The University Library Blog

on August 22, 2008

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Oh, wait, you wouldn’t know what that’s like (unless you’ve traveled to Europe).

Beloit College has released their annual Mindset List, which examines the worldviews of incoming freshmen. Just in case math isn’t your forte, the majority of students beginning college this year were born late 1990 or early 1991. According to the list, these kids have been deprived of the raw umber crayon and Benefit Cereal with psyllium but have always had global positioning systems and been looking for Carmen Sandiego.

The list provides insight into what our new fresh faces have under their thinking caps, but it also might make you feel old - just FYI.

International Year of Languages

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on August 21, 2008

in around the world, info.gov and online @ the library

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“On average, a language ceases to be spoken every two weeks.”

That’s what the web page for the UN’s International Year of Languages (2008) says. UNESCO suggests that language policies enable people in linguistic communities to use their first languages as much as possible, including in education, while also learning a national or regional language and an international language. At the same time, dominant-language speakers should be urged to master another national or regional language and one or two international languages.

hello in different languages UWW offers language classes (Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic), and language study is good preparation for life in a global society, promotes intercultural understanding, and comes in very handy during study abroad too! The University Library has materials that can help, including dictionaries (e.g., Kodansha’s romanized Japanese-English dictionary, 2nd-floor Reference Collection PL679 .V36 1993, and Oxford Reference Online’s bilingual dictionaries), books, and CDs for language practice (e.g., Conversational Japanese, 1st-floor Media Center, Oversize CDs PL535.5 .C66 2005).

For a partial listing of some recently-acquired CDs, search the Library Catalog for the keyword pimsleur.
For a broader listing of resources search for the keywords “japanese language” and (study or dictionary), substituting the language of your choice in place of japanese. This will list language practice CDs, videos, teaching methods books, K-12 language textbooks, foreign language dictionaries and grammar books, etc.
The 1st-floor Periodicals Collection includes some non-English subscriptions, such as Stern Magazine and Die Zeit (German), World Journal (Chinese), and Le Monde (French). Additional major non-English publications from around the world are available through the LexisNexis Academic database.

Of course, for quick and dirty help with translation of text there are translation sites online such as Yahoo! Babel Fish.

But the issue of language preservation/endangerment is much bigger than asking university students to study another language. Language transmits and embodies culture. Loss of linguistic diversity leads to a loss of cultural diversity. For more information see The Rosetta Project, which is “building a publicly accessible online archive of ALL documented human languages,” a National Science Foundation special report on Endangered Languages, and the web site of the Indigenous Language Institute.

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!

View documentaries on the web

Published

on August 14, 2008

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SnagFilms offers free viewing of documentaries.

You can look for specific titles or browse by topics. There’s everything under the sun here, from A Pug’s Life to Super Size Me (you might remember that one, where the guy eats a fast food diet for a month?).

Witches of Whitewater

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCWLed98QFM

on August 8, 2008

in around the library, around the world and campus connection

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One of our favorite questions here at the Reference Desk is, “Is it true that there’s a book in the library that will make you go crazy?” Since we’re all pretty sane around here, that would mean that we haven’t seen the book ourselves.

This question is certainly going to come up a lot more in the future thanks a movie currently in development, aptly titled The Witches of Whitewater. The topic is the fascination to those in the surrounding area, and the movie caught the attention of NBC 15 in Madison. They even interviewed our very own Karen Weston, University Archivist, about the town’s paranormal connections.

Whitewater’s “Witches” Subject of Movie Trailer - NBC 15

Just in case you haven’t seen the trailer…

Olympic fever?

Published

on August 8, 2008

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Yes, it’s time for the summer Olympics, being held in Beijing, People’s Republic of China, on August 8-24, starting with the opening ceremony (on television Friday evening).

swimmer clip art fencing clip art Visit the International Olympic Committee’s official web site, which lists the summer events and provides details about the medals and other trappings of the games, the history and goals of the Olympic Movement, and information about athletes and future Olympic sites.

Visit the official site of the 2008 Beijing Olympics for the 2008 competition schedule.

You can read more about the Olympics in Library resources.

For example, do a subject keyword search in the Library Catalog for olympics and find titles such as Olympic turnaround: how the Olympic Games stepped back from the brink of extinction to become the world’s best known brand (3rd-Floor Main Collection, GV721.5 .P34 2006) and A picture history of the Olympics (3rd-Floor Main Oversize, GV721.5 .C63 1972). You can also find materials on specific events, such as fencing. Or, search for articles on the 2008 Olympics in databases such as ProQuest Newspapers (a possible search is olympics and beijing).

Quotes Gone Wrong

Published

on August 1, 2008

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One of the main reasons of citing original authors is to give credit where credit is due. Here’s another one: If you’re going to use a famous quote in public, make sure that you get it right. Instead of being called out for plagiarism, you’ll be up for public humiliation.

