Faulkner (would have) turned 110 today

Yoknapatawpha County has its fair share of characters: Dewey Dell, Caddy Compson, Thomas Sutpen, Addie Bundren, and Ab Snopes just to name a few. William Faulkner spent decades weaving tales of this fictitious Mississippi county. Whether making a casket for one’s still-living mother or walking hundreds of miles to find an unborn child’s father, there is something uniquely odd in each Faulkner novel. Every one of them mixes the macabre and the exalted. The Nobel Laureate would have celebrated his 110th birthday today. Celebrate for him and enjoy one of these titles.

Faulkner novels:
As I Lay Dying
The Sound and the Fury
Absalom, Absalom
Go Down, Moses
A Light in August
The Reivers

Faulkner biographies:
One Matchless Time: a Life of William Faulkner
Faulkner: a biography
William Faulkner
Count No ‘Count: flashbacks to Faulkner

Faulkner Movie Tie-ins:
Barton Fink
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Big Sleep (Faulkner wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel)

Little Rock Central High School

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the 1954 US Supreme Court decision that declared segregated public schools to be unlawful, was severely tested during the attempt to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Would the United States enforce civil rights laws when so many opposed them? It has been 50 years since federal troops escorted nine African-American teenagers to the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School. Central High continues to educate the young people of Little Rock, but it is now also a National Historic Site.

Read about what it was like in Little Rock in 1957:
Bitters in the Honey: Tales of Hope and Disappointment Across Divides of Race and Time

Crisis at Central High, Little Rock, 1957-58

A Life is More Than a Moment: the Desegration of Little Rock’s Central High

Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation

The Long Shadow of Little Rock: a Memoir

Warriors Don’t Cry: a Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High

White is a State of Mind: a Memoir

Find images in eLibrary CE (Curriculum Edition) and History Study Center, two of our subscription databases.

You can find more information about the history of Central High and also find a schedule of 50th anniversary events at these websites.
Little Rock Central High School, National Historic Site
and Central High 50th Anniversary.

Traveling Librarian: West End Library in DC

My co-worker and I just returned from Washington DC and while we were there we visited a branch of the District of Columbia Public Libraries, the West End Library. It’s on the corner of 24th and L Streets in a very unassuming building. Built in 1967, this public Library was the first of the DC Library system to be air conditioned! Right now, the library has a very busy first floor with children’s area, public computers and fiction, non-fiction sections, videos and music sections. The second floor is used as meeting rooms.

We talked to the Reference Librarian at length about being a Librarian and Library things. She, Barbara, was very easy to talk to and was more than happy to talk to us. She told us a little about the history of the Library itself and told us the city wanted to move the branch to the floor above the fire station around the corner! The neighborhood, rightly so, is against that idea. Could you imagine quietly reading your magazine only to be disrupted with the fire alarm! Anyway, as many Library systems across the country, they are going through renovations, remodels, tear-downs and moves. Right now this library has a cozy atmosphere and a friendly and welcoming staff, elements that in the end are what keep patrons feeling happy and coming back.

To learn more about the DC Public Libraries, visit their website here!

New Thrillers with a Strong Sense of Place

The Unknown Terrorist
(Sydney Australia)
by Richard Flanagan
Examines the power of the media to destroy a life.

Restitution
(New York's financial scene)
by Lee Vance
Financier goes on the run after his wife is murdered.

Requiem for an Assassin
(Paris, London, Amsterdam)
by Barry Eisler
Slick and fast action about a contract killer with a conscience.

Secret Servant
(London, Amsterdam)
By Daniel Silva
Chilling fast-paced terrorism thriller.

Stalin's Ghost
(Moscow)
by Martin Cruz Smith
Renko investigates, with loyalty and courage, a murder-for-hire scheme that leads him to Chechnya and World War II.

For more titles, please see APL's list of recommended Spy Thrillers.

