The Meriam Library has been given trial access to Films on Demand. This is a web based digital video service, which streams educational films online. There are over 5,500 titles in the database covering a broad range of subject areas, including humanities, social science, business, economics, science, and more.
October is Archives Month and Meriam Library, Special Collections is celebrating with an exhibit “Celebrating Archives Month: Selections from Special Collections,” located on the second floor of the library, between the main staircase and the elevators. The exhibit features a replica of diseño of Rancho Arroyo Chico, 1846 with a hand drawn map by John Bidwell, Anti-Chinese League Minute Book, 1894-1895, brochures for Diamond Match homes, 1927, a hand written cookbook open to a recipe for marshmallow pudding, 1922-1937, historic photographs, scrapbooks, and much more. These one of a kind items depict just a sampling of the unique materials found in Special Collections.
Special Collections holds books, maps, historic photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, correspondence, manuscripts, business records, and rare books pertaining to the 12 county region known as “Northeastern California”. Visit us on the third floor of the library and take a journey through California’s past. For more information on this exhibit contact Pam Nett Kruger at x6213.
More information about Special Collections is available online.
Image by Wim Mulder, used under the Creative Commons license.
Now this is interesting — I certainly wasn’t expecting this, though I think it’s a positive development. President Obama has declared October to be the National Information Literacy Month. (Information literacy is a fancy term for the ability to find information and evaluate its level of quality, authority, etc). The President’s press release notes the issue of information overload, and champions info literacy as a skill set that allows a person to avoid irrelevant information and, conversely, to find and evaluate useful information:
Every day, we are inundated with vast amounts of information. A 24-hour news cycle and thousands of global television and radio networks, coupled with an immense array of online resources, have challenged our long-held perceptions of information management. Rather than merely possessing data, we must also learn the skills necessary to acquire, collate, and evaluate information for any situation. This new type of literacy also requires competency with communication technologies, including computers and mobile devices that can help in our day-to-day decisionmaking. National Information Literacy Awareness Month highlights the need for all Americans to be adept in the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age.
Though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it. Over the past decade, we have seen a crisis of authenticity emerge. We now live in a world where anyone can publish an opinion or perspective, whether true or not, and have that opinion amplified within the information marketplace. At the same time, Americans have unprecedented access to the diverse and independent sources of information, as well as institutions such as libraries and universities, that can help separate truth from fiction and signal from noise.
To this I’ll add that the Meriam Library plays a similar role. Certainly we provide information (and the tools to find that information), but we also offer tools to help you find and evaluate information. I’m both surprised and pleased to hear the same message coming from the office of the President as well. I’m also curious if you have any thoughts on either the presidential declaration or on info literacy in general — leave a comment below 
.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
The following video should be of interest to those of you coming through the library with the Spanish language children’s book assignment (and also for anyone interested in seeing what a library in another part of the world looks like). The report is done by Rocketboom, a daily video blog.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Image by DML East Branch, used under the Creative Commons license.
The first thing when I got in the elevator, the elevator guy said to me, “Innarested in having a good time, fella? Or is it too late for you?”
“How do you mean,” I said. I didn’t know what he was driving at or anything.
“Innarested in a little tail t’night?”
“Me?” I said. Which was a very dumb answer, but it’s quite embarrassing when somebody comes right up and asks you a question like that.
“How old are you, chief?” the elevator guy said.
“Why?” I said. “Twenty-two”
“Uh huh. Well, how ‘bout it? Y’innarested? Five bucks a throw. Fifteen bucks the whole night.” He looked at his wrist watch. “Till noon. Five bucks a throw, fifteen bucks till noon.”
…………………………
All those women having jobs: hard to imagine, now, but thousands of them had jobs, millions. It was considered the normal thing. Now it’s like remembering paper money, when they still had that. My mother kept some of it, pasted into her scrapbook along with early photos. It was obsolete by then, you couldn’t buy anything with it. Pieces of paper, thickish, greasy to the touch, green colored, with pictures on each side, some old man in a wig and on the other side a pyramid with an eye above it. It said In God We Trust. My mother said people used to have signs beside their cash registers, for a joke: In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. That would be blasphemy now.
