New Year's Wishes...

In light of the recent tsunami tragedy, New Year's celebrations will be more subdued this year as people around the world express their sympathy and concern. Please see the previous posting if you wish to contribute to relief efforts...

From the World Book encyclopedia, an overview of New Year's celebrations around the world... This site provides background on the tradition of New Year's resolutions.... and this site offers government assistance with keeping them. (Courtesy of the Librarian's Index to the Internet and Wonkette, respectively)

Tsunami Information and Relief Sites

Satellite Images of Tsunami Devastation from Resource Shelf
Asia Quake Disaster from the BBC
Magnitude 9.0 and Tsunamis and Earthquakes from the U.S. Geological Survey
Earthquakes 1995 to 2004 by David Shedden
Waves of Destruction: Tsunamis from Savage Earth, PBS
Health Action in Crisis from World Health Organization

The BBC offers this advice for those wishing to contribute to relief efforts.

Here's a list with ratings from the American Institute of Philanthropy, to assist those giving to tsunami relief and other causes (from Mesoj, education blogger).

More Library Art...

Faithful readers (and I hope there are some) will recall the furniture built from withdrawn books. Check out the poetry/art exhibit created from discarded library catalog cards...

Holiday Hyperlinks...

Holiday traditions around the world
A history of the National Christmas tree
The Poinsettia pages
Consumer Reports Holiday Buying Guide
The 12 Days of Christmas (adjusted for inflation by PNC Bank)
Holiday Fast Facts (from the Census Bureau)
The History of Silent Night and the Twelve Days of Christmas
Create your own Carol
The Official Kwanzaa Web Site
Urban Legends About Christmas
New Year's Facts and Figures

Gifts from the Librarian's Index to the Internet!
Happy Holidays!

As Time Goes By...

TIME magazine has now made its 81 years of archives available, over 266,000 articles. The archives have their own domain at http://www.timearchive.com . See more details from Research Buzz...

Attention Muggles...

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to drop in July...

Peace on Earth, Goodwill...

Small private libraries in Iraq.
Fadl Abid Oda, 30 years old, has taken it upon himself to do something that western companies in Iraq have failed to do. In a tiny room off a busy street in the Orfali district of Baghdad, Fadl stands in his small library. From Jessamyn (famous library blogger)

Harvard to provide assistance to libraries in Iraq
News releases indicate that Harvard and Simmons College will collaborate to provide professional development opportunities for Iraqi librarians, collection development expertise, and cataloging and preservation assistance for rare materials. Books ransacked from libraries are now being sold by street vendors. From the Crimson

More Iraqi library news
Saad Eskander, library director, discusses the challenges (death threats to the staff, an approximate loss of 90% of the general collection, and 60% of the archive lost) and the opportunities..."we have removed all the barriers that prevented leftwing books, Shia books, Kurdish books - all are available now." from the Guardian

Last Minute Shopping...

About.com offers these recommendations for children's Christmas books...

Who's stirring at the library?

The library is open Monday-Thursday next week, from 8:00 am-4:30 pm. The library will be closed between Christmas and New Year's, reopening on January 3. Hours from January 3-7 are 8:00 am-4:30 pm. Normal operations resume, as do classes, on January 10.
Happy holidays!!

What Films Will You Be Watching?

The Golden Globe nominees were announced this week (see http://www.hfpa.org/nominations2005.html for a full list). Looking them over, it seems as though moviegoers will have a blockbuster holiday season. The young at heart may be enchanted by "Finding Neverland," history buffs will appreciate Martin Scorsese's biopic, "The Aviator," Clint Eastwood fans will once again be vindicated by the former spaghetti western star's "Million Dollar Baby," and music aficionados can be dazzled by Jamie Foxx as "Ray." I know I'm trying to prioritize what films I'll watch during my annual holiday film fest (and yes, "Ocean's Twelve" has to fit in there somewhere!). While the library obviously doesn't yet have any of these new films in its collection, you could check out some earlier award winners like "The English Patient," "Laurence of Arabia," the "Deer Hunter," "Marty," and "As Good as it Gets" in the second floor Instructional Materials Center.

Famous Authors, Bad Sex, and College Life...

Tom Wolfe's latest work, I Am Charlotte Simmons, portrays contemporary college life as seen through the eyes of a naive country girl. Wolfe, as you may know, is famous for his "social observation" novels, like Bonfire of the Vanities and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. These links provide reviews of this latest campus-based novel, which is available in the library's reading room--
Newsweek
Publishers Weekly
New York Times
It's easy to find book reviews using databases like InfoTrac--simply look for the title and add the word "review" to your search, as in "charlotte simmons and review".

Now, about the sex....Wolfe and Charlotte were recently awarded the Bad Sex Award, a British "prize" given to the worst descriptions of intimate relations, recognizing "crude and tasteless" depictions in published literature.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia...

Google, Google, Google...yet another Google report:

Following on the heels of the Google Scholar announcement...
Google Partners with Oxford, Harvard & Others to Digitize Libraries
Google is working closely with five new content partners on a massive scanning project that will bring millions of volumes of printed books into the Google Print database.

Congrats to CINAHL...

CINAHL, the Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, recently indexed its 1,000,000th record. Slippery Rock University patrons will find CINAHL under Journal Articles and Databases on the library's home page. The official database description states "CINAHL provides indexing for over 1,700 current nursing and allied health journals and other publications dating back to 1982. ...CINAHL covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines". For other health-related databases, check out Databases by Subject/Nursing.

So, when's the party?

More Lists!

