Butterfly Gardening

With all the rain we have been having this spring the flowers are blooming! And with the flowers comes butterflies.   Here is one book to get you started on what to plant in your garden to attract butterflies.

Butterfly Gardens
QL544.6.B87 1995
General Stacks

Search Discovery@Tarleton to find out what other materials the library has available on butterfly gardening.  (You might also search to find ways to get rid of mosquitoes!)

Artemis Literary Sources

Tarleton Libraries now has access to a new database, Artemis Literary Sources. Artemis Literary Sources combines the information found in Literature Criticism Online, Literature Resource Center, Scribner\’s Writers Series, and Twayne\’s Author Series into a new interface that searches them all together. All of these resources are still available to search separately. However, Artemis adds new search tools that you can use to narrow topics, or see how language has changed over time.

Topic Finder

The Topic Finder tool lets you narrow your search using a wheel visualization, as seen in the picture below:

Here, I\’ve done a search for \”Emily Dickinson\”. By looking at the wheel, I can some topics that are associated with her, and I can narrow my topic from there. In this case, I\’ve selected \”Amherst\”, which was her hometown. So, the results are showing me biographical articles and articles on how her home influenced her work. Using this tool, I can see what paths my research might take and what sources might be available to support my paper.
Term Frequency

This tool is very similar to Google\’s N Gram Viewer. Google\’s tool shows the frequency of a word in books indexed in Google Books over time. This does something similar, but it shows how frequently a word or term has shown up in the sources indexed in Artemis over time. This includes book reviews, works of criticism and works of literature, so you get a good range, as you can see below.
Here, I\’ve visualized the terms \”Hip Hop\” and \”Techno\” from 1985-2014. As you can see, both terms have been rising steadily since about 1998 or so. I can click on any of the points of the graph to see the documents that the graph is referencing.
Overall, this new database gives some pretty cool tools for researching and visualizing my data.

Americans and privacy

The Pew Research Center recently published a research study on American\’s attitudes towards privacy, security, and surveillance. Some of their findings include the following information:

                                          flickr photo by Sean MacEntee http://flickr.com/photos/smemon/4592915995
                                          shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

  • \”93% of adults say that being in control of who can get information about them is important; 74% feel this is \’very important,\’ while 19% say it is \’somewhat important.\’
  • 90% say that controlling what information is collected about them is important—65% think it is \’very important” and 25% say it is \’somewhat important.\’ \”

Books on privacy in our collection
To find out more about privacy, security, and surveillance, you may want to search our catalog. Using \”privacy\” as a subject brings up many results.  You may also want to try \”security\” or \”surveillance.\” If you are off-campus,  narrow your search by restricting it to e-books so that you can start reading right away.  Log in with your NTNET username and password to receive access.

E-books
Some of our e-book titles on privacy include Facebook nation: total information awareness (2014) by Newton Lee and Privacy vs. security (2014) by Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon.

 
   Image retrieved from Amazon.com          Image retrieved from Amazon.com

Print books
Two of our print books on privacy (located upstairs, in the General Stacks) are Data and Goliath : the hidden battles to collect your data and control your world (2015) by Bruce Schneier and Dragnet nation : a quest for privacy, security, and freedom in a world of relentless surveillance (2014) by Julia Angwin.

Free public domain books

If you can\’t find a public domain book in the library or would just prefer something downloadable, there are lots of good sites out there. A couple I like are Project Gutenberg and LibriVox.

Project Gutenberg has over 49,000 free e-books – you can download them as Kindle e-books, EPUB files, or read them online in your browser. If you don\’t have a particular book or author in mind, it can be fun to browse the categories and subcategories on their Bookshelf page.
LibriVox is great if you prefer audiobooks. Everything on the site is read by volunteers, so the performance quality varies, but some works have multiple versions available, so you can choose which readers you prefer. You can download a whole book as a zip file, stream individual tracks, or subscribe in iTunes.
Some of my favorites from these sites include Jill the Reckless by P.G. Wodehouse (LibriVox) and The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc (Project Gutenberg). Feel free to recommend your favorites in the comments!

Books on Weather, Nature, and Meteorology

Have you noticed the extremely unusual summer we\’re having?

All of the crazy weather that Texas is experiencing has made me curious about meteorology and how meteorologists predict storms.

