Eyewitness to History

History through the eyes of those who lived it.

Holiday Reading

ManyBooks.Net: Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader. Browse through the most popular titles, recommendations, or recent reviews special collections. There are 19,167 eBooks available here and they're all free! from our visitors. Perhaps you'll find something interesting in the special collections. There are 19,167 eBooks available here and they're all free!

Yale U. Puts Complete Courses Online

From the Wired Campus: Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

Open Yale Courses reflects the values of a liberal arts education. Yale's philosophy of teaching and learning begins with the aim of training a broadly based, highly disciplined intellect without specifying in advance how that intellect will be used.

This approach goes beyond the acquisition of facts and concepts to cultivate skills and habits of rigorous, independent thought: the ability to analyze, to ask the next question, and to begin the search for an answer.

We hope these courses will be a resource for critical thinking, creative imagination, and intellectual exploration. http://open.yale.edu/courses/

If you're feeling the charitable spirit of the Holidays, the US government
links to a variety of volunteer opportunities and ways to support the
troops. http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Usgresponse/Help.shtml
For other ways to support American soldiers and their families,
see America Supports You,
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/americasupportsyou/index.aspx

Courtesy of Marylaine Block

Munch Museet

I have always enjoy this artist's work, here is a posting from the Librarian's Internet Index:
This website is for this museum in Oslo, Norway, the city where Expressionist artist Edvard Munch bequeathed all his remaining works upon his death in 1944. Features a Munch biography and timeline, illustrated essays about Munch's paintings and graphic works, details about specific works such as "The Scream," online exhibits on topics such as "The Frieze of Life" and Munch's palette, conservation information and images of paintings stored on rolls, and more. In English and Norwegian.
URL: http://www.munch.museum.no/default.aspx?lang=en

Revival of Out-of Print Books

This is some cool news from The Chronicle.com Oct. 29th 2007

Can Open Access Revive Out-of-Print Books?

"Like most institutional imprints, the Universite Libre de Bruxelles has published plenty of books that have long since gone out of print, left to languish in campus libraries and professors' private collections. Until now, that is: The university is giving those texts second lives by recasting them as open-access e-books.
About 20 books are already available on the press's Web site, and more are forthcoming."

Online library offers 1.5 million works and counting

From C/Net News.com:

The Universal Digital Library, a book-scanning project backed by several major libraries across the globe, has completed the digitization of 1.5 million books and on Tuesday made them free and publically available.
The online library offers full text downloads of works that are in the public domain, or for which the copyright holder has been given permission to make available. Having the backing of prominent institutions such as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, however, the collection goes far beyond the widely available classics, though those are there, too.

Medical Search

From ResearchBuzz:I was very interested to read about SearchMedica's 'Clinical Search Terms' reports. this quarterly report will show the list of top searches used at SearchMedica.com, ostensibly by medical professionals. (As using the search engine seems to require no registration, I'm not sure how the users are being identified as medical professionals.)

Top searches include breast cancer and lung cancer, which surprised me because those searches are essentially layman's vocabulary. Then I saw vertebroplasty metastases and aphthous ulcers. Alrighty then.

SearchMedica.com divides its search into three tabs -- general, psychiatry, and oncology/hematology. You can get the press release, with the announcement of the top searches in the preliminary Clinical Search Terms report, here.
Check it out at: http://searchmedica.com/home.html

Thanksgiving

Cranberries that bounce four inches high, one billion pounds of pumpkin, and oodles of turkey all help to make Thanksgiving be remembered for its food, but Thanksgiving has its' own, independent, history. Even in Minnesota, this holiday predates Abraham Lincoln's presidency. The Library of Congress created this Thanksgiving Day Timeline to help share the history of Thanksgiving Day. Enjoy!

Norman Mailer

The Works of Norman Mailer
Companion to a fall 2007 exhibition of materials associated with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer, who died in November 2007. It "highlights some of the major works of Norman Mailer housed in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Thomas Cooper Library [University of South Carolina]." Includes images of book jackets (such as for "The Naked and the Dead"), and a self-portrait. From the University of South Carolina.
The Works of Norman Mailer from our friends at Librarians' Internet Index

New York State Writers Institute

New York Times Archives about Norman Mailer

1851 : Moby-Dick published

On this day in 1851, Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville about the
voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, is published by Harper & Brothers
in New York. Moby-Dick is now considered a great classic of American
literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in
fiction: "Call me Ishmael." Initially, though, the book about Captain
Ahab and his quest for a giant white whale was a flop.

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819 and as a young man
spent time in the merchant marines, the U.S. Navy and on a whaling
ship in the South Seas. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee,
a romantic adventure based on his experiences in Polynesia. The book
was a success and a sequel, Omoo, was published in 1847. Three more
novels followed, with mixed critical and commercial results.
Melville's sixth book, Moby-Dick, was first published in October 1951
in London, in three volumes titled The Whale, and then in the U.S. a
month later. Melville had promised his publisher an adventure story
similar to his popular earlier works, but instead, Moby-Dick was a
tragic epic, influenced in part by Melville's friend and Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose novels include The
Scarlet Letter.

