Connect with the Campus Library!

Looking for that perfect topic for your college project?  Well, this first step of your research assignment may not always be as easy as so many students, even instructors, may want to think… So, why not turn to the news for some help?

MSNBC just got a news story about a recent study confirming what most of us have always suspected: “The oldest kid in the family really does bear the brunt of parental strictness, while the younger brothers and sisters generally coast on through.” According to the research findings, the first born is more likely to be the rule-abiding and responsible offspring while younger siblings have a higher tendency to take more risks and get into trouble!

Now, this can be a great research topic for you students out there, especially if you come from or raising families with siblings! Finding something engaging and of personal interest to complete your writing or speech assignment is the first ingredient to a successful project! And since this piece of news certainly caught my attention (I am the youngest of two siblings, plus I am raising two boys with distinct personalities…), I decided to do a quick search on the topic using Summit, one of my favorite tools to use when looking for books! To do my search I used the expression “birth order,” which gave me a list of great titles to pick from. And remember, in Summit these are books (and videos, too) that you can request from other libraries and pick up from the COCC library within 2-3 working days! If you haven’t used Summit before, it’s easy to find the link on the COCC Barber library homepage, under “Books & More: Library Catalogs.”

So, now you got the first two steps of your research project done (topic selection and use of Summit)!  To be continued….

A week and a half ago, I went to Professor William Robbins’s lecture at the Des Chutes Historical Museum.  Dr. Robbins is a leading regional historian, an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History at Oregon State University, and author of numerous books on Oregon and Pacific Northwest history.  His talk was about his personal experience of Oregon as a historian as well as his views on the interplay between history and landscape.  Bill Robbins’ presentation was a great reminder of the reasons I feel so privileged to live in a state so rich in history and natural beauty!

If you have an interest in history AND in Oregon, one of  Bill Robbins’ books, Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800-1940, has received high critical praise as “the best guide to the ‘Oregon Country’ we have had in a long time, perhaps ever.” For this and other publications by this author and scholar, check our local college library collection!  Who knows? A glimpse in history may also bring a better appreciation of the place where you live, too!

There are (at least) a couple fun sites for sharing your books and socializing with other readers. There’s the relatively new Goodreads where you can see what your friends are reading, find good books to read and keep track of what you have read and want to read. It’s free and fun and worth a look if you enjoy reading, discussing and discovering new books.

I See Dead People(’s Books)

Also there’s LibraryThing, which has been around for a bit longer. Here you can do the same kinds of things, plus you can find people with similar reading interests.

Not quite as morbid as it sounds, at LibraryThing, there’s a group devoted to cataloging the collections of dead people. Wanna see what was on Tupac’s bookshelf? Wanna know what Sylvia Plath was reading? Now you can. For a complete list of cataloged authors, including libraries in progress, visit the group I See Dead People(’s Books) over at LibraryThing.

Author Doris Lessing was taken by surprise as she became the oldest winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature this month. According to NPR, the British writer had been named as a candidate for the Nobel prize several times before, but she was still shocked to hear the news from  a crowd gathered in front of her home a few weeks ago.

Besides The Golden Notebook(1962), which is her best known novel, Lessing’s literary work has been praised for the depth of writing on “hot” political and social topics such as racism,  communism, feminism, or environmentalism.  At the age of 88, Lessing is still an active writer currently working on a new novel dealing with the damaging effects of World War I on people’s lives.  

Looking for a book to read? Here, in our college library, we have a collection of 13 books by Doris Lessing.  You may also visit our downtown Public Library with this author’s 21 titles for you to pick from, including The Golden Notebook.  Happy reading! 

Today is Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers everywhere are all writing about a single topic. This year’s topic is the environment, and there is no better way to appreciate the environment and our place in it than by getting outside.

But, you say, isn’t going to the library (or studying, or sitting at a computer reading blogs) the opposite of getting outside? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Our library has a fantastic collection of materials to support our Recreation Leadership (COCC) and Tourism and Outdoor Leadership (OSU-Cascades) programs, programs that are all about getting people outside. We have software for preparing customized topo maps, all kinds of travel and trail guides, and books to help you learn to cook outdoors, telemark ski, or avoid climbing accidents, just to highlight a few.

If you’re looking for guided adventures, you might also check out Cascades Adventures‘ outings schedule. These ultimate study breaks are open to the entire COCC/Cascades community (and friends, space permitting), and give you an opportunity to take advantage of the expertise of folks in our outdoor leadership programs. There, you don’t even have to read the manuals, someone else will have done it for you.

Now, stop by the library to get ready, then get out!

Interested in intellectual freedom? So are librarians! For 25 years the American Library Association (ALA) (in partnership with several other sponsors) has used this week to focus on our freedom to read by highlighting books that are challenged or banned from libraries and bookstores. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has lots more information about Banned Books Week as well as other things the office does to make sure information continues to be freely available to all who need it.