Did you know that the Dick Smith Library has books on weather, nature, and meteorology?

Stop by the library for a dry place to hang out and learn about meteorology.

You can check out any of these great books with your Texan Card or current photo I.D.


The Handbook of Nature 
by Frank R. Spellman and Joni Price-Bayer

QH45.5 .S63 2012  General Stacks

Meteorology Today: an Introduction to Weather
by Donald Ahrens

QC861.2 .A3 1991 General Stacks

Sky Alert: When Satellites Fail
 by Les Johnson

TL796 .J64 2013 General Stacks

A 21st Century Library?

I recently saw this picture with the caption that this library contains 3 million books.

Photo attribute: John Strassfield, May 2015

Discussion about this photo and what appears to be lack of evidence of 3 million books centered around the value of browsing stacks to find books and disappointment with the disappearing circulation desk.

How do you feel about a library that looks like this?  Is this really the future library of the 21st Century?

New Resource – Britannica Online

The Library has a new resource – Britannica Online!

Not only does it give online access to the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it also includes Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, general and history reference resources, news, videos, vetted web sites, plus 700 full-text magazine and periodical articles.

We hope you find it useful!  

Remember help is available for this or any other resource by visiting the library, by phone at 254-968-9249, or email at [email protected]. 

Summer Reading Video

Looking for something fun to read this summer? Need a good audio book for your next road trip? The library has you covered! Check out our newest video for staff suggested books and audio books for summer reading.

Fun for the summer!

If you\’re ready to sit back and relax, you can find something for just about everyone at the library – we have books, graphic novels, DVDs, and more. The above picture shows just a few of the things in our collection. From left to right:

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel – A steampunk YA novel.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett, performed by Stephen Briggs – A fantasy audiobook featuring magically intelligent rats and a cat, set in the Discworld.

Angel by Erica Sakurazawa – A standalone Japanese manga.

Cadfael: The Complete Collection – A historical mystery series on DVD.

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn – A historical mystery novel.

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling – J.K. Rowling\’s first novel written for adults.

Cowboy Bebop – A Japanese anime TV series. It\’s a space western centered on a bunch of bounty hunters.

The Hero\’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy – A humorous Middle Grade fantasy starring a bunch of princes from various fairy tales.

Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich – Another installment in Evanovich\’s popular Stephanie Plum series.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – A popular thriller.

Avengers Forever – One of several Marvel graphic novels in the library\’s collection.

Spirited Away – An anime movie both kids and adults can enjoy. A girl works at a bathhouse for spirits in order to rescue her parents, who\’ve been turned into pigs.

QUIET!! Thinking Fast and Slow

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com Copyright � 1998 Mark A. Hicks. Originally published by Mark A. Hicks. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/copyright.html
Texan Hall Library in Fort Worth seems to be considerably quieter during finals week?  Why?
I think it might relate to this funny post going around on Facebook about turning down the radio when you are driving down the road looking for an address.  
taken from Jodideo. com
Yes, some people admit to doing this as some sort of fault or an ironic action that they have taken, but the truth is that the active thinking required to find an unfamiliar address has invoked the unconscious action of turning down the radio.  The result is that the auditory senses have given way to the visual senses to use more brainpower. 
Professor Steven Yantis of John Hopkins University uses this principle as it pertains to cell phone use and driving.  Yantis (2005) states, \”Directing attention to listening effectively \’turns down the volume\’ on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited — a zero-sum game.”  

Image found at: <img src="http://images.macmillan.com
/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_186W/
9780374533557.jpg\” alt=\”Thinking, Fast and Slow\”>

 The book, Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, is available at the Dick Smith Library at BF441 .K238 2011. 

The book deals with the function of fast thinking and slow thinking.  Fast thinking is the thinking that allows us to accomplish daily tasks. Slow thinking is the deliberative thinking that it takes to concentrate, the type of thinking required to study for finals!  Check out this book to find out more about these thinking processes and how Kahneman applies these to the world of business executives.

                 


References:


Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking Fast and Slow, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Yantis, S. (2005). Multitasking: You can\’t pay full attention to both sights and sounds:

Lab findings suggest reason cell phones and driving don\’t mix, EurekaAlert!: The Global Source for Science News. Retrieved from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/jhu-myc062105.php

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