Did you miss President Obama’s State of the Union Address Tuesday night? It’s not too late!
A transcript of the President’s prepared speech is available via National Public Radio. You can listen to it from the NPR site too. Or, listen and watch video from the White House site.
Commentary is widely available, such as the Washington Post‘s fact checking. Please ask a librarian if you’d like assistance with finding materials.
The Library is conducting a trial of the Academic Video Online: Premium streaming film database from Alexander Street Press through February 28, 2014. Please try it out and send us your feedback by February 28, 2014.
We are considering whether this product can adequately replace our current Films on Demand subscription. The Films on Demand subscription will continue through January 1, 2015, regardless of the decision.
Some of the reasons we are considering this switch:
Features that both streaming products offer:
What we need from faculty and instructors:
What we need from students:
Please send us your feedback by February 28, 2014 – thanks!
The World Bank‘s annual Little Green Data Book is an interesting source of data related to the world environment. The 2014 edition will appear in June, but of course the 2013 edition is available now to learn, for example, what percentage of the population in a country has access to “improved water source” or “improved sanitation.” You also can see what percentage of a country’s land area is agricultural or forested, how many threatened species live in a country, energy use per capita, how fast the size of the urban population is changing, acute respiratory infection prevalence (% of children under five) and diarrhea prevalence (% of children under five), and more. This information is also provided at the regional and world levels; and for low-, middle-, and high-income economies (according to countries’ gross national income per capita).
Older editions of The Little Green Data Book, 2005-2012, are available online too at http://data.worldbank.org/products/data-books/little-data-book/little-green-data-book.
If you need other data for research you are doing, please ask a librarian for assistance.
Sharks:
Ancient Predators in a Modern Sea
by Salvador Jorgensen
QL638.9 .J67 2013
New Arrivals, 2nd floor
I think everyone in the United States has seen Anthony C. Ferrante’s movie Sharknado by now, or at least everyone I know has done so. I have no desire to see it, as it seems pretty scary. (I’m a horror wimp!) Real sharks, however, I find fascinating…especially on the pages of a book. Not so much off a beach at which I’m swimming.
Sharks are prehistoric fish that range from the tiny to the massive and live in primarily salty environs, although some live in freshwater too. One of the freakiest looking is the frilled shark (p. 59), which is the most primitive living shark, and some of the cutest are bamboo sharks (pp. 124 and 127). Don’t worry though, there’s plenty of coverage of the well-known great white and whale sharks as well.
I’ll state right from the start that Sharks is not a weighty tome of the sort it will take you weeks to slog through, although it is well referenced and chock full of great information. It’s mostly a picture book with a few paragraphs associated with each photograph. These images are amazing and the text extremely informative. Topics range from reproductive and mating strategies to predatory strategies and behaviors. There is even a phylogeny chart for those of you interested in evolutionary classification.
To find more books on sharks search “Everything” in Research@UWW for “sharks” and then limit to both the “books” resource type and the “sharks” subject on the left side.
Tell the truth: Did you watch/listen to Governor Walker’s State of the State Address on January 22nd?? I’ll confess that I only saw part of it. Well, it’s not too late!
You can listen to the 2014 State of the State Address online, or stream the video via Wisconsin Public Television.
A transcript is available via Fox6 news (Milwaukee).
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average household debt in 2011 was $70,000. You could buy an iPad Air for yourself and 139 friends with that kind of money! Money management does not come easily to most people, and unexpected expenses seem to appear every month. You may consider debt to be an unfortunate reality, but you can increase your wealth by becoming financially literate and making wise decisions with your money.
Investopedia.com (a great resource for deciphering business jargon) defines financial literacy as “the possession of knowledge and understanding of financial matters… mainly used in connection with personal finance matters.” This may not sound terribly exciting to many non-business majors, but you’re going to be thinking about personal finance for the rest of your life. If you don’t believe me, consider the following: You’ll have to figure out how to pay off your student loans. You’ll need to determine if and how you should use a credit card. You might decide to invest in the stock market. You’ll have to make judgment calls about insurance and retirement. These are all financial decisions, and you need to have enough information to make the best choice in each situation.
