Join us for our summer session of BHP Book & Film Club on Homelessness is a Housing Problem by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern. The book seeks to explain the substantial variation in rates of homelessness apparent in cities across the United States. Using accessible statistics, the researchers test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain why, for example, rates are so much higher in Seattle than in Chicago. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a more convincing explanation.
The Building Healthy Places Book Club is supported by ULI Foundation Governor Randall Lewis.
June 19 – July 13, 2023
· | Participants will receive a Book Club 101 email outlining how the Book Club will work, along with the suggested 4-week reading schedule.
· | At the close of the reading period, author Gregg Colburn will share his personal story and motivations for writing the book; Allison Clark of the MacArthur Foundation will lead a fireside chat and Q&A discussion with the audience and Gregg.
· | In weekly emails, the author will offer observations and questions to guide your reading. Weekly emails will align with the four-week suggested reading schedule.
· Participation is free with registration.
· Participants receive a Book Club 101 email, along with the suggested reading schedule; links to the virtual meetups; and weekly thought prompts via email.
· Meetups are scheduled for 75 minutes.
· Reading the book or listening to the audiobook is recommended but not required to participate.


Even the most accomplished athlete needs a little motivation sometimes, not to mention there are some days that the weather just isn’t cooperating. We get it – it’s tough to lace up and head out in a torrential downpour. So we put together a list of inspiring books to read when you’re feeling sluggish, or when you’re stuck inside. We have a feeling that lack of motivation won’t last very long!
You don’t have to be an ultrarunner to appreciate this book. Jamison interviewed 35 runners about everything from training tips, to pain tolerance, to what is going through your mind at mile 93 of a 100 mile race. Most of the runners aren’t pros, either, so this one might make you feel a little better about your upcoming long run.
In this book, Brant chronicles the story of the men behind one of the greatest U.S. races of all time – the 1982 Boston Marathon. Not just about the race, but what happened to both men afterwards, this well-written story reads almost like fiction.
Many beginner runners don’t know the reputation that the University of Colorado Boulder Cross Country Team has (I know I didn’t). This inspirational story follows the team in their 1998 season while the team was chasing their first national title and Olympic hopeful Adam Goucher (yes, the future Mr. Kara Goucher) was going for his first NCAA cross country title. This book goes inside the mind of the amazing, yet controversial coach Mark Wetmore, and gives readers a glimpse of what life and training is like for some of the best.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
When Murakami decided to train for the New York City marathon, he also decided to write about the journey. This memoir about the intersection of his obsession with running and writing, and everything that comes up along the way. He shares his philosophy on running and on life, and is more about the mental process of training for a race instead of the actual training advice.
Sole Sisters: Stories of Women and Running
Jennifer Lin and Susan Warner
This book is a collection of inspiring stories from women from all over the United States. It’s about women who for friendship, for grief, for health, and for everything in between.
The Runner’s Guide to the Meaning of Life
After running for 35 years, and winning the Boston Marathon, you pick up a few tips. Burfoot shares the 15 life lessons he’s learned, essential traits for a runner, and inspirational quotes that have kept him going along the way. This is a wonderful read for any runner, whether you’re a newbie or have been at it for decades.
Just about everyone has at least heard of Steve Prefontaine, the running phenom who tragically died in a car accident at the age of 24. He was destined for greatness and continues to influence the sport today, even though it’s been 40 years since his death.


Robert Hales’s passion for antiques, travel and the Orient began with an overland trip to India in 1966. Within a year he had jettisoned his job as a fledgling microbiologist to begin a career specialising in antique Islamic and Oriental arms and armour. For almost thirty years he had a gallery in Kensington Church Street, London, where the atmosphere was decidedly informal. He has supplied many of the world’s leading museums and collections with some of the finest items to surface on the market.
Robert continues to pursue his interests with an undiminished enthusiasm.
This book comprises illustrations and concise descriptions of over a thousand assorted eastern weapons and armour which have passed through the hands of the dealer Robert Hales during the last half-century. The pictures show a varied selection of the best and most interesting examples that the author has chanced to own, and they strongly reflect his passion and personal taste. They originate from Islamic and Hindu cultures and beyond, including Russia, China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea and South East Asia. Most of the objects have not been published before, and the illustrations present a brilliant and delightful panoply.
The text is largely descriptive, but also includes a considerable amount of information published here for the first time. The section on Burmese weapons was written by Noel Singer, and his contribution is entirely new to arms history. Many of the objects in this book have an historical as well as an aesthetic narrative, such as the kris presented to Captain Richard Swann in 1638-1640 by the king of Andragera, or the various weapons and armour owned by Tipu Sultan. Due to the historical Anglo-Indian connection, a significant amount of Indian material found its way to Britain and hence into the stock of the author. This explains the preponderance of Indian weapons to be found in the book. Robert Hales has sought out some of the finest Oriental antique arms and armour to have surfaced in a generation, and he has distilled this into four hundred pages with hundreds of illustrations.


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Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of...
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The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle aged Humbert...
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Revered by all of the town's children and dreaded by all of its mothers, Huckleberry Finn is indisputably the most appealing child-hero in American literature. Unlike the...
The Great Gatsby
The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age". Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of...
The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of perpetuating the regime's propaganda by falsifying...
War and Peace
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as...
In Search of Lost Time
Swann's Way, the first part of A la recherche de temps perdu, Marcel Proust's seven-part cycle, was published in 1913. In it, Proust introduces the themes that run through...
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her...
For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality...
The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers, is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor...
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put...
One Hundred Years of Solitude
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in...
The Sound and the Fury
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The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship...
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1945 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, the novel has become a common part of high school and college curricula...
To the Lighthouse
A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates...
On the Road
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From the preeminent prose satirist in the English language, a great classic recounting the four remarkable journeys of ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver. For children it...
The Grapes of Wrath
Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the...
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The Portrait of a Lady
The story centres on Isabel Archer, an attractive American whom circumstances have brought to Europe. Isabel refuses the offer of marriage to an English peer and to a...
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The Mount Vernon Public Library has received a grant of 3 Sony E-Readers as part of the Sony E-Reader Library Program. Mount Vernon Public Library is one of 3 recipients of this grant in New York State. These readers are here to introduce you to e-readers and ebooks in the library setting.
The Sony readers supplement our already existing catalog of ebooks from Overdrive, which are available for checkout. These ebooks are for your enjoyment, entertainment, and education.
The E-Readers soon will be available for checkout from the Circulation Desk for in-house use. The checkout is one time per day for two hours per patron. This is an opportunity for people to learn how to use the new ebook devices. It will help update the library and prepare for our digital future.
Press Release- Building on its work with libraries to expand their eBook collections and digital reading programs, Sony today announced that it has selected the next 30 libraries to participate in its Reader Library Program . The libraries, from across 20 states, include the Pikes Peak Library District, Parkland Community Library, Laguna Hills Technology Library and the Kalamazoo Public Library. The program will be rolled out over the upcoming weeks and will provide participating libraries with in-house training on digital reading devices, educational materials to help librarians and patrons learn more about eBooks and digital reading devices for library staff use and patron demonstrations. Participating libraries have reported digital circulations more than doubling in the month following the in-house training.
“The first phase of our Reader Library Program was a tremendous success with participating libraries across the country reporting significant interest from patrons corresponding with strong growth in digital lending,” said Phil Lubell, Sony Electronics’ vice president of digital reading. “Today, we’re excited to announce the next 30 participants in the program and look forward to opening up digital reading opportunities to more consumers.”
“The Sony Reader Library Program has enabled our Library to successfully spread the word about digital books, and we have seen an unprecedented increase in use since the inception of this timely partnership,” said Kara Kohn of the Plainfield Public Library. “Our patrons are enjoying the opportunity to test out devices the library would not otherwise be able to provide in the current economic climate. The training and knowledge we received from Sony goes a long way in communicating to the public that the library is on the cutting edge. We can't thank Sony enough for this effective initiative and hope it motivates other libraries to be active promoters of eBooks in the public library.”
Sony is also providing digital reading assistance to libraries beyond the next 30 participants in the Reader Library Program. Libraries not currently participating will have access to further program information, details on applying for it, free eBook training videos and printable collateral for them to use in educating their patrons at www.sony.com/libraryprogram .
Borrowable Sony e-Readers