After Moby-Dick's disappointing reception, Melville continued to
produce novels, short stories (Bartleby) and poetry, but writing
wasn't paying the bills so in 1865 he returned to New York to work as
a customs inspector, a job he held for 20 years.

Melville died in 1891, largely forgotten by the literary world. By the
1920s, scholars had rediscovered his work, particularly Moby-Dick,
which would eventually become a staple of high school reading lists
across the United States. Billy Budd, Melville's final novel, was
published in 1924, 33 years after his death.
From The History Channel
Read Moby Dick and other classics online.

Veterans Day

Veterans Day originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation in 1954 to change the name to Veterans Day as a way to honor those who served in all American wars. The day has evolved into also honoring living military veterans with parades and speeches across the nation. A national ceremony takes place at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
More Facts about Veterans Day

United States Department of Veterans Affairs

Veterans of US War

Change to The Tournees Film Festival!

Hi Everyone,

We have had a slight change to the rooms for some of the nights of the festival. They are as follows:

Wednesday-we will be in room C118
Thursday-we will be in the Auditorium as previously announced
Friday-we will be in room C118
Saturday-we will be in room C118

Once again, these will be shown at the MSCTC-Moorhead Campus @ 1900 28th Ave South in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Thanks!

The Tournees Festival @ MSCTC-Moorhead!

Minnesota State Community and Technical College-Moorhead Campus Library and Student Life

PRESENT
The Tournées Festival

(click above to see invitation)

Titles and Showtimes

De Battre Mon Coeur S'Est Arrette (The Beat That My Heart Skipped)
Monday, November 5, 2007 @ 7pm in the Auditorium

Les Triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville)
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 @ 7pm in the Auditorium

L’Enfant (The Child)
Thursday, November 8, 2007 @ 4:30pm in the Auditorium

Brodeuses (Sequins)
Friday, November 9, 2007 @ 3:30pm in the Auditorium

Moolaade
Saturday, November 10 @ 10am in the Auditorium

Admission is free on a first-come basis.
*Popcorn will be provided by Student Life.

For more information, contact the Moorhead Campus Library at (218) 299-6530.

The Tournées Festival was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture (CNC). It is sponsored by The Florence Gould Foundation, the Grand Marnier Foundation, highbrow entertainment, agnès b. and the Franco-American Cultural Fund.

The School's New Website!

Hi everyone,

We at the library have been really excited about the new website our college's Web Development Team has been creating. Today, David Overby, our college's Chief Information Officer, recently requested feedback about the new website. To help out, please read the following:

"To all MSCTC Students, Faculty and Staff:

Several months ago the College Web Committee and the Web Services Department made a commitment to build a new web site for MSCTC. The new site is not completely finished; however, we want to give you an opportunity to provide us with your feedback. More specifically, we need you to review the design, layout, and ease of navigation. We are still creating new content and updating older content for some areas of the new site, so please keep in mind that some areas are still "under review and development."

There are two ways in which you can provide us feedback. In the middle of every page on the new site, there is a link to a short survey where you can answer some questions related to the areas described above (Called We Want Your Feedback!). You can also send your comments to webcomments@minnesota.edu.

Our current plan is to "go live" with the new site on November 27. We'll continue to make changes/updates with your suggestions and feedback, and the site will be updated weekly.

To view the new site, there is a link at our current home page at www.minnesota.edu or you can click on this link: http://beta.minnesota.edu/changelog.php .

I want to give a special thanks to the Web Development Team (Joanna Sheridan, Justin Rovang, and Chris Kulish) for their hard work and dedication on this project.

Thank you,
Dave"

Holiday Recipes

With the approach of Halloween, we enter a period of frenzied cooking. You may make some old family favorites, or you may decide to be creative and make a new favorite. Here are some links to some recipe websites to help you out during the hectic entertaining season.

Betty Crocker
RecipeLink.com
Food Network
Kraft Kitchens

American Indian Heritage Month

The purpose of National American Indian Heritage Month in November is to honor and recognize the continuing contributions Native Americans make to this country. National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month is celebrated to recognize the intertribal cultures and to educate the public about the heritage, history, art and traditions of the American Indian that is an important part of our history. Here are some links to get started:
NCAI
First Nations Site Index
Native Americans
Storytellers-Native American Authors/Wiki
Index of Native American Movie Resources

Art of Ex Libris

Here is a couple of sites devoted to Bookplates (A label identifying the owner of a book in which it is pasted) Confessions of a Bookplate junkie & Art of Ex Libris

World Freedom Atlas

Neat site: World Freedom Atlas

Is new technology a mystery to you?

Check it out, very funny..

Make Textbooks Affordable.com

Make Textbooks Affordable.com
Website for a national student campaign to reduce college textbook costs. Features a discussion of why textbooks are expensive (such as new editions and supplementary material), suggestions for finding cheaper books and saving money (such as buying or renting online), reports on topics such as publishers' pricing tactics, and links to news about legislative activity. A joint campaign of various student organizations throughout the U.S.
URL: http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/
From: Librarians' Internet Index

Exploring knots

In a library, we encounter plenty of knots. With all of those computer, phone, and power cords, it can become a downright snarl behind and under our desks. So, it was interesting to see that a study had been conducted to see how they form. To read more, visit The Science of Knots Unraveled by Jeanna Bryner.