Your Family Tree

Many of our customers are interested in genealogy research. Austin Public Library subscribes to two genealogy databases, Ancestry. Library Edition and HeritageQuest Online.

The Austin History Center lists biographical sources for in-depth research on local residents, and the Texas State Library houses thousands of resources to help you trace your family tree. There are also websites, some free, that can help you build your family tree.

Genealogy.com
OneGreatFamily
Family Search
Geni

Alex (1976-2007)

Alex, the famous grey Amazon parrot, passed away unexpectedly last week at the age of 31. As a psych major in college, I saw numerous videos about this remarkable bird and his many talents in my cognitive psychology classes. He knew 100 English words and could count and distinguish colors and shapes. In my favorite clip, someone sprayed him with a water bottle, to which he squawked happily "shower!" He was thought to have the mental capabilities of a five year old. An online video of Alex is available from Scientific American Frontiers.

Dr. Irene Pepperburg purchased Alex from a pet store and began teaching him for her cognitive research at several universities, most recently Brandeis University and Harvard. His achievements seemed to indicate that he was able to learn and communicate with humans rather than just mimic what he heard. However, there is some controversy about just what his abilities meant. For more on the fascinating topic of Alex and animal cognition in general, check out the following titles:

• The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots
• Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind
• Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness
• Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think
• Readings in Animal Cognition
• How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species

The Man in Black

Johnny Cash died on this day four years ago. His career spanned half a century and took him everywhere from the Grand Ole Opry to Austin’s own Emo’s. His list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of the music world; Elvis, Willie, and Bono all took a turn crooning with the Man in Black. From the black land earth of the Arkansas Delta to fame, fortune, addictions, and redemption, the man lived it all. The Austin Public Library has numerous Cash recordings you can check out. We also have a nice collection of writings about and/or by him. Put on some black and grab a nice read.

Literary Cash: unauthorized writings inspired by the legendary Johnny Cash

Cash: the autobiography

I was there when it happened: my life with Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash: the biography

The man called Cash: the life, love, and faith of an American legend

Johnny Cash live at Folsom Prison: the making of a masterpiece

Johnny Cash: he walked the line, 1932-2003

Winners got scars too: the life and legends of Johnny Cash

Let’s go hunt for books!

If you find a book in a market, bus stop, park bench, or any public place that seems to be forgotten by his or her owner, look inside the book cover for a Book Crossing label. If you find one, it means that this book was left there for you to pick it up, read it, and “release it” at another public spot for others to read. This book can then travel from hand to hand, from person to person, between cities and even countries. The purpose of Book Crossing is to transform the world in a big library.

Right now, there are 585,204 people from 130 countries in the world participating in this project. To get involved, you can visit the Book Crossing web site, sign up and then participate by “releasing” some of your favorite books or by “catching” the books left by others. The Book Crossing web site is a fundamental tool of this project. Here, you can find information about places where certain books were released, or you might find the information about somebody who caught one of your books. But what is more important, this web site provides forums where people share ideas about this project and the books they have read through it. In a way, this is like a big book club.

Do you want to know which books have been released here in Austin? Let’s go see!

Reliable Books about China

I have recently been reading The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper that I thought was just about business. I was surprised to find interesting articles about books, popular culture, consumer electronics, and health. One recent short article that I enjoyed was a list of reliable books about China compiled by Oliver August, the Beijing bureau chief of Times of London. You too can easily read the newspaper by accessing the Factiva database from home. On Factiva’s homepage, click “News Pages”, and The Wall Street Journal is the third choice.

Fiction

The Bridegroom by Ha Jin
Please Don't Call Me Human by Wang Shuo

Nonfiction
Hermit of Peking; the Hidden Life of Sire Edmund Backhouse by Hugh Trevor Roper
God's Chinese Son; the Aaiping Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan by Jonathan Spence
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

by Peter Hessler

Job Hunting

Finding a new job is a necessary evil that I can’t imagine anyone enjoys. The job search itself can be tedious, and once you find opportunities, the torture of filling out innumerable job applications begins. (Why oh why can’t there just be one standard application for all jobs?). Then you have to update your resume, write cover letters, and prepare for interviews. It’s stressful and time consuming, especially if you are currently out of work.