One question we hear frequently during Banned Book Week is “what does it mean when a book is challenged or banned?” The answer, according to the ALA is:

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others.

Stop by the library and check out our display of commonly challenged books. If you hurry you might even be able to pick up a free “I read banned books” button–there were still a few left this morning!

Rather read online? Google Book Search is getting into the act too with their page of commonly challenged books. While many are still under copyright and not available for free online, classics like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Sinclair’s The Jungle are there. Also, there are previews available for many of the newer controversial books like the most commonly challenged book of 2006, Richardson and Parnell’s children’s book And Tango Makes Three. No matter how you like to read, we’re making sure you don’t lose access to what you like to read.

Graduation is coming up and I’m sure finding a job is on the minds of many graduates. Though some come to school knowing exactly what they want to do with their degrees, plenty of folks aren’t sure what to do when they finish. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I finished my degree, but I wish I had known about the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) is a treasure trove of information about the kinds of things you might be expected to do in a particular job, the education and/or training you might need, how much you might expect to earn, and whether the market for a particular job is expected to grow or not (and how quickly it might be expected to grow, or not) in the future.

In addition to information about particular occupations, the OOH website also includes tips on job hunting and the links to occupational outlook information by state.

If you’d rather curl up with a book than your computer screen, the library has the Occupational Outlook Handbook in print, too. We also have lots of books about resume writing, interviewing, and job hunting in the Campus Library–stop by and check out what we have to offer!

You never know what you might find in the Library, roving around among the shelves. I was upstairs the other day, looking for a particular book for some reason or another when a random book happened to catch my attention. (I’m also one of those people who gets horribly distracted by interesting and irrelevant words when using a dictionary. Online dictionaries, for whatever they have given us in convenience, have taken away that bit of fun, but that’s a subject for another day.). Anyway, the book that jumped out at me was called Annual Review 1968, which admittedly doesn’t sound that exciting. What was so interesting was that it was an annual publication of an organization called the “Center for Short-Lived Phenomena.” Now, really, who could resist that? Well, it turns out that the Center for Short-Lived Phenomena was a branch of the Smithsonian Institution that existed from 1968-1975 in order to “obtain and disseminate information on short-lived natural events such as volcanic eruptions, major earthquakes, the birth of new islands, the fall of meteorites and large fireballs, and sudden changes in biological and ecological systems.” Flipping through the 1968 report, I see that there was an Appalachian Squirrel Migration, a California Fish Kill, a Vermont Windstorm, a Schenectady Meteorite, and a Chilean Drought. It seems somehow poetic that an organization existed for the sole purpose of collecting and preserving information about ephemeral, momentary events and that they also published a report, a permanent record, of their findings about short term phenomena. It also seems to signify something about the human need to understand the world in which we live, the need to quantify, describe, and, most importantly, remember the events, no matter how small, that make daily life so meaningful. Browse around the next time you’re in the Library; you never know what you might find.

Thursday’s news about Kurt Vonnegut’s death left me with the sad feeling that another great author and mind has left the world. I still remember how impressed I was with his unique style of writing when I first read Slaughterhouse Five as a college student in the 1980s. Vonnegut revolutionized science fiction, reinventing it as a more respected literary genre through which readers can actually find meaningful, thought-provoking messages. His anti-war stance and pessimistic view of human nature, a product in part of his own WWII experiences, will always remain relevant for as long as people in this world refuse to get along. So it goes…

Want to know more about Kurt Vonnegut and his writing? Check Gale’s Literature Resource Center, a huge database our library subscribes to for biographical and critical information on literary authors. To find this database:

- go to the library web page (http://campuslibrary.cocc.edu)
- click on Articles & More: Databases
- select by subject “Humanities,” or click on See all COCC databases A-Z.

Also,

Books in the Campus Library by Kurt Vonnegut
Books in the Campus Library about Kurt Vonnegut
New York Times obituary

I’ve been meaning to read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring for a long time; perhaps the Rachel Carson Online Book Club will provide the motivation I need. Over the next nine months, authors, professors, scientists, and other Rachel Carson experts will moderate weekly discussions about Carson’s life and her work. Folks like Linda Lear, a Carson biographer, John Elder, a literature professor at Middlebury College, and Cindy VanDover, a marine biologist will pose questions and participate in discussions. Titles to be discussed include Silent Spring, Lost Woods, and The Edge of the Sea, among other works both by and about Carson.

Sometimes it’s easy to dismiss blogs (and other social software like wikis or MySpace) as low quality or a waste of time. The Rachel Carson Online Book Club is a great reminder of the amazing things the read/write web makes possible.

Books in our library written by Carson
Books in our library written about Carson