Berkeley Heights Public Library Book Blog

Berkeley Heights Online: New Local Website

2008-07-21T08:53:00.000-05:00

Take a look at a new website of local interest, Berkeley Heights Online, which debuted July 17. Berkeley Heights Online provides a calendar of local events, relevant articles and weblinks, forums for BH residents to contribute to, classifieds and links to local agencies and resources among other features.

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Festival, Berkeley Heights, NJ

2008-07-16T11:57:00.001-05:00

Today was the last day of the Festival of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Berkeley Heights, NJ. which started Saturday, July 12 and ends tonight with fireworks at the River Road site of Mt. Carmel Hall. Today's procession, punctuated by the sporadic boom of firecrackers, brought the statue of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel down Plainfield Avenue past the library to the Church of the Little Flower for morning Mass.

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society was founded in 1909 in Berkeley Heights and celebrates annually on July 16, the Saint's day. In Italy, many towns celebrate the day of their patron saint and Italian immigrants brought the tradition to many Italian-American communities in the United States.

The Mt. Carmel Society built their first hall in 1925 next to the church. In 1952, the Society sold the hall to the town and the Berkeley Heights Public Library, previously in a small real estate office, moved in. The Mt. Carmel Society subsequently moved to its present River Road location.

"Richard II" Fun Facts

2008-07-15T10:34:00.002-05:00

One of the unusual things about Richard II (coming Friday!) is that it's written completely in verse. In particular, it's in iambic pentameter (10 syllables to a line, with every other syllable stressed), and there are often rhyming couplets (two lines in a row that rhyme). Usually in Shakespeare, characters from the lower classes speak in prose, but in Richard II even the gardener speaks in verse. The only other Shakespearean play like this is King John. Not being an expert on Shakespeare myself, I got this information from the excellent Old Vic Theatre's Educational Pack on Richard II.

According to ShakespeareNYC, Richard II was written at the same time as Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The ShakespeareNYC web site also credits Richard II (the real king) with the invention of the handkerchief. For more info on that, check out this site.

Your last fun fact of the day has to do with John of Gaunt. According to Shakespeare Online, Holinshed's Chronicles (the history that Shakespeare used as a source) portrayed him as a "disorderly and rapacious magnate". Shakespeare's queen, Elizabeth, traced her lineage directly to John of Gaunt, which is one of the reasons why Gaunt became a wise and noble patriot in the play.

Library Children's Room to Close July 21st for Renovation

2008-07-11T12:04:00.002-05:00

The BHPL Children's Room (on the Lower Level) will closed for renovations for several weeks starting July 21st. Selected chidren's books will be available on the Upper Level. Reserves cannot be placed on titles which are in storage. Many area libraries honor BHPL library cards, including the New Providence Memorial Libraryand the Summit Free Public Library. Other participating libraries include several Middlesex and Union County libraries as well as the libraries in Chatham, Madison, Bernards Township and Morristown/Morris Township. Be sure to take your Berkeley Heights library card with you, along with ID, and make sure your library card hasn't expired.

Even Librarians Watch TV

2008-07-10T13:44:00.001-05:00

Librarians watch television of course, we just feel guiltier about it than most people if that's possible. Tonight's must-see TV (imho) is the debut of Greatest American Dog at 8:00 PM and the third episode of medical reality series Hopkins at 10:00. How can I tie this in with a library blog? OK, here you go: the Dewey number for dogs and dog training is 636.7 and we often get young families asking where the puppy picking or puppy training (usually in that order) books are. Furthermore, the BHPL Reference Department has an excellent medical reference series called Johns Hopkins White Papers (Ref 616 JOH) which covers all topics in a highly accessible but thorough format. Also if you do a publisher search of Johns Hopkins Press, there will be 72 results. Phew, don't feel so guilty now about being off-topic... How did I get from dogs to medicine? It's easy, that's how the whole day at the Reference Desk goes: computer help, reference book instruction, fiction recommendation, etc. See last post.

