Preschool and Elementary School Online Learning for Children

Last week while visiting my grandchildren I spent time walking backwards, chasing downhill and up, reading stories and, yes, watching shows on the Nickelodeon TV channel. I was surprised to see 'ABC Mouse' advertised during a show about humanoid monster trucks that my three year old grandson loves. "Wait!" I felt like saying, "don't buy that stuff, parents, get it free from your local library."

Whether you are reading this from your cozy spot in Berkeley Heights, NJ or have stumbled upon this blog post by Googling and are somewhere else in the world, here is what librarians want you to know:

Your library has so many resources available for free and librarians hate for you to spend money on something we can teach you how to use without getting out your charge card. 

Libraries have done a pretty good job letting people know that we have books. Most people realize that libraries also have DVD's and books on CD. Many people realize libraries have downloadable e-books for free. Students may know that we have databases that can be used for researching term papers. But libraries also offer streaming and downloadable resources for children. So if your child or grandchild really, really NEEDS to be entertained so you can cook that Mac 'n' Cheese in peace, you can turn on a fun and educational library resource and know that the child will not be bombarded by commercials or unsuitable content while you boil up that orange goop or even tackle something more challenging.

 

Several online educational resources for children including ‘ABC Mouse’ are offered free from the Berkeley Heights Public Library.

Go to our Database links at http://www.bhplnj.org/databases-for-children/ to find ‘ABC Mouse.’ Sign up for a free account and start learning!  Preschool to elementary age children will learn pre-reading and reading skills through fun online games. Other children’s online resources include:

‘BookFlix’: Animated children’s books and read-alongs. 

‘Hoopla Kids’: Movies, TV programs, music and e-books that can be viewed on your computer, tablet or mobile device. Use the Hoopla Kids Mode by toggling to ‘Kids’ in your Hoopla app settings. Hoopla offers content for adults and children. Parents can toggle from adult mode to children’s mode in the app. Each BHPL card holder can view, stream or download up to eight free Hoopla items per month. One item may contain a TV series or musical album but that only counts as one item. Lending periods vary by title and format.

‘TumbleBooks’: animated storybooks that also work on iPads. Children will be entertained and learn while using ‘Tumblebooks’ and the other library resources for children. There are no fees and no advertisements! If you watch Nickelodeon TV and see ‘ABC Mouse’ and other resources advertised, don’t buy them before checking out the free access that your local library provides. 

 I wrote about these online resources in our monthly email newsletter, The Buzz, which can be found on the library website here. You can read the Buzz online or you can have a link to it emailed to you monthly. Come in to talk to the children's librarian or reference librarians about these fun online learning activities and other library resources which are free, free, free, did I mention that? It's hard to compete with talking monster trucks, but libraries are trying.

Learn Something New from the Teaching Company at the Library

The Teaching Company makes instructional DVD's and CD sets called "Great Courses' which you can borrow from the Berkeley Heights Public Library. These sets cover a variety of historical and artistic topics with  lectures from well-known university professors. You can find them by typing 'Teaching Company' or 'Great Courses' into the library catalog. You can find and read Ellen's blog posts about the courses she listened to and watched by using the same keywords in the blog's search box. Here is a sample of three of Ellen's reviews with links to the full reviews:

Listen & Learn (first posted Thursday, July 3, 2008)
Do you ever carelessly say "gonna" instead of "going to"? That's the way language has been changing and making new words for millennia. The Indo-European root words for "go" and "carry" (words that sounded something like "bear" and "ink") ran together to become the English word "bring". There also used to be a word that meant "repeatedly" that's now just the suffix "le" in English; it's the difference between dab and dabble, drip and dribble.
I learned this from 'The Story of Human Language,' a Teaching Company course on CD which is a series of lectures by linguist John McWhorter. The Berkeley Heights Public Library has over 200 courses, on CD, DVD and audiocassette tapes by the Teaching Company and Recorded Book's Modern Scholar.
Posted by Ellen at 7/03/2008 10:31:00 AM

