Archive for the 'around the world' Category

Ah, birds singing of spring

Published
by
Barbara
on March 18, 2010
in around the world and info.gov
. 1 Comment

photo of indigo buntingIsn’t it lovely when the birdies sing of spring in the morning? You should listen! Turn off the cacophony of your phone, radio, TV, etc.! Now sit back, close your eyes, and just….listen. Try to filter out noise like cars. This works best early in the morning.

Can’t take the time in the morning? Listen anytime to recordings (or watch videos) at the University of Utah’s Western Soundscape Archive. You can search for your favorites (I recommend the indigo bunting or house wren). The site provides information about the bird (or animal) including scientific name, kingdom, phylum, etc. There are non-animal sounds here, too, such as thunder at the Grand Canyon National Park or alpine stream in Albion Basin, Alta, Utah. And you can also find videos with birdsong at YouTube, such as this one of a house wren:
YouTube Preview Image
If you want to learn more about birds, Andersen Library has resources, e.g.,

Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials.

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The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!

Library TV this week: March Madness

Published
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Barbara
on March 15, 2010
in around the library and around the world
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Basketball imageHey you hoop fans! The Library’s big screen TV will show March Madness games this week. I’d never suggest skipping class, but when you’re free come on over and follow the bouncing ball!

A complete bracket of the teams playing will be available. The Library will show all the games that are on while we’re open. The games also will be streamed for those who can’t make in to see them on our TV. For live streaming see: http://mmod.ncaa.com/

2010 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Schedule
Opening Round Game March 16
1st Round March 18-19
2nd Round March 20-21
NCAA Sweet 16® March 25-26
Elite Eight® March 27-28
Final Four® April 3
National Championship April 5

Where the tournament will be played
(note some games will be played in Milwaukee, Providence & Syracuse)
Opening Round: March 16
UD Arena, Dayton, OH

First and Second Rounds: Thursday and Saturday, March 18 and 20
New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, LA
Dunkin Donuts Center, Providence, RI
HP Pavilion, San Jose, CA
Spokane Memorial Arena, Spokane, WA

First and Second Rounds: Friday and Sunday, March 19 and 21
HSBC Arena, Buffalo
Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville, FL
Bradley Center, Milwaukee, WI
Ford Center, Oklahoma City, OK

Regionals: Thursday and Saturday, March 25 and 27
East: Carrier Dome, Syracuse, NY
West: Energy Solutions Arena, Salt Lake City, UT

Regionals: Friday and Sunday, March 26 and 28
Midwest: Edward Jones Dome, St. Louis, MO
South: Reliant Stadium, Houston TX

Final Four: Saturday and Monday, April 3 and 5
Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, IN

Daylight Savings

Published
by
Barbara
on March 13, 2010
in around the world and info.gov
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alarm clock imageDaylight Savings Time goes into effect on Sunday March 14th. Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead one hour, or you’ll miss the first hour the Library is open that day!

More information is available from the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Physics Laboratory. (The Division “maintains the standard for frequency and time interval for the United States, provides official time to the United States, and carries out a broad program of research and service activities in time and frequency metrology.” Who knew?!)

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The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!

Test & improve financial literacy

Published
by
Barbara
on February 12, 2010
in around the world and info.gov
. 1 Comment

How’s your financial IQ? According to the executive summary of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation’s 2009 report “Financial Capability in the United States,” respondents to a national survey demonstrated a low level of financial literacy. Here are couple of places to test yours:

  • Take the Council for Economic Education’s 20-item economic literacy test.
  • Take the 5-item portion of the FINRA survey related to financial literacy, on pages 28-29 (items M6-M10) of the survey questionnaire.

cover of WI Planning Curriculum in Personal Financial LiteracyYou can search HALCat (Andersen Library’s online catalog) for materials about personal finance, investments, or financial literacy. Some titles are intended to guide and educate you, such as The road to wealth: A comprehensive guide to your money (2nd-floor Browsing Books, HG179 .O758 2008). Others are about better educating our children, such as Financial literacy education: What do students need to know to plan for the future?: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Education Reform of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives (online or in print in the 2nd-floor Federal Documents collection, Y 4.ED 8/1:108-39) and Planning curriculum in personal financial literacy (2nd-floor Wisconsin Documents collection, ED 6/2:C 87/P 47/2009). The latter title is intended to help Wisconsin teachers implement the state’s standards for students’ personal financial literacy.

Search article databases for information also, and find articles such as “Integrating Personal Finance Concepts into the Financial Accounting Course” (Business Education Forum, Oct. 2009, vol. 64:no. 1, pp. 17-22 — available in the 1st-floor Periodicals Collection) and the Sept. 4, 2009 issue of CQ Researcher on “Financial Literacy” (which includes a discussion of whether courses that cover personal finance should be mandatory in schools).

There also are a number of web sites for improving your financial knowledge. Here are just a few:

Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials.

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The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!

Earthquakes

Published
by
Barbara
on February 11, 2010
in around the world and info.gov
. 0 Comments

Were you awake for the quake on Wednesday morning? Have you been following the news about the ongoing recovery from the January 12th earthquake (and its aftershocks) in Haiti? Are you interested in learning more about earthquakes?

Andersen Library has information, and so does the federal government.

cover of After the earth quakesSearch HALCat, Andersen Library’s online catalog, to find titles such as Apocalypse: Earthquakes, archaeology, and the wrath of God (3rd-floor Main Collection, CC77.N36 N87 2008) and After the Earth quakes: Elastic rebound on an urban planet (3rd-floor Main Collection, QE539.2.E42 H67 2006).