Not a linguist?

If you need some quick help translating, check out Babelfish. You can type into the box, cut-and-paste, or just tell it to translate a whole page at once.

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage

Collection of material in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15-October 15. Features an interactive map showing Hispanic history in the Americas ("the roots ... stretch from the Caribbean to California and back more than 500 years"), annotated listing of Latinos in history, interview transcripts with recent famous Latinos (such as astronaut Ellen Ochoa), a research guide on the Spanish missions in California, and more. From Scholastic.

Banned Book Week

Banned Books Week

September 29–October 6, 2007

Free People Read Freely ®
ALA

Good Site for more Information: Banned Books Online

Ahoy, students!

It's time again, for Speak Like a Pirate Day. Arrr....Our treasure be books-not gold, matey. We encourage you to check out our bounty (of resources) at the MSCTC Library page!

Happy Traveling to Ben Kohler

The MSCTC Moorhead Library would like to wish Ben Kohler farewell and happy traveling. Ben worked in the Learning Center at MSCTC Moorhead. He has accepted a position as an English conversation assistant in north-cenral Spain, and will be living in the city of Logroño. This is prime wine country in Spain and it is populated with many very small country towns.
Congratulations Ben. We wish you the best!

For more information about Logroño, click here.

A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

Libraphiliac Love Letter:









A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries -

Curious Expeditions
Beautiful pictures of beautiful old libraries in Europe, the US, and
Latin America, where the architecture and decor reveal a deep reverence
for knowledge.

From: Marylaine Block
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html

Book Burnings & Histroy

Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings
Companion to a traveling exhibit about book burning activities in Nazi Germany. Topics include the immediate American response, how "books figured prominently" in U.S. patriotic slogans during World War II, and later symbols of book burning. Features written and audio material about 58 authors whose works were burned. Authors include Theodore Dreiser, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Jack London, Karl Marx, and Upton Sinclair. From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
URL: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/bookburning/
From our friends at : : http://lii.org/

Detroit Lakes Proctoring & Toolbar

If you need a proctor at the Detroit Lakes campus please call us at 218-846-3772 or use the toll free number 1800-492-4836 and ask for the Library we would be more that happy to help you out.
We also have a Detriot Lakes Library toolbar which features our databases, library catalog and Websites reviewed by Librarians, (the last is a work in progress, if you look on the right hand side you'll see it is broke down by classes: Architecture Sites, Automotive....ECT, just click on what ever you are interested in and it will open up, than follow that link to the web site..

To Download Library Toolbar

• Go to this site http://detroitlakeslibrary.ourtoolbar.com
• Follow the directions on the page, if you have any question please call the Library

Proctoring Services @ the MSCTC-Moorhead Campus Library

Once again, it is time for students to start requesting proctors for their distance courses. If you need a proctor at the Moorhead Campus, please call the library at 218-299-6530 or stop by and grab an information sheet. When you call, we can provide you with the information you need over the phone (or we can email it to you).

Thanks!

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2007

Each year, the Department of English at San Jose State University holds the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This competition, named after the Victorian author who penned the infamous line “It was a dark and stormy night,” rewards that individual who submits the most cringe-inducing first line for an imaginary novel. Check it out: The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2007 Results

MedlinePlus Go Local!

The National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health have teamed up to make MedlinePlus Go Local. The main Go Local website provides access to basic information about all of the states. Minnesota is one of the states that has been upgraded to a complete status. As work progresses, more states will be upgraded, too. The Minnesota information not only provides you with addresses and phone numbers, but also links to general health information.

Interstate 35W Bridge Collapse

Interstate 35W Bridge Collapse
Minnesota state government documents concerning the August 2007 collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis. Provides Video, news and updates, inspection expenditures (2004-2007), recent inspection reports (including fatigue evaluation), an inventory of deficient trunk highway bridges in Minneapolis (released August 2007), and related material. From the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT).
URL: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/i35wbridge/

From New This Week from LII

50 Best Websites 2007

Every year Time Magazine comes up with a list of the 50 best websites
Enjoy the cruise there is some great stuff out there.

The Science Museum of Minnesota

I recently visited the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. It's educational AND I had a lot of fun. There's something there for everyone!
Right now they have an exhibit called A Day in Pompeii. In the year 79AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the entire Roman city, including civilians. "See hundreds of exceptional objects, including eight body casts of the volcano's victims frozen in their last moments that lay buried in Pompeii's ruins for over 17 centuries."
Seeing this exhibit is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It will be at the Science Museum until January 6th, 2008 and it is only going to a couple more cities in the U.S. before heading back to Italy.
See what the Science Muesem has to offer!
Summer is not over yet, you can still plan a trip!

