Pardon a little dust and noise…

image of construction hardhatAndersen Library is open for business, but there is some work being done on 2nd floor. So at times it may be a bit noisy, and perhaps a bit messy near where the work is being done. One of the two sets of restrooms is being remodeled. When the work is done, these restrooms will be larger and accessible. There is another set of restrooms available on 2nd floor, on the hallway where the elevator is located. There also is another restroom (accessible) outside the Library at the top of the stairs.

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Library hours for MLK Day weekend; MLK Day

Andersen Library will be closed Sat. Jan. 14-Mon. Jan. 16 (Winterim ends on Jan. 13th, and it’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday the 16th).

Spring Semester hours will start on Tues., Jan. 17th, at 7:30 a.m.

Please remember that even when the Library is closed, you can:

  • Search the article databases (login when prompted with your campus Net-ID, same as for your campus email or D2L),
  • Search the HALCAT Library Catalog and use links to online titles, including ereserves for classes,
  • Renew checked-out books, DVDs, etc. (once) through your Personal Record (unless you’ve already used up your allowed renewals),
  • Consult online guides for help, including citation guides for APA, MLA, and Turabian format, and class assignment guides, and
  • Ask a librarian for help using email or chat (UWW librarians respond to the emails when the Library is open, but chat is covered 24/7 by non-UWW staff).

You can learn more about the MLK Day holiday online from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Joanne Bland will speak at UWW’s 2012 Martin Luther King Commemorative Event on Wed., Jan. 25 at 3:30 p.m. in the UC Hamilton Center. Joanne Bland is co-founder and former director of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, Alabama. She began her civil rights activism in 1961 as an eight-year-old attending a freedom and voters’ rights organizing meeting presided over by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Grand Canyon

On January 11, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt made more then 800,000 acres of the the Grand Canyon area a national monument. The History Channel quotes him, “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is,” he declared. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.” The Grand Canyon National Park Act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

screenshot of NPS Grand Canyon web page The National Park Service, created in 1916 and and responsible for administering the Park, provides information about the Grand Canyon online, including some stunning photos, audio files of natural sounds (like a bugling elk and birds at sunrise), podcasts, information about its history and culture, and videos. There are even a couple of webcams.

The Library of Congress provides information online about the Grand Canyon, including photographs, a 1919 Rand McNally map, and a “vivid description of the Grand Canyon” written by Charles Dudley Warner about his visit in 1890.

Andersen Library has more information, if you’re interested.

Search HALcat (Harold Andersen Library’s catalog) to find titles such as The wilderness warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the crusade for America (3rd-floor Main Collection, E757 .B856 2009), Down the great unknown: John Wesley Powell’s 1869 journey of discovery and tragedy through the Grand Canyon (3rd-floor Main Collection, F788 .D65 2001), and A place called Grand Canyon: Contested geographies (3rd-floor Main Collection, GF504.A6 M67 1996).

Search article databases to find articles such as “The California River and its role in carving Grand Canyon” (Geological Society Of America Bulletin, July 1, 2011, vol.123:no.7/8, pp.1288-1316), “Grand Canyon: Bigger than life” (National Parks, Spring 2008, vol.82:no.2, pp.1-3), and “The canyon dwellers” (American West, 1967, vol.4:no.2, p.22- , available in Andersen Library’s 1st-floor print Periodicals Collection).

Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials.

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Librarians’ favorite books

If you’re looking for some recommended books to fill your limited time for unrequired reading, how about these? Librarians were invited to contribute to Librarians’ Best Books of 2011 by Library Journal. The list includes both fiction and nonfiction:

  • The art of fielding by Chad Harbach (UB)
  • The orchard: A memoir by Theresa Weir (available at the Irvin L. Young Memorial Library, Whitewater’s public library)
  • Ready player one by Ernest Cline (UB)
  • The long goodbye by Meghan O’Rourke (UB)
  • A discovery of witches by Deborah Harkness (2nd-floor Browsing Books, PS3608.A7436 D57 2011)
  • Claire DeWitt and the city of the dead by Sara Gran (UB)
  • Killing the cranes: A reporter’s journey through three decades of war in Afghanistan by Edward Girardet
  • The tiger’s wife by Téa Obreht (3rd-floor Main Collection, PS3615.B73 T54 2011)
  • The call by Yannick Murphy (UB)
  • The restorer by Amanda Stevens
  • The swerve: How the world became modern by Stephen Greenblatt (3rd-floor Main Collection, PA6484 .G69 2011)

Call numbers are provided above for those titles available from Andersen Library. UWW students and staff may request those marked (UB) above from other UW libraries by using the free Universal Borrowing service. Those titles not available from any UW campus library might be available from area public libraries, or UWW students and staff could request them by using the interlibrary loan service (students pay $1 per request).

Enjoy!

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New Stuff Tuesday – January 3

Getting Wasted

Getting Wasted
Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party Too Hard
by Thomas Vander Ven
HV5135 .V36 2011
New Arrivals, 2nd floor

Happy New Year! 2011 has come to a close, and I’m sure that we’re all ready to take 2012 by storm, right? As long as you’re not still recovering from all of the ‘fun’ that you had on New Year’s Eve, that is. The week’s featured title involves students’ weekend [and sometimes weekday] habits with alcohol.