The story of Anne Frank is infamous; when she was 13 years old her family went into hiding from the Nazis, and on the 4th August 1944 they were found in their secret Annexe.
Anne died in 1945 in a concentration camp, and her father was the only one of the family to survive and so published her diary.
I found it difficult to believe that I was reading the diary of a 14 year old girl. Anne Franke was so sophisticated, her sentences so excellently constructed, and the ways she viewed both herself and others was so adult. ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ is much more than a historical document; it personally and intricately details all the close events of Anne’s life and her feelings and emotions at those times. Less is said about the Nazis and what is happening in the country, and more emphasis is placed on the confines of Anne’s world and the people around her and the unique situation they have found themselves in.
There were some incredible insights Anne Frank had on certain topics that I was not expecting:
1. Women’s Rights
One of the many questions that have often bothered me is why women have been, and still are, thought to be so inferior to men.
Fortunately, education, work and progress have opened women’s eyes. In many countries they’ve been granted equal rights; many people, mainly women, but also men, now realise how wrong it was to tolerate this state of affairs for so long.”
Despite all the other injustices that were happening to Anne Frank, she still had time to question why women were not equal to men. This is so interesting because it is still a huge issue today, and Anne is correct in saying that progress and education have helped the situation, and that men are feminists also these days. She perfectly showcases how discrimination can occur on many levels.
‘I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body… I asked her whether, as proof of our friendship, we could touch each other’s breasts… I also had a terrible desire to kiss her.’
Anne discusses boys that liked her at school and even has her first kiss whilst in hiding. Many entries in Anne’s diary are like those of normal teenagers, describing emotions and being obsessed with a crush. This reminds us of how human Anne is, and that despite being hidden she was just a young girl trying to figure herself out. She describes how she loved the female form, and was excited to start her period. Anne seemed incredibly interested in her own and other’s womanhood, and the female form, despite being attracted to men.
A contradiction imposed from without and one imposed from within…… As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two.”
Her last entry is an essay about ‘a bundle of contradictions’, describing how the Anne within is different to the Anne expressed to others. She often expresses how she views her personality compared to how other people view it and how she would like to change to produce less conflict, which is an odd realisation for someone so young to make about their character. She is intuitive about why people act the way they do, and how they act towards her.
4. Her mother
Just as my heart sinks every time I hear her harsh words, that’s how her heart sank when she realised there was no more love between us.”
Anne often complains about the people she lives with, which is understandable as personalities clash when living in such a confined space. However, it was surprising how often she discussed not loving her mother and only showing adoration for her father. She claims that her mother did not understand her or treat her well, and it seemed to go a little deeper than just a teenage tantrum of hate to a parent. Anne edited the diary after reading it over a year later and claims she understands her mood swings at the time and the comments that she made as all part of growing up.
She so ironically says that she doesn’t think in the future anyone would be interested in reading the diary of a thirteen year old girl.
Oh Anne, you were so wrong!
Millions have read the diary and been opened up to Anne’s world, and I for one was pleasantly awed by all that I discovered about her.


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“Evaluations of soybean genotypes for tolerance to soybean cyst nematode”, Phytopathology, vol. 86, p. 98, 1996.
“Effects of zinc fertilization of corn on hatching of Heterodera glycines in soil”, Journal of nematology, vol. 27, no. 2, p. 164, 1995.,


Publication date: 21 January 2010
They’ve got to stick together – whatever
‘Jamie and me have run away,’ said Rhianna, ‘and now you can too, Vicky.’
I took her hand in mine. It was freezing. When we first started school, they thought Rhianna could manage without any help. But every morning, Mum would whisper to me, ‘Keep an eye on your sister, Vicky.’ So I did. I looked out for her. Kept the bad kids away. Protected her from danger. And now Mum was dead, I would always have to look out for her. For ever and ever, amen.
Vicky and Rhianna are twins but they couldn’t be more different. For their fourteenth birthday,
Vicky wants a card from the hottest boy in school. Rhianna, brain-damaged at birth, wants a Furby. What they get is a nasty shock – their foster parents can’t cope and it looks as if Vicky and Rhianna and their younger brother Jamie will have to be split up. How can they stay together?
Desperate times call for desperate measures …
Exciting, fast-moving and deeply affecting, this innovative story is Laura Summers’ first novel.
Laura Summers grew up in South London and was a teacher before turning full time to writing. She has written extensively for many popular children’s television series including The Story of Tracy Beaker (based on the novel by Jacqueline Wilson), The New Worst Witch (based on the Jill Murphy books), and was recently nominated for a children’s BAFTA for one of her scripts for The Little Princess – a pre-school animation series based on the picture books by Tony Ross. The idea for her first novel came from the observation there were very few protagonists with learning disabilities in children’s books and the reality that one of her own children is disabled. The result is the creation of Rhianna and her sister Vicky: two very individual teenagers, one of whom happens to have learning disabilities. Laura now lives in North Devon with her husband and children and when not writing loves to draw and paint.


September 15, 2021
Mississippi State University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department has been selected through a competitive application process to be part of NASA@ My Library, an education initiative created to increase and enhance STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) learning opportunities for library patrons throughout the nation, including geographic areas and populations currently underrepresented in STEAM education.
“Mississippi State is one of just 6 universities nationwide to be selected to support this initiative, and we’re thrilled to be part of this project,” said Jean Mohammadi-Aragh, assistant professor in the ECE department. “We look forward to our students helping libraries bring electrical and computer engineering concepts to younger patrons and exploring the universe together with people of all ages during their public programs in 2021 and 2022.”
As a NASA@ My Library Partner University, MSU ECE students will provide near-peer subject matter experts from undergraduate and graduate programs to libraries as they explore NASA science and technology, specifically around NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Launch (fall 2021), the James Webb Space Telescope First Image (spring 2022), and as part of the Collaborative Summer Library Program (summer 2022).
Through this funding, along with support by the NASA@ My Library team, MSU will support students and libraries to conduct relevant and engaging NASA STEAM programming and activities. NASA@ My Library will create compelling learning experiences for communities across the United States and share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system and the universe beyond.
NASA@ My Library is offered by the National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) at the Space Science Institute (SSI) in partnership with the ALA Public Programs Office, Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) and Education Development Center (EDC). This material is based upon work supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under cooperative agreement No. NNX16AE30A. This work was also assisted and supported by the Space Science Institute, which was the recipient of the cooperative agreement. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASA or the Space Science Institute.
Learn more about Dr. Mohammadi-Aragh and her research by visiting her website.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Mississippi State University consists of 23 faculty members (including 7 endowed professors), 3 clinical faculty, 10 professional and support staff, and over 700 undergraduate and graduate students with approximately 88 being at the Ph.D. level. With research expenditure of the department in excess of $10M, the department houses the largest High Voltage Laboratory among North American Universities. For more detailed information on the department please visit our website www.ece.msstate.edu.