The Open Library Makes Its Online Debut

"The Open Library Makes Its Online Debut"
"Imagine a library that collected all the world's information
about all the world's books and made it available for everyone
to view and update," write members of the Internet Archive's
Open Content Alliance. "We're building that library." And now
the alliance has put a demo version of that library online. The
Open Library is meant to serve as a vast digital card catalog,
and Web surfers will be able to edit entries, much like in
Wikipedia. The repository will also collect books in the public
domain, a mission that will bring the library into competition
with Google's much-publicized book-scanning service. Some
critics of the Google project have high hopes for the Open
Library, which seems more eager to embrace the ideals of Web
2.0. "If all goes well," writes Ben Vershbow of if:book, "it's
conceivable that this could become the main destination on the
Web for people looking for information in and about books."
That's still a big if: The library will rely heavily on
contributions from unpaid volunteers. But the Open Library has
at least one thing going for it, according to Mr. Vershbow: "On
presentation of public-domain texts, they already have Google
beat." The library offers books in a number of different file
formats, including a "flip book" tool that attempts to simulate
the experience of rifling through a hardbound tome. "This sort
of re-enactment of paper functionality is perhaps too literal,"
writes Mr. Vershbow, but he admits that it makes for a pretty
decent reading experience. The Open Library plans to unveil a
fuller site in October, and project officials will have to do
plenty of work to meet that deadline. They plan to create an
entry for every book ever published, not just digitized books in
the public domain. --Brock Read
From The Wired Campus
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2235

Photographic Libraries

Photographic Libraries
http://www.photographiclibraries.com/
Search a wide variety of photographic libraries by both keywords and type
of library (archive collections, photojournalist resources, fashion
photographer resources, science, free photos and clip art, etc.). Note
that results take you to the appropriate photo libraries, not to specific
images.

Good Old Summer Time

The Great American past time:


July is National Hotdog Month
Hotdogs as America
Fact Sheet on Hotdogs

Erle Stanley Gardner

Today, in 1889, Erle Stanley Gardner was born. A practicing attorney in California, he turned to writing and created the famous Perry Mason based upon his experiences. Perry Mason lived in the multiple realms of print, radio, and television. For some history of the well-known show, visit The Museum of Broadcast Communications.

Book Sale

It's the book lover's favorite time of year! It's the Barnes and Noble Summer Clearance Sale online!
You can get great books for as low as $2.00. Also, they usually have great shipping discounts. It's sometimes free when you spend over $25.oo.
Check it out!

World Clock

World Clock

Interesting to notice which number moves quickest.

Rare Book Room

Rare Book Room
This "educational site [is] intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world." Includes digitized facsimiles of "some of the great books in science, including books by Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, [and] Darwin"; most of the Shakespeare Quartos; musical scores by Beethoven and Mozart; the 1455 Gutenberg Bible held by the Library of Congress; and many more. Searchable, or browsable by topic, author, or library. Very Interesting, enjoy.
URL: http://www.rarebookroom.org/

From the Librarians' Internet Index
Websites you can trust!

100 Best First Lines of Novels

100 Best First Lines of Novels: As chosen by the editors of American Book Review

1.	Call me Ishmael.	Herman Melville	Moby-Dick	1851
2.	It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.	Jane Austen	Pride and Prejudice	1813
3.	A screaming comes across the sky.	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity's Rainbow	1973
4.	Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.	Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa)	One Hundred Years of Solitude	1967
5.	Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.	Vladimir Nabokov	Lolita	1955
6.	Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.	Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett)	Anna Karenina	1877

Continued.....

Recipes (and even more recipes)

For all of you food lovers out there, there's a recipe search engine. FoodieView has been designed to search multiple websites to try to find the recipe you are searching for. You can search for anything from rhubarb crumble to clam chowder. One of the websites that it searches is RecipeZaar. This website even has a Nutrion Facts panel for many of its dishes.

Happy Cooking!

Summer Reading

Pour yourself a glass of ice cold lemonade, cozy up in a hammock in your yard, and read a good book.

Get a tan at the beach while reading a book on a lawn chair.

When it's so hot outside that merely looking out the window makes you sweat, turn up the AC and read!

Road trip? Bring something to read when it's not your turn to drive.

Need some ideas for great books? Check out the New York Times and Modern Library top 100 books of all time list.

Power of Art

• Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and Wheatfield with Crows,
• Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Guernica,
• Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) and David with the Head of Goliath,
• Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) and The Ecstasy of St. Theresa,
• Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis,
• Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) and The Death of Marat,
• J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On),
• Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and the Seagram murals.

The POWER OF ART Web site allows viewers, students and educators to build upon the scholarship and research of the series, and to fully explore the artists, the paintings and the stories behind them.

Best Places to Get Free Books - The Ultimate Guide

From Friedbeef’s Tech:

Best Places to Get Free Books - The Ultimate Guide

Weeding Adventures

Recently, Kristen and I embarked on a weeding project for our main books collection. We pulled some of our older books from our shelves to make room for new ones. During this process, we encountered some outdated books that were really cool. One of the ones was a directory of the internet. The writer has now published an updated version of this book on the web at Harley Hahn's Internet Yellow Pages. It's very similar to the Librarians' Internet Index mentioned previously by Doreen.