The New York Times names the ten best books of the year--The list includes "five novels, a short-story collection, a memoir, two biographies and a historical study -- [that] present a broad range of voices and subjects. What do they have in common? Each is a triumph of storytelling, and each explores the past, whether through research, recollection, invention or some combination of the three."

Extra! Extra! Get Your News Right Here!

Are you suffering from too much information? Try a news aggregator! The following free sites allow you to create an account, select the sources you wish to monitor (all they need is an RSS feed, becoming more and more common every day), and you can customize your own newspaper. This author uses bloglines and finds it a tidy way to keep up in the world and in specialized fields of interest. You can subscribe to sources as diverse as the Chronicle of Higher Education and E Online! You can easily create your own clipping file, email interesting tidbits, or develop your own blog.

• Feedster
• Bloglines
• Waypath
• Pubsub
• Amphetadesk

Interested in talking more about blogs? Contact me here or post a comment below.

People Are Talking...

Technorati.com specializes in searching the World LIVE Web, scouting nearly 5 million blogs, to create lists like this one...the books people are talking about now. Another book-related list...books you can't have...The Top 10 Out of Print Books for 2004, a list from Bookfinder.com. Bookfinder and Alibris are two excellent tools for locating that elusive, rare tome.

Watch Out, Google....

It seems Google's successful IPO has given administrators at Johns Hopkins University some ideas. In the most recent edition of the Johns Hopkins newsletter, the GAZETTE, JHU President William Brody ...began thinking that surely some students or faculty at Hopkins could come up with an idea that could "command an equally high premium in the commercial world." Then, he noted, the light went on. "Full of Google-envy, I suddenly realized that we already have the ultimate information search engine right here at Johns Hopkins," Brody wrote. "And it can be used to locate important references from credible sources, without getting a lot of extraneous garbage...Therefore, any day now, two prominent New York investment banks will announce the initial public offering for JHUSL.com, the newest and most powerful search engine."

JHUSL, of course, stands for Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries. And while Brody was only being mischievous in suggesting that JHU would take its libraries public, his sentiment was serious. In an age when some university presidents have questioned the future of university libraries, Brody offered a strong vote of confidence for librarians. "Our library has the most
effective search engines yet invented--librarians who are highly skilled at ferreting out the uniquely useful references that you need." he wrote, adding that "massive information overload is placing librarians in an ever more important role..." To read Brody's piece, visit:
http://www.jhu.edu/gazette/2004/06dec04/06brody.html

From Library Journal Newswire (via our Director Phil Tramdack)

Talk back to us...

It's okay to talk back to us...on the blog, anyway. One of the most interesting aspects of a blog like this one is the interactivity. Simply click on the comment link at the end of a post and speak your mind! You can post anonymously if you are feeling a little shy.

The Library Invites You...

To attend an Open House in honor of Connie Dickey who is retiring after 35 years of service at Bailey Library. The reception will be held on Thursday, December 9, from 1:00-4:00 in the Special Collections room of the Library.

Things to do during a blackout...

Find a flashlight and read.

Move over, Ken Jennings...

Carnegie Mellon University librarian Jacqueline Cipa tests her skill on Jeopardy beginning today. (Ken Jennings finally lost last week, after 74 wins and a total of $2.5 million in cash and prizes--read the Wikipedia article.)

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

New York Times Review of Books names 100 Notable...

Looking for the perfect holiday gift? Books are always the right size. The New York Times Review of Books names 100 notable titles published within the last year. Reviews are linked to book titles.

Genealogy and Civil War Researchers...

Look for Civil War military records online at the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, an interesting site from the National Park Service that includes records for 6.3 Civil War service personnel, regimental histories, battle histories, some prisoner of war records, and will eventually include cemetery and burial information.

For Your Weekend Entertainment...

Don't miss this exciting made-for-TV movie with ER's Noah Wyle on TNT this Sunday--The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. For real!

And if you need any further evidence of our action-adventure-hero capabilities...

Hard to Curl Up on the Couch With One, But...

Have you read any good e-books lately? The library currently subscribes to over 30,000 electronic titles. Keyword searching makes an e-book a very valuable research tool. These books appear in the library's online catalog--simply click on the Web Link in the catalog record to view and search titles. Ebrary books require the download of a special reader; Netlibrary books cannot be read off-campus without first establishing a personal account on campus.

Another important subscription collection for computer science and communication majors (and interested others, of course) is Safari Tech Books Online. Nursing and health majors will benefit from the online collection in STAT!Ref. Both of these collections are available from the library's Journal Articles and Databases page.

In addition, a large number of freely available digital collections are listed here... How about a little Digital Pittsburgh, over 400 books from the 19th and 20th century dealing with western Pennsylvania history and culture? Religious Resources contains several full-text editions of the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon... Or perhaps you would enjoy the Hive and Honeybee collection from Cornell, full-text e-books on beekeeping?

If your appetite for e-books is still unsated, Dr. Ramona Nelson sends us a link to a new Australian collection.

AIDS: Women and Children

Did you know that seventeen million women worldwide are currently infected with AIDS? Or that nearly 13 million children in sub-Saharan Africa have been orphaned by this merciless killer? December 1 was the 17th annual World AIDS Day--a day such international groups as the World Health Organization and Unicef devote to raising global awareness. What kind of action is being taken to address this tragedy? Numerous organizations, large and small, are attempting to tackle the problem. Examples include Avert.org, an international HIV and AIDS charity headquartered in the UK, with programs in Africa, Asia, and other places around the globe. The Worldwide Orphans Foundation, a more grassroots group that works out of New York, sends medical students to live in orphanages in Africa and runs a treatment center for children with AIDS in Ethiopia, among other programs.

To find more information online, take a look at Apathy Is Lethal, a site sponsored by the United Nations.