As we quickly approach our annual Otsukimi moonviewing exhibit, it's essential to delve into the rich cultural context that surrounds this holiday. In this keijiban article, we will explore the long history, cultural significance, and unique traditions that make up one of Japan's most celebrated festivals.
Otsukimi (お月見) literally translates to "moon viewing" in Japanese, and is an autumn festival steeped in centuries of tradition. This celebration is dedicated to viewing the beauty of the moon at its fullest. While the specific date varies each year, it generally falls between September and October. This moon festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is also celebrated across Asia under various regional names.
The origins of the Otsukimi holiday can be traced back to Japanese aristocrats during the Heian period when elements of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival were first introduced to Japan. Members of the aristocratic class would host moon-viewing gatherings, often aboard boats, to witness the moon's reflection shimmering on the water's surface. This tradition was not only an ode to nature's beauty but also a reflection of the influence of Chinese culture on Japan during that era. The composition of waka poetry was an integral part of these mid-autumn moonviewing festivities, and it continues to hold significance in Otsukimi celebrations today. These poems served as expressions of deep appreciation for the moon's radiance and the changing seasons.
The Otsukimi festival is also often adorned with rabbit imagery, stemming from the Japanese folktale of Tsuki no Usagi. According to the tale, the Old Man from the Moon, disguised as a beggar, encountered a monkey, a fox, and a rabbit gathered around a fire. He expressed his hunger and requested food from them. The monkey and the fox procured fruits, nuts, and fish, while the rabbit, unable to find any food, made an incredible sacrifice by leaping into the fire to offer itself as sustenance. Touched by this act of selflessness, the Old Man from the Moon resurrected the rabbit, allowing it to live with him eternally on the moon. This is why, in Japan, instead of seeing a man in the moon, they envision a rabbit pounding mochi.
To coincide with the popular folktale, mochi has emerged as a central element in celebrating Otsukimi. Mochi-based treats, such as tsukimi Dango (moon-viewing rice dumplings) and rabbit-shaped mochi confections, have become popular choices for both making and savoring during the holiday. These delicious treats serve as both culinary delights and symbolic representations of the moon and the rabbit's image of pounding mochi.
In Japan, eggs can also symbolize the moon in cuisine, and during otsukimi, you'll encounter familiar dishes like Tsukimi Soba or Tsukimi Udon, enriched with the addition of a raw egg. This practice not only enhances the flavor but also deepens the connection to the holiday. Additionally, seasonal and autumnal fruits and vegetables such as chestnuts (kuri), kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), persimmons, Japanese sweet potatoes, taro, grapes, and pears all find their place in the traditional Otsukimi harvest spread, alongside sake to toast the occasion.
Otsukimi is a visual spectacle, with decorations playing a vital role. People often create intricate arrangements made of pampas grass, known as susuki-no-sekku. They are displayed with great care in homes and public spaces during the festival, adding a touch of seasonal elegance to the surroundings.
Outside of moonviewing, the art of poetry, particularly waka poetry, is an enduring tradition associated with Otsukimi. Guests often gather to compose poems that pay homage to the moon's brilliance and its profound influence on Japanese culture along with celebrating a successful season of harvest.
We invite you to partake in these time-honored traditions at our upcoming Moonviewing Exhibit, where we celebrate the beauty of this traditional holiday!


Ray Bradbury August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012
Ray Bradbury, whose some 500 titles, spanning books, movies, plays, children’s books, and short stories, explored childhood terrors, colonialism and the erosion of individual thought, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 91.
Mr. Bradbury left a legacy of sage quotations, like “Science fiction is the art of the possible, not the art of the impossible.” He made the possible so close to truth it made us squirm. . . in a good way. “Fahrenheit 451” taught me the importance of writing to disturb thought rather than simply reflecting truth; he taught that truth is not a singular reality. “Something Wicked This Way Comes?” How many disturbing metaphors can a story deliver? Content4Good celebrates the disturbance Mr. Bradbury urges writers exercise to remake the world. Would he have described his as a legacy of hope?
“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.“
“Light?” “Burn?” Hope.
“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.
You must write every single day of your life.
You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
“Love?” “Remake the world?” Honor the legacy. May you create disturbing content today.


Well tonight was the first experience with John Lent. He gave an address at the library on dealing with long wandering narratives. He talked to us about how to handle them and encouraged us to trust our abilities and allow the story to flow. He suggested that we consider using space in the narrative to give strength. In short what we don't say is as important as what we do say.
I was struck with the words that he chose to describe writing. They crossed over to the visual arts strongly. Create large panels with space in between, apply texture and volume. It was all very interesting and relates well to the thinking I have been doing in the past couple of days about community engagement voice and connection. The fluid nature of change and the trust of process, of creating a vision and theme for the piece.
I am looking forward to my meeting with him next week. I am inspired to write and can't wait to get back at it.
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I’m looking to restock my bookshelf with some page-turners and helpful resources, and I’d love your suggestions!
So, if you’ve read a book that has rocked your world, I want to hear about it. The sky’s the limit….I’m open to anything. Let me hear what mind-candy you’re reading, what leadership guru’s are pouring into your life, or what book is challenging you spiritually.
My latest reads? Here you go:
Mind-candy: The Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins
Marriage: Heart to Heart About Men, Nancy Groom
Next up for me is UnChristian, by David Kinnaman (it’s been patiently waiting on my nightstand for several months).
And, on May 1st, my hubby’s book will be released, The Measure of our Success, An Impassioned Plea to Pastors. (shameless plug, really, since I’ve already read it) If you serve in ministry leadership, this is a must-read.
Ok, your turn. WHAT ARE YOU READING?


Arts Council of Thomasville
The Arts Council of Thomasville is dedicated to bringing the arts to the community. It is responsible for performing plays, musicals, concerts, a ghost walk and bringing many other exciting actvities to our great community. Please be on the lookout for their next production.
Thomasville Public Library - Museum
Feel free to check out or newly opened Public Library on W Front street in Downtown Thomasville. There has been a great includion of history and artifacts throughout the Library sharing the history of Thomasville throughout the years! The library is free to the public and a great way to learn more about Thomasville.
Kathryn Tucker Windham Museum
Located in the Thomasville Coastal Alabama campus, you can learn of the rich history surrounding Kathryn Tucker Windham. She is one of the greatest story-tellers to live and she is treasured and remembered each year by the Thomasville Art's Councils annual Ghost Walk!
You can also give us a follow on Instagram at @thomasvillealchamber.
Check out our stories and highlights for quick updates!


A youth group in Deparo, Caloocan City has recently asked me to write a Bible study for their youth camp this May.Being the youth friendly guy that I am, I willingly obliged. They were asking only for one but I wrote three. Heheh. I’m sharing these study guides for you. Feel free to copy and use these Bible studies. All I’m asking is for you to acknowledge that these bible studies were written by Mighty C. Rasing. Continue reading
For the longest time, I have been looking for books, materials, and references dealing with the leadership needs of young people from a distinctly Filipino perspective. I went to various bookstores in search of such materials. Too bad, I haven’t found any.
There are books on leadership–John Maxwell’s books easily dominate the list. Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard, and Peter Drucker also come close. Yet, books dealing with youth leadership specifically are rare and most of them usually come from other countries, mainly the United States. Continue reading


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- Praised for her blend of "action, suspense, and...erotically charged romance" (Booklist), New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan presents the story of Sarah, the eldest of the extraordinary -- and magical -- Drake sisters.
"Sarah's coming home." Ever since Damon Wilder sought refuge in Sea Haven, he's heard the same breathless rumor pass the lips of nearly every local in the sleepy coastal town. Even the wind seems to whisper her name -- a reverie so powerfully suggestive that it carries the curious Damon to Sarah's clifftop home, and seeks to shelter him there.
But Damon has not arrived alone. Two men have tracked him to Sea Haven, and into the shadows of Drake House, where Sarah hides her own secrets. And danger -- as well as a desire more urgent than either has ever known -- is just a whisper away...
Magic in the Wind has been released in several books over the years — alone, or combined with other stories:
TWO DRAKE SISTERS STORIES
Release Date: November 2, 2010
Sea Storm includes two Drake Sisters stories: Magic in the Wind (the new, expanded edition) and Oceans of Fire.
Number of Pages: 448
Publisher: Penguin Group
Release Date: October 1, 2005
This version of Magic in the Wind has been rewritten and expanded, in a very special collector's edition.
Number of Pages: 103
SPECIAL OFFER: Enjoy Magic in the Wind with this beautiful new cover:
Release Date: July 1, 2003
Includes: Magic in the Wind by #1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan; Hot August Moon by international bestselling author Katherine Sutcliffe; After Midnight by #1 New York Times bestselling author Fiona Brand; and Only Human by #New York Times bestselling author Eileen Wilks.
Number of Pages: 368
I have to admit this was a book of the heart. Seven sisters interacting, all magical and capable of extraordinary things. A town filled with wonderful people seen, first through the eyes of a stranger who can't accept them, and then seen through the eyes of one who loves them for all their differences. This is book of magic, of love and tolerance. . . well, with a bit of suspense and action thrown because that's the way my mind works!!!!
Magic in the Wind was originally released in an anthology called Lover Beware. The newer books include a new bonus chapter.
— Christine Feehan
Christine regularly writes about her books (and all kinds of subjects) in the following places:


Read about our recent beautification award! Click here!
We always welcome new members — Please join online or pick up a membership form, available at Duncan, across from the circulation desk. Memberships are tax deductible and valid for one year.
Duncan Friends is an all volunteer group and is always looking for people to step forward and help make the Duncan Branch even better!
There are currently several open positions and we have position descriptions for each. Please contact Danielle Robinson if you’re interested in serving as a committee chair or co-chair: firstname.lastname@example.org. Or join us at our next open board meeting, generally the fourth Wednesday of every month 7:00PM at Duncan Library to learn more. Monthly meetings are open to anyone!
About Friends of Duncan Library
FODL is an all volunteer organization that solely supports the Duncan branch of the Alexandria Library, located in the heart of Del Ray.
FODL sponsors a variety of educational and enrichment programs that include children’s programming, enhancing the overall collection, a cinema club and poetry society.
Along with memberships, we also host biannual book sales to support the library’s needs.
Thank you for your support of our neighborhood library!