This brings me to an article in the Atlantic Is Google Making Us Stoopid? by Nicholas Carr. The gist is that people who use the internet a lot may be rewiring their brains to have shorter attention spans. I could make a bad joke about how I only skimmed the article and/or didn't finish it, but I did finish it and I tried to pay attention just to disprove what the author is trying to say about our changing level of literacy. I don't know if google is making internet users more stupid, but its convenience may be making people more intellectually lazy. So the question might be, is intellectually lazy the same as stupid? The discussion of how internet searching tends to lend itself to cursory research, skimming, jumping from one topic to another, shallow understanding of topics sounds a lot like the observations/criticisms of Sesame Street's format and how its choppy, fast-paced programming might be enabling attention deficit in its young viewers. There used to be a lot of that kind of commentary going on. As noted, reference librarians tend to jump from one topic to another all day long never lingering long enough to go in depth, so maybe our brains have already been rewired a la google.

Conclusion: if google makes us stupid and tv makes us guilty and both the internet and tv shorten our attention span, then...um, that puts librarians at the cutting edge of these phenomena and um, whatever...

You answer questions about what?

2008-07-09T09:08:00.000-05:00

It happened again last night. I let it slip that a patron had asked a question about Amtrak routes and fares to California, or maybe it was the question about the conversion from analog to digital TV broadcasts to take place next year or the patron who wanted a list of board certified gastroenterologists. Whatever it was I mentioned researching, it surprised people that reference librarians would look up that sort of information. I don't know if it's surprising that people ask or surprising that we answer, but we will look up almost anything patrons ask. The limits are something like this: we won't do anything illegal or unethical. We have a sort of unexpressed, non-specific time limit; if we don't have time, we teach the patron how to do the research or refer him to a resource that will be able to help him further. If we can't find the answer, we refer questions to a larger library, like Newark, and get back to the patron. If that fails to answer the question, again we give the patron a list of possible options to pursue. We don't practice medicine, law or give financial tax-advice, but we do provide resources, forms, books, best websites and teach the patron how to do their own research in those areas. On any given day, we print out maps and directions for people who are lost, spotted the library and wandered in, frustrated by the confusing New Jersey roads and bad signage (jughandles and the Jersey slide inspire fear and loathing in non-New Jerseyans, probably New Jersey drivers too.) We look up what people on TV said or read or cooked or did. We sympathize about the confusion about Bush's Economic Stimulus program and hand them print outs from the irs.gov website that are only marginally helpful. Ditto on the infamous and mysterious Homestead Rebate we have in NJ. We find books on diseases for the sixth grade one-assigned-disease-per-student assignment. Turns out we were a little short in the books on acne. Who knew? Got to order some more in that category. We found the names and phone numbers of: Portuguese newspapers in NJ, CEO's of companies patrons wanted to write a complaint to (that and company 800 numbers are pretty commonly recurring questions.) And of course, we try to find good books to read in whatever genre a patron likes and help patrons on the internet computers and library catalog.
Why aren't these people just googling for the answers? There are two reasons I can think of: one, some people are not computer literate; two, we have access to databases and ways of searching that turn up better answers faster, or at least we hope so.

Shakespeare's Richard II

2008-07-08T19:13:00.000-05:00

The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey will perform Richard II on Friday, July 18 at 7:00 PM at the Berkeley Heights Public Library. The performance will take place outside, behind the library, bring a lawn chair for this free program.

For a very clear, short synopsis of the play, take a look at SparksNotes here. The play is the story of the last Plantagenet king, Richard II, who squanders funds and power to wage wars and is overthrown by the first Lancaster, King Henry IV.

The play starts with a dispute between Mowbray and Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) which Richard mediates by banishing both of them. Then Richard raids Bolingbrokes father's estate to fund his war on Ireland. The public is not happy with Richard's reign and when Richard returns from war, Henry puts him in prison and takes the throne.