But, if you're looking in Austin, take heart. According to an August 18, 2007 Austin American Statesman article, "Austin's strong job market keeps humming along in high gear, with job growth last month [July] at a 4.6 percent annual rate, the highest this year."

For helpful hints on all aspects of the job hunt, visit our online Job Searching Resource Guide. It includes sections on Finding Job Postings on the Internet, Overseas Jobs, Finding Companies and Organizations, Local Organizations That Can Help, Resumes, and Salary Information.

We also have several new books available for checkout:

• 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions


• Best Entry-Level Jobs


• One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success


• Portfolio Life: The New Path to Work, Purpose, and Passion After 50


• Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market


• Secrets of Power Salary Negotiating: Inside Secrets from a Master Negotiator


• The Ultimate Job Search: Intelligent Strategies to Get the Right Job Fast


• Perfect Phrases for Cover Letters


• 100 Fastest-Growing Careers: Your Complete Guidebook to Major Jobs with the Most Growth and Openings

Closed for Labor Day

Austin Public Library is closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday for Labor Day.

Labor Day is one of the few national holidays to mark the contributions of a particular segment of the population to society. In addressing the special nature of the holiday, Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor, said: "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day ... is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation." The establishment of Labor Day reflected the growing power of organized labor in Gilded Age America. The first Labor Day was celebrated Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, when close to 20,000 working people marched to demand an eight-hour workday and other labor law reforms. The parade was repeated annually without interruption, but not always on a Monday, until several states and then Congress in 1894, settled on the first Monday in September.

The Library will be open again on Tuesday. We will return refreshed and ready to serve you tomorrow.

No Library materials are due on dates the Library is closed for holidays, but overdue fines do accrue during holidays.

Traveling Librarian visited Harold Washington Library Center

My friend and I were wandering down State Street on a recent Saturday morning in Chicago and noticed an imposing building ahead on the right. Chicago has more imposing buildings than just about any city I have ever visited so that in itself was not so unusual, but atop this building were some of the larger gargoyles I had ever seen. I thought maybe we had wandered onto the set of the latest Batman movie currently filming in various locations around the city. But as we drew nearer I realized it was the Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago's central public library. The building has a retro look, completed in 1991, which a library brochure describes as Beaux-arts inspired with Classical and popular styled ornamentation, that must mean huge gargoyles.

Inside are 9 public floors of library quiet, over one million impressively spent dollars of public art, 70 miles of shelving for books and materials, a breakout of high demand items in the Popular Library, a welcoming, brightly lit and colorful Children's Library, and each successive floor arranged by subject matter all accessed through a central escalator. A friendly staff person, one of many, suggested we continue up to the Winter Garden, "a place a lot of visitors like to see." How did she know? The room is spectacular, naturally lit by skylight, high ceilinged, spacious and sparsely furnished, and very quiet on a Saturday morning. It is a beautiful sancutary amidst the rumble of downtown Chicago.

The Harold Washington Library Center reinforces the idea that "great cities have great libraries."

College Football Is Upon Us

So there are other sports, and then…there is college football. Since bowl games ended last January, we have waited months for the pigskin’s return. Packed stadiums, marching bands, and mascots all fire up tomorrow night as the 2007 college football season gets under way. Whether you’re a Longhorn, Aggie, Red Raider, or Banana Slug the college football season brings regional and national rivalries. As the season progresses and you find yourself watching game after game, grab one of these fine books and take a gander at some of the history behind the collegiate gridiron.