How to Listen and Understand Great Music (First posted Tuesday, December 13, 2011)
New Jersey's own Robert Greenberg is the entertaining lecturer of the music appreciation course with that name 'How to Listen and Understand Great Music,' which BHPL has in its nonfiction audiobook collection. Dr. Greenberg tells funny and illuminating stories about composers. You get to hear a little of each selection, which is a good way to figure out what you'd enjoy listening to on your own in full later. This audiobook course is located at BHPL at CD AUDIO 780.9 GRE - scan the walls for a pink flamingo to find the nonfiction audiobooks.
Posted by Ellen at 12/13/2011 11:28:00 AM

Museum Masterpieces: the Met  (First posted Thursday, December 1, 2011)
The library has a wonderful Teaching Company course on DVD that you can borrow called Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are 24 half hour lectures.
My favorite part was learning about the historical connections between works of art in the Museum. An amazing engraved helmet, the "burgonet with falling buffe"  is on display in the Department of Arms and Armor. The helmet was given to the Medici court in Florence sometime in the 16th century. The helmet appears in a portrait of Cosimo II de Medici, which the Met web site says is not on display - another reason to check out the DVDs. The lectures will also give you a peek at famous prints, photographs and costumes usually not on display.
The period rooms you can wander around in (like the bedroom from the Sagredo Palace in Venice, above) have always been my favorite part of the Met. The DVDs showed me several rooms I had never come across before, including the Verplanck Room in the American Wing. The Verplanck Room's furniture is from the home Daniel Verplanck grew up in. Daniel's childhood portrait by John Singleton Copley is also at the Met, and the view in the background is that of his family's home in Fishkill-on-Hudson. The walls and cornice of the room were taken from another house in the Hudson River Valley, so the portrait's background gives you an idea of what the view through the room's windows may have been like.
Posted by Ellen at 12/01/2011 11:07:00 AM

Flamingo Signage

Quality of Books Declining: not a new complaint

Whenever I hear that the quality of books is declining, I think of the essay by Washington Irving written over 200 years ago that posits that very complaint. It is not a new complaint at all. Is it even true?
Read excerpts of Irving's thoughts in this blog post 'The Mutability of Literature' from a year ago.
http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-mutability-of-literature.html

Take a look at the New York Times bestseller lists back to the 1950's on the Hawes Publications site, 

then take a look at this list of the Harvard Classics (which can all be downloaded free from this OpenCulture website.) The list of Harvard Classics volume by volume follows. (Courtesy of Wikipedia states the Open Culture website.) What do you think? Do the New York Times bestseller lists have anything to compare to the Harvard Classics?

