Census on Campus

You’ve seen the 2010 Census ads on television, but what do they mean to you?  The 2010 Census is getting underway and college students are included.  Students who are not living at home during the school year should complete their own census form.  The Census counts people where they live, not by where their family lives.  Census on Campus, a pdf document, answers common questions students ask.  International students should also be prepared to fill out the 2010 Census.  To see the 2010 Census questions or learn more about the census visit the 2010 Census website.

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Go Straight to the Source – C-SPAN Online

Don’t rely solely on media coverage to find out what YOUR government is doing and saying. 23 years of C-SPAN coverage is now available online for free. There are restrictions on re-braodcast, but viewing is completely free for anyone who wants to see all the action from Capitol Hill.

The site features some nice browsing tools, like “Most Recent”, “Most Watched” and “Most Shared”.

Here’s some search advice from Information Today:

“C-SPAN has not provided any search help as of yet, so a few warnings are in order. The word search automatically looks for variations on your search terms; corn will find corners, Cornyn, and Cornhuskers. Use double quotes around a single word or phrase to limit results to exact matches. Another caution: In most cases, C-SPAN uses the full name of an entity and does not supplement the indexing with acronyms or alternative names. For example, many videos refer to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but none can be found by searching on AIPAC. (The Video Library team hopes to add supplemental names, or nicknames, for both people and organizations in the near future.) The program descriptions, with summaries and other metadata updated daily, are a great boon to searchers. With the lack of more sophisticated search power on corrected transcripts, however, browse becomes an ally.”

Make sure your participation in this great democracy is full – get to know the lawmakers of today, yesterday and tomorrow through their own words and actions.

TA

Is Winter Gone for Good?

I know that the calendar says that it’s spring, but since we had snow this last weekend I’m not so sure.

I’ve always hated winter.  I think this idea started when we had a terrible blizzard in the 1950’s.  My parents, sister, and I were living in the country, and we depended on a road grader to clear our country roads.  Although this generally took a few days, we stayed snowed in a lot longer than usual during this particular incident.  Since our farmhouse was located 1/4 to 1/2 mile from the country road and our 4 wheel drive jeep couldn’t make it to the snowplowed road, we had to place groceries and other supplies on a wooden sled and pull it to and from the main road.  As you can imagine, these were not “fun” trips.

Nighttime wasn’t fun either.  We used a kerosene lamp for light.  Since my parents had lived many years without electricity, they didn’t seem to mind it.  However, this was new to me, and I hated the dark.  Although I hadn’t heard of the term “depression” before, I’m sure that I was depressed during this time.  As far as I was concerned, light was a necessity.

The relentless cold was another factor.  If you’ve ever experienced living in a place with no central heat or air conditioning, I think you’re beginning to get the picture.  Keeping 4 of the 20 rooms in an old Kansas limestone house warm was impossible with only two small propane stoves.  We had to sleep in unheated bedrooms too so by the time I got up in the morning I was almost warm enough to sleep.

So as you can see, I really enjoy looking at pictures of lovely snow scenes, but I have too many memories from the past to enjoy winter.

Hurry up Spring!  J.A.S.

New York Times and Wall Street Journal Online

Want to do some Spring cleaning and get rid of some back issues of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal back through 2008, here’s your chance.  To access, go to the Library’s web page http://www.fhsu.edu/library, choose Find Articles from the Research tab, then scroll down until you see ProQuest Digital Microfilm.  Choose it and then select the year, month, date you want to view.  This is one way to catch up on some back reading and not have to keep the newspapers around.  Remember to “recycle the newspapers you toss”.–LH

FREE online resource celebrates Women’s History Month

Alexander Street Press is celebrating Women’s History Month by offering the online collection, Women and Social Movements in the U.S., 1600-2000, Scholar’s Edition, FREE for the entire month! Of particular interest are their Document Projects, which group texts around key areas of women’s history like:

From Wollstonecraft to Mill: What British and European Ideas and Social Movements Influenced the Emergence of Feminism in the Atlantic World, 1792-1869?

How Did Susanna Rowson and Other Reformers Promote Higher Education as an Antidote to Women’s Sexual Vulnerability, 1780-1820?

How Did Diverse Activists Shape the Dress Reform Movement, 1838-1881?

How Did Black and White Southern Women Campaign to End Lynching, 1890-1942?

And many many more fascinating topics. Each question links to a resource section which includes an abstract, an interpretation of documents, and the primary documents themselves.

TA

The Alluring Avocado?

“Every year Diagram Group publishing offers a prize, via the column of the estimable Horace Bent in The Bookseller magazine, to the person in the trade who comes up with the oddest book title published that year.

The shortlist for this year’s winners have been announced:

* David Crompton’s Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
* James A Yannes’ Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich
* Daina Taimina’s Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
* Ronald C Arkin’s Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
* Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky’s The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
* Tara Jansen-Meyer’s What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua?

The winner will be announced March 26th”~thebookseller.com

Forsyth Library does not currently own any of these titles; I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.  But here’s a few intriguing titles we do own:

The Alluring Avocado by J. Hickes (1966)

The Relation of Fungi to Human Affairs by William Dudley Gray (1959)

A Marvelous History of Mary of Nimmegen: who for more than seven year lived and had ado with the devil, by H.M. Ayres (1924)

Yesterday’s Tomorrows by W.H.G. Armytage (1968)

The Naked Employee by Frederick S. Lane III  (2003)

Knotted Doughnuts by Martin Gardner (1986)

If you’d like to peruse any of these peculiarities, or find a treasure of your own, come explore Forsyth Library.

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Research in your jammies

Did you know you can find full-text scholarly articles, electronic books and more, any time, without leaving your nice, warm house?  Forsyth Library’s online materials are just a few clicks away, and are available 24/7.  If you live off-campus, you’ll need to set up Off-Campus Access first.  Then, click Find Articles, Databases, and on the database you’d like to search.  These two are a good place to start:

InfoTrac Databases: a group of databases covering nearly every topic, which can be searched singly or in combination.  Check the ones you want to search, or just hit Continue to search them all.  Check the box for “full-text” to see only those items which have a link to the complete article.  Check peer-reviewed if you only need scholarly articles.

Wilson OmniFile:  This one is made up of several elements which focus on particular disciplines, including Education, Social Sciences, Business and more.  Check the box at the top for one of these, or check OmniFile to search them all.  Enter your term(s) and limit to full-text, peer-reviewed, and/or by date, if desired.

Need help?  Just call us at 785-628-5283 or e-mail us at refserv@fhsu.edu