Vander Ven, sociology professor at Ohio University, takes on the widespread notion that college and drinking are synonymous. He confesses in his preface that it never occurred to him to actually research it though. However, after investigating the issue, he contends that colleges and universities provide enough of a safe zone from the real world for students to use drinking to excess as a social ritual or coping mechanism. Structuring the book like a night out, the author explores the process of intoxication and its effect on students and groups, when things go wrong, and the post-drinking haze. Vander Ven’s research provides a welcome addition to the growing literature on the drinking culture in higher education, making it an excellent starting point on alcohol use and abuse by college students.

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New Stuff Tuesday – December 27

Fools Rule

Fools Rule
Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change
by William Marsden
QC903 .M37 2011
New Arrivals, 2nd floor

I just spent the last five days driving over a thousand miles around the great states of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, all in the name of the holidays. The best part: I didn’t have to worry about weather being a factor at any point in the trip. In fact, as most people lamented [or cheered] on Facebook, there was no white Christmas. Because of this, I couldn’t pass up the book with the cover image of a plastic snowman in the middle of a dusty field.

Marsden, an investigative journalist for the Gazette in Montréal, sets his sights on the international efforts, or lack of efforts, for cooperation on the topic of climate change. He goes well beyond the shallow media glances at the gatherings of nations to figure out just why the world’s leaders refuse to support environmental reform. The author reviews the apocalyptic studies that scientists reference in their urging politicians to act sooner rather than later. Marsden then traces the money that flows from outside interests to the pockets of the lawmakers. This isn’t Marsden’s first environmental exposé, as he won an award from his Stupid To the Last Drop, which points the finger at Alberta’s destructive oil industry in Canada.

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Spotify your playlists

Have you tried Spotify? You can download it free, login with your FaceBook login, and then search for about a gazillion music tracks to play. You can create playlists to keep the tracks for reuse. Amazing. If you choose, your playlists and tracks can be shared with your friends. Why, the day I wrote this blog I saw that one of my coworkers had listened to a Bobby Sherman track “Julie, Do Ya Love Me?” and “Puppy Love” by Donny Osmond (really???). Now, if she wanted to stop me from seeing what she’s got playing right now, she could go to the File menu and click “Private Session.”

There’s a mobile version too, but not free (except for a 48-hour trial).

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Friday fun: Vocabulary Quiz

As if you haven’t taken enough tests! But this one is for fun. It’s just a 10-question quiz to see how good your vocabulary is, compare your score to others in your age group, and maybe learn some new words.

Take the Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Quiz.

If you like word games, this site also links to several others, including a “Name That Thing” visual vocab quiz.

And if you’d like to increase your vocabulary in 2012, but Santa doesn’t give you one of those calendars that give you a word per day, try the Oxford English Dictionary‘s “word of the day!” You can sign up for an RSS feed so you don’t have to remember to go to the site. Also on the database web site you can learn “recently published” definitions so you can keep up with the English language. On December 21st, for example, the word of the day was greenhew. On the same day the recently published terms included earworm.

earworm OED entry

    What’s an earworm?

  • an earwig
  • a counsellor who secretly advises a monarch
  • a catchy tune or piece of music
  • all of the above

If you said all of the above, you’re right! The best part is that the OED provides examples of usage and dates it. These examples can be interesting and even entertaining. OED’s examples of using earworm include these two:

“2003 Windsor Star (Ont.) (Nexis) 23 Oct. b9 He surveyed about 500 students, faculty and staff on campus asking about the type, frequency and duration of earworms and possible causes and cures. Among the songs respondents picked as most likely to become stuck were: The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Who Let the Dogs Out.

2011 Atlantic Monthly Apr. 104/2 The best advice I’ve heard for making earworms go away is to just stop being irritated by them, and come to peace with the fact that you’re humming Britney Spears.”

Is anyone else humming one of those songs from the 2003 example? Or maybe something from Britney? Enjoy.

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Break & Winterim Library Hours

Library hours during the break (Dec. 23-27) are:
Fri Dec 23: 8am-4:30pm, CLOSED Sat Dec 24-Mon Dec 26, and Tues Dec 27: 8am-4:30pm

Winterim starts on Wed Dec 28, when the Library hours will be:
Mon-Wed: 7am-6pm, Thurs-Fri 7am-4:30pm, Sat: CLOSED, Sun: noon-8pm

However, because of New Year’s Day, the Library will be CLOSED on Sat Dec 31-Mon Jan 2.

Please plan ahead! Remember that even when the physical Library is closed, you can:

  • Search the article databases (login when prompted with your campus Net-ID, same as for your campus email or D2L),
  • Search the HALCAT Library Catalog and use links to online titles, including ereserves for classes,
  • Renew checked-out books, DVDs, etc. (once) through your Personal Record,
  • Consult online guides for help, including citation guides for APA, MLA, and Turabian format, and class assignment guides, and
  • Ask a librarian for help using email or chat (UWW librarians respond to the emails when the Library is open, but chat is covered 24/7 by non-UWW staff).
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Travel Safely

Plan to drive safely this winter! Look up weather ahead of time (another site 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

Andersen Library is a federal and Wisconsin depository library with many federal and state government 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 Andersen Library!

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