Vol. 1: FRANKLIN, WOOLMAN, PENN
His Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin
The Journal of John Woolman, by John Woolman (1774 and subsequent editions)
Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn
VoTexts in the Harvard Classics collection (courtesy of Wikipedia):
l. 2. PLATO, EPICTETUS, MARCUS AURELIUS
The Apology, Phaedo, and Crito, by Plato
The Golden Sayings, by Epictetus
The Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
Vol. 3. BACON, MILTON’S PROSE, THOS. BROWNE
Essays, Civil and Moral, and New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon
Areopagitica and Tractate of Education, by John Milton
Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
Vol. 4. COMPLETE POEMS IN ENGLISH, MILTON
Complete poems written in English, by John Milton
Vol. 5. ESSAYS AND ENGLISH TRAITS, EMERSON
Essays and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Vol. 6. POEMS AND SONGS, BURNS
Poems and songs, by Robert Burns
Vol. 7. CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE, IMITATIONS OF CHRIST
The Confessions, by Saint Augustine
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas á Kempis
Vol. 8. NINE GREEK DRAMAS
Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Furies, and Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus
Oedipus the King and Antigone, by Sophocles
Hippolytus and The Bacchae, by Euripides
The Frogs, by Aristophanes
Vol. 9. LETTERS AND TREATISES OF CICERO AND PLINY
On Friendship, On Old Age, and letters, by Cicero
Letters, by Pliny the Younger
Vol. 10. WEALTH OF NATIONS, ADAM SMITH
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
Vol. 11. ORIGIN OF SPECIES, DARWIN
The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
Vol. 12. PLUTARCH’S LIVES
Lives, by Plutarch
Vol. 13. AENEID, VIRGIL
Aeneid, by Virgil
Vol. 14. DON QUIXOTE, PART 1, CERVANTES
Don Quixote, part 1, by Cervantes
Vol. 15. PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, DONNE & HERBERT, BUNYAN, WALTON
The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
Vol. 16. THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS
Stories from the Thousand and One Nights
Vol. 17. FOLKLORE AND FABLE, AESOP, GRIMM, ANDERSON
Fables, by Aesop
Children’s and Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
Vol. 18. MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA
All for Love, by John Dryden
The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith
The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon, by Robert Browning
Manfred, by Lord Byron
Vol. 19. FAUST, EGMONT, ETC. DOCTOR FAUSTUS, GOETHE, MARLOWE
Faust, part 1, Egmont, and Hermann and Dorothea, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
Vol. 20. THE DIVINE COMEDY, DANTE
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
Vol. 21. I PROMESSI SPOSI, MANZONI
I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
Vol. 22. THE ODYSSEY, HOMER
The Odyssey, by Homer
Vol. 23. TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, DANA
Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Vol. 24. ON THE SUBLIME, FRENCH REVOLUTION, ETC., BURKE
On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French Revolution, and A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
Vol. 25. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ETC., ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES, J.S. MILL, T. CARLYLE
Autobiography and On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, and Sir Walter Scott, by Thomas Carlyle
Vol. 26. CONTINENTAL DRAMA
Life is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille
Phèdre, by Jean Racine
Tartuffe, by Molière
Minna von Barnhelm, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
William Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
Vol. 27. ENGLISH ESSAYS: SIDNEY TO MACAULAY
Vol. 28. ESSAYS: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
Vol. 29. VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE, DARWIN
The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
Vol. 30. FARADAY, HELMHOLTZ, KELVIN, NEWCOMB, ETC
The Forces of Matter and The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday
On the Conservation of Force and Ice and Glaciers, by Hermann von Helmholtz
The Wave Theory of Light and The Tides, by Lord Kelvin
The Extent of the Universe, by Simon Newcomb
Geographical Evolution, by Sir Archibald Geikie
Vol. 31. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, BENVENUTO CELLINI
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Vol. 32. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS
Essays, by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Montaigne and What is a Classic?, by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
The Poetry of the Celtic Races, by Ernest Renan
The Education of the Human Race, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, by Friedrich von Schiller
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, by Immanuel Kant
Byron and Goethe, by Giuseppe Mazzini
Vol. 33. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS
An account of Egypt from The Histories, by Herodotus
Germany, by Tacitus
Sir Francis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols
Sir Francis Drake’s Famous Voyage Round the World, by Francis Pretty
Drake’s Great Armada, by Captain Walter Bigges
Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Voyage to Newfoundland, by Edward Haies
The Discovery of Guiana, by Sir Walter Raleigh
Vol. 34. FRENCH AND ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS, DESCARTES, VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, HOBBES
Discourse on Method, by René Descartes
Letters on the English, by Voltaire
On the Inequality among Mankind and Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Vol. 35. CHRONICLE AND ROMANCE, FROISSART, MALORY, HOLINSHEAD
Chronicles, by Jean Froissart
The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory
A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
Vol. 36. MACHIAVELLI, MORE, LUTHER
The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper
Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
The Ninety-Five Theses, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, and On the Freedom of a Christian, by Martin Luther
Vol. 37. LOCKE, BERKELEY, HUME
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, by John Locke
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, by George Berkeley
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
Vol. 38. HARVEY, JENNER, LISTER, PASTEUR
The Oath of Hippocrates
Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey
The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner
The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister
Scientific papers, by Louis Pasteur
Scientific papers, by Charles Lyell
Vol. 39. FAMOUS PREFACES
Vol. 40. ENGLISH POETRY 1: CHAUCER TO GRAY
Vol. 41. ENGLISH POETRY 2: COLLINS TO FITZGERALD
Vol. 42. ENGLISH POETRY 3: TENNYSON TO WHITMAN
Vol. 43. AMERICAN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
Vol. 44. SACRED WRITINGS 1
Confucian: The sayings of Confucius
Hebrew: Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes
Christian I: Luke and Acts
Vol. 45. SACRED WRITINGS 2
Christian II: Corinthians I and II and hymns
Buddhist: Writings
Hindu: The Bhagavad-Gita
Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran
Vol. 46. ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 1
Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe
Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
Vol. 47. ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 2
The Shoemaker’s Holiday, by Thomas Dekker
The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson
Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher
The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
Vol. 48. THOUGHTS AND MINOR WORKS, PASCAL
Thoughts, letters, and minor works, by Blaise Pascal
Vol. 49. EPIC AND SAGA
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel
The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
Vol. 50. INTRODUCTION, READER’S GUIDE, INDEXES
Vol. 51. LECTURES
The last volume contains sixty lectures introducing and summarizing the covered fields: history, poetry, natural science, philosophy, biography, prose fiction, criticism and the essay, education, political science, drama, travelogues, and religion.

