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Written on: August 11th, 2009 by: in News
Click on the links below to get lists of new items available from the Delaware Library Catalog in various formats:
Written on: August 10th, 2009 by: in News
Today’s Sunday New York Times Book Review led with an article about a couple of books related to this year’s 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, including The Road to Woodstock, by Michael Lang, one the organizers of the event. You can read lengthy excerpts here at the publisher’s website.
There’s a wealth of other Woodstock-related library material available through one of your Delaware public libraries, and the Delaware Library Catalog. One of the best ways to remind yourself of what you missed (especially if you were there) is the seminal documentary Woodstock: 3 days of peace and music– now in a 40th anniversary Director’s Cut version. Joel Makower’s Woodstock: the Oral History is also worth a look.
There was a sizeable 25th anniversary concert in 1994- You can read a story about it in the August 1994 issue of Billboard. My recollection of it was that there were many complaints of it being muddy, corporate, and selfishly hedonistic. At the time, I was at the free alternative 25th anniversary concert, because my wife and I had been in upstate NY for her grandmother’s funeral, and thought that we might as well attend- we thought better of it after tramping 5 miles in the mud through pitch dark back roads and winding up in a muddy field with the rain pouring down, no tent, listening to Arlo Guthrie! My Mother-in-law’s dog, which we were taking back home with us, was never quite the same after that evening. Just like the original event, however, everyone in attendance was friendly, helpful, and beautiful.
Written on: August 8th, 2009 by: in News
Community Colleges are “no longer America’s best-kept secret”, according to Delaware’s own Jill Biden in this essay at Forbes.com.
Dr. Biden taught for 16 years in our own Delaware Technical and Community College, and is well qualified to talk about the tremendous advantages these institutions have in their flexibility, ability to accommodate the needs of adult learners, and relative inexpensiveness compared to other institutions of higher learning.
If you’re a Delaware Library Catalog user, you’re already receiving services from the four campus libraries of DTCC- because they are members of the consortium, their holdings are almost all available to all public library users in Kent and Sussex Counties. Because of the specialization that is inherent to college libraries, this means that on certain subjects- particularly health topics and the social sciences, public library patrons have access to a quality and depth of collection that would not typically be available at a normal public library. Patron’s don’t have to go through a complicated inter-library loan process for these titles- they can be found in the online catalog and holds can be placed for delivery to the user’s local library.
Written on: August 8th, 2009 by: in Q & A's
Yes!
1. Go to the Delaware Library Catalog
2. Enter your User ID (library card number) and P.I.N. in the upper right, then click “Login For More Features”
3. Now you are looking at your library account. To renew the items you have checked out, click on “Renew Items” (this is located in the green bar – “renew items” is on the last line)
4. Select the items you wish to renew and click “Renew Selected Items”
5. That’s it – you’re done!
Please be aware that not all items are able to be renewed. Please contact your local library if you need assistance.
Thanks for using Ask a Librarian Delaware! Have a question? Ask us!
Written on: August 7th, 2009 by: in Q & A's
A: Yes! We contacted the State of Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), and Delaware homeowners are able to legally burn:
For complete guidelines, including restrictions, check DNREC’s Citizen’s Guide to Open Burning (También disponible en español).
For more information on open burning, check DNREC’s Division of Air & Waste Management.
Thanks for using Ask a Librarian Delaware. Have a question? Ask us!
Written on: August 7th, 2009 by: in News
Some number-crunching for the weekend- FY2009 ran from July 2008 to June 2009, and we saw good increases in key indicators for the us of the Kent and Sussex County public libraries as well as the Delaware Techs and other academic members of the Delaware Library Catalog consortium:
| FY 2009 Circulation | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2008 | FY 2009 | % of Change | |
| Total Circ | 1,920,397 | 2,067,368 | 7.65 |
| Checkouts | 1,542,397 | 1,625,571 | 5.39 |
| Checkout Reserves | 6,608 | 7,037 | 6.5 |
| Staff Renewals | 220,308 | 241,268 | 9.5 |
| Online Renewals | 104,963 | 135,443 | 29 |
| Use Item* | 46,121 | 58,049 | 25 |
*Use Item refers to items that are tracked as being used by patrons within the library but are not checked out.