- Oscilla Power
OSCILLA POWER INCLUDED IN PAUL HAWKEN’S DRAWDOWN
Noted environmentalist Paul Hawken recently released Drawdown, a book that maps, measures, models, and describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. Oscilla Power is listed as one of those solutions!
Drawdown, as explained in the compendium, is that point in time when the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere begins to decline on a year-to-year basis. The book takes a practical approach, looking at solutions that are already in place or nearly ready for market, with a goal of determining if it is possible to reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon within thirty years.
To learn more about the book, visit the Project Drawdown website. Bill Maher also interviewed Paul Hawken recently about the book and his work on his show Real Time with Bill Maher.


As a nonfiction writer, I’m interested in how a novelist goes about research, and the decisions one makes about how to use such material. Do you have to limit or control the ways in which you use research-generated material, and is there ever a risk of that material coming across as too academic?
—Peter Hessler, Cairo, Egypt
Pete, I’m going to cheat a little and start with a quote from Shelby Foote, the wonderful chronicler of the Civil War, who also wrote fiction. He’s talking about the difference between writing history and writing fiction, but the parallel to what you ask is close: “The novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth–not a different truth: the same truth–only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.”
To reduce this, all writers of stories want to convey experience accurately, whether it’s real or imagined. So if they’re after something that has a core similarity, perhaps it’s really only their methods that are intrinsically different. But even that is hardly the case. No writer, regardless of the degree of research he or she does, uses everything the research yields. You always have to impose yourself on the material. Yet that doesn’t mean the rest of the research is useless. There’s a Vanessa Redgrave anecdote I love that’s maybe relevant here. I think she was advising one of her daughters on a stage performance. A scene, anyway. There was a trunk as part of the props, but it was never opened. They discussed the character and various aspects of the performance and then Vanessa Redgrave said, “Of course, you know what’s in the trunk.”
For a fiction writer—and I suspect a non-fiction writer as well—all the research that doesn’t land visibly in the story is what’s in the trunk. The knowledge of it informs the tone of a story, a character’s reactions, what things a writer decides to include.
In terms of the more specific issue of whether I include actual quotes, the answer is sometimes, though sparingly. Actually, I would only characterize Suite Harmonic of my work as actual historical fiction, and it holds a different place in the quote category, particularly since it is based so closely on the letters John Given wrote primarily during the Civil War. There are quotes in some of the chapter epigraphs. I start one chapter with an entire letter of John’s and quote parts of others. What may be more pertinent here is how I used details and paraphrases from his letters, which I did fairly often. If those things slid neatly into what I was writing, I was pretty thrilled. It made me feel that I had captured John’s voice and was able to make it the solid underpinning of his story. I felt I was writing fiction but with an eerie verisimilitude.
Since voice and tone are often linked, at times even the same thing, I’ll move quickly here to your concern about whether or not researched material in a story can come across as too academic. It can.You don’t want the reader to be pushed out of the story by exposition that feels like maybe a widget inserted into it. Plunk. So it’s necessary to work and work to find the right diction level and to cut everything that feels extraneous. And it’s maybe one of the places in work where you can feel the thing is never quite finished.
Peter Hessler is a writer for the New Yorker .


YES!! This August we will be creating a fully-equipped library for the eager students at A.V.Bukani Primary in Nomasamsanqa Township in South Africa.
Here are the details:
We are teaming with an international shipping company to send a 40-foot shipping container that will leave the U.S. in late June, filled with 18,000 – 20,000 books. The container will arrive on the grounds of A.V. Bukani School a few weeks later, where it will become the school’s library! Want to help? Here is what is needed to make this project a reality:
- Book drives for new and gently-used books
- Monetary donations to offset at-cost shipping expenses and purchase new books needed to support the curriculum
- Volunteer time to help sort the books and prepare them for the library
- Donations of book cases, flooring or carpeting
- As shipping space permits, as much donated classroom supplies as we can ship
Your donation will play a pivotal role in the education and future employment potential of THOUSANDS of students over the coming years. You or your organization will receive a charitable tax donation receipt from South Africa Partners, a 501 (c) 3 US-based charity.
BOOK DRIVES: First book drive at Cinema Arts Theatre, Fairfax, Virginia was a great success!! More than 1000 quality children's books were donated in conjuction with the showing of the movie INVICTUS about Nelson Mandela.
Telegraph Self Storage in Lorton, Virginia, not only donated storage space for the collected books, but is hosting their own book drive! Drop off a book at 8935 Telegraph Road in Lorton.
Contact Eileen and Larry to find out more TheKuglerFamily@gmail.com


I have been cognizant of RSS Feeds every since blogging became popular. I typically just visit my favorite sites using the browser’s booksmarking system or if I get an email digest of new posts/articles. I see the RSS Feeds on my Google homepage each day, but it just doesn’t force me to click on anything since I typically visit each site a few times a week and stay informed that way.
I understand why RSS feeds are great for the web. It helps you organize and skim articles and not waste time reading something that may not be worth your time or of interest to you.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading “The Impact of New Technologies on Current Awareness Tools in Academic Libraries”. This has been the most interesting article thus far. I am a victim of information overload at time. Sometimes I have 200+ tabs open in Firefox and Chrome because I get carried away while researching or browsing and I open a new tab, and then another, and then another. With Libraries utilizing Web 2.0 tools and other social media applications, it’s easier to organize the plethora of resources available and that makes it easier to find later on when writing a paper or doing a project.
I finally had an opportunity to create an account at Diigo yesterday and I conducted a search for articles and websites related to my study. I found a few presentations linked to Slide Share that were directly related to my topic, but were from European countries. Using Delicious, I found resources that I found through the USF library and a search on Google. Honestly, I like my research workflow as it is constituted. Thanks to Amanda’s great presentation of StumbleUpon, I may add that site and then Delicious and Diigo will not be very relevant to me. I am pretty comfortable utilizing the library’s services to find peer-reviewed literature. I do understand how Delicious and Diigo can be valuable regarding other aspects of managing the web, but I do not believe those sites are for me.


The most important thing in the Charmed Ones' lives isn't magic, and it's not their jobs or their clothes. It's family. Piper, Phoebe, and Paige are Warren witches -- the latest in a long line of women with incredible supernatural strength. For more than two centuries, the Warren witches have fearlessly practiced magic: From Melinda Warren in the 1600s to the Charmed Ones in 2005, the power of these witches is unsurpassed.
"The Warren Witches" recounts never-before-told stories of their lives -- as women, as witches, and, most important, as members of a family of considerable magical strength and power. Above all, they are family; beyond all, they are witches.