Teaching the Low-tech Way

I sometimes wonder if the greatest invention of the late 20th century was the PC or the Post-it note. Some days I would definitely go for that little sticky piece of paper. In fact, when a patron comes up to the desk and hands the reference librarian a small crumpled-up piece of paper with an almost illegible scribble on it, that is usually the beginning of a very interesting interaction. Do you have this book? Can you figure out who called me from this number? Can you find me information on this disease/drug/procedure? Can you find the actual law from this citation?A recent article in the New York Times describes a Waldorf School in California where many Silicon Valley employees enroll their children. The irony is that Waldorf Schools do not use computers in the classroom until middle school and then in a very limited way. The Waldorf philosophy is very low-tech and old fashioned. Read about it here:
This article in the New York Times 
What do you think the best way to teach young children is? Are computers helpful or harmful at that age?
Despite all the advances and changes in public library services, most people still think of the old-fashioned book as the centerpiece of the library mission. Quick: I say "library", you think insert word here_________!

Chapter 713, in Which the Librarian Responds to Questions

Some questions that have been asked today at the reference desk:

Q: Is there a number that I can call to reach the 13 or 14 state attorneys general who are suing the U.S. over the health care bill?

A: Googling "attorney generals sue health care" brought up news articles that said the Florida attorney general was the first to sue and that the suit had been joined by other states' attorneys general. I gave the patron the phone number for the Florida attorney general's office.

Q: Do you still have Love Story by Erich Segal?

A: Yes. Who would be heartless enough to get rid of it?

Q: I am writing a paper and need books and articles about school reform and African-Americans in American history.

A: A few books on school reform turned up in the catalog, and I told the student to look in their indices under African-Americans. As far the articles went, I knew we should search the databases at JerseyClicks.org*, and that we needed a more specific topic to search for. To find that, we looked in the Encyclopedia of Education in the reference collection. A brief look at the topics in the index under African Americans gave us magnet schools and other terms the student could look up.

*JerseyClicks.org won't exist anymore if the state budget passes as proposed. If you value JerseyClicks, or other services like the Library for the Blind or interlibrary loan, please let your representatives know that you don't support the 74% funding cut to state library services.

Q: Do you have a paper copy of the instructions for the NJ-1040?

A: Yes, for in-library use only. The only other alternatives are to view it online or print it for ten cents a page (and it's 69 pages long).

Time Management in Libraries: some thoughts on continuing education classes

Anyone who has ever attended Continuing Education (CE) classes knows that sitting in a chilly meeting room, drinking coffee that tastes like styrofoam, while watching a Power Point slide show, which duplicates the handout slide-for-slide, are the order of the day. A popular CE topic is time management. Obviously, time would be better managed if the presenters just put the slide show on their website, but the irony seems to elude the presenters. Regarding the frustrations of CE, we present this letter sent to us by a frazzled librarian somewhere in Libraryland:


'Greetings and Salutations Fellow Librarians,
Inspired by the Regional Symposium on Time Management which I attend annually, I submit the following ideas for your consideration.
Has everyone seen the TV ad for the search engine Bing that shows people madly babbling tidbits of unrelated factoids? The ad appeals to the overwhelmed in all of us. The phrase “information overload” is decades old, but the situation only got worse with the advent of the internet. Time, they say, waits for no man, but what it does do is get cluttered up with too much to do and too much information. Since every malady should have a remedy, here is a plan to solve the problem of how to fully acknowledge the many worthy causes which we just don’t have time for and how to manage other demands on our time and attention. Clearly autumn is overburdened with serious causes and holidays, so I propose that we move several fall events to February which has a dearth of activities, followed closely by the month of March. Using the ever-popular multi-tasking approach, we could even double-up some holidays. For example, Valentine’s Day and Banned Books Week (last week of September) are perfect together. Just think of the possibilities. Give your significant other Lady Chatterley’s Lover or some other racy banned book instead of those fattening chocolates, dying roses and expensive jewelry. Not only will it be a lasting tribute to your love, it may easily outlast your love, as your S.O. may realize what an unromantic cheapskate you are.

