due. How do you cite a picture you've plucked off the Internet? Our guide has a page of examples of MLA and APA citations for pictures from a book or from the web. There are web sites with 'free' pictures that use Creative Commons licensing.

Honor the work of those who labor by giving them credit in an appropriate citation!


-kss

A picture is worth what?

Autumn colors are permeating my thoughts. The wisps of red and yellow are beginning to show up on the trees. Georgia doesn't get the grand swaths of bright color like New England. To give me a boost, I went looking for a book of autumnal photos. I thought a Timber Press book, My Garden in Autumn and Winter [ISBN:9780881924596,
in Ebsco books would give me that visual punch. But there were no pictures.

I began to think oops- no pictures in Ebsco books, that's not good. I did another search specifically for Timber Press and the first book I opened [Bulbs] had pictures. I'm not sure why one title does and one does not. Could there really be no pictures in the Timber Press book, My Garden in Autumn and Winter by E. A. Bowles [ISBN:9780881924596]?

If you have the print edition of this title, would you share if there are pictures?


-kss

Know it all

Researchers, serious people who are hunting for a specific piece of information, attend workshops and seminars on individual resources. They learn how to make one resource stand up and be counted.

How do you get the same sort of control over a search through Google? Trial and error, asking friends, posting queries on lists are ways to learn the ins and outs of Google searches.

Google has an Improve your Search Experience page. There you'll find hints and tips on getting exactly what you want from the world wide web.

Use the Tutorials, the Help Screens, the Ask Us links on every resource. Reinventing the wheel with each search seems counterproductive.


-kss

Beta

Beta tests can be lots of fun. You get to try it before anyone else. You have the thrill of discovery (and sometimes the agony of defeat).

I stumbled upon the ARRC (Auto Repair Reference Center) Beta for Ebsco. Oh my goodness, you will be delighted. I've talked about ARRC several times. It's kind of clunky but full of information. The ARRC Beta - well, apples and oranges couldn't be more alike.

I found it when I was kicked out of Ebsco books. I clicked on the Ebsco link, there is a list of Ebsco products, I scrolled down looking for Books and saw the ARRC Beta.

The difference is not in the information offered but in the 'look'.

With the 'old' ARRC, one made a selection for year, went to another page, selected the make, went to another page, selected the model,went to another page for the detailed vehicle. A final page contained links to the information.

The 'beta' ARRC has almost every search option on one page with drop down boxes for selection. The visual is much more appealing! There are links to the Auto IQ, the Care, and the Troubleshooting tips.

How do you get to the Beta ARRC?
Log into GALILEO you may get the current password from your Georgia librarian
....select Databases A-Z
.....select E
......Select EBSCO Databases
.......Scroll down to the bottom of the list for ARRC Beta

It's a great day to play!

-kss

Fall Leaves

Yesterday, a student asked if I thought Libraries were going to exist in the future. This query came up at the end of a Library Instruction class. An instruction session where I showed the very basics of searching in our catalog and one of the databases available. I laughed and said, yes, because Librarians know where the information is and how to find it.

Here's an example of why Librarians will be around in the future. As I drive to work, I am struck by the leaves that are beginning to change color, autumn is such an emotional transition between the heat of summer and the cold of winter. I want to find a poem that illustrates my feelings.

We'll use LION Literature Online which

is a full-text library of over 330,000 works of British and American poetry, drama and prose. In addition to literary texts, LION includes biographical sketches of major writers, selected author bibliographies, and critical and reference works.

A quick search for 'autumn' found 1546 poems. I looked on the main page for an advanced search or a search limiters page. It didn't jump out at me. I clicked on Text (under Search) and voila - there were the limiters. I want to find a poem about autumn, referring to fall colors, written in the latter half of the twentieth century. How do I limit my search?
I selected the Poetry tab
I clicked on "select from a list" for the First line/ Title Keywords
I noticed each word has a number next to it.
I selected 'autumn' (over 900). LION puts the word in quotes in the search box.
Back to the search page, I limited the publication date to 1950-2011
Searched.
Pulled up 537 titles.
We're getting closer to a reasonable number but still way to many.