Star Wars

The Official Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge
Collection of short movies from spring 2007 made by fans of the "Star Wars" films. Users may vote for their favorite, and George Lucas picks his favorite in late May. From Lucasfilm and an online "entertainment network for original shorts and web shows by top independent creators."
URL: http://www.atomfilms.com/2007/starwars/challenge/index.jsp
From the Librarians' Internet Index
Websites you can trust!

Stumbleupon

Join 2,391,937 Stumblers & Discover New Sites

Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.

Reviews:
"Stumbleupon is a brilliant downloadable toolbar that beds into your browser and gives you the chance to surf through thousands of excellent pages that have been stumbled upon by other web-users" BBC

"Next time you want to wander the Web, forget about Googling it. Stumble it." Wall Street Journal

Calisphere

"Calisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 150,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history. Calisphere's content has been selected from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses, and from a variety of cultural heritage organizations.
Calisphere is a public service project of the California Digital Library (CDL). Through the use of technology and innovation, the CDL supports the assembly and creative use of scholarship for the UC libraries and the communities they serve. Learn more about the CDL."

Summer Vacation

I don't know about your summer vacation plans, but I'm probably going to visit family and see some sights around the region. If you're more adventurous than me, there's a cool site called See America that will give you a brief overview of each state and provide you with contact information for their department of tourism.

Happy Travels!

Get Ready For Your Finals!

It's that time of year again!
Here are some tips to prepare for next week.

1. Don’t panic (make too much of the final).
The first thing you should do is to check what the final is worth in each course. Remember, it is only one component of your final grade. If it is worth 20% or less, you probably won't be able to bring your final grade up or down by more than one grade level (e.g., B to B+), unless you perform extremely better or worse than you have on other exams and assignments during the semester.
2. Take breaks from studying.
This is NOT the time to stop exercising or doing other things that you find enjoyable. Pace yourself! You will study more effectively if you spread things out and take breaks. But watch the proportions here. Beware of doing 15 minutes of studying followed by a two-hour break to play a video game!
3. Use an effective study method.
The key to effective retention is repetition, and not overloading your brain (it can only absorb so much in an hour). Click here to get information about an effective technique for exam study. Whatever you do, don’t do it all in one long cramming session. Which brings us to:
4. Get enough sleep.
Don’t pull an "all nighter." You will do better if you are rested, and cramming often leads to a superficial and confused knowledge of the material you have studied.
There is a reason why sleep deprivation is used as torture. Failure to follow #4 and 5 can lead to writing nonsense on exams.

For more tips, check out http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/ohe/library/mental/finals.htm.

Happy Studying!

Webby Awards

11th Annual Webby Awards
Links to the winners in a variety of categories, as well as to those
chosen by the "people's voice" and to the finalists in each category.
From Marylaine at NEAT NEW STUFF, MAY 4, 2007

Iago...the Parrot?

Yes, the grand villian Iago became a parrot in Disney's Aladdin-now there's quite a meshing of literary figures from two very different cultures. You have to remember, even Shakespeare himself drew inspiration from prominent figures and stories in British and Roman history. Most of you have heard of Romeo & Juliet or Macbeth, but Shakespeare also wrote about Cleopatra and even King Richard III. For more information about all of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, visit About: Shakespeare or The Royal Shakespeare Company-for just the plays. Since I brought up Aladdin, you can read some of the stories at About.com or Cornell's Library website.

Citing Sources

Here is a couple of Sites to help with citing MLA or APA on those last minute reports:

Son of Citation Machine: citing MLA & APA, this is an interactive web tool designed to assist college, and university students, in their effort to respect other people's intellectual properties. To use Citation Machine, simply.. Click the citation format you need and then the type of resource you wish to cite, Complete the Web form that appears with information from your source, click on Make Citations and copy and paste on your document.

NoodleBib Express:Just need one or two quick citations in MLA or APA? No need to log in or subscribe -- simply generate them in NoodleBib Express and copy and paste what you need into your document

NUCLEAR DISASTER AT CHERNOBYL

April 26 1986 : NUCLEAR DISASTER AT CHERNOBYL:

April 26, 1986, the world's worst nuclear power plant accident

occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union.

Thirty-two people died and dozens more suffered raOndiation burns in the

opening days of the crisis, but only after Swedish authorities

reported the fallout did Soviet authorities reluctantly admit that an

accident had occurred.

The Chernobyl station was situated at the settlement of Pripyat, about

65 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine. On the evening of

April 25, 1986, a group of engineers began an electrical-engineering

experiment on the Number 4 reactor. The engineers, who had little

knowledge of reactor physics, wanted to see if the reactor's turbine

could run emergency water pumps on inertial power.

As part of their poorly designed experiment, the engineers

disconnected the reactor's emergency safety systems and its

power-regulating system. A chemical reaction, driven by the ignition of gases

resulted in an explosion and ensuing fire,

more than 50 tons of radioactive material were released into the

atmosphere, where it was carried by air currents.

On April 27, Soviet authorities began an evacuation of the 30,000

inhabitants of Pripyat. A cover-up was attempted, but on April 28

Swedish radiation monitoring stations, more than 800 miles to the

northwest of Chernobyl, reported radiation levels 40 percent higher

than normal. Later that day, the Soviet news agency acknowledged that

a major nuclear accident had occurred at Chernobyl.