| Top 5 Item Types Circulated | ||
|---|---|---|
| Item Type | Total Circ | % of Circulation |
| Book | 1,228,538 | 59.4 |
| DVD | 384,718 | 18.6 |
| Paperback | 119,022 | 5.75 |
| CD Book | 70,034 | 3.38 |
| Video | 42505 | 2.05 |
| Top 5 Home Locations Circulated | ||
|---|---|---|
| Home Location | Total Circ | % of Circulation |
| DVD | 315,174 | 15.25 |
| Fiction | 311,725 | 15 |
| Nonfiction | 200,357 | 9.7 |
| Juvenile Easy | 189,073 | 9.14 |
| Juvenile Fiction | 92,692 | 4.5 |
Note- there are a lot of item types and home locations in addition to the ones listed above, which is why the reports don’t total 100%
You can see other stats for FY09 as they are added and link to reports for previous years here.
Written on: August 7th, 2009 by: in News
Written on: August 6th, 2009 by: in Learning Journeys
I took the afternoon off today to visit the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia- one of the best museums in the area, in my opinion. I have a friend there who arranged for ‘back stage passes’ for my daughter to see some Lewis and Clark Expedition-related items in their collection, since she has been interested in this voyage since doing a third grade reading assignment on it- Seaman: the dog who explored the West with Lewis and Clark– I guess that she’s starting her learning journey early! We’re fortunate to live in an area that has such a wealth of cultural institutions covering every aspect of human ingenuity and interest- this gives us the ability to take the topics that interest us in our reading and create incredibly memorable, tangible experiences around them. I think that this sort of process is important in how kids find their creative path and perhaps their lifelong interests- becoming interested in a subject or observation, reading about it, having that interest manifested in some concrete way that drives them to find out, talk about, or read more about it.
We were able to see some amazing things in the Academy’s library and its botany collection- Dr. Alina Friere-Fierro showed us the Lewis and Clark Herbarium (part of which shown in the picture), which consists of the plant specimens collected by the expedition as it passed from St. Louis to Oregon. Part of the reason for the expedition was to document the range of plant and animal life in the newest regions of the U.S., so while outfitting the expedition in Philadelphia, Lewis took time to learn how to mount and preserve plant specimens, and upon their return the noted European botanist Frederick Pursh examined the collection and created the first survey of American plant life, Flora Americae Septentrionalis. Scientists continue to use the herbarium today- Dr. Friere-Fierro explained how one recent researcher measured the levels of carbon dioxide in some of the samples as part of an investigation into global warming. In the library, we were able to see a map of the expedition, still bound in the original 1814 edition of the History of the Expedition, as well as some collections of minerals collected by members of the expedition. The map had been another thing that had originally piqued Lucy’s interest, after seeing another copy appraised at $50,000 on Antiques Roadshow!
Meriwether Lewis wrote an account of the expedition, which has been republished either in its entirety or in any number of abridged or edited versions, and there are a number of great books about the expedition, including Stephen Ambrose’s very popular Undaunted Courage, and I Should be Extremely Happy in Your Company, a fictionalized account of the expedition as seen through the eyes of Sacagawea.
I’ll have to start planning another Philadelphia trip, this time to the American Philosophical Association- the actual journals from the expedition are currently on display there. We won’t be able to get quite as close to the items as we did today, but it will be amazing to see them.
Written on: August 5th, 2009 by: in Q & A's
A: According to Heloise, rubbing a small amount of coffee grounds or toothpaste over your hands or rinsing with vinegar should remove odors after peeling onions, chopping garlic, or handling fish. Other options include rubbing your hands with a salt/dishwashing liquid mix, rinsing with lemon juice, or using a lemon-scented or special de-fishing soap.
For more household hints, check out 1,001 Old-Time Household Hints, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Green Cleaning, and, Homemade: How to Make Hundreds of Everyday Products Fast, Fresh, and More Naturally.
Thanks for using Ask a Librarian Delaware! Have a question? Ask us!
Written on: August 5th, 2009 by: in News
Vampires and Michael Jackson remain topics of great interest. Click on the image to see the full-size version on the Wordle.net site.
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