Picture from http://www.nndb.com/people/704/000093425/

Listen & Learn

2008-07-03T10:31:00.001-05:00

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.

If linguistics isn't that interesting to you, there are science, religion, history, philosophy, art and music courses to choose from, like How to Listen To and Understand Opera (which is what my mom's listening to). You'll feel like you're in college again!

Percy and Books by Mary Oliver, a poem

2008-07-01T16:14:00.000-05:00

This poem by Mary Oliver arrived in my email inbox today, appended to a notice from the Reference Department at Newark Public Library.

Percy and Books (Eight), by Mary Oliver

Percy does not like it when I read a book.
He puts his face over the top of it and moans.
He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.
The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.
The tide is out and the neighbor's dogs are playing.
But Percy, I say, Ideas! The elegance of language!
The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories
that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage.
Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough. Let's go.

The poem is from Oliver's collection, Red Bird (2008)

I didn't mean to post poems two days in a row on the blog, but ironically, modern technology pushed me into into the world of poetry. Yesterday, I took a digital camera on my lunchtime walk, thinking I would make images that were absolutely copyright free to post on the blog. Then I used Grangers' Poetry database to find poems about (keyword) "woods" and chose a suitable poem to post, illustrated by my picture of the swampy area behind the library. Today, the New Jersey librarians' listserv brought me the usual array of notices, salespitches from publishers and bibliophilic chatter, some useful, but taken as a whole, mostly causing a strong feeling of Email Overload. Was it a reward to me for diligently going through my entire inbox, that one email brought this terrific poem? Proving that new means of communication are not incompatible with the old. Or maybe proving the adage, it's an ill wind that blows no good - even a surfeit of digital hot air in your inbox can bring a hidden gem.
PS: my Border Collie ate the dog obedience book that I borrowed from the first library I worked in.

Path through the Woods Behind the Library

2008-06-30T12:57:00.002-05:00

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

From the Woods of Westermain

Meredith, George. “Enter these enchanted woods.” Columbia Granger's World of Poetry Online. 2008. Columbia University Press. 30 Jun. 2008. http://www.columbiagrangers.org/.

Use BHPL's Grangers' Poetry database to find this and thousands of other poems online.

All the Parking Lot's a Stage

2008-06-28T13:24:00.003-05:00

The library parking lot (apparently once the site of a haunted telephone booth, according to Weird NJ) will host a performance of Shakespeare's Richard II on July 18 at 7 p.m. If you'd like to read it beforehand, the play's only a little over a 100 pages. And there's treason, intrigue and murder in it, plus what another BHPL staff member calls "the most beautiful speech in the English language":

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth

We still have copies left on the shelf in nonfiction at 822.33 SHA RICHARD II. Bring your own lawn chair for the performance. The theater company returns on Friday, August 1 to perform Moliere's comedy The Learned Ladies (Les Femmes Savantes).

If you like Eat, Pray, Love: Take Big Bites

2008-06-26T16:36:00.001-05:00

Take Big Bites, Adventures Around the World and Across the Table (c 2005) by veteran newswoman and iconoclast, Linda Ellerbee delivers a delightful tour of the world, and recounts wonderful meals and her further adventures following her two earlier memoirs, And So It Goes and Move On. Baby boomers may remember the author from the news program, NBC News Overnight that she and Lloyd Dobyns anchored in the 1980's. The younger generation and their parents may know her from her work on Nick News. Wherever Ms. Ellerbee turns up, in print or on the air, she is usually described as irreverent, wry, funny, original, creative and so on. She is all that and more. Contemplating English food, she observes"How could a people who ate something called mushy peas have conquered half the known world? " And the toast in racks? "Let's see, we lost an empire, now how can we screw up toast?" (p. 35) Of course, English food is an easy target, but when she describes the memorable meals, the reader may start to salivate.
For readers and book clubs who liked Eat, Pray, Love, Ellerbee's book covers similar territory, with some philosophizing and recipes, but the tone is that of an old friend, if you had a friend who was a world famous reporter, klutzy but lovable, adventurous, outgoing, sharp as a tack and didn't take herself too seriously.