Michael Lewis’ Blind Side: Evolution of a game

Michael Hurd’s Black college football, 1892-1992: One hundred years of history, education, and pride

Bob Boyles’ Fifty years of college football: A modern history of America's most colorful sport

Brian Curtis’ Every week a season: A journey inside big-time college football

Ted Mandell’s Heart stoppers and Hail Marys: 100 of the greatest college football finishes

James Kirby’s Fumble: Bear Bryant, Wally Butts, and the great college football scandal

Mark Wangrin’s Horns!: A history: the story of Longhorns football

The 2006 Rose Bowl game: National championship

Mike Shropshire’s Runnin' with the big dogs: The true, unvarnished story of the Texas-Oklahoma football wars

W.K. Stratton’s Backyard brawl: Inside the blood feud between Texas and Texas A & M

Katie Hnida’s Still kicking: My journey as the first woman to play Division I college football

Richard Pennington’s Home field: An illustrated history of 120 college football stadiums

Eddie Robinson’s Never before, never again: The stirring autobiography of Eddie Robinson, the winningest coach in the history of college football

Back to School

Students around Austin are headed back to school today, so it's time once again for all those lovely homework assignments, tests, and science projects! If the school library is closed or doesn't have a resource available, the Austin Public Library can help.

Our Homework Helpers databases have access to newspaper and magazine articles as well as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference books. Most Austin Public Library databases can be accessed from home with a library card or at any library location without a card.

The Wired for Youth web site contains a list of homework and research links, book information, and technology links. You can also Ask a Librarian for help getting started.

We also have several new educations titles for parents and teachers:

• Building on Strength: Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities
  
• The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life
  
• Nolo's IEP Guide: Learning Disabilities
  
• Preventing Hazing: How Parents, Teachers, and Coaches Can Stop the Violence, Harassment, and Humiliation
  
• Not for ESOL Teachers: What Every Classroom Teacher Needs to Know about the Linguistically, Culturally, and Ethnically Diverse Student
  
• Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind
  
• The Game of School: Why We All Play It, How it Hurts Kids, and What It Will Take to Change It
  
• First Time in the High School Classroom: Essential Guide for the New Teacher
  
• Tongue-Tied: The Lives of Multilingual Children in Public Education

The universal writer

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." That is one of the most famous quotes from the prolific and magnificent Argentinian writer José Luis Borges. His birthday is celebrated today around the word with workshops and discussions of his work in universities, libraries and even cafés. This is because Borges work interests everyone who reads it in one way or another. He wrote short stories, poetry, biographies, book reviews, essays, poetry, screenplays, prologues and he was also a translator of English, German and French literature into Spanish. The variety of topics he included in his work is vast: mathematics, theology, mythology, folklore, history and philosophy are some of them. Borges work is not only discussed from the literary point of view; mathematicians, physicist and philosophers often study his works as well.

Several anecdotes also reveal important characteristics of his personality. When Borges was 80 years old he visited Mexico. His schedule was very busy but he managed to have an afternoon free so he asked his editor to take him to pyramids of the Yucatán. His editor told him that it was too far away to go for the afternoon but Borges was not dissuaded. After a long and extenuating trip by plane, jeep and taxi, they finally got to Uxmal. Borges sat down in front of one of the pyramids, stayed there in silence, and after a half an hour stood up and said: "thank you for this afternoon and this unforgettable landscape." Something important to know is that by this time, he was completely blind.

Some of the titles by Borges you can check out from the Austin Public Library are:

• The book of imaginary beings
  
• This craft of verse
  
• Selected nonfictions
  
• Labyrinths : selected stories & other writings
  
• The book of sand

A website with useful information about this writer and how to read his work is:

Internet Aleph

Enjoy!!

Craft series: Knitting

It seems like everywhere you look, everyone is knitting, or talking about crocheting, or buying something embroidered…what’s the deal? What’s all the hubbub? It seems like everyone is crazy about knitting, crocheting, embroidery, or any of those wonderful DIY crafty type things.

This week, I’ll chat about knitting. I want to start with knitting because we (the downtown central Library) have just started a knitting circle. You can bring your new or continuing projects every Friday to the 2nd floor from 11-12 and sit around and knit.