Generally speaking, the most famous translations are also the most influential, having triggered visible changes in the workings and perception of the world.
Translation throughout history has offered individuals not just a chance to interact with disparate peoples and cultures, but to see and interpret their environment in a different way.
Listed below are five of the most significant translations that history has given us so far:
5. Twain Translates Twain
Mark Twain is a renowned literary figure, and his books have been translated into numerous languages for readers all over the world to enjoy. But interestingly enough, perhaps the most famous translation of one of Mark Twain’s works was done by Twain himself.
Twain undertook this translation effort in order to prove the unreliability of a direct back-translation. Back-translation is a method in which a work that has already been translated into a foreign language is translated back into its original language, using the foreign-language document as source material.
Twain took the French version of one of his stories — “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” — and translated it word for word back into English. He published the original English and French versions along with the notorious back translation in one edition, named “The Jumping Frog: in English, then in French, and then Clawed Back into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil.”
Mark Twain’s take on translation was certainly tongue-in-cheek. But notable translations such as his have had real and lasting consequences, and have shaped the society we live in today. And beyond anything else, his translation clearly points to the necessity of localization when translating copy with a linguistic flair.
4. Treaty of Kadesh
After a long war between the Egyptians and the Hittites in the 13th century BCE, the two parties signed a peace agreement known as the Treaty of Kadesh. In addition to being the first known diplomatic agreement in the region — and the oldest surviving written treaty — it is also the first such bilingual legal document in the world.
The treaty was recorded in both Egypt and in the Hittite empire; the former inscribed in hieroglyphics, and the latter written on baked clay tablets. It is interesting to note that even in ancient times, translations were not wholly literal. The Hittite version of the treaty was somewhat evasive in wording, while the Egyptian version was blunt and direct — an issue in legal translation that continues to cause problems today.
3. The Qur’an
The translation of the Qur’an is a sensitive issue for most Islamic scholars. Despite its translation into more than a hundred languages, it is argued that the Qur’an is inviolable and should not be reproduced in languages other than its original form of Arabic.
But there is a need for Muslims all over the world to be able to understand and study the Qur’an. Therefore, translated versions of the text are called “interpretations,” and are not considered to be as holy as the original Arabic version.
2. Buddhist Translations of Indian Sutras
At its core, translation is a medium for communication. And like any other medium, it is subject to tampering, filtering, and editing by the translator. An historic example of this is the translation of Indian sutras by Buddhist monks into Chinese in the 2nd century CE.
The monks had modified the message of the original sutras to reflect desirable elements of Chinese culture such as filial piety. This localization effort made the religion more appealing to the monks’ countrymen, and increased Buddhism’s popularity with the Chinese people. Today, it’s estimated that there are more than 100 million practicing Buddhists in China.
1. The Bible
One of the oldest religious texts known to man, the Bible has been translated into more than 450 different languages.
The Bible’s original version was written mostly in Hebrew. It was first translated into Greek by a collection of 72 Jewish scholars, and thereafter known as the Septuagint.
In the 4th century CE, Saint Jerome single-handedly translated the entire Bible into Latin. He was declared to be the patron saint of translation for his conversions of the Bible and other significant religious works.
Thanks to these and subsequent translations, Christianity was able to spread over multiple countries and continents, helping to ensure its place as one of the most widely practiced religions in the world.
Need Translation Help?
History has proven the power of the written word, and translations of significant works can often be just as powerful. It’s not an overstatement to say that many famous translations have changed the world.
If you require professional translation services, contact Accredited Language today. Our expert translators are available in 200+ languages and dialects.
Call us at 1-800-322-0284 or simply fill out our free quote form.


Winner of Fit Out Project of the Year – Public Sector
Located in the former Dominican church, the new library in Athy town was opened on the 3rd of May 2018.
This €3.75m project was jointly funded by Kildare County Council and the Irish Government. This building has been completely transformed from the former Dominican Church into a modern, inviting and inspiring place for community members to enjoy.
Dlight was tasked with the lighting design and supply for this particular project. Our design was focused on meeting the diverse needs of the community members of Athy by creating an atmosphere that was suitable to act as a hub for education, cultural, information and civic engagement services.
We used the Lightnet Ringostar G1 with direct light distribution across the main areas of the library.


The Jewish genocide committed by the Russian Imperial Army during WWI was the beginning of the Europe-wide slaughter of Jews during WWII commonly referred to as the Holocaust.
The book -- KHURBM 1914 - 1922. Prelude to the Holocaust. The Beginning -- is the first English-language collection of the most important eyewitness testimonies about this genocide and Russian Army orders of persecution.
A serious general reader may benefit by purchasing a less expensive version at https://www.amazon.com/Khurbm-1914-1922-Beginning-Expulsions-Forgotten/dp/1590451015
If you teach courses that may benefit from the use of the documents and eyewitness testimonies from the first genocide -- now almost completely forgotten -- of the 20th century Europe (or you wish to review the book), we'd be glad to make available to you a digital edition of the book.
To receive your free digital copy (free printed copies are available for reviewers), email us indicating the titles of your courses and institutions where you’ll be teaching them at email@example.com


Are we users or readers? Is thinking of users too dehumanizing for the work we do? Why are words so hard?
You might have noticed that in these newsletters I rarely refer to readers, but rather to book users. It’s something I’ve done pretty consistently since I started studying bibliography and book history. Here’s the explanation for this terminology that I wrote in Studying Early Printed Books:
This focus on bibliography is also why I refer to a book’s users rather than to its readers. Books are certainly read, but there are many types of reading—browsing, memorizing, reading for pleasure, reading for work. And there are many things you can do with books other than read them—you can write in them, take them apart, display them, share them, and throw them away. All of these uses are part of how we experience books and part of what we should consider when we study them.
It’s been a useful habit of mind, for me and for my students, and I believe strongly in its utility. For the almanacs I’ve been writing about, “use” is a much better verb to use than “read.” Do you read an almanac? I mean, yes, parts of it, but that doesn’t nearly encompass the full range of things you do with an almanac.
I think this is true even of the most recent book I’ve bought, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House. I bought the book in paper even though I do most of my pleasure reading as ebooks because I anticipated that the type of reading I wanted to do with it would be better served that way—the way the pieces are laid out on the page, my imagined desire to be able to return to it again. That’s about reading, but it’s also about use, especially because I bought it about a month ago and it’s still sitting on my dresser, waiting for me to pick it up and begin. And relevant here is that there are tons of books I buy that I don’t read and that get shelved away, sometimes pulled out, sometimes not. My decision to place In the Dream House on my dresser—not even on my bedside table!—suggests I’m getting something from having it visibly in view. Does talking about me as this book’s reader capture the full range of activities encompassed in my relationship to this unread object? Or am I instead that book’s user, someone who derives meaning from it even though I have not read it?
But recently I came across something that gave me pause.
In Robin Sloan’s most recent missive, he talks about a new book by Joanne McNeil, Lurking: How A Person Became A User:
Lurking by Joanne McNeil, out soon, is something truly new: a nonfiction book about the way it feels, and has felt, to use the internet. Its subtitle is How a Person Became a User: a quietly radical observation. There have been plenty of books about those users we all became: business books, policy books, how-to guides for digital designers. Joanne’s great contribution is to locate and celebrate the people we, the angsty wanderers in cyberspace, still remain. People finding their way to AOL message boards for the first time; people lying in their beds with their laptops open on their bellies; people migrating from one flawed platform to the next. In a memorable passage, Joanne writes:
In this book, I use the word “lurking” only in a positive context. Lurking is listening and witnessing on the internet, rather than opining and capturing the attention of others.
I know there are many lurkers receiving this newsletter. Thank you: for being people, whole people, not just “users.” Thank you for listening. Thank you for witnessing.
I actually love the idea of thinking about lurking in terms of books, but what made me pause was the opposition of users and people.
Do we lose something by thinking about people as users of books rather than readers? Is “users” in this context opposed to “people”?
McNeil’s book is focused on the internet, not the book. Although, really, since I think talking about “the book” is ridiculous since books take so many forms and have so many histories, shouldn’t I also be talking about “internets” here? Let’s try that again.
McNeil’s book is focused on internets, not books. And as such, her eye is on how we are online and how platforms and companies have shaped and reshaped online communities. (Again, I haven’t read her book yet because it’s not actually on sale until tomorrow, February 25th, but this is my sense from reading her introduction and conversations around it.) From that point of view, there’s a clear sense that “users” might be distinct from “people.” They’re definitely distinct from “developers” and lord knows that developers don’t always fully anticipated how their products will be used, often because they haven’t fully anticipated how their imagined users are fully fledged human beings, complete with all their unruly desires and offbeat behaviors.
So although I’m tempted to say I don’t need to worry about “users” instead of “readers” in my context, this was still a wake-up call that “user” carries connotations that might not always be helpful for my purposes. I can’t really think of a better word, so I’m going to keep talking about a book’s users, but I’m also going to be more aware of how to convey that those users are people in the past and present, with lives that we know and don’t know and a messiness that is humanity.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on users and readers and the language we (or you!) use to describe who consumes books and how we do it. Substack has recently introduced discussion threads for all newsletter subscribers, so let’s take advantage of it! How do you refer to the people who interact with the books you study?
I started thinking in terms of book use thanks to conversations with Bill Sherman and then his 2009 book, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Penn Press, 2009). He, in turn, credits another work that I have found invaluable in thinking about book use, Carla Mazzio and Bradin McCormack’s Book Use, Book Theory: 1500-1700 (U Chicago Library, 2005). Sherman’s book is easy to find; Mazzio and McCormack’s is less so, but I highly recommend it.
Robin Sloan’s infrequent newsletter is always a delight; you can sign up on his website. You might think of him primarily as the author of Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, and he is, but if that is your main association with him, you’re missing the wide-ranging interest he has in technologies of all sorts and just his general curiosity and kindness toward the world.
Joanne McNeil’s book, Lurking, is out from Farrar, Strauss and Girous on February 25th and I’m looking forward to reading it. You can check out her introduction, which coincidentally starts off by talking about a used book and is making me think at the moment about book history as lurking. Really. Go read it.
Finally, I’m hoping that maybe having discussion threads will create a community here where we can learn from each other. I miss the days of blog comments! But I in no way miss the ways in which discussion threads can turn into hostile places. So I reserve full rights to delete anything that isn’t on-topic, that harrasses other commenters, or that is mean-spirited or racist or sexist or transphobic or ablist. It’s my home and I’m happy to invite you in and am eager to talk with you. But I keep my home a place of love, so those are my rules.
ps—I took that picture of a pen-and-ink facsimile infill of a book I saw at the University of Glasgow a few years ago, and for the life of me, I cannot now find my notes on what it is. I have them somewhere, but just can’t be bothered. I’m sorry. But not that sorry.
Thanks and see you soon!
I really hadn’t meant for a month to slip by, but maybe that’s a sign that posts every 3 to 4 weeks is the schedule my brain wants to do. We’ll see.
In the meantime, use your books, read your books, and mind your p’s and q’s!