In the opening days of the crisis, 32 people died at Chernobyl and

dozens more suffered radiation burns. The radiation that escaped into

the atmosphere, which was several times that produced by the atomic

bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was spread by the wind over

Northern and Eastern Europe, contaminating millions of acres of forest

and farmland. An estimated 5,000 Soviet citizens eventually died from

cancer and other radiation-induced illnesses caused by their exposure

to the Chernobyl radiation, and millions more had their health

adversely affected. In 2000, the last working reactors at Chernobyl

were shut down and the plant was officially closed.

Here is a great link of Chernobyl and the surrounding area today: Ghost Town

50 Greatest Cartoons

50 Greatest Cartoons
Found a cool list of The 50 Greatest Cartoons as voted on by the animation industry in 1994. Many wonderful, funny, trippy and cartoons spanning the decades, enjoy.

New Book

New Book at the DL Campus:

Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson

From Publishers Weekly
Acclaimed biographer Isaacson examines the remarkable life of "science's preeminent poster boy" in this lucid account (after 2003's Benjamin Franklin and 1992's Kissinger). Contrary to popular myth, the German-Jewish schoolboy Albert Einstein not only excelled in math, he mastered calculus before he was 15. Young Albert's dislike for rote learning, however, led him to compare his teachers to "drill sergeants." That antipathy was symptomatic of Einstein's love of individual and intellectual freedom, beliefs the author revisits as he relates his subject's life and work in the context of world and political events that shaped both, from WWI and II and their aftermath through the Cold War. Isaacson presents Einstein's research—his efforts to understand space and time, resulting in four extraordinary papers in 1905 that introduced the world to special relativity, and his later work on unified field theory—without equations and for the general reader. Isaacson focuses more on Einstein the man: charismatic and passionate, often careless about personal affairs; outspoken and unapologetic about his belief that no one should have to give up personal freedoms to support a state. Fifty years after his death, Isaacson reminds us why Einstein (1879–1955) remains one of the most celebrated figures of the 20th century.

Just a Reminder

Dear MSCTC Students,

MSCTC- Detroit Lakes is hosting an EMPLOYMENT EXPO & CAREER FAIR next Thursday, April 26th at 10am - 4pm in the conference center at the Detroit Lakes campus. Everyone is invited!

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? Graduation is just around the corner for some of us and it’s never too early for first year students to start planning a career. Besides, we (the Event Planning and Sales & Marketing students) did the hard part for you- finding local businesses that employ our graduates. All you need to do is show up! If you follow a few of the pointers we’ve included below, your chances of finding the job that’s right for you may increase.

• Dress casual but neat.
• Bring your resume-if you don’t have a resume, there are workshops available that day to help you get started or help with the finishing touches.
• Practice what you will say to employers- we are also holding workshops that can help you develop your interviewing skills.
• Don't eat, drink, or carry food around when you're visiting employers.
• If you go with a friend, split up and visit the employers YOU want to see.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to meet your future employer!

Here's a list of tentative employers scheduled to attend:
• Arvig Communications
• L&M Fleet
• North Star Nursing
• Gander Mountain
• SJE Rhombus
• All-Pro Auto Repair
• MnDOT
• Shooting Star Casino
• DL Marine
• Lakeshirts
• MN Workforce Center
• More to come!

Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions.


Thanks,
Marcus Lacher - DL Faculty

Star Wallowing Bull

Star Wallowing Bull is a Chippewa/Northern Arapaho artist on the rise from Minneapolis. His beautiful, vibrant, colorful works reflect many subjects including traditional American Indian ideals in a comtemporary world.
At the Art Auction held on the MSCTC Moorhead Campus on March 23rd, the artist had one of his works up to be bid on. And, he was here, in person!!! I admit, I was a little star-struck, but it was a really great experience meeting this artist.
Check out Star's website to learn more about Star and his art.

Black Elk's Little Sand Man, 2002
Prismacolor pencil on paper, 36x50"
Collection of Plains Art Museum

National Library Week!

National Library week is next week, April 15-21. Come celebrate with us @ your campus library!

Our Detroit Lakes Campus Library will be having a contest to guess how many pages are in a book. The prize will be the book Marley & Me by John Grogan. The winner will be announced on April 23.

Our Moorhead Campus Library will be hosting a drawing for a book. Stop by to enter and see what title we have next week!

Today is...

Apparently, today is Big Wind Day. It was created to honor the date when the highest wind speed ever was recorded. If you’re interested in this, or similar holidays, check out the Holiday Insights website, American Greetings' Celebrate the Date page for April, or About.com (At About.com, you can get to monthly holiday lists, by selecting the “Fundays Calendar” subtopic folder link).

Enjoy your holiday today!

Leonardo da Vinci

BBC Science & Nature: Leonardo
"Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519. Italian artist, scientist, engineer. An all-round genius whose paintings and inventions changed the world. Take an interactive journey through his life and works to discover what made him a true Renaissance man." Includes a timeline, painting and drawing galleries, an interactive tour of Leonardo's studio, and a quiz to see what type of a thinker you are. From the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/

Celebrate Diversity Month

Support Celebrate Diversity Month!