Beginnings: Wikipedia states that “[o]ne of the earliest known examples of knitting was finely decorated cotton socks found in Egypt in the beginning of the first millennium AD”.

Books: Do a simple subject keyword search for knitting in our Library catalog. You will find hundreds of books on patterns, how-to, and history, including 2007’s Men who knit & the dogs who love them : 30 great-looking designs for man & his best friend. You can also scan the bookshelves in any of our Libraries in the call number area 746s.

Who’s doing it: If you’re in Austin, you’re in good company when it comes to knitting! The Internet has had a hand in bringing crafts such as knitting, crocheting and embroidery back in a big way. There are tons of blogs, websites, guilds, and other fun stuff online. Here are a couple for the locals:
Austin Knitter’s and Crocheter’s Guild
Austin Knitting and Crocheting Meetup Group

How to Log In into My Account

We recently posted a survey with questions for users that would help us improve the Library Web Site. Many of the suggestions and comments concerned the catalog. In response to these comments we will be adding new features, such as easy format searching, to the catalog in the near future. One complaint that we saw over and over - having to log in repeatedly when using the My Account features - can be addressed now. If you log in in the top right-hand corner of the FindIt page, you will not have to log in again during your session. Or, from the Library's homepage, click My Acccount, and then log in in the top right had corner before you click on Review or Renew. For more help with the catalog, please see the Catlaog FAQs on the Findit homepage.

Login in the upper right hand corner of FindIt and place holds on some new DVDs.

Babel
Blood Diamond
Borat
Children of Men
Freedom Writers
Miami Vice
Night at the Museum
The Pursuit of Happyness
The Queen

Unusual libraries, unusual places

When you think about a library, you probably imagine a building located in the middle of a city, right? Well, sometimes libraries defeat our imagination and we can find them in the most unusual places.

This is the case of the Bibliometro, a project that the Department of Libraries, Archives and Museums of Chile put in practice more than 10 years ago. It consists of small libraries located in eight different metro stations around the city of Santiago, where people can check out books to read while they commute every day. Bibliotrenes (Book Trains) is another program implemented by this department. For this project they remodeled two old train wagons and transformed them into two libraries located in two of the busiest parks in the city.

The local government in Barcelona has also been trying to implement something new like libraries at the beach, pools, rivers, public parks and plazas. The idea is to bring libraries to places where people usually read and make the books more accessible to patrons. In Alicante, Spain, one can also find a library located in the city market.

Do you know of any library located in an unusual place? Share it with us!!!

Literary Austin

Essays, fiction, and poetry reveal the variety of literary responses to Austin through the decades in the new collection titled Literary Austin. As the author states, the book will be something of a nostalgia trip, or for newcomers, a revelation.



Part One - The Seat of Future Empire
Part Two - City of the Violent Crown 1900s - 1940s
Part Three - This True Paradise on Earth: 1950s
Part Four - An Oasis for Mind and Body: 1960s
Part Five - Austin is the Heart of Texas:1970s
Part Six: Austin is a Happy Place, Sort of: 1980s
Part Seven: Our Scruffy Eden: 1990s - 2006

For more Austin memories, please see the Recommended Reading list for the 2005 Mayor's Book club choice Writing Austin Lives.

The World Without Us

The World Without Us, a new book by Alan Weisman, offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us. In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.(book description)

Another way to try to understand our impact on the planet, is to read fiction about global warming or biotechnological catastrophe. Please check out these eco-thrillers listed below:

Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson
Fifty Degrees Below Kim Stanley Robinson
Sixty Days and Counting Kim Stanley Robinson

Black Leopard by Steven Voien
Bones of Coral by James Hall
Dead Game by Kirk Russell
Desert Burial by Brian Littlefair
The Green Trap by Ben Bova
Greenhouse Summer by Norman Spinrad
The Ice by Louis Charbonneau
Ill Wind by Kevin Anderson
Minutes to Burn by Gregg Hurwitz
Shell Games by Kirk Russell
The Swarm by Frank Schatzing
Zodiac: the Eco-thriller by Neal Stephenson

