Secrets of the Library Revealed, Part I...

Did you know that you can check out new digital cameras and digital camcorders and tripods and cassette recorders at the Instructional Materials Center on the second floor? This equipment goes out for 3 days at a time--and you can find out more here. The IMC also has videos, DVDs, CDs, games, educational kits, software, weird sock puppets, giant dentures, and a host of other interesting, entertaining, and educational resources for you.

Friday Fun...

The Sears archive... Check out the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art
10 Things Your (Fill in the blank) Won't Tell You... a witty collection of consumer advice that covers everything from yoga instructors to lawyers

The Punxsutawney phenomena....

Find out more about this uniquely-Pennsylvania event:
Groundhog's Day
All About the Woodchuck
Groundhog Day from the Stormfax Weather Almanac
Spirit of Punxsutawney, video available in the IMC, VC 2241
Groundhog Day lesson plans from Education World

Photo by Alan Freed/PunxsutawneyPhil.com

New Address for the Online Catalog...

The library catalog link is now http://pilot.passhe.edu:8021. Those of you using a bookmark or a direct link from your own pages will need to change the address.

From Del Hamilton

"Tired of Cruising Online Aimlessly Like a Bored Teenager?"

Try the The Incredible Internet Guy... Every week (or close to it) Ken Leebow, the Incredible Internet Guy, selects one topic and presents high-quality Web sites related to it. Includes archives of earlier topics, like dieting, digital photography, family vacations, etc. (From the Librarian's Index to the Internet)

E-books for the Visually Impaired...

can be found at Bookshare.org, which contains over 20,000 titles. For more information, read this entry from the Research Buzz blog.

New Database for Images....

Through ARTstor, a new library database, you now have access online to approximately 300,000 visual images and their corresponding data; the tools to make active use of those images; and an online environment intended to balance the interests of users with those of content providers. ARTstor documents artistic and historical traditions across many time-periods and cultures and focuses on, but is not limited to, the arts. As a campus wide resource, ARTstor is designed to be used by researchers in fields that do not traditionally use images, as well as by art historians. Low-resolution images can be exported. The images in ARTstor can be used in student papers, theses, and dissertations (provided the dissertations are not distributed widely).

The ARTstor link can be found on the Library's database page and the collection is continually growing. The latest addition is the Native American Art and Culture collection from the Smithsonian Institution. Check it out...

GO STEELERS!

Photo by Alyssa Papay

Bailey Library and Academic Support staff show their support for the Pittsburgh Steelers!

New Trial Database for History...

We have a trial (1/12 - 2/10/05) for the online databases American History and Life and Historical Abstracts. The link can be found on the Library's database trial page or by going to the Journal Articles/Databases page. Please contact Lynn Hoffmann with feedback.

An update on Sri Lankan libraries...

Photos and appeals for help here....

Bill Gates Helps to Close the Digital Divide...

Bill and Melissa Gates give $11 million to libraries....

Cleaning Out the Blog Closet...

Miscellaneous lists for your edification...

• The 10 Most Viewed New York Times articles in 2004;
  
• The Google Zeitgeist Report for 2004--the most popular searches worldwide (Britney and Paris rule cyberspace);
  
• The most common search terms from various search engines (from ResourceShelf);
• The top 10 magazines read by college women and men (from YPulse);
• and finally--The Encyclopedia of Fake Bands, a meticulous reference for bands that never really existed except in movies and on TV.
  

Children's Literature: Caldecott, Newbery Awards Announced

Cynthia Kadohata, author of Kira-Kira, and Kevin Henkes, illustrator and author of Kitten’s First Full Moon, are the 2005 winners of the John Newbery and Randolph Caldecott medals, the most prestigious awards in children’s literature.

Toni Morrison, author of Remember: The Journey to School Integration, and Kadir Nelson, illustrator of Ellington Was Not a Street, are the winners of the 2005 Coretta Scott King Awards honoring African American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults.

Other awards announced today include the Michael L. Printz Award, the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the Schneider Family Book Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, the Robert F. Sibert Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal, the Mildred L. Batchelder Award, and the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture Award. Read more about the winners here.... and more background on the awards here.

GO STEELERS!

Photo by Sarah McNulty

New Dietary Guidelines

All the news shows today are buzzing about yesterday's release of "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2005" from the Department of Health and Human Services. Check if out for yourself at http://www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines/.

Martin Luther King Jr.

A new pathfinder on Martin Luther King, Jr. has been developed. Find out more...

Pathfinders are web pages that list books, journal articles, audiovisuals, internet sites, and children's material on specific topics--a collection of information sources as a service to our patrons. Some past pathfinders have included Brown v Board of Education, Elections and Information Literacy, the Underground Railroad, and Bullies. Have a suggestion for one? Post a comment below...

Attention Grant Writers!

Are you looking for current demographic or economic data? Try the Pennsylvania State Data Center, the commonwealth's official source for such information. Their web site is a rich resource--the Data and Maps page, for example, arranges data by both geography and type. As a regional affiliate, Bailey Library also has a number of their publications available for your use in our collection. Sample titles include the Pennsylvania County Data Book for various counties, including Butler, which is housed in the reference room. 1999's Smoking Facts for Pennsylvania is in the Pennsylvania documents collection, and Pennsylvania County Industry Trends, 1995-1999 is also available in reference.

It's Not You, It's Us...

The library has experienced some difficulty with the data loads that maintain our patron records. If you experience difficulty with your barcode (logging in to the databases or catalog, renewing items, etc.), please contact the circulation desk for assistance -- 724-738-2637.

A Faster Acrobat...

Ever notice how long it takes Acrobat Reader to load? Make a sandwich, read the paper, file your nails, take a nap. Try this free download to speed up Acrobat Reader (it works by disabling many of the extraneous plugins).

10 x 10...

This site displays a new collage each hour of one hundred ranked images and words harvested from the news at Reuters, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and The New York Times Web sites. It "leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life." Includes an archive and links to sources. Click on This Is Now...

From the Librarians Index to the Internet

Read and Release...

BookCrossing.com was launched in April of 2001, extending the useful life of books by encouraging readers to leave them in public places, in the hope that whoever finds them will read them, enjoy them, and release them again. The unique feature of BookCrossing.com is the ability to track a book's journeys via onsite registration. Read the full story by Jim Regan in the Christian Science Monitor... A similar site for currency is Where's George?, which lets you track dollar bills.

Ready Reference Sites...

To a librarian, the term "ready reference" means those research tools that provide quick and accurate answers to specific questions--almanacs, dictionaries, statistical sources, etc. The American Library Association has a comprehensive and eclectic list of ready reference sites for 2004 here, archives for past years here.

A new service, answers.com, is now freely available from guru.net and provides "ready reference" answers instead of the standard search engine return of link lists.

A Plea for Sri Lankan Libraries...

Already devastated by civil war, the libraries of Sri Lanka are now faced with the task of rebuilding facilities and collections devastated by the tsunami disaster. To learn how you can help...
from Del Hamilton