Library Card Sign Up Month (September) could coincide with Saint Patrick’s Day. Libraries would set up tables in bars and sign up unsuspecting revelers by intimating that they may win all the green beer they can drink if only they get a library card. You could even have green library cards with scratch and sniff beer smell as a little marketing gimmick. Will those beer-swilling bar patrons become best seller-swilling library patrons? Who cares, your library membership stats will shoot up.
But wait, there’s more! This multi-tasking/ schedule-rearranging approach to the information-glut can also be enhanced by using the web 2.0 mashup time-management tool, which no one really understands, but has something to do with elevating ones anxiety level by simultaneously blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, RSS reader-ing, texting, IM’ing and so on ad nauseum. When I say ad nauseum, take that literally. Take one aspirin and call me in the morning. Not by cell phone. Not email. Not texting. No tweets please. In fact, just take the pill and leave me alone because you can find this Time Management Power Point presentation posted on my website: Marian the Librarian Tells It Like It Is.

Yours in eternal bibliotherapy,

A librarian squished flat on the Information Highway

Prep School Library to go Bookless

USA Today reports that New England boarding school, Cushing Academy, has decided to discard most of its book collection and replace it with electronic books and databases. The library had about 20,000 volumes which is now down to half that number, in the physical sense, but pumped up into the millions of volumes in the virtual sense. The library circulates Kindles onto which the librarians will download whatever title a student needs for a course. This decision has caused a strong reaction on blogs, according to USA Today reporter Greg Toppo. A small private school library with a generous budget and a small student population to serve seems to me to be the ideal petri dish for this bookless experiment. Rather than gnashing teeth with fear and loathing over this library's plan, librarians, publishers and anyone interested in the question of how fast print will be replaced by online information should be glad that Cushing Academy is trying on the future for size.

Reference Questions Librarians Hate

This blog often has posts that recount our interesting daily reference questions. Many people don't realize that they can ask their local librarian to help find information so we like to advertise that fact. What has not been posted are the dismal failures. So in the interest of full disclosure, here are some recent stumpers submitted to the reference librarians.

How to make charts using linear programming? OK, I give up. We searched JerseyClicks and the library catalog and the internet. The patron's table was littered with math and business books we hauled out. But nothing was quite right. In cases like this, I wish I could text or twitter the professor who assigned this problem and say something really scathing like - "huh?"


A patron wanted the Silver Banquet which evaluates railroad memorabilia. It didn't show up in any N.J. library according to JerseyCat. WorldCat showed very few library holdings for it. Googling didn't turn up any copies we could get our hands on. I'm posting this long after the question reared its puzzling head. Anyway, another "huh?" In these cases we often try to do a bait and switch - well we don't have that, but how about this? But when a patron has her heart set on a particular thing that Uncle Fred said was the best, that's it. No bait and switch works. We don't argue with the wisdom of Uncle Fred.


A few commonly asked questions which just don't seem to lend themselves to easy answers are as follows:


Ratings for NJ private schools. The book, Private Secondary Schools describes, but does not rate them.


Ratings of things not rated by Consumer Reports are especially frustrating. Not that CR should rate NJ prep schools, but we can dream, can't we?


Catcher in the Rye on audio? Nope, does not exist. J.D. Salinger will not allow his classic book to be recorded.


A book whose title includes the acronym HIAA which lists costs of medical procedures? We found physician fee schedules , but even the local health sciences library did not have such a book.


Is Sony Reader compatible with Netlibrary? No, the former is text, the latter is audio mostly and they don't play well together.


Specifics from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. We found recovery.gov, but it's big, it's complicated and it's a work in progress. Please don't make us look through it.

Use Your Library, it's good for you!