As a younger man confronting another experience as a caregiver, I coped by “stuffing my feelings” and “numbing out” with alcohol. “Now I was facing Carol’s traumatic disease, I knew I had to be different.” Friends reminded me, “This is a marathon, not a sprint.” I was committed to being “consciously present” with Carol throughout her illness and to do that I had to take care of myself. This analogy recently came to me: if she were a craftsman, I would be the most important tool in her tool box. You are the most important element in helping your loved one recover and survive. Treat yourself as such!
Acceptance is an awesome force. Accepting reality is the first step. You also can learn to cope in delving into the mind, life and acceptance of life and death that is the heart of Coy Cross’s experience related for all to learn from in “The Dhance” (Available from KohoPono Press, ISBN 978-0-9845424-2-0, visit kohopono.com or call 503-723-7392).


Apps Full of Fingertip Fun!
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We're really chuffed to be able to offer you these children's app-books. There are more on the way, so do keep in touch. Tell us what you think, we'd love to hear from you.
Also available on the iBookstore.
With story by Sigrid Heuck & Mark Holme, and art by Bernhard Oberdieck. This app has interactive images, an orignal score, touch & play narration and record-me reading.
This charming story is about how an owl and a mouse prove an unlikely friendship can make dreams come true.
Two owls have moved in next door to the mouse-house in the forest. Can Tubby save the day?
With story by Udo Weigelt and Mark Holme, and art by Bernhard Oberdieck, this charming trickster tale will enchant children time and again.
The classic folk story, with original art by Bernhard Oberdieck, interactive images, touch & play narration, record-me reading and more!
Follow the donkey, dog, cat and rooster on their adventurous journey to become town musicians of Bremen.
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When you’re looking for sources it pays to be choosy, because a bad source is death to a paper. No lie, when your instructor is reading your paper, half of their assessment as to how much effort you put into it is formed by examining your works cited page. A good paper is not the one for which there are the most sources. It’s the one with the best sources.
How do you find the best sources for your paper? Do you thumb through the back issues of Newsweek at your dentist’s office until you find some articles that look like what you’re writing about? Not so much. Do you run a Google search and click on the first three links? Not if you want an A. Do you go to the library, find the shelf with roughly the right material and start scanning titles? Well, that’s how we used to do it, but that was before databases put refined search capability at our fingertips.
Writing a good research paper starts with being a savvy searcher. Serendipitous discovery as a research process is overrated. The percentage of academics who “stumble” onto a great find is misrepresented in modern movies, where everyone seems to pick up the right book out of a pile just at the moment they needed it. Real academics don’t “stumble” into their best discoveries. We stumble over to our nearest librarian the moment we feel ourselves stumble at all.
I can’t give you a foolproof series of steps for finding the right source for your paper, but I can give you these tried and true guidelines:
First, look at the assignment to find out what kind of sources you should use.
There are different kinds of sources: Secondary sources are sources written by other people about your topic. Primary sources, however, are witnesses to history: artifacts, interviews you collect, materials you find in the world or in an archive. On your assignment sheet, your instructor will likely have explained what sources are to be used in your paper. Does your instructor want you to look for peer-reviewed academic articles, newspaper articles, or to draw from only the texts used in class? Do they want you to do primary research? If the assignment doesn’t specify what sources are acceptable, ask your instructor.
Second, know what you’re looking for before you search.
Every paper you write in college begins with you: your interests, your questions, your hunches. If you don’t have at least some sense of what your paper is about before you search, you’re not going to find answers in someone else’s book. Make a list of what you need to find out before you start searching, and you’ll maintain some sense of your own voice in the paper. Go out clueless, and you might wind up presenting your instructor with a disconnected pile of quotes.
Third, look in the right place.
You can’t find bread in a hardware store. And you won’t find academic journal articles in a library database that only covers newspapers. Make sure you’re searching in the right place for the source you need.
Fourth, the source has to answer your question.
This seems obvious, but it’s easily forgotten once you get into the details of writing the paper. Too often what’s available takes over. You forget your purpose. The source you collect must help you answer your research question. If it doesn’t, don’t include it. If your question is about why the campus dining hall went trayless, for example, you can’t find that out by asking students, even if students are standing all around you. They don’t know. Get an interview with an administrator in dining services.
Lastly, some sources are just bad.
Sure it depends on your purpose, but no one really wants to see a quotation from Newsweek in an academic paper, unless your paper is about the death of print magazines, citing Newsweek as an example. You need to go where the story is. The story is never in Newsweek.
If you remember nothing else after reading this post, please remember: The story is never in Newsweek.


