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Written on: September 8th, 2009 by: in Q & A's
A: You can print out a library card application from home in English or in Spanish. Fill it out and bring it with ID to your local library. Parent/guardian signature is required for children under 17.
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Written on: September 8th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
The Army recommends a substantial reading list to warfighters preparing to deploy to Afghanistan- it has published a list which includes dozens of books and online resources selected to give service members a deep understanding of the history and culture of Afghanistan and the role and tactics of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
It’s an impressive list that anyone with an interest in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs would benefit from looking at.
The Delaware Library Catalog includes many of the core titles from the list:
The list also includes links to online resources and online retailers, such as MCDP1: Warfighting. The full pre-deployment reading list can be seen here (opens in a new window)
UPDATE: More military reading lists can be found at this link.
Written on: September 7th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
There’s an African theme to several of this week’s New York Times Book Review selections.
An Expensive Education by Nick McDonell gets a great review, and Sam Tanenhaus’ weekly podcast (opens in a new window) includes an interview with McDonell about his “unerringly entertaining book”.
Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains-“a work of the utmost skill, sympathy, and moral clarity” concerning central Africa’s ethnic genocide . You can read an extract from chapter 1 at this link (opens in a new window).
Sisters of Sinai, by Janet Soskice is a delightful recounting of the rediscovery of the earliest Christian gospels at St. Catherine’s Monastery by an irrepressible pair of Victorian widows
Moving away from Africa, the new E.L. Doctorow novel, Homer and Langley has been garnering great reviews as a “small but sweeping masterpiece”, based (typically for Doctorow) in a true story about two reclusive brothers in New York who fill their decaying mansion with the daily evidence of the madness of the world. The book is also a sensitive study of the psychopathology of compulsive hoarding.
Written on: September 4th, 2009 by: in Reviews
If you’re a ‘geek dad’ like me, this question can take the place of any rugged outdoor pursuit you may otherwise be planning this holiday weekend.
If you’re interested in the history of how labor day came to be, you can learn more at the Department of Labor’s website. The first labor day holiday was observed in 1882 by the Central Labor Union, and in 1894 the U.S. Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September a legal holiday.
Written on: September 4th, 2009 by: in Blog Posts
I had just finished reading Charles Todd’s extremely good new mystery, A Duty to the Dead, another book that I received in galley form while at the American Library Association Conference in Chicago, when I coincidentally discovered this story in publishers weekly which revealed that “Charles Todd” is actually a mother and son writing team, one of whom is a Delaware resident.
In fact, next Thursday the duo will be signing copies of the new book at the Stanton Borders bookstore, according to our very own Division of Arts’ excellent cultural events calendar, DelawareScene.
The Todd’s website includes this video introduction to the new book and its new protagonist Bess Crawford, an army nurse who bears a message from a dead patient to his family and uncovers a sinister conspiracy.
Or you can read my review, along with other library patrons opinions, which is available through the library catalog’s LibraryThing book review feature. All patron review submissions are welcome- you can find instructions at this link.
Written on: September 4th, 2009 by: in News
On September 4th, 1969, North Vietnamese radio announced the death of Ho Chi Minh. Almost 25 years had passed since Ho, taking advantage of the retreat of the defeated Japanese army and the weakness of the postwar French government, had announced the formation of an independent Vietnamese Republic. After the division of the country under the Geneva Accords which followed the defeat of the French army at Dien Bien Phu, Ho declared war on the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government. Despite Ho’s death, and despite the promise of the Paris peace talks, the North Vietnamese continued their attempt to conquer the South, and eventually prevailed in the protracted and bloody conflict.
You can read a biographical summary of Ho Chi Minh at our online Nonfiction Book Collection, with your Delaware Library Catalog library card and PIN. Ho has been a popular subject for biographers since the beginning of the conflict with America- it might be interesting to look at the differences in how Ho was perceived in different books between 1968 and 2006, as revolutionary romanticism has been supplanted by a deeper understanding and documentation of the impact of communism in South-East Asia over that time.
Written on: September 3rd, 2009 by: in Reviews
Here’s the New York Times bestseller list from Dec. 27, 1998- what’s so special about that date? Well, it’s the date that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone debuted on the list (at number 16):
Vampires were apparently less popular back then, but as for many of the rest, plus ca change….
Written on: September 3rd, 2009 by: in Q & A's
A: The book you are looking for is called Jake, Reinvented by Gordon Korman. According to Booklist “high society meets high school in this retelling of The Great Gatsby, set at the class-conscious F. Scott Fitzgerald High.”
Both the Delaware Library Catalog and New Castle County Library Catalog have copies of the book.
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Written on: September 2nd, 2009 by: in News
In an attempt to get away (statistically, at least) from Patterson/Grisham/Evanovich/Roberts- the velvet mafia of library circulation- it’s always nice to look at the weekly records of books checked out from individual libraries in the Delaware Library Catalog. It’s a refreshing reminder that Delaware’s libraries are as different as the communities they serve, and while national trends and preferences are reflected in the library media that we make available, our libraries respond to their customers and always try to ensure that everyone has a home at the library.
It’s partly because of this structure that we can see lists like this one, last week’s most popular authors at the Greenwood Library. Not a “top-ten” name among them, and you might not find them on the front table at a big-box bookstore, but local libraries make sure that every book has its reader:
There’s no chain-bookstore mentality in the Delaware Library Catalog- each library manages its own purchases through its own processes, and with its own funds- with some policy guidance from a collaborative collection development team comprised of library directors and Division of Libraries staff- and retains ownership of the books it purchases while those books are made available through any of the Kent, Sussex, or Del Tech and other libraries that make up the catalog consortium. A small collection of “floating” items is purchased by the team through funds managed by the Division, and circulates between all of the libraries and their customers- mostly books that have been selected to fill gaps in the non-fiction collection of the library catalog as a whole, or update the books and other media available in critical fields such as health and medical reference.
Written on: September 2nd, 2009 by: in Blog Posts, News
1969: On Sept. 2, two computers at University of California, Los Angeles, exchange meaningless data in first test of Arpanet, an experimental military network. The first connection between two sites – UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. – takes place on Oct. 29, though the network crashes after the first two letters of the word "logon." UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah later join.
And that’s how the internet was born! Of course, for the next twenty years of so after its birth, the internet was only used by a small and specialized group. The phenomenon of today, entwined in every work and leisure aspect of our lives, was not in the original specifications. The Delaware Library Catalog includes a number of books about Tim Berners-Lee and other architects of the web.
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