Selected 'modify search' which kept the initial search terms. I added 'leaves' to the search box for keywords in the poem. 219 titles

Selected modify search and typed in 'color' for a keyword! That brought the number down to 20!

It is thought provoking to set a limiter on publishing between 1950 and 2011 but poems are pulled up by authors who died in the 1800's. Publishing date is the key here.

Back to modify search, scrolled down and noticed a limiter for additional poet details where I can put in the years the poet lived. I limited it to a poet living between 1920 and 2011 This time there were 19 titles.

I quickly found a poem that touched me - Autumn [from Carnival Evening (1998) , Norton ] by Linda Pastan.

Took about ten minutes to think through the search process, narrowing, refining, limiting, until I was able to put my hands on a manageable number of poems!

Yes, librarians will be around.

-kss

Your CTC campus librarian will give you the current password to GALILEO. CTC Library subscribes to LION just for our students.

Michael Hart RIP

Do you use e-books? Are you familiar with the Gutenberg Project? Today, I read in the Chronicle that Michael S. Hart founder of the Gutenberg Project had passed on earlier in September.

Project Gutenberg was inarguably the birthplace of the e-book. Today we don't think twice about downloading a book to our Kindle, tablet, Web browser, or cellphone. But in 1971, when Mr. Hart officially began Project Gutenberg, or even in the early 1990s, when it began to reach critical mass, e-books were not just unusual—they were unheard-of....[more]

We have downloaded the MARC records for 415 Gutenberg Project titles. You can of course access all 36,000 by going directly to Project Gutenberg.

Thank you, Mr. Hart, for creating this invaluable resource for information sharing.


-kss

VW history

Driving to work I noticed a billboard advertising the new VW Beetle. It does have a sleek look yet it is reminiscent of the original beetle.

Check out "VW Beetle specification guide 1968-1980" by Richard Copping [TL215 .V6 C66 2010 , Appalachian campus] if you'd like to wander down memory lane. The book goes well with the Automobile Repair Reference Center in GALILEO. I did a search in ARRC for 1968 Volkswagon, Beetle. You pick the year, the manufacturer, the model to finally get to the 'manual' with pictures, charts, and even a history of the vehicle. Comparing the book and database is an entertaining way to spend time learning about the VW Beetle!

-kss


Your Georgia librarian has the current password to access GALILEO off campus. Current students of CTC may borrow books from any campus. We will ship books from one campus to another via the courier. If you are not a current CTC student, your public library may borrow books from us for you!

The guides

What does a guide do for you? I laughingly refer to the Library Guides we subscribed to last year as sherpas. Our 67 Library Guides carry the research 'load' specifically for our classes and programs.

Our latest guide is for the Automotive Technology program.

Each Library guide follows a pattern - Intro, Books, Articles, Internet sources, News sources, How do I. The content varies by program or course.

A few Library Guides have multiple drop down pages with supplemental information (i.e. Horticulture, ENGL 2130 American Literature, and CUUL 1120 American Regional Cuisine).

Find a guide that can carry your research load to your ultimate goal, which is a superbly crafted, well researched, and correctly cited paper.

-kss

Zoom Zoom

Cooler weather inspires thoughts of travel, fast cars, new vistas.

[Yes, I like this advertisement]

Before I hit the road less traveled, I need to give my car the once over to ensure that I don't end up stuck on the side of the road. There is a helpful resource in GALILEO, ARRC Automobile Repair Reference Center.

Content includes nearly 857,000 drawings and step-by-step photographs, approximately 99,000 technical service bulletins & recalls issued by the original equipment vehicle manufacturer, over 158,600 enhanced wiring diagrams for easy viewing and printing.

The ability to print out step-by-step directions makes this a most useful tool as I try to make sure my car will go 'zoom zoom'!

-kss

Your Georgia librarian can give you the current password to GALILEO.