Classics rewritten

Classic novels are deemed so for their timelessness, impressive writing style, and memorable characters, plots, and themes. In the following pairings, authors have taken a character or plot from a classic title to create their own original works:

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The Decameron by Giovania Boccaccio
Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley

The Iliad by Homer
Ilium by Dan Simmons

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Jack Maggs by Peter Carey

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Finn by John Clinch

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman

Catalysts for reform

The novel is often used as a means of social protest. Authors use fictional characters to inform and inspire the public to fight injustices, gain sympathy for their causes, or just to initiate a debate. Many of these novels become classics, such as Animal Farm, Beloved, Catch-22, and The Jungle. An excellent reference for more information on the subject is Social Protest Literature: An Encyclopedia of Works, Characters, Authors, and Themes available at the Faulk Central Library. Below are a few titles highlighted in this book:

• The Twilight Years - Ageism in Japan


• The Ugly American - American foibles in Southeast Asia


• The Death of Artemio Cruz - Mexican governmental corruption


• Castle Rackrent - Irish feudal system


• Love in the Days of Rage - 1968 student revolution in Paris

Maupassant short stories to cool the summer

On August 5, 157 years ago, Guy de Maupassant was born. He is considered one of the most notable French writers of the 19th century. Because of his particular way of writing, he has been considered one of the fathers of modern short story. During his youth, while living in Paris, he found a mentor in the writer Gustave Flaubert. Maupassant also had the opportunity to meet other great writers like Émile Zola and Ivan Turgenev. He wrote novels and poems, but his short stories are the ones considered masterpieces.

Short stories in general are refreshing and entertaining. Sometimes, short stories have the capacity to impact you so quickly that you will feel your head spinning, but believe me, it is worth it! So, if you are looking for something stimulating and new to read this summer, how about some short stories?

If you would like to read something by Guy the Maupassant, here we have some recommendations for you:

The necklace and other tales

Pierre and Jean

Little Roque, and other stories

Short stories

Best short stories = Les meilleurs contes (Bilingual edition)

Wikiwiki, what's a wiki?

We’ve all seen, heard about and even used Wikipedia and other Wikis, but what does Wiki mean? Well, wikiwiki means “quick” in Hawaiian. A wiki is a place online where anyone can access and edit it. Thus, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia online that anyone can edit and write to. You may have written something in a particular section of Wikipedia or you may have noticed glaring mistakes in Wikipedia. Don’t be afraid, go in there and correct the mistakes! That’s the whole nature of Wikipedia. It’s an encyclopedia for all of us.

There are also other wiki’s online, try Wikitravel, a “project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide travel guide.” A favorite of mine is LyricWiki, a free site to get reliable song lyrics. Then, of course, there’s Wiktionary, a collaborative, multilingual dictionary. Oh! Check out TV IV! It’s a “compendium of television knowledge”! You can see a list of some of the largest wikis out there by going here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_wikis.

How about creating your OWN wiki? You can do that too. There are several places you can do that, PeanutButterWiki, Socialtext, Wetpaint, and Wikia. Try one out!

A novel in letters

Epistolary novels tell stories through letters written by one or more characters. Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) is considered to be the first of this genre. While this literary technique is not as popular as it once was, it is definitely still around today. In an effort to stay current, authors are now incorporating email, IM, and chat to convey their characters' innermost thoughts and to present different characters’ point of view. Here are just a few of the epistolary novels available at the Austin Public Library:

• Donorboy: A Novel


• Other People's Mail


• The Perks of Being a Wallflower


• Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable


• Zenzele: A Letter for my Daughter


• Where the Road Goes: A Novel


• A History of the African-American People Proposed by Strom Thurmond: A Novel


• Letters from Carthage


• The Eagle's Throne: A Novel


• So Long a Letter


• The Pull of the Moon

Home-based Businesses

An article from BusinessWeek Online presents an interview with Manvinder Saraon, vice-president of marketing and business development at Homestead Technologies, about the company's home-based business ideas for 2007. Saraon explains how they determined which home-based businesses have the greatest potential in 2007. Two of the suggestions are: offering children’s art classes, and organizing garages.