Not a day goes by, it seems, without an article in the newspaper about library usage being up during these bad economic times. Usually accompanied by a picture of library patrons surrounded by books or sitting at a computer terminal - looking for jobs on the internet (as per caption.) For any reporters looking for a scoop, there it is: Americans use libraries. A lot. Especially these days. Interview any librarian and they will tell you, business is booming.
Librarians like to be recognized as much as the next professional, maybe more, being the self-effacing introverts that we are. And anyone with a sense of the ironic will appreciate that while library usage goes up in bad times, library funding goes down resulting in closed branches, fewer hours open, smaller budgets for materials and so on. We are also noticing that using your local library is now included in those endless articles about how to live a more frugal life. Libraries have become a kind of Heloise Hint or bullet point in budgeting articles. Skip the video store, use the library! that sort of thing.
Regular library users have always known about the benefits of using the library and for those of you who, because of reduced circumstances, have been frogmarched to the library doors, Welcome! We wish we had met under better circumstances, but welcome.We hope you don't leave when boom times return. More than that, we hope that boom times return soon for everyone, not just for libraries.
Here are links to the latest news articles about libraries:
USA Today
Buffalo News
New York Times
Courier News
Wall Street Journal
Associated Press

Cyberchondria: The Internet and Health Information

Do you use the internet to find health information? If you do, you may be a cyberchondriac. Cyberchondria is a new word according to this article ,
" Microsoft researchers coined the term after finding that thanks to a plethora of online medical information, more and more people think they are sick."

The article goes on to say that,
"Information can assist people who are not health-care professionals to better understand health and disease, and to provide them with feasible explanations for symptoms," said the researchers in a report. "However, the Web has the potential to increase the anxieties of people who have little or no medical training, especially when Web search is employed as a diagnostic procedure."

It looks like the key point there is that using the web to diagnose an illness can cause a lot of problems. Even doctors can hear hoofbeats and think zebra instead of horse, but it's a much more common problem for the layman. That refers to the tendency to think that symptoms point to something really rare and serious rather than to the more common cause of the symptoms. For example, a websurfer may conclude that a headache is a sign of a brain tumor rather than just a garden variety stress headache. Add into that the effect of watching TV programs like "House" where the diagnosis is always something really arcane and websurfers may easily jump to the wrong conclusions.

The cure for this cyberchondria is to start with your doctor. Once you have a diagnosis, be sure to use reliable resources to research the disease or condition. Many library patrons come to the Reference Desk to ask for help with medical questions. The medical books in the library have all been reviewed and selected, for the most part, with an eye for accuracy and helpfulness to the layman. Sometimes, bowing to popular demand, we buy a health bestseller which may contain dubious information. The medical reference section has the most unbiased health information in the library's book collection. The Merck Manual of Medical Information (Ref 610 MER) and the Johns Hopkins White Papers (Ref 616 JOH) are two good places to start your research.
To find medical information online, the Reference Staff has bookmarked authoritative health websites to use and is trained to be skeptical of websites that seem to be primarily a marketing tool for online quacks and opportunists.

Here is a list of websites we use for medical information and links to a few articles about choosing reliable health information. One more caveat: make sure you have the correct spelling of the condition or drug you are researching.

The first stop on the web for the BHPL Reference Staff is usually the National Library of Medicine's website, http://www.medlineplus.gov/
This website will take you to articles from The Cleveland Clinic, the Mayo Clinic, various medical schools, hospital centers and universities. It has links to the the National Institutes of Health and other U.S. government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture (for nutrition.)
Notice that many of these websites are dot govs or dot edus, in other words, they are government or university websites, not dot coms, which essentially are commercial,profit-making websites.

The American Cancer Society
Top 100 Health Websites from CAPHIS
Clinical Trials
Healthy New Jersey from UMDNJ, the state medical schools
Household Products Database from NIH
MyPyramidTracker to plan your food intake -for free, no ads for supplements or other dubious or expensive promotions.
Sloan Kettering's website about herbal supplement efficacy and potentially harmful interactions with prescribed drugs.
The ABMS, American Board of Medical Specialties, list of Board Certified doctors

And finally, an entertaining, thought-provoking, possibly controversial website
Quackwatch. You may not agree with the website author, Stephen Barrett, MD, but at the very least you will learn to be very skeptical of medical information you hear about from friends, read online or see on television.

