Elvis spotted in library cafe!

Hah hah, well, OK, it was really two of the cafe staff in Halloween costume. Elvis Presley sure was something in his time though. We have some great books about Elvis and those amazing early days of rock 'n roll, like, Last train to Memphis: the rise of Elvis Presley, by Peter Guralnick.

Read All Day

Read All Day is a project and a blog by a woman who challenged herself to read a book a day for 356 days, and to write a brief review of each. For anyone who loves books and reading it's a fascinating story! (She is pictured here, busy reading!)

We have books here in the library on reading of course, for example Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why. As a matter of fact, with the sizable book collection we have, covering so many areas, from philosophy to literature to science, history and more, there's no reason why you couldn't embark on your own personal "read all day" project :-)

Nor'easters!

For you meteorology students, or the weather buffs among us, there's a nice article in the NOAA website about nor'easters. We do have the Weather Almanac online, and many books in our collection relating to weather. ScienceDirect and AcademicSearch would be great for articles. I found this photo of a nor'easter in the AP Multimedia site. The photo is of a March 2001 storm, in Kennebunk Maine.

Dictionaries, encyclopedias and more!

Need the definition for a word? Like to read a good background article from an encyclopedia or other reference source, so you have all the facts, names etc. straight in your research? Try our Online Reference Sources page - there's a link right off our main web page too.

We have lots for you to take advantage of, from the definitive "OED," Oxford English Dictionary, to current controversy resources like CQ Researcher, specialized sites like Mental Measurements Yearbook (great to research those psych and educational tests,) general encylopedias like Britannica, and collections of resources, like Gale Virtual Reference.

Is your co-worker a king in exile?

That was the case for this man's co-workers, who according to this story recently found out that he was returning to Uganda as a king! If you're interested in African issues and stories, we have many resources to help your research. Lexis has newspaper articles from African newspapers. Academic Search Complete would be a good starting point for journal articles. Use our catalog to find books, and don't forget the African and African American Studies research guide.

"Times Says It Will Cut 100 Newsroom Jobs"

Things are tough in the newsroom these days, as the above headline shows. What if you wanted to know more, to research the issue?
A great article database would be our Communication and Mass Media Complete, which covers a lot of journalism related titles. Business and Company Resource Center would be good for industry and company overview, stats etc.
We have many books on the newspaper business too, including recent titles like Restless genius : Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street journal, and the invention of modern journalism, from this year.

GenderWatch & Ethnic NewsWatch

These two article databases are not among our more widely used or better known resources, but they are excellent for certain topics, and have articles from a number of journals, magazines and newspapers not found elsewhere.

GenderWatch: excellent for anything to do with gender, homosexuality, sexuality etc. Find articles from titles like Feminist Review, Journal of Homosexuality, The Advocate...

Ethnic NewsWatch: excellent for research into ethnic and race topics. Find articles from titles like American Indian Quarterly, Cherokee Observer, NY Amsterdam News and more.

"I thought I saw a tweety bird!"

Wondering what that "tweety bird" was? We have many databases, article databases like Academic Search Complete and so on, but also others, like the Birds of North America. This site from the Cornell Ornithology Lab is a premier resource for ornithologists and birders.

Help with Word, Powerpoint, Excel...

You are welcome to ask for help at the reference desk, or the IT HelpDesk, on the main floor of the library. There are handy one page cheat sheets to these programs at the HelpDesk, and there are book stands with Word etc. for Dummies books scattered about, help yourself. An option people often overlook, but that can be useful is to use the "help" link in Word, Excel... This often is what we look at when helping you! :-)

Gas at $2.74 in Brockport

Your blogger just put gas in his truck here in Brockport for $2.74 a gallon. What if you wanted to know what gas prices were elsewhere, perhaps the price of crude oil and other energy statistics? The Energy Information Administration site from the federal government would be an excellent resource! For example, the Weekly Gasoline and Diesel Prices chart could be useful. (And no, that's not my truck, mine doesn't look nearly as nice, lol.)

WorldCat?

In the upper middle of our web page there is a set of tabs. One of them is labeled "WorldCat." If you aren't familiar with it, WorldCat is a databases of records from libraries all over the country and beyond. So, if for example you had already clicked on the "Books" tab to see what we have, and wanted to find more, you could try the WorldCat tab. If it's something we don't own, we will try to get it for you through inter-library loan.

Walk 1000 miles in 1000 hours anyone?

Robert Barclay Allardice did just that in 1808. A Scottish nobleman and fitness enthusiast, he was a famous "pedestrian" of his day, a forerunner of the sport of race walking. You could look for books about walking and pedestrianism in our catalog and WorldCat. Articles could be found in databases like SportsDiscus, JSTOR and Academic Search. A fun website is the Historic and Literary Walking Stories site.