The results are in!

Last night in New York City the National Book Awards were announced. Colum McCann won the award for fiction for Let the Great World Spin, a novel set in New York City in 1974, with a large cast of characters whose lives are touched by the mysterious tightrope walker who crosses a wire suspended between the Twin Towers. The award for non-fiction was given to T. J. Stiles for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a biography of that Gilded Age entrepreneur who built a vast steamship and railroad line. There also was an award for young people's literature, won by Philip Hoose for Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, an account of the civil rights champion who at age 15 was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous refusal.

Word(s) of the Year

Dictionary publishers like to announce the "Word of the Year" about this time every fall.

This year, the Oxford English Dictionary selected "unfriend." The definition:
unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Merriam Webster selected "admonish." The Definition: 1 a : to indicate duties or obligations to b : to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner
2 : to give friendly earnest advice or encouragement to

Going Mobile

As devices for accessing online resources get smaller and smaller, we're seeing more companies creating web sites to fit these small screens. Witness the huge number of apps for iPhones, Blackberries, and the iPod Touch (the iTunes store carries somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 apps at last count).

Now some library vendors are getting into the act, most notably EBSCO. They've recently developed a mobile version of their database pages, and the STCC Library has a mobile profile so you can search these resources from your mobile device.

As always, if you have any questions, call the reference desk at 755-4549.

Conference on Career Planning for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

On November 17, 2009 STCC, in conjunction with the Autism Asperger Publishing Company, will sponsor "Developing Talents: Career Planning, Including Higher Education, for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder". Temple Grandin Ph.D., a scientist with autism, "will share her personal story of how she developed her own abilities for the workplace. She will also outline key components for educators and parents to use in helping to develop the special talents of individuals with HFA/AS." The fee for this conference ranges from $60 to $120 depending on the category of person registering. More information on the conference can be found here.

The STCC library has developed a research guide on autism and Asperger's syndrome in order to highlight resources available from the STCC library and from the Web that can help if you want to learn more about these issues.

DID YOU KNOW?????

The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners' budget for the next fiscal year has been cut by 16 percent. Library advocates fear there will be more cuts down the road. The STCC Library is a member of the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System, an agency of the MBLC.

The STCC Library gets a number of valuable services at no or little charge from or through the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System. These include, but are not limited to: access to periodical databases, delivery of materials to and from the STCC Library, and classes and programs that help STCC library employees improve their job and professional skills.

Susan McAlister, president of the Massachusetts Library Association, provided the following figures on PUBLIC library use in Massachusetts at a rally supporting libraries in Massachusetts on November 4, 2009.

On a typical day Massachusetts libraries:

• provide 278 programs for children and adults,
  
• circulate 148,000 items
• answer 13,900 reference questions
  
• and host l83,484 visitors - 23,666 of whom use public Internet computers

Representative Mark Falzone, a Democrat from Saugus spoke at the rally, where he said:

"When they learn how to think, then they can go out and make millions of dollars in those private companies that we are funding up here."

He said that 118 (out of 160) House members signed letters to the House speaker and to Gov. Deval Patrick asking to restore library funding that was cut on July 16. He said the push to preserve libraries has received great bipartisan support. "That's a great first step but we aren't going to stop there. We are going to keep fighting," said Falzone. "This is crucial funding."

Library posters have said for years: "Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."

How to Say It: Grantwriting...Write Proposals that Grantmakers WANT to Fund.

Thanks to Deborah Koch, STCC's Director of Grants, the library has its very own copy! Why? It seems our Ms. Koch is the author of this 2009 publication from Prentice Hall!

"How To Say It: Grantwriting promises to be an essential resource to grant seekers." says
Sally S. Tremaine, Director, Academic and Government Grants, Quinnipiac University

Koch "is aware of the importance of using language well," says Benjamin R. Shute, Jr., the Program Director of Democratic Practice and Corporate Secretary Emeritus of Rockefeller Brothers' Fund.

"This is the most helpful and logical guide on grantwriting that I have seen in my long career of doing biomedical research." Says Ronald Newbower, PhD, co-founder and CTO of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) and former Senior Vice President for Research at Massachusetts General Hospital.