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

2008-06-23T13:49:00.004-05:00

The Spellman Files is a great summer read for anyone who likes Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter Stephanie Plum but needs something new. Izzy Spellman is a 28 year old private investigator who still lives at home (rent in San Francisco is too high) with her family, i.e. lots of other private investigators with no respect for her privacy. Great hilarity ensues until Izzy's little sister, who has a habit of tailing strangers, disappears. It takes a little faith to get through the first chapter, but it's worth it. There's also a sequel, Curse of the Spellmans, which came out this year.
Lisa Lutz's site
Lisa Lutz's guest blog posts on Omnivoracious

Dreams of Dust

2008-06-18T12:33:00.000-05:00

Dreams of Dust, a drama in French with English subtitles, will be shown at the library on Thursday from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Mocktar, a Nigerian farmer, comes to a gold mine in Burkina Faso hoping to find work and forget his tragic past. The Essakane gold mine which inspired the writer/director and is shown in the film is real. The French-born director was unable to secure funding for the film until he became a citizen of Burkina Faso.

If you're going with friends, Film Movement has provided some discussion questions you can talk about afterwards:

1. How does the cinematography create both a sense of space, especially in the vastness of the desert and the narrowness of the mines, as well as set the mood of desperation felt by most of the characters in the film?

2. What do you think happened to Mocktar back home, and what draws him to help Coumba and her daughter in Essakane?

3. Given that the gold mine is not highly successful, and Mocktar obviously has a troubled past, what do you think Mocktar hopes to find in Essakane? And what do you think he ultimately does find at the end of the film?

4. The style of the film has occasionally been described as being a docu-drama. How does the director establish a sense of reality in the film? Do you feel that this situation is close to reality? Why?

Bloomsday: reJoyce

2008-06-16T15:17:00.000-05:00

Publishers' Weekly reminds us that today, June 16, is Bloomsday in Dublin, Ireland. Chases' Calendar of Events, the standard reference compendium of holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, says, "June 16, 1904. Anniversary of events in Dublin recorded in James Joyce's Ulysses, whose central character is Leopold Bloom."

The Irish Times reports,"It is traditional to dress up and go out around Dublin on Bloomsday, visiting the locations featured in the book and taking part in readings, walks and activities associated with Ulysses .
Now a week-long festival, Bloomsday 2008 got underway last Monday and ends today with a number of events taking place in the city centre and south Dublin."

The University Archives of Virginia Tech offers a collection of Bloomsday cards featuring pictures of places in Dublin connected with Joyce's book, click here.

Quote and author photo from Lucidcafe website; click here for list of e-texts of Joyce's works.

"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives."
—James Joyce

New York Times Best Seller Lists from the Past

2008-06-12T14:19:00.000-05:00

Today on the Reference Desk:
We post the best selling books list in a plexiglass frame on the Reference Desk every week, usually from http://www.booklist.usatoday.com/, but just now I came across a really neat website that has the New York Times Best Seller List back to 1942, by year, by author, by number one best-seller. Here is the link to the Hawes website. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty was number one on the list the week and year I started college. Désirée by Annemarie Selinko (Morrow) was number one the year I was born. Desiree doesn't sound familiar at all. Probably my mother was reading Uncle Wiggily stories to me and my older brothers at that point.

This afternoon, a patron asked if there is a way to search the catalog for audiobooks, especially recently acquired ones. That's a pretty common request and the answer is, yes - but it isn't easy. There is a way to "tell" the catalog to "set limits" (using a radio button found only in the "Classic Catalog" format) then to choose the "Format" called "Sound (non-music)." Are you with me so far? Is this "intuitive and user-friendly?" No, of course not, which is why we publish a monthly list of DVD's and CD's acquired since the previous list. Copies of the CD/DVD list are in a binder in the Reading Room and also available on the library email newsletter, The Buzz. Click here to see the Buzz or come in to fill out a form to be put on the the free email subscription list. The Buzz will keep patrons updated about library programs, events and other news. I recommend it highly as light but essential reading. (Disclaimer: I'm the editor.)