We propose the following proclamation to declare Celebrate Diversity Month in the United States. It is our hope that Congress will designate the month of April for this celebration.
Please read the proclamation and consider adding your name to the list of supporters! We believe we are very close to congressional support.

http://www.celebratediversitymonth.org/site/page/pg4178.html

Here are some Cultural links from Wikipedia Encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Cultures_by_region

Minnesota Higher Education Services

The Minnesota Higher Education Services Office is a state agency providing students with financial aid programs and information to help them gain access to post-secondary education. The agency serves as the state's clearinghouse for data, research and analysis on post-secondary enrollment, financial aid, finance and trends. Check their site for publications to help students identify programs that interest them. To download or request a free copy, visit www.getreadyforcollege.org

New on this blog!

Hi everyone,

We have just added a new area to our blog-the News of Interest section (look to the bottom portion of the white box). In this area, you will see some recent headlines concerning the library world and related matters.

Enjoy!

Science Mall

Looking for the perfect gift for the science buff in your life?
Try the Science Mall!
They have jewlery made out of coal from the Titanic, cool posters, meteorites, and more.

The Library History Buff

This site promotes the appreciation, enjoyment, and preservation of library history. It features illustrated commentary and links to related sites in the areas of "librariana" (about collecting library artifacts and memorabilia, with a list of collectible items), library history (such as Carnegie libraries and membership libraries), and postal librariana. From retired librarian Larry T. Nix.
URL: http://www.libraryhistorybuff.org

Books for Soldiers

Books For Soldiers | Winston-Salem, NC
Books for Soldiers operates on a simple mission: to get books out to the soldiers overseas so that when they have downtime, then can enjoy themselves and have a piece of home with them. During the first Gulf War, the founder of Books for Soldiers had friends deployed internationally, and knew they were in need of reading material. So he started shipping old books he could find and asked others to pitch in–sending over 1,000 books the very first year. As the idea caught on, Books For Soldiers set up a self-service website so that volunteers nationwide could send out books and other mementos from home to soldiers around the world. Even better, the site provides a way for soldiers and military officials to request specific items. A Books For Soldiers volunteer can simply look up the request, find the books and send them off. The site currently gets 7,000 requests a month and fills 99.9% of them, totaling over 100,000 shipments sent yearly.

Books for Soldiers

Employment Expo & Career Fair

Employment Expo & Career Fair

MSCTC – Detroit Lakes 2007 Employment Expo & Career Fair will be held April 26, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. in the Conference Center at MSCTC – DL. The event is open to the public, and is for anyone seeking employment or career opportunities.

This event will also offer an emphasis to current MSCTC-DL students and occupations that fit their academic programs.

Local and regional businesses will have booths promoting their company and current employment and internship opportunities. Workshops focused on résumé critiquing and interview skills will be held in adjoining conference rooms.

Students from approximately 15 area high schools will also be in attendance to learn about career paths available in the region. After attending the Expo and lunch, the high school students will tour campus programs that align to their selected career clusters. For more information, contact Marcus Lacher at 218-846-3761 or Lynn Kaiser at 218-846-846-3737

Great Article

Great article about plagiarism and copyrights issues,

The Ecstasy of Influence:A plagiarism/From Harpers.org

By Jonathan Lethem.

Interesting Book

I just got a new book today the title is Gay Life and Culture: A World History, here is the book review from Amazon ( they sum it better then I could)

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
In the years since Stonewall, the world has witnessed an outpouring of research, critical inquiry, and re-interpretation of gay life and culture. This book draws on groundbreaking new material to present a comprehensive survey of all things gay, stretching back to ancient Sumeria and ranging to the present day. Critically acclaimed historian Robert Aldrich and ten leading scholars juxtapose thought-provoking essays with an extensive selection of images, many never before seen. This masterful combination reveals the story behind gay culture from the industrialized world to the remotest corners of tribal New Guinea. The book covers such topics as the Old Testament relationship between Jonathan and David, the Age of Confucius, Native American berdaches, Polynesian mahus, Berlin in the '20s, Stonewall and the disco-flavored hedonism that followed, and the advent of AIDS, Act Up, and Angels in America. This book is an important contribution to understanding what makes gay life and culture universal throughout human culture and across time. A side note the book includes wonderful pictures and is just beautiful in itself.
And just for fun, check out this Geoffrey Chaucer Blog, very funny stuff.

Fun Translation Sites

Hi Everyone, I found a couple of fun sites the first is TRANSLATOR, BINARY
it translates text into a binary language (and more) and another one is Words by William Whitaker
which translates English into Latin, and the best for last, the Universal Translator Assistant, which translates English into Klingon, Vulcan and Romulan, ok, ok, I think they are cool.

American Heart Association

The Detroit Lakes campus has shown great support for the American Heart Association April 21 Heart Walk. Six people have signed up to walk and have received pledges in the amount of $730 to date!

Team captain, Mary Lynk, originally set a modest goal of $300 but $1,000 is beginning to look possible!