THANK YOU, DEBORAH! We will be cataloging this shortly.

HALLOWEEN!


Credo Reference includes Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary,
which says (in part)

That Halloween was originally celebrated as a harvest festival. The Celts (pronounced KELTS) thought that this festival (SAMHAIN) was a time when the spirits of the dead roamed the earth.
Witches, goblins, black cats, and ghosts were said to roam abroad.

Irish settlers brought many of their traditional Halloween customs, such as bobbing for apples and lighting jack-o’-lanterns—to America in the 1840s.

Treats are exchanged for "safety," and the cry of "Trick or treat"warns us that, with no treat forthcoming, costumed children might play a prank!

Some people enjoy being scared. Here is a list of some of the scary links and places people go during the Halloween season.

Visit:

West Springfield:

Western Massachusetts: Halloween Activities in Western Mass

Spookyworld

Online try:

HauntedHouse.com

Haunted America Tours

Scary New England

Recession Proofing Your Career

The STCC Extended Orientation Program, in coordination with the Student Mentor Program, is hosting a fair entitled "Recession Proofing Your Career" on Wednesday, November 4. The fair will be held in Building 2 on the 7th Floor during the College Hour (12:15 PM to 1:20 PM), and is designed to encourage students to learn more about career opportunities. A number of departments will be staffing informational tables. The library will have a table, and will display books and other materials on specific careers and on the job search process. The library will also promote its online Career Exploration Guide, which has information on library resources about careers and occupations, as well as resources providing advice about searching for a job. It contains a page of links to career Web sites, including sites related to diversity in employment. Stop by the fair next Wednesday and take a look!

An A to Z of Web 2.0 Classroom Tools

From Jose Picardo's Technology and Education Box of Tricks, here's a comprehensive list of Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning. It includes the biggies, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google, but there are dozens of more obscure tools that might be useful in the classroom. Try the iPhone audio blogging site Audioboo, or Blabberize, an animation tool that makes people and animals in your photos appear as if they're talking.

(h/t Mark Milliron)

Got a bright idea for your own business?

That's an important part of starting a small business, but it helps to learn a little bit about developing a business plan, marketing, finding start-up funding, etc. How can you learn about these things? Why, at the STCC library, of course, and from Web sites that the library has located for you in our business, entrepreneurship and marketing research guide. We have listed some of the books and other resources about business in general, business plans and entrepreneurship, that you can use to increase your familiarity with these topics. We have also compiled a list of electronic databases that can be used to find articles about business, as well as financial information about particular companies or industries. In addition, much valuable information is available on the open Web, but you have to know where to find it. This research guide can help with that, as well, with links and descriptions to Web sites on small business, advertising and retailing, as well as sites where you can find local or national statistics that might be useful in your business planning.

Have you heard of Nina Sankovich?

Visit her 'blog to see her project. She is reading and reviewing a book a day for an entire year! She started on her birthday, October 28th, 2008. By rights, I should have waited till next week to 'blog this, but I thought it was fascinating!

She's read The African Queen by C. S. Forester, The Last Essays of Elia, by Charles Lamb, Eurdora Welty's A Curtain of Green, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and Jame's Lee Burke's Crusader's Cross. But why am I telling you this? Go to her website to see what else she's reading and to read her comments. Her site offers her rationale, her lists of authors, her genre lists, and, of course, her reviews! She has four boys at home, along with her husband, and still is able to get the books read and the reviews written. On October 28th (a week from this Wednesday), she'll be finished with her project.

Read what the New York Times said about Ms. Sankovich. She believes that ANYONE can read a book a week. Why not start now?

Errors of Style

APA (American Psychological Association) recently published corrections to the much examined 6th edition to the APA Style Manual. Mary Lynn Skutley from the APA Style blog addresses the changes in a recent posting. Skutley also includes a number of links useful for students and other users of the APA Style. In short, most of the errors in the APA Style Manual occurred in the sample papers, along with typos and clarifications. You can access the pdf of the corrections at http://supp.apa.org/style/pubman-reprint-corrections-for-2e.pdf. If you have any doubt about the APA formatting of your paper, feel free to contact the Reference Desk at 413-755-4549 or stop by during regular hours.