If you are interested in starting a home business, please check out these titles.

Home Business Tax Deductions: Keep What You Earn 2006
Home-based Bookstore 2006
Legal Guide for Starting & Running a Small Business 2005
Home-Based Business for Dummies 2005
The Work-at-Home Sourcebook 2005
The 200 Best Home Businesses 2005

To find articles on home-based businesses from US newspapers and magazines, please see the Library database Factiva.

Best-selling Nonfiction

More and more readers are beginning to enjoy nonfiction, not just for the information it imparts, but for reading pleasure. David Carr, a librarian at The University of North Carolina says that “nonfiction addresses our memories, our curiosities and unfinished questions, and our hopes to learn about something remarkable and real, something transforming and true, something lost and something discovered.” (“Many Kinds of Crafted Truths: An Introduction to Nonfiction.” Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory (2005)

Some popular nonfiction favorites at APL have been The Tipping Point,
Freakonomics, The World is Flat, Three Cups of Tea, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and Omnivore's Dilemma. The Tipping Point, for example, is a great science book for all ages. I suggest that you read it aloud to family and friends to start a lively discussion.

The Library's Good Reads nonfiction page has a list of top nonfiction books by year, a list of contemporary memoirs, and books devoted to obscure topics. David Carr also has created a list of his favorite nonfiction.

A New Book of Quotations

The Yale Book of Quotations

Library Journal: "This collection of 12,000 quotations is a real treat! The quotes range over literature, history, popular culture, sports, computers, science, politics, law, and the social sciences, and although American quotations are emphasized, the book's scope is global. The authors represented are as diverse as William Shakespeare, John Lennon, Jack Dempsey, both Presidents Bush, J.K. Rowling, Rita Mae Brown, Confucius, Warren Buffet, and Deng Xiaoping."

I have selected a few of my favorite quotations from the book and included a related title in the APL collection for each person.

J. Robert Oppenheimer
US physicist, 1904-1967
"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atom bomb."
American Prometheus; the Triump and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird

Walker Percy
American Writer, 1916-1990
"The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives."
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Philip K. Dick
American Writer, 1928-1982
“Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away.”
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Julian Barnes
British Writer, 1946-
“Books say: she did this because. Life says she did this. Books are where life is explained; life is where things aren't."
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Tom Waits
American singer-songwriter, 1949-
“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.”
Real Gone by Tom Waits


For more quotation sources, please see APL’s Quotation Locator Research Guide.

How to Get the Health Care You Want

When faced with our own or a family member’s health problems, our first priority is locating a skilled doctor and all the information about the illness that is available. The Austin Public Library offers many resources that can assist you.

Our health research databases provide up-to-date health care information from sources you can trust. You can access articles from medical journals, encyclopedias and other reference books as well as images, diagrams, drug and herb information, fact sheets, and pamphlets. Use your library card to access the databases from home!

On Tuesday, July 24th at 6:00 p.m., the Central Library will host a discussion with Laura Casey, the author of How to Get the Health Care You Want: The Savvy Consumer's Guide to Navigating The Health Care System. The book stresses that that we as consumers have a right to demand excellent customer service from our health care professionals, just as we would from any other business or service provider. Ms. Casey will discuss the importance of creating and maintaining one’s own medical records and answer questions about the health care system.

