Greetings from Harrisburg...

Jane Smith and I are presenting on BLOGS today at the SSHELCO Share the Commonwealth conference. View our presentation here...

Resources Related to the Schiavo Case...

End of Life choices from the Family Caregiver Alliance
Schiavo case resources from the University of Miami Ethics Programs
Living Will and medical power of attorney forms from the Allegheny County Medical Society

UPDATE: Legal issues related to the Schiavo Case from FindLaw

Rip-off 101...

A report on the high cost of textbooks...

Federal Depository Librarians at SRU

Representatives from eight of the ten PASSHE federal depository libraries recently held their annual meeting at Bailey Library. Federal depositories are responsible, according to the Federal Depository Library Program guidelines, for providing access to government information in an impartial environment. Bailey Library has been a depository library since the 1960s and has thousands of print documents in its collection. In the last few years, the federal government has focused on publishing information online and depositories have responded to this shift. At Bailey Library we add records to our online catalog that allow patrons to directly access these virtual documents. This move to "intangible" documents was a major focus of the recent meeting at SRU as we discussed how best to preserve the print materials we currently have and provide easy access to these new, electronic collections.

Easter Information...

The date of Easter changes. Why?
The official marshmallow peep site...
Read more about virtual Easter Eggs from the Wikipedia...

And the Peep Research project, which compares the information literacy skills of marshmallow peeps to the behavior of your average college student...

Former Librarian Presents Research....

Susan Ferrandiz, recently retired reference librarian, will be presenting her original research on the labor activist Fannie Sellins as part of this year's Research Symposium. Her presentation will be at 3PM, room 130 in the Physical Therapy Building on Friday, April 1.

Fannie Sellins was a labor activist in western Pennsylvania in the early 20th century and was murdered in Pittsburgh. Somehow she was left out of most history books or given little more mention than a footnote. Susan has done a great deal of research with primary documents and has even interviewed descendants of Sellins. Sellins is remembered at a yearly ceremony when a few people gather at her gravesite. This year Susan spoke at the event. Read more about Fannie Sellins here...

A Little Weirdness for the Weekend...

Here's something you don't see everyday... A story about a story where individual words are tatooed onto individuals. The full text will be known only to participants and must be in a standard book font.

And as a companion to that article, this site is the companion to an exhibit at the Australian Museum on body art and modification....

And just because you have been good, here are instructions on how to make a dandy wallet out of duct tape!

Library Hours for Spring Weekend

The library closes today, Wednesday at 5:00 pm.
Hours for Thursday and Friday are 8:00 to 4:30 pm.
We are closed Saturday and Sunday until 6:00 pm.
Sunday hours are 6:00-11:00 pm.

Enjoy!

Read and Grow...

April is National Garden Month* and if you are thinking spring, come take a look at the latest gardening books in Bailey Library’s Reading Room. These as well as other new books can be found in the Reading Room, on the shelves “under the clock.” A new selection of audio books has been added too.

Some of the newest titles:
· The Natural Gardener – Bourne
· The Writer in The Garden (audiocassette)
· Home Almanac: Maintaining your House Month by Month
· Orchid Fever – Hansen
· Design in the Garden – Barth
· The Illustrated Virago Book of Women Gardeners – Kellaway
· Forever Green: The History and Hope of the American Forest – Welch
· The Forest Lover – Vreeland (CD)
· Clean Like a Man: Housekeeping for Men – McNulty
· A Castle in the Backyard - Draine

The Reading Room collection of print and audio books was created to provide popular fiction and nonfiction materials for the Slippery Rock community, beyond the academic collection of Bailey Library.

*The theme of this year’s garden month is Give a Garden – Help Make America a Nation of Gardeners. For a list of 101 Ways to Celebrate and Give a Garden, go to the National Garden Association’s website (http://www.nationalgardenmonth.org/) or visit the American Horticulture Society (http://www.ahs.org/).


from Lynn Hoffmann

Would It Be Less Annoying When Your Cell Phone Rings in the Library if We Knew It Was a Book Calling?

The next big thing from Japan....

More from Computers in Libraries...

Learned about a lot of new resources, including this library video...

March Madness Resources...