Memorial Minute for Marc Steinberg
Written and read by Nancy Whittier at the October 23, 2019 Faculty Meeting
Marc Steinberg was born on June 21, 1956 and grew up in Pittsburgh. He attended Johns Hopkins, where he received a BA and MA in history simultaneously in 1978. He received a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan in 1989. He began his academic career in the Sociology Department at Clark University and came to Smith in 1994.
Because Marc was so modest, many faculty may not know what an eminent scholar he was, so I am going to spend a little time detailing his intellectual contributions. Marc conducted painstaking historical research on work and workers in 19th Century England for his influential first two books. His first book Fighting Words: Working-Class Formation, Collective Action and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England was published in 1999 and addressed a question central to sociology, the formation of class consciousness. Using meticulous archival research about silk weavers and cotton spinners, Marc demonstrated how they expressed their class consciousness by drawing upon the dominant discourse in order to challenge it. He drew on the dialogical theory of Bakhtin to advance a perspective about the discourse of social groups that became influential among scholars of social movements well beyond 19th century England. His book was named a Choice outstanding academic title and won awards within the American Sociological Association.
Marc’s second book, Law, Labor and England’s Great Transformation, published in 2016, was even more ambitious. Again, Marc drew on archival records of local court cases in three 19th century industries–pottery, fisheries, and needlemaking – to challenge fundamental ideas about labor and class in the English industrial revolution. He demonstrated that employers relied on master and servant law to discipline and control their workers, who thus were effectively “unfree” for far longer than the narrative about the Great Transformation and its “free labor contract” has suggested. As Marc wrote, “law is . . . an institutional process through which domination is realized.” The book was a theoretical tour-de-force, that reviewers called “magisterial,” “thrilling,” and “an exemplar of comparative/historical sociology” and it received the award for Best Book in Economic Sociology from the American Sociological Association.
Marc’s most recent book, Beyond Betrayal: The Priest Sexual Abuse Crisis, The Voice of the Faithful and the Process of Collective Identity (co-authored with Patricia Ewick) was published just after his death. The book charts the development of a group of Catholics who, in the wake of the priest sexual abuse revelations, worked to redefine what the Catholic Church might become and, simultaneously, redefined themselves and their faith. After his years in the archives, Marc switched methods, as he and his co-author spent over two years attending the group’s meetings and conducting interviews with members, many of whom they remained in touch with afterwards. The book makes important contributions to theories of collective identity and – like Marc’s earlier work – will doubtless make an impact on future scholarship.
In addition to his books, Marc was the author of over 25 articles, receiving major awards for two of them, while writing numerous essays and book reviews and giving countless conference presentations. At the time of his death, he was working on a new research project on fascism in the U.S. during the the 1930s, which unfortunately had not yet resulted in any written work.
Marc valued teaching at least as much as he did research. He was a beloved professor, whose courses were always heavily enrolled. He taught sociological theory, social movements, rock music, power, and politics. Marc worked particularly hard to help students learn to write effectively and to develop their critical thinking and analytical skills and led many conversations about this goal in the department. He was notorious for the quirkiness and comedy he used to help students grasp difficult concepts. He tossed students candy or silly pens when they spoke in class, and once in a class I observed, climbed out the first-floor window to illustrate a point. He kept in touch with countless former students, mentoring them years after they graduated from Smith.
Marc was a remarkably generous and thoughtful colleague. He read voraciously across a wide range of topics and routinely passed along references to his colleagues and students. He was a source of steady and wise counsel for many of us. He served as Chair several times, and on significant committees at Smith, and numerous editorial and advisory boards for the discipline of sociology.
Marc had a deep commitment to social justice, mentoring student activists advocating for sweatshop-free Smith apparel, getting Coke off campus, and divestment, among other issues. He was a fierce advocate for his students, calling deans, arranging support services, and even helping out materially on occasion. He spoke up when he saw inequities at Smith, and he attempted to live as consistently as possible with his fundamental values.
Marc’s formidable intellect, generous and humble nature, and wide-ranging curiosity and enthusiasm were a unique combination. His absence leaves a large space.
The Sociology Department is organizing an event to remember and celebrate Marc, to be held on November 16, 2-5 PM, in the Poetry Center. Anyone who wishes to attend is welcome. In addition, a Smith fund is being established in Marc’s memory to support student research in sociology, a cause near to his heart. If you are interested in donating to that fund, please talk with me or any member of the sociology department.


Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
the whole of the flower the whole of the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
By Abbot Zenkei Shibayama Nanzenji Monastery Kyoto Japan. Included in the book, A Flower Does Not Talk, Zen Essays.
Published by Charles E. Tuttle Company 1970 Kyoto Japan Now out of print.
Zenkei Shibayama (柴山 全慶, Shibayama Zenkei, 1894 - 1974), a former Abbot of Nanzen-ji, was a Japanese Rinzai master well known for his commentary on the Mumonkan. Due to a number of lecture tours he undertook to the United States in the 1960s, and the translation of several of his books into English, Shibayama was a significant contributor to the establishment of Zen in America.
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Wow we have had the most fantastic World Book Day!! The staff and children dressed up as some of their favourite book characters and have had an absolute blast celebrating books, stories and poems. We read stories throughout each day but today was extra special, we read stories, we listened to audio books, we acted them out and made up our own. It was a day of literacy heaven. The staff all chose to dress up as characters for their rooms book of the month and we decorated the rooms to suit the books. The babies and toddlers were characters from ‘That’s not my’ books, Nursery ‘Dear Zoo’ and Pre-school were characters from ‘Night Pirates’ and had their very own plank to walk. We had a funny moment when we realised that Elaine dressed as a cheetah and Hayley as a dog looked like Cruella Devil and a Dalmatian they were costumes that kept on giving. Management were not exempt Ruth was the witch from ‘Room on the Broom’ and Megan ‘Winnie the Pooh’. We at First Steps are big advocates for reading as we see the benefit it makes to a child’s development and we were recently astonished to discover that a child that has one story read to them daily hears 1.5 million more words in their first three years than a child that doesn’t. We also see the advantages to a child’s imagination and therefore extends their play and development. We want to say a huge thank you to all of our First Steps families not just for dressing up but for sharing your favourite books with us. It has been a truly magical day.


Good evening, folks! Yes, it's that beautiful day of the week devoted to all manner of beverage. Precious, thirst-quenching, life-giving fluids. Today I'd like to focus on the most nefarious of drinkers, the ever-popular vampire.
The original supersucker has a long and storied history. Tales of vampires have manifested in one form or another for centuries in nearly every culture. And while they vary greatly in form, from mindless fiends to sophisticated socialites, they all share one thing in common: a lust for blood. In their newest and arguably most popular incarnation, vamps have even become teenage hearthrobs. More on that later.
So what's the big deal about these reprehensible creatures? What's the allure? I mean, aren't they just walking parasites?
It would be easy to say that Dracula is the best vampire story ever told, and it was certainly a starting point for me. One of the first books I can remember reading was a watered-down children's edition of the Bram Stoker's masterpiece. A villain who drank the blood of the innocent and turned them into mindless minions? How oogie! I was hooked. (Though, really, what editor thought it would be acceptable to release a version of one of the scariest books of all time for six-year-olds?)
A vampire story that pre-dates the old Count, though, is Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's terrifying and provocative Camilla. One of the first works of horror to explore homosexuality, this was a major inspiration for Bram Stoker's work. Hammer Films even adapted it into the chilling 1970 film The Vampire Lovers.
But my all-time favorite vampire story has to be Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. None of the film adaptations quite capture the horror of the book, which surprises me considering the cinematic prose Matheson employs. The uglies here have fallen to disease, which makes them crave blood and fear light. Yet they remain intelligent creatures who gather outside the house of plague survivor Robert Neville in coordinated attempts to coax him out.
The genre received a transfusion when Anne Rice published the Vampire Chronicles, which at 12 volumes and counting has, in this writer's humble opinion, far outstayed its welcome. The series would have worked better as a trilogy or, at best, a pentalogy with the conclusion of Memnoch the Devil. But, like Rice's immortal characters, the series just goes on. And on. And on. Living forever is just...well, boring.
Lastly, I would be remiss to mention Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, which just plain sucks. Forget the pun; I'm not wasting one on these books. Aside from limp prose, tin-ear dialogue, and cardboard characters, the effect sunlight has on the vampires is that they...sparkle? And the author doesn't even have the courtesy to go into the biology behind this choice.
But none of the aforementioned beefs are my biggest one with Ms. Meyer's work. That falls to the central romance. We have a) a naive 16-year-old girl and b) a vampire who looks like a GQ cover model but has the life experience of a Centenarian. The word "pedophile" comes to mind. If I ever catch my daughter with someone over a century her senior, there's going to be hell to pay. What could they possibly have in common? Oogie indeed. Figuring how this series became a global phenomenon is above my pay grade.
Also, and this is the last space I'll waste discussing it, the woman hasn't even read Dracula! There are several books that an author must read to effectively be able to write in the horror genre; Drac is one of them. Call it research or paying your dues. Either way, it must be done.
There are still many avenues one may travel in this very tired genre. I still love a good vampire story, on the rare occasions I can find something original. Take, for example, Lorna D. Keach's "Slut Dracula" -- fun, fresh, flat-out hilarious. Check it out if you can spare a minute or two of your life. If not, I understand. After all, you're merely mortal.
So tell me: who -- or what -- is your favorite bloodsucker? I thirst to know.