This semester, we’ll discuss a variety of personal finance topics and provide resources to ease your money-management headaches. We’ll talk about:
Below are a just a few resources to get you on the right track to becoming a responsible manager of your money. Check back each week for more tips on improving your financial status!
eBooks available through Andersen Library
Websites
Career and Leadership Development is again holding Resume Doctor sessions in Andersen Library! Stop by with your resume to have it professionally reviewed! No appointments necessary. Located on the second floor of Andersen Library near the circulation desk.
Wed., January 29 1-4pm
Thur., Jan 30 9:00am-Noon
Tue, Feb 4 1-4pm
Visit Career and Leadership development’s blog for some helpful career tips! https://blogs.uww.edu/career/tag/resume-dr/
Do you collect cookbooks? Are you looking for cookbooks with new recipes, perhaps using a certain ingredient? Well, the Cookbook Finder might be a real find for you!
This experimental application was developed by OCLC. OCLC provides us with WorldCat, which holds library catalog records from libraries all over the world. The Cookbook Finder lets you search library catalog records for cookbooks by authors, titles, ingredients or methods!
I had to try this out, even though I’m pretty much an anti-cook (ask anyone who knows me). But that pretty much makes searching by methods too much of a stretch for me.
I’ve read a lot lately about quinoa (What’s quinoa?) , so I searched for that and clicked on the first of the cookbooks retrieved: Deliciously g-free: Food so flavorful they’ll never believe it’s gluten-free. I scrolled down to the see a copy held at 939 libraries and clicked the title to find that there are copies at the public libraries in Whitewater, Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, Janesville, and others nearby! There also appears to be a link to Google Books, because I could click “Preview this item” under the image of the book’s cover and search within the book’s content (even though not all content can be viewed online).
Then I searched for tofu (What’s tofu?), since I recently watched an episode of the Jazzy Vegetarian on PBS and she seems to be a huge tofu fan, and selected one of the titles: Veganomicon: The ultimate vegan cookbook. I scrolled down and clicked the copy held at 867 libraries and this, too, is at Whitewater’s public library and other nearby libraries.
If you are interested in identifying cookbooks and possibly finding them in libraries near you, try this yourself! Or, if you want to see the cookbooks available in Andersen Library, search HALCat for cookbooks, and you’ll find titles like Weeknight wonders: Delicious healthy dishes in 30 minutes or less.
Enjoy.
Andersen Library’s Spring Semester hours are the same as the Fall Semester hours, except that Saturday hours have been shifted to open and close one hour later:
The Circulation Desk closes 15 minutes before the Library closes, which means that Circulation services, such as checking out materials, are not available in the last 15 minutes. In addition, the Library entrance doors are locked 15 minutes before the Library closes. This allows Circulation staff members to perform tasks related to getting the Library closed.
Exceptions to the Library’s semester hours, such as for Spring Break, are posted online at http://library.uww.edu/hours#spring_excepts.
Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong:
A Guide to Life Liberated from Anxiety
by Kelly Wilson and Troy Dufrene
BF575.A6 W55 2010
New Arrivals, 2nd floor
Welcome back to Spring Semster 2014! Feeling anxious yet? If not, great! If you are, you certainly are not alone. Anxiety affects most of us from time to time. The authors of this book, a professor of psychology and a science writer, do not try to tell readers to overcome their anxiety or to make it go away. They are focused on providing readers with a way to think about anxiety and more peacefully co-exist with anxious thoughts and feelings, what the authors call “learn(ing) to live a little freer each day.”
Thought-provoking and satisfying, this book is a great companion for anyone living with daily worries and looking for ways to breathe a little easier.