Search Library article databases to find articles such as “Geologists to evaluate future Haiti risks” (Nature, January 21, 2010, vol.463:no.7279, pp. 276-277) and “Effects of recent environmental changes on global seismicity and volcanism” (Earth Interactions, 2008, vol. 13:no.4, pp. 1-14).

The U.S. Geological Survey has materials on earthquakes, such as Earthquake hazard in the heart of the homeland (including a shaking-hazard map for the U.S.), and there’s even a “Did You Feel It?” web site for you to report whether you felt Wednesday’s earthquake.

Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials.

Government Printing Office logo

The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!

What’s hot, per Wikipedia

Published
by
Barbara
on January 29, 2010
in around the world
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Is there a hot topic you want to learn about fast? Or do you want to know what some current hot topics are?

Wikirage tracks the topics in Wikipedia that are being edited the most (during the last hour, 6 hours, day, 3 days, week, and month). The web site refers to it as “monitoring the hive mind through Wikipedia edits.” you can even follow it on Twitter.

Some of it makes absolute sense, if you follow the news. Topics getting a lot of editing earlier this week included “Nancy Kerrigan,” “Conan O’Brien,” “2010 Pro Bowl,” and “Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409.” But “Attachment theory”…hmmmm.

“Tell me a story” lecture series

Published
by
Barbara
on January 28, 2010
in around the world and campus connection
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The Spring 2010 Fairhaven Lecture Series “Tell Me a Story: The Narrative Tradition in the Arts and Media” will look at our understanding of the world through story. All of these free and informative lectures are on Mondays at 3:00 p.m. in the Fairhaven Community’s Fellowship Hall (435 W. Starin Road, Whitewater).

  • Feb 1: Beer, Guillotines, and Sunrises: Musical Storytelling in the Late Romantic Period (Mike Allsen, Music Dept.)
  • Feb 8: Putting the Bayeux Tapestry in its Place (Chris Henige, Art Dept.)
  • Feb 15: Competitive Speaking Examples from the UW-W Forensics Team (Jeanine Fassl, Communication Dept.)
  • Feb 22: Narrative in Music from Around the World (Alena Holmes, Music Dept.)
  • Mar 1: What Costumes Say to an Audience, Part 1 (Marshall Anderson, Theatre/Dance Dept.)
  • Mar 8: What Costumes Say to an Audience, Part 2: The Collaborative Process between Choreographer and Costumer and the Resulting Costumes (Tracey Lyons, Theatre/Dance Dept.)
  • Mar 15: “Once Upon a Time…”: The Power of Storytelling in Public Speaking (Anne Mancl, Communication Dept.)
  • Mar 29: That’s My Story, But I’m Not Sticking to It: Compositional Conversations (Robert Mertens, College of Arts and Communication)
  • Apr 5: Digital Storytelling: How Journalists Are Adapting to the Internet (James Kates, Communication Dept.)
  • Apr 12: Works on paper: Whitewater to Oaxaca, Mexico–A Cultural Narrative (Art Dept. faculty panel talking about their cultural exchange)

Videos and podcasts of previous lecture series are available:
Fall 2007 “Big Ideas at UW-Whitewater”
Spring 2008 “Our natural Wonders”
Fall 2008 “Election 2008″
Spring 2009 “My Favorite Lecture”

And if you are interested in doing research on these topics, Andersen Library may have materials! Look for books using HALCat (Harold Andersen Library’s catalog) and look for articles in article databases. Please ask a librarian for assistance.

Want to read a “Kindle” book without the Kindle?

Published
by
Susan
on December 17, 2009
in around the world
. 1 Comment

Amazon now has Kindle software for PCs available for free (and a MAC version soon). Learn more about how this software works at NewsFactor Network.

If you don’t want to purchase Kindle books, you can find some available for free. Amazon offers thousands of free books at the Kindle Store.

The iReaderReview Blog has more information on how you can get many more free books in the Kindle format.

Cramming for Finals

Published
by
kyle
on December 16, 2009
in around the world
. 0 Comments

Everyone is preparing for the end of the semester, whether it be by frantically studying or furiously grading. Both processes involve an intake of one intangible and seemingly unmeasurable thing: information. However, someone has quantified it.

The Global Information Industry Center, housed at UCSD, has come out with their latest report, stating that Americans “consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day.” The study, aptly titled How Much Information?: 2009 Report on American Consumers, goes on to offer more statistics about not only the time spent consuming information, but also about the sources of information. The researchers report that while traditional media (television and radio) still command much of our attention spans, the computer, not surprisingly, is challenging that by providing interactive exchange of information.

You can read the full report (PDF) and see for yourself. Take it all in.

Travel Safely

Published
by
Barbara
on December 14, 2009
in around the world and info.gov
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Plan to drive safely this winter! Look up weather ahead of time (another site one of my colleagues really likes is AccuWeather.com).

picture of winter driving Check road conditions ahead of time. The Wis. Dept. of Transportation’s 511wi Travel Information web site can provides a map showing driving conditions on interstates and other major highways in Wisconsin, info on work zones, links to traffic cameras and congestion maps for Madison and Milwaukee, and links to weather sites. Other states may have similar sites, e.g., Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, and Michigan (or MI Drive.

In WI, you also can dial 511 from landlines or cell phones for information.

And don’t forget to prepare for cold weather by dressing appropriately and having winter weather supplies in your car, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control.

Government Printing Office logo

The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!