Just ask the vandals in Pittsburgh that decided to deface the Carnegie Library with a quote from what they thought was from J. Alfred Prufrock. In reality, they should have attributed T.S. Eliot and his poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

I think that Suzanne Thinnes, the library spokesperson, has the best comeback - “They should come into the library and use our services.”

source: Graffiti Vandal Tags Carnegie Library, Gets Quote Wrong, WTAE, Pittsburgh

Economy Got You Down?

Published

on July 23, 2008

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I hate to sound like a downer, but with all of the news reports about the lackluster economy, it’s hard not to think about the difficult times upon us. On the other hand, Consumerist shared a reader’s comments about seven ways your public library can help you during a bad economy - and it’s not just about summer reading. As a library of a public university, we serve not only the faculty, staff and students of UW-Whitewater, but also community members from Whitewater and the surrounding area.

Of course, we’re not the only library in town. You can also walk about six blocks east of the University Library to the Irvin L. Young Public Library on Center Street.

International Year of the Potato

Published

on July 11, 2008

in around the world, info.gov and tips for research

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potatoes Did you know that 2008 is the International Year of the Potato? Yup, thank the United Nations and eat a spud today.

Why?!

The International Year of the Potato (IYP) “will raise awareness of the importance of the potato - and of agriculture in general - in addressing issues of global concern, including hunger, poverty and threats to the environment. ”

This seems to be asking a lot of the humble potato, but promoting its production and consumption is a step toward fulfilling the UN’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 (Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger), while ensuring environmental stability (MDG7). For an explanation of the potato’s importance to these goals (nutritional benefits & sustainability as a crop), statistics, etc., see Buried treasure (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) and the IYP official web site:

“The potato is already an integral part of the global food system. It is the world’s number one non-grain food commodity, with production reaching a record 320 million tonnes in 2007. Potato consumption is expanding strongly in developing countries, which now account for more than half of the global harvest and where the potato’s ease of cultivation and high energy content have made it a valuable cash crop for millions of farmers.

At the same time, the potato – unlike major cereals – is not a globally traded commodity. Only a fraction of total production enters foreign trade, and potato prices are determined usually by local production costs, not the vagaries of international markets. It is, therefore, a highly recommended food security crop that can help low-income farmers and vulnerable consumers ride out current turmoil in world food supply and demand.“

The University Library has resources for more info, maybe for a research paper.

Search the Library Catalog for potato? and find titles such as Seeds for the future: the impact of genetically modified crops on the environment (3rd-floor Main Collection, SB123.57 .T494 2007) that discusses genetic engineering to improve the virus resistance of potatoes. Search for “food supply” to get books and government documents such as World hunger (Main Collection HC79.F3 W65 2007)
Search Library databases such as Academic Search Premier to find articles such as “Spud we like” in The Economist (March 1st, 2008 issue), which reports on the economic importance of the potato as a food crop (providing more calories, more quickly, while using less land and in a wider range of climates than any other plant), and “Global food security under climate change” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 12/11/2007, v.104 ,no.50).
You can also look for more on the Millennium Development Goals, finding such sources as the December 2007 issue of UN Chronicle (also available in the Library’s 1st-floor current periodicals collection) “The MDGs: Are we on track?”
Websites may be helpful also, such as UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Food Summit, 1996, which called for cutting the number of the world’s undernourished people in half by 2015. FAO also has web pages monitoring progress toward this hunger reduction goal as well as the MDGs, and a 2006 report, The state of food insecurity in the world.

potatoes

YouTube, Privacy, & Copyright

Published

on July 7, 2008

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embedded video image Ever post a video to YouTube? Ever embed a YouTube video in your blog or webpage? Have you ever viewed a YouTube video that may have come from a movie or television show protected under copyright?

Viacom, owner of movie studio Paramount and MTV Networks, has been pursuing a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube and its parent, Google, since March 2007. An issue is whether YouTube is protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

On July 1st 2008, Judge Louis Stanton (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York) ordered Google to release data including copies of all videos that were once available for public viewing on YouTube.com but later removed and the “logging” database that contains information about each instance when a video is watched, either through YouTube or through embedding on another site. The logging database includes data such as usernames of YouTube viewers and users’ computer IP addresses.

UWW students and staff can read this latest decision in the legal research database LexisNexis Academic (search for 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50614).

Further information can be found in magazine, law review, and newspaper articles. For example, search ProQuest Newsstand Complete to find related New York Times articles such as “Google Told To Turn Over User Data Of YouTube” in the (July 4th, p.C1) and “Google Takes Step on Video Copyrights” (Oct 16, 2007, p.C7).

Celebrate July 4th

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