A patron just came in looking for travel books. Of course by Librarian Law, librarians can't answer a question without asking another question first: "travel books about what country?" I asked.
- "This country."
- "Is there a specific town or city you are interested in?"I further inquired, not yet ready to give him an answer.
-"Seattle."
-"OK, that's 917.9." I scribbled it on a slip of recycled scrap paper and hand it to him. Off he went, only to be bamboozled by that pesky Dewey Decimal System. Back he came. This is what keeps librarians in business - libraries are confusing and for the most part patrons have to ask librarians to decode the catalog and actually find things for them. We don't do this on purpose. It's kind of tricky to organize 40,000 books and other items and be entirely consistent about it over time. Bookstores may have a larger inventory (more books) but fewer titles with multiple copies, which makes finding books a little easier there.

Which brings me to the final library adventure for the day: patrons often think they can buy books at the library. Here's a post from Love the Liberry, a very cynical librarian blog, about that common point of confusion between the retail and non-profit mission of bookstores versus libraries.

Moral of the story: Just ask us. You are not alone in being confused by the strange rituals and habits of libraries and librarians. We like to answer questions. Or think of it this way, if you sell insurance, I have no idea what you are doing either, and I'd rather do almost anything other than read the fine print in insurance policies.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Turns to Wikipedia Model

2008-06-11T09:34:00.000-05:00

The venerable Encyclopaedia Britannica plans to partially capitulate to the internet trend of user-generated content by accepting articles and updates from a community of scholars and experts. This article in Wired explains how EB plans to continue to closely monitor and edit all content but will follow a model similar to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia which is free and to which most students, young people and search engines turn for information.

This is big news in the education and library world because this decisioin by EB shows just how much the free internet has changed the way people search for information and also how people decide where the most reliable information can be found. Generally people will seek out the easiest source for information first, rather than the highest quality source. For example, how many times have you just asked a friend for medical information rather than asking your doctor or instead of looking it up in medical reference books or websites? Maybe you double-check on your friend's information later, but initially, people often turn to the easiest way to seek answers.
This "information seeking behavior," as it might be called in scholarly articles, is frustrating to educators, librarians and to experts in various fields who feel that people are not getting the best information for making important decisions or for their education when they just "google" for the answers.

The Berkeley Heights Public Library has the hardbound EB set on the Reference shelves and subscribes to the online version so patrons can access the content the old-fashioned way or the new-fangled online way from home 24/7. To use EB online, click on Remote Databases from the library homepage, follow the prompts to verify that you are a BHPL card holder and choose the database from the list.

Currently many teachers will accept an online database as a legitimate resource for student bibliographies, but most eschew Wikipedia. To get around that restriction I've observed that students use whatever free internet sources they find by googling and then pad their papers with quotes from sources the teachers will accept and put only those sources in the footnotes or works cited page. The fact is that free sources are easier to use than databases which are still somewhat hidden and require passwords to access. That problem can be solved by educating students and library patrons, but it is an issue that keeps turning up each time a patron says, " I didn't know the library had these databases and that I can get into them from home."