…………………………
On weekends, Heather and her two mommies are all together. They do lots of fun things. On sunny days they like to go to the park. On rainy days they stay inside and bake cookies. Heather likes to eat two gingersnaps and drink a big glass of milk.
…………………………
And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle close to the back of Lenny’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering.
…………………………
“Will Bigger Thomas rise and face the court?”
The room was full of noise and the judge rapped for quiet. With trembling legs, Bigger rose, feeling in the grip of a nightmare.
“Is there any statement you wish to make before sentence is passed upon you?”
He tried to open his mouth but could not. Even if he had the power of speech, he did not know what he could have said. He shook his head, his eyes blurring. The courtroom was profoundly quiet now. The judge wet his lips with his tongue and lifted a piece of paper that crackled loudly in the silence.
You guessed it, its Banned Books Week. The passages above are taken (in order) from The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger), The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), Heather Has Two Mommies (Lesléa Newman and Diana Souza), Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck), and Native Son (Richard Wright), all of which appear on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
At the top of the new Library ReSEARCH Station you will see a banner that reads Need To Find An Article On Your Topic? The box below is our new Article Quick Search. Type your keywords into the box and retrieve articles from over eighteen different EBSCO databases. Results are sorted by relevance but you can easily resort by date or limit to academic journals. It’s quick, it’s easy, and the full text is free! Try it and tell us what you think.
Posted by Sarah Blakeslee
Beginning this semester, books ordered through Interlibrary Services will be available for pick up at the Circulation and Reserve Desk instead of in the Interlibrary Services office. This change allows you to pick up your books in the evening or on weekends, as well as during the 8:00-5:00 office hours, so we think you’ll agree this is a better plan. You can return your books through any book drop. The staff in Interlibrary Services are still available to help you with problem requests and hope you come by now and then to say hello.
Posted by Sarah Blakeslee
Welcome to our new, improved, Library ReSEARCH Station. Using current best practice and user comments to help us in our redesign, the new ReSEARCH Station offers more intuitive navigation and additional services.
Some of the major changes are:
• The Periodicals List is gone. Use Search For/A Specific Journal Title instead. All our journals, both electronic and paper, are now searchable through the library catalog.
• The Article Quick Search box on the homepage allows users to search across twenty databases with one search to find articles on almost any subject.
• The Ask A Librarian Instant Messaging service has moved to the first page.
• New Research and Subject Guides pages give students access to up to date resources by subject or for classes.
Come check it out!
Contributed by Sarah Blakeslee
The Meriam Library is offering guided tours from noon – 12:30pm on the following dates. Meet in the lobby on the first floor of the library.
Mon. – Wed., Aug. 24-26
Tues. – Thurs., Sept. 1-3
A self-guided tour handout is also available.
Contributed by the Meriam Library staff
Image by ellenmac11, used under the Creative Commons license.
What would you ordinarily expect to happen when a journalist from the Los Angeles Times walks past a homeless man? Probably very little. But in journalist Steve Lopez’s case, a lot happened. And the events that unfolded from a chance meeting between Lopez and Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a homeless man in L.A.’s Skid Row who possesses both musical talent and mental complications, is the subject of The Soloist.
In the coming months you’re going to be hearing a lot about The Soloist. This year’s book in common is a deeply personal story of an “unlikely” friendship (to borrow the book cover’s word). It is also a piece of commentary that covers such diverse topics as the place of the arts in a society, the role of journalism in informing a population about their world, the issues homeless people face (in L.A., though the same issues appear in other cities as well — the current issue of the News & Review has the following story from a woman who was homeless in Chico), and the most effective methods for treating mental problems in a society’s members. As a result, this book touches upon a whole range of different disciplines — whether you are majoring in journalism, psychology, social work, music, or are just curious about Lopez’s experiences with Nathaniel, this book will touch upon your life and experiences from some angle.
We have The Soloist in the Meriam Library, and the Butte County Public Library also has copies of both the book and the audiobook recording. The DVD of the movie based upon the book, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx, will be released in August of this year.
Contributed by Aaron Bowen
Image by Geoff Livingston, used under the Creative Commons license.