Supplied only on request (delivery and price to be confirmed).
With Chinese therapy guidelines for acupuncture, herbal Prescriptions, and nutrition
The over-all success and the friendly reception of the first English edition of the Pocket Atlas of Tongue Diagnosis on the international market shows the actual need for this book. The second edition includes updates of illustrations and corrections throughout the text and presents the full material with an improved layout.
The Pocket Atlas of Tongue Diagnosis conveys the connection between theory and reality of practicing tongue diagnosis. It covers everything from basic anatomical and physiological information to the history and methodology of tongue diagnosis, basic techniques, and systematic procedures and thus helps the reader in developing a holistic approach to diagnosis.
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The Five Languages of Apology: How to Experience Healing in All Your Relationships by Gary Chapman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I believe that this book is a companion book to the The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. After reading this book I have a greater understanding of how the people in my life say sorry. Not everyone expresses it the same and by recognizing it in other people you can have a better connection and more open communication. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
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The Breakthrough Book on Mind Breaking in America
Has Broken New Ground – Again!
Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change
Updated and Expanded 2nd Editio
by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman
Now Available in a New Kindle Edition!
NEW! Listen to the MindShift podcasts
with Flo Conway & Jim Siegelman
In June, 1978, six months before the cult massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman published SNAPPING, a groundbreaking investigation of the spreading epidemic of sudden, drastic personality changes that was bringing a frightening new era of personal loss and horrific human tragedies. SNAPPING went on to sell 100,000 hardcover and trade paperback copies and become a required text in high school and college classes in psychology, sociology, persuasion, mass communication, criminology, and comparative religion.
Now SNAPPING is back in an expanded and updated 2nd Edition. Snapping is on the rise among zealous cult members, born-again Christians, anti-government ideologues, participants in popular self-help, professional training and “stress reduction” programs--and, increasingly, among people in everyday life situations. And the epidemic is spreading worldwide in the 21st century. In this Stillpoint Press edition, the authors show how powerful, mind-altering spiritual and personal growth practices found in all these domains may impair the brain’s living information-processing powers and lead to profound personal changes, altered awareness, thinking, feeling and free choice, post-traumatic stress disorders, grand delusions, and violent destructive acts. In exclusive interviews and fascinating science, Conway and Siegelman span the history of snapping--from the 1969 Manson Family murders, to the 1978 Peoples Temple massacre, to the disastrous 1993 siege and conflagration at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Findings in their award-winning study of the effects of new spiritual and personal growth practices—the first of its kind—along with a special postscript on the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the Aum Shinrikyo poison gas attack in the Tokyo subway, and the global rise of extremist “terror cells” of many persuasions complete this seminal work that calls for new ways to counter a mushrooming threat to the mental health of America and every civilized society.
Stillpoint Press, Updated/Expanded 2nd Edition (1995/2005)
Softcover: 380 pages, illustrated $17.95
Praise For SNAPPING!
“Their book is judicious, sensible, well-researched and very frightening.”
– New York Times Book Review
“It is a book of investigative reporting at its best.”
– New York Post
“What Woodward and Bernstein were to Watergate, Conway and Siegelman may well be to the cults.”
– United Press International
“CLASSIC RETURNS . . . . More timely now than when first published . . . An important title for academic and public libraries.”
– Library Journal
“Credible and chilling . . . The second edition of SNAPPING is as important a resource in understanding spreading societal chaos as the first edition was in explaining the chaos of cults.”
– Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Important. . . . this book provides a tool to exercise judgment, monitor incoming information, and interpret what has become an increasingly intrusive battle for our minds. . . . At its core, it is language that holds the key to our mental health or to our destruction. What George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ is to literature, ‘SNAPPING’ is to non-fiction.”
– Albuquerque Journal
“In a prophetic vein. . . . SNAPPING is not only fascinating and frightening reading, it is also extremely well-written. . . . The escalating pattern of cult fanaticism and religious-political terror that the authors call a ‘death spiral’ seems to be widening. If we do nothing to understand and ultimately reverse that pattern, it will pull more and more innocent people into its vortex.”
– Cleveland Jewish News
“For anyone threatened with snapping, this book is a dispassionate, valuable study of an often frightening phenomenon.”
“There is no doubt that Conway and Siegelman are opening the door on areas of human understanding that have never been examined and that are in urgent need of study.”
– New Society
“A powerful look at a social phenomenon that is making headlines.”
“SNAPPING is an exciting and responsible and original piece of research that has taught this old poop amazing new ways to think about the human mind.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
“SNAPPING is by far the best and most scientific treatment of the cult problem yet published. For the scientist, politician, clergy or parent, it is valuable and wonderfully readable.”
– John G. Clark, M.D.
Asst. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
“Conway and Siegelman . . . place cultic behavior in the wider context of the communication revolution of our time. . . Indeed, SNAPPING unfolds as a traveling detective investigation. . . . they very capably trace and analyze the course of the phenomenon and . . . contribute greatly to our understanding of it.”
– The Cult Observer
“Conway and Siegelman are onto something important. . . . SNAPPING is a fascinating book with frightening implications.”
– Edward T. Hall,
author of The Silent Language
“[The] classic book on cults, still the best book ever. . . . Believe me, folks, these are the real experts.”
– Geraldo Rivera
“Conway and Siegelman deliver a powerful book and an amazing yet responsible look at the inner workings of the human mind.”
– Examined Life Psychology Newsletter
Tattered Cover Books, Denver CO
**** – “One of the most important books of our time.”
– firstname.lastname@example.org, Amazon.com
But It Now @ Amazon.com and Pay Only $15.79
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Learning of OWL Class Descriptions on Very Large Knowledge Bases
From Ontology Learning
|title||Learning of OWL Class Descriptions on Very Large Knowledge Bases|
|author||Sebastian Hellmann, Jens Lehmann, Sören Auer|
The vision of the Semantic Web is to make use of semantic representations on the largest possible scale - the Web. Large knowledge bases such as DBpedia, OpenCyc, GovTrack, and others are emerging and are freely available as Linked Data and SPARQL endpoints. Exploring and analysing such knowledge bases is a significant hurdle for Semantic Web research and practice. As one possible direction for tackling this problem, we present an approach for obtaining complex class descriptions from objects in knowledge bases by using Machine Learning techniques.


The Brigade Activity Reports in the Military Service Pensions Collection were released in February 2019. With the IRA Nominal Rolls, the BARs form a very significant source of information and inform us on the individual claims lodged by the veterans of the Irish struggle for independence. There are completely unique records
If you are unsure as to what the Brigade Activity Reports are, how they were created and how they relate to the rest of the collection, click HERE.
If you want to know even more about the Brigade Activity Reports, you can download our guide for free (click on the PDF logo on the right): HERE.
If you’d like to take the scenic route to the Brigade Activity Reports through our new platform, click HERE.
If your search demands a more direct route due to the nature of your research, we have outlined the most direct way to search below.
2. Click on ‘Entire Collection’
3. Search page: Here, there are a couple of things to check in order to search the relevant records series.
a. Check that you are in ‘Basic Search’ mode (left)
b. Check that the first drop-down menu (field ‘search in’): select Organisations and Membership’
4. Select ‘Brigade Activity Reports’ in the drop down menu ‘File Series’
NB: you can see that that drop down menu is also the gateway to search the IRA, Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Eireann Nominal Rolls (membership listings).
5. Then it all depends what you know about the records you are searching or what you want to retrieve. Here are a few tips and pointers:
- do you want to retrieve all the records at once? After step 4, do not fill any other field, just click on search (at the bottom).
- do you want to search by county? Note that the results will show those units that conducted activity within that county. Therefore if you are using the ‘Title’ field to search ‘Offaly’, you will only retrieve 3 records (file titles contain the word ‘Offaly’). However, if you use the ‘County’ field, you’ll retrieve 15 record.
- Free word search: this is searching the main body of our file descriptions. They are quite detailed descriptions to optimise retrieval.
- You can combine searches: for instance County=Cork and free word search: ambush. This will retrieve the records in which ambushes are mentioned from units which were active in County Cork (so not just the Cork Brigades).
- You can search by divisions if you are familiar with them.
- Obviously, if you know the reference code of the file you’d like to have a look at, enter it straight away in the Reference Code field. The BAR reference code will always be: A+ number (no other character like – or / and no space) ex: A23.