Commencement Speakers 2008

2008-06-09T13:22:00.000-05:00

In her commencement speech to Harvard on June 5, J.K. Rowling said that she could not remember anything about the commencement speech when she graduated from college. She said that eased her anxiety when writing her speech knowing that ultimately most students would forget all of it. You can read the text of her speech by clicking here. To watch the video, click here.
My old friends and I have been attending a lot of college graduations lately and comparing notes. I read the Rowling speech and it is funny and poignant and inspiring. For other commencement speakers, you can search by college or university name or speaker name at the Chronicle of Higher Education website, click here. The speaker at my daughter's graduation declined to speak due to the rain. She will remain nameless here. Maybe it was just as well because looking at a sea of umbrellas in a football stadium may have been more memorable than most speeches. When I graduated a long, long time ago in a football stadium far, far away, the university I attended had a policy not to have commencement speakers. The Dean, President, Chancellor or whatever the head honcho was called, spoke. I can't remember what he said or his name. Sorry Alma Mater. I remember there were snow flurries - in May! I remember the veterinary students had stuffed animals pinned to their caps and I was envious of that. I remember where we went to dinner and who my friends were and that the weather was sunny, barring those few flurries... but the speech? I imagine I was exorted to go forth and do good, that much was expected of people who had received such a great education, and so on.
If you just can't get enough of speeches, check out The Greatest Speeches of All Time, DVD 808.85 GRE. 68 minutes of inspiring rhetoric from people who changed history. If you have to write a speech, BHPL has books about public speaking in 808.85. You don't have to picture your audience in their skivvies, just remember they want you to hurry up so they can go eat and they won't remember much anyway. Liberating, isn't it?

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

2008-06-03T16:10:00.002-05:00

At 10:30 a.m. this Friday, June 6, the morning book group will be discussing The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. The Namesake is the story of a Bengali couple who immigrate from Calcutta to Boston; the story of their Americanized son, Gogol; and a book about the immigrant experience, families and identity and names, names, names: namesakes and pet names and good names. Jhumpa Lahiri points out in an interview that having two names is "almost too perfect a metaphor for the experience of growing up as the child of immigrants, having a divided identity, divided loyalties, etc."

Gogol's world and that of his parents and wife envelops the reader as the story unfolds slowly and methodically. The critical consensus about Jhumpa Lahiri is that her style is "quiet" but dazzling (she is the daughter of a librarian!): Time called Jhumpa Lahiri "the Quiet Laureate" this month in an article about her newest novel, Unaccustomed Earth. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called The Namesake "quietly dazzling" in its review. Stephen Metcalf, also writing in the Times, described Lahiri's earlier collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, to be "written in an elegant hush."

If you are wondering what "pujo" refers to - mentioned indirectly several times in the book, as in "pujo money", read about this celebration that is so important in Calcutta and to expatriates.

Discussion questions are available here at the Reading Group Guides web site.

Does Carrie Bradshaw have a library card?

2008-05-31T13:51:00.000-05:00

Check out this New York Times video about the Sex and the City premiere, in which Sarah Jessica Parker is asked, "So what do you say to all the would-be Carrie Bradshaws?"

"I'd say stop at the library on the way to get the purse."

SJP seems to take her own advice. She discussed the Victorian novel New Grub Street by George Gissing in an interview with New York magazine, and her son, James Wilkie, is named after Wilkie Collins. By the way, if you haven't read Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (which T. S. Eliot called "the first and greatest English detective novel") I recommend it as one of those classics which is actually fun to read. It's set in the 1800s and revolves around the mysterious disappearance of a precious diamond hours after it reaches a country mansion.

Internet versus Magazines

2008-05-30T09:10:00.001-05:00

Digital full-text versions of thousands of magazines and newspapers are available free from several library databases like EBSCO, National Newspapers 9, and Custom Newspapers. These databases are a treasure trove for research, but browsing through the publications in the old-fashioned sense is not possible using databases. Now USA Today reports that Zinio makes entire magazines and newspapers available by subscription that look exactly like the copy on the newstand. Pages are turned by clicking on the upper right-hand corner of the page. Zinio sells hundreds of magazines and newspapers from its website. Readers pay per issue or by subscription.
Before you consider buying an issue from Zinio or another online periodical vendor or magazine website, remember that the library offers over 3,000 magazines FREE going back decades through its EBSCO database. Reference librarians will help you find old issues of Consumer Reports, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week or the New York Times Magazine and teach you how to do the research at the library or from your home computer. Printouts of articles are ten cents a page. To buy a magazine article or issue online can cost $5.00 and issue.