HEART FELT THANKS to all who have contributed.

If you can help us hit the $1,000 mark, please send your contributions to Mary at the DL Campus or contribute via internet. Contributions of $25 or more can be recorded on line at http://heartwalk.kintera.org/detroitlakesmn. It will do your heart good!

Art Auction

There is an Art Auction tonight at MSCTC Moorhead from 7:00pm-9:30pm in the new student commons area. Tickets are $5.00 and are available at the door.
The work of professional and amateur artists, along with gift baskets, memberships, and art lessons will be featured in the silent auction. Additional event highlights include hors d’oeuvres prepared by MSCTC’s culinary chefs and music by Darin Henze.
More information available at http://www.minnesota.edu/foundations/moorhead_art/

For more information about art in general, check out these cool websites:

The Louvre, France http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home_flash.jsp
Egyptian Museum - Cairo, Egypt http://www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg/
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam http://www3.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?lang=en
The Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York, New York http://www.metmuseum.org/
The Heard - Phoenix, AZ http://www.heard.org
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts - Minneapolis, Minnesota http://www.artsmia.org/
The Plains Art Museum - Fargo, ND http://www.plainsart.org/

Free Frontline Video Online/DLC Library

I found a site today that offers free Frontline videos from of course, the PBS. The subject matter is from the Iraq War to Inside a teenage mind, both very complex issues. One other site I'd like to share is actually where I ran across the PBS offering, the site is called Online Education, this has everything from online lectures from major school and universities (Berekley, MIT ect), to etext books, Learning Languages on iTunes and more, for of course free..be sure to cruise, there is some great stuff.

On the Road

Kristen and I were on the road last week-for most of it! While we were out, we learned quite a few new things about some really advanced functions and tools in Microsoft Excel. Additionally, we spent some time at the libraries on our Detroit Lakes and Wadena campuses. While there, we introduced them some of the new online tools and projects we recently embarked on.
We had a really nice time at the other campuses and it was really great to work with everyone in-person for once.

Registration Window for Summer 2007 & Fall 2007

From the Detroit Lakes Campus:

The registration windows will be open for the Summer 2007 and Fall 2007 as follows:

April 2, 2007 - Window opens at 8:00 am for students that have 40 or more completed credits.
April 2, 2007 - Window opens at 1:00 pm for students that have 24 or more completed credits.
April 3, 2007 - Window opens at 8:00 am for students that have 12 or more completed credits.
April 4, 2007 - Window opens at 8:00 am for students that have 0 credits.

Note: Completed credits means as of Fall 2006 semester.

Tuition Policy

All Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, including MSCTC, are now required to drop registered students unless one of the following applies:

a) You have paid for registered courses in full.

b) You have made a down payment of $300.00 or 15% of your tuition and fee charges, whichever is less.

c) You have applied for financial aid and MSCTC has received your FAFSA results from the US Department of Education. The FAFSA website is www.fafsa.ed.gov.

d) The MSCTC Business Office has received advance payment of a scholarship or scholarship notice, to cover tuition and fees.

e) You have submitted a third party billing authorization to the MSCTC Business

Office. Examples of funding agencies are Minnesota CEP, Vocational Rehab, Workers Comp., etc.

f) You are an international student and have an active I-20 or DS20.19 on file.

MSCTC’s deadline for having one of the following in place for Fall Semester is Thursday, August 23, 2007.

And remember the MSCTC Libraries are open in the summer months, look forward to seeing you .

Detroit Lakes: American Indian Awareness Week

On March 17th Detroit Lakes is holding it's 22nd Annual American Indian Awareness Week Traditional Pow Wow at the Detroit Lakes Middle School gymnasium, there is One Grand Entry at 1:00 pm with the Feast at 5:00 pm, this event is free and open to the public
For more information contact:
Sue Holt 218-847-4491
Joe Carrier 218-847-9228
Bill Stech 218-846-3756

Detroit Lakes Library

Hi just want to share a few things, Detroit Lakes campus Library has created a tool bar for you download, which includes MSCTC Databases, MSCTC library catalog, New Books and DVDs in the library and a site called del.icio.us which has sites geared to the DLC's programs.
Also I started a Wiki with the some of the same information and a little more fun stuff, music, movie sites and my picks of the month for movies and books.

IM Reference Now Available!

Working from home and need a quick question answered? We can help. We have recently created two IM accounts. Here is their information:

Service: AOL
User Name: msctcLibrarian

Service: Yahoo!
User Name: msctcLibrarian

We're not available 24/7, but we will try to be online as much as we can between 7:30am-10pm Monday through Thursday, 7:30am-4pm Friday (maybe later in a few weeks), and 9am-1pm on Saturdays for the rest of Spring Semester-excluding break hours.

Welcome to the Minnesota State Community and Technical College Libraries Blog!

We have started this blog as a space to announce new services and items about our libraries and to let you know about some of the things we already have. Additionally, we will be sharing with you some things we think are fun or interesting! Since we are just starting, we do not have all of the features turned on, yet-like commenting. As soon as we get the hang of this, we will begin adding them.