Since the madness starts soon, check out these sites for keeping track and filling out online brackets. No wagering please... from Lifehacker.com

Greetings from Washington, DC....

Blogging this morning from the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, DC. The whole conference is being blogged! One of the interesting messages in Clifford Lynch's keynote address yesterday was the fact that web information is in the process of changing from "presentation", like a newspaper, to a "conversation", like a blog. (That's a hint: You are supposed to talk back!)

Some other food for thought, students... there is some sort of technology law that the piece of information you desperately need to find has evaporated into cyberspace, but the things that you wish would disappear never go away and indeed, tend to proliferate! The example Lynch gave was the drunken photo of you your friends may have posted to the web--which could continue to haunt you in the future when you are interviewing for jobs, becoming a parent, running for office...

It's a brand new world of digital information out there, with a whole new set of protocols to be worked out....

Why the Irish? What About the Italians? Or the Russians? Or the Swiss?

• The history of St. Patrick's Day from the History Channel
• Facts and Features from the U.S. Census Bureau: Irish Heritage Month and St. Patrick's Day

Is it the green beer?

And in reference to green and beer, have you noticed the "green roof" at the North Country Brewery? Read more about the concept here....

Some Friday Fun...

Interesting post from MetaFilter on fore-edge painting...books with hidden paintings. Check this film on fore-edge painting. Look for more fore-edge painting examples (each letter is linked).

And since we are on the subject of book art, here is a link to the new Harry Potter cover art from Kids Lit.

RedLightGreen... Have You Tried It?

RedLightGreen

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 20, 2004. "The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google" (subscription required), by Steven J. Bell:

Another interesting experiment is the "RedLightGreen" project, recently made public by RLG, a nonprofit group of more than 160 universities, national libraries, archives, historical societies, and other institutions. That interface presents users with a single search box, similar to Google's. But the initial-results screen includes a list of books and suggests other search terms from the database's subject vocabulary that, if selected, could lead to more-relevant material. RedLightGreen ranks books and other material according to relevance and to how many libraries own the material, thus combining the use of a subject vocabulary with a Google-like popularity measure.

Both RedLightGreen and ProQuest now allow users to put information about the material they find on the interfaces into any of several standard citation formats.

From the All Things Google Dept:

• Things You Didn't Know Google Does, from Sreetips.com
• Google Links: Link Directory of Important Google Information from Search Engine Roundtable
• Building Research Tools with Google for Dummies from Braintique.com
• Google Weather Debuts from The Google Blog

Online Technology Books...

Bailey Library was one of the first libraries in the state system to provide access to a selection of online books for computer users through Safari Tech Books Online. The library's subscription to this database has just been increased to include the entire collection of over 2,700 titles and all new titles as they become available.

If you need help with computer applications, consider searching the Safari collection. Here are just some examples of the fully searchable online books:

Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Excel 2000
10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Word
Linux and Unix Shell Programming
AppleScript: The Missing Manual

The records for the entire collection will soon be added to the library's online catalog, or you can access Safari through the library's webpage. The direct link is http://voyager.ship.edu/remote/validate.cgi?db=SAFARI

For questions or comments about Safari, please contact del.hamilton@sru.edu.

Read Across America

Read Across America (March 2) honors the birthday of childhood favorite Dr. Seuss...

Books on IPod...

Read more about books-on-Ipod...

It's your birthday, it's your birthday...

Today is John Irving's birthday and the library has 7 of his books for your enjoyment: The 158-lb. Marriage; Cider House Rules; Fourth Hand; Hotel New Hampshire; A Prayer for Owen Meany; My Movie Business; and The World According to Garp.

AND...today is Yahoo's 10th birthday and they want YOU to have the present. Go to Yahoo and print out your coupon for a free Baskins and Robbins ice cream cone. (Today only)

John Irving didn't get you anything.

Secrets of the Library Revealed, Part III

Did you know you can get a coffee, a tasty pastry, a salad, a smoothie, or a sandwich at the Library? Last fall, Bailey's opened and offers a cozy atmosphere for meeting with friends in the book-shaped booths or checking your email while sipping a latte. The cybercafe is located to your right as you enter the Library.

And here's an article titled "Good to the Last Drop" on the growing popularity of coffee shops in libraries...