Summary:
For research, finding a copy of an article, finding articles by subject and to save money, use the library.
For browsing through your favorite magazines on your IPOD, Blackberry, or laptop while on the go, use an online distributor and pay prices similar to subscribing to magazines in hard-copy.

The library and the internet are not mutually exclusive resources. Users just need to decide where, when and at what cost do they plan to use the resources offered by each.

Take Our Memorial Day Poll!

2008-05-23T14:13:00.005-05:00

BHPL will be closed on Sunday and Monday for Memorial Day. In the meantime, keep the "little grey cells" sharp with the poll on the right (as Hercule Poirot would say). The choices (self-pursuit, circumvolution, stereotypic whirling and ritualistic motor behavior) are taken from an e-mail discussion that appeared today on the listserv Project Wombat: the Difficult Reference Question Mailing List.

Friendship: See Psychology, Applied

2008-05-22T13:20:00.001-05:00

Some cards from the pre-Internet pamphlet file have turned up in the scratch paper supply at the reference desk. We have lots of cards with subjects beginning with O and P. "Friendship: See Psychology, Applied" was so classic that I saved it to take home with me. I shall now refer to my friends as my "applied psychology experiments."

Then there are the cards that are showing their age:

Outer Space: see Astronautics; Satellites, Artificial; Space Flight to the Moon

Physics: See also: Cosmic Rays

You can make your own card catalog cards with the Card Catalog Generator (which is how I made the card above).

The Story of the Great Swamp

2008-05-19T13:00:00.003-05:00

Can you imagine a major regional airport in Berkeley Heights' backyard, the Great Swamp?
In 1959 the Port Authority announced plans to put an international airport in the Great Swamp area.

Can you name any of the 25 endangered or threatened species that live in the Great Swamp?
The blue-spotted salamander (pictured below), the bog turtle, the wood turtle are endangered. Some less-endangered species that have thrived in the swamp: blue birds and wild turkeys.

If you'd like to find out more about the Great Swamp, on Wednesday evening (May 21) from 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., the library will welcome Jane Kendall and Ruth Lloyd, two members of the Friends of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. They will show a short film about the history and habitats of the Great Swamp called The Great Swamp: A Story of a National Wildlife Refuge. They will also speak about the latest information from the Swamp, wildlife viewing and volunteer opportunities. Don't miss it!

Friends of the Great Swamp

The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge

A Book Lover's Journal

2008-05-18T12:56:00.002-05:00

I keep a running list of books I read in a blank book with the title, "A Book Lover's Journal." The journal was a gift from a book group I belonged to almost twenty years ago. Some months and years, my reading is faithfully recorded with annotations, then months go by with no entries. A few years ago I figured that the trick is to just write the date read, title and author and forget the annotations because then the whole list-keeping project becomes such a big chore. I sometimes tuck my library check-out receipts into the journal until I have time to enter the ones I have actually read and finished which is usually a small fraction of the ones that I have checked out. Here are some greatest hits from the last few months as listed in my book journal:
The Miracle at Speedy Motors, which is Alexander McCall Smith's latest addition to the Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. It fully lives up to expectations of this fan and the gentle humor is just a little funnier, edging into slapstick when Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, her assistant, and one of the feckless mechanics from Speedy Motors go to the supermarket to follow a suspect and decide to do a little shopping as long as they are there. If you are a fan, you will read it. If you haven't discovered this series, start at the beginning.
I started reading classic English mysteries like Agatha Christie and Mary Roberts Rinehart. Rinehart's The Confession and Sight Unseen, bound in one volume kept me guessing up to the end. Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library keeps the reader trying to match wits with Miss Marple who says she knows who did it halfway through. I'm in the middle of Christie's Sleeping Murder, also featuring nosy Miss Marple and it is excellent, the clues lead to several possible solutions at this point.
I also recommend Kate Atkinson's Case Histories and One Good Turn. For reviews. click on the titles.