Dumb and Dumberer: U.S. Teens Failing History

Young people are not only failing history, but are just plain all-around dumb-as-dirt claims a new report by Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. USA Today reports that American teens don't understand many common historical and cultural references or terms:
Greg Toppo writes,
"Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job. Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them."

The article is linked to a related one, Dummy Drumbeat Goes On for U.S. Students which in turn refers to the new Susan Jacoby book on the same subject, The Age of American Unreason (in the new non-fiction section at BHPL, call #973.91 Jac). Jacoby laments the prevailing ignorance of our younger generation. So we can add increasing stupidity to our collective list of failings: failing economy, weakening job market, nasty election process, you name it, we can't seem to do anything right. But wait, there's more. An upcoming book by Mark Bauerlein is titled, the Dumbest Generation. Educators especially are on the defensive every time one of these reports or books comes out. Reporter Toppo calls it "dummy fatigue," and quotes the man responsible for this poor, pitiful us survey,
"There is this kind of Aren't We Stupid? industry," researcher Rick Hess says. "It's a drumbeat: 'Don't we keep getting dumber?' "
The rest of the article debates whether we are or we aren't getting dumber. There is even a quiz you can take, Are You Smarter Than a 17 Year Old?
Here is the link to the report that fueled all these articles, Still at Risk, What Students Don't Know Even Now by Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, which, btw, is generally considered to be politically conservative.
The solution? Libraries! Start at the beginning of Dewey and read on through. Disprove these pundits and at the same time, support your local library! OK, let me go back to YouTube, reality tv, text-messaging ...

Advanced Placement History

Here at the BHPL Reference Department, we keep getting high school students looking for something "good" to read to fulfill their A.P. U.S. History summer reading assignment. Well, "good" is a subjective term, but we know most students mean "short" for one thing when they say that. What follows is a list of entertaining, readable, fairly short, books about some aspect of American history. We hope this helps some student out there.

Please add to this list by clicking on "comment" and telling about your favorite. "good" American history book.

Really Readable American History books for AP U.S. History Students

Ashes of Glory, Richmond at War by Ernest B. Ferguson (975.5 Fur) Life in the capitol of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Confederates in the Attic, dispatches from the unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (973.7 Hor) Reporter's humorous take on Civil War reenactments across the South.

The Day Lincoln Was Shot by Jim Bishop (Bio Lincoln) An hour by hour account of the President’s assassination.

Devil in the White City: murder, madness, and magic at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson (364.1523 Lar) A portrait of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and American life in that era.

Fire in the Lake, the Vietnamese and the Americans in Viet Nam by Frances FitzGerald
(959.7 Fit) One of the first and one of the best histories of that war.

Flag of Our Fathers by James Bradley (940.5426 Bra) The Battle of Iwo Jima.

Founding Brothers, the Revolutionary generation by Joseph J. Ellis (973.4 Ell) The lives of Adams, Burr, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and Washington converge to create the new republic.

General Washington’s Christmas Farewell, a Mount Vernon Homecoming 1783 by Stanley Weintraub (973.4 Washington) After the war, Washington steps down and resigns his commission rather than accepting a third presidential term.

Ghost Soldiers, the forgotten epic story of World War II’s most dramatic mission by Hampton Sides(940.5425 Sid) U.S. prisoners of war in the Philippines.

The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan (940.54 Rya) D-Day by WW II war correspondent.

In Pharoah’s Army (Bio Wolff) Recollections of a Viet Nam veteran.

Men to Match My Mountains, the opening of the far west 1840 – 1900 by Irving Stone (978 Sto)

Shadow Divers, the true adventure of two Americans who risked everything to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson (940.5451 Kur) In 1991, two scuba divers found a German U-boat wrecked off the coast of New Jersey in WWII.

Terrible Swift Sword by Bruce Catton (973.7 C) Dramatic history of the Civil War by preeminent Civil War historian Catton.

To America, Personal Reflections of an historian by Stephen Ambrose (973 Amb) Highlights of American history from the Revolution to present day.

Triangle: the fire that changed America by Dave Von Drehle (974.71 Von) The 1911 factory fire that changed American labor and safety laws.

The Wild Blue, the men and boys who flew the B-24’s over Germany by Stephen Ambrose (940.5449 Amb) The story of WW II flyers told by a very readable historian.