In addition to this title, we have plenty of related books to choose from:

• Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis, and the People Who Pay the Price
  
• Your Money and Your Health: How to Find Affordable, High-Quality Healthcare
  
• Physical: An American Checkup
  
• The Health Care Mess: How We Got Into it and What it Will Take to Get Out
  
• Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises

"One giant leap for mankind”

Today marks the 38th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing. Three United States astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins, set off on the Apollo 11 mission on July 16th, 1969. On July 20th at 4:18 p.m. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), the Eagle lunar landing module touched down on the Moon. Armstrong stepped out of the Eagle at 10:56 PM EDT with Aldrin following behind. Collins remained in the orbiting Command Module Columbia until Armstrong and Aldrin’s return 21 hours and 36 minutes later. During the mission, the two astronauts gathered rocks, took photographs, set up scientific instruments, planted an American flag, and left a plaque reading "Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon. July 1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind." The crew returned to Earth four days later on July 24th and then spent 18 days in quarantine to insure that they were not contaminated by lunar microbes. Over half a billion people world wide watched this momentous occasion on television and an estimated million watched the launch firsthand.

For more information, check out the NASA web site or one of these Austin Public Library resources:

• Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest
• First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong [sound recording]
• Destination Moon: The Apollo Missions in the Astronauts' Own Words
• First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
• The Race to the Moon [videorecording]
• The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account
• Man on the Moon [videorecording]

Blog anniversary: a message from the editors

“Time flies when you are having fun” is the old proverb. It is surprising for us to already be celebrating our first blog anniversary! It seems that we just started talking about this project, opening our blog accounts, and posting our first entry. So, this time we wanted to post a brief message from our blog editors to you:

Aleph: This is one of the projects that I enjoy the most at the library. I love looking for interesting information to post in our blog, but I would also like to hear more from the public, their opinions and suggestions. So, don’t be shy! We love to hear from you!

Oracle: I have really enjoyed writing and reading other librarian’s submissions to the Traveling Librarian blogs. It is so interesting to hear what other libraries have to offer and see the wonderful photos!

Evelyn Carnahan: I enjoy hearing about something interesting then writing a blog post to share with our reading public. I hope to one day start a Library Music Blog. Living in the “Live Music Capital of the World”, how fitting would that be?! As Aleph, I’d also like to hear more from our readers, post comments and suggestions!

La Princesse de Cleves: La Princesse de Cleves (1678) is considered by many literary historians to be the first modern novel. I chose this name because I enjoy writing blogs about books. We always appreciate your book suggestions, and we have plans to allow customers to add their own reviews of items in the catalog.

Thank you all for your support!

Black Swans

The Black Swan is the most social and least territorial of all swans. The non-migratory birds nest in rather loose colonies in Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden. The world thought swans were just white until Australia was colonized in 1697. Black Swans begin their lifelong partnership shortly after they become a year old. Both male and female Black Swans share in the incubation duties.

I have listed some interesting titles that include black swan in the title or as the subject matter, including nonfiction, fiction, and a music cd.

The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Taleb
An applied statistician calls rare, life-changing events that have massive impact "black swans".

The Medici Giraffe: And Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power
Marina Belozerskaya
Author surveys history for arresting tales of black swans, giraffes, and other exotic animals.

The Black Swan: Memory, Midlife, and Migratory Birds
Ann Batterson
In spare, well-crafted prose, this mid-life memoir recounts a cross-country trip alone in a VW bus to look at migrating birds. The book shares both title and theme with Thomas Mann's novel about a woman's fear of aging.

The Black Swan
Mercedes Lackey
In this re-telling of the German folktale, Odile, the daughter of a vengeful sorcerer, lives on an isolated medieval estate with her father's prisoners, unfaithful young women who are swans by day and human while the moon shines.

Black Swan Green: a Novel
David Mitchell
Charming study of a time and a place: small-town England in the early 1980s, seen through the eyes of a boy stranded in the hot zone of adolescence.

White Swan, Black Swan: Stories
Adrienne Sharp
Former dancer explores both the exultation and the physical and emotional stresses of professional ballet.

Hang on Little Tomato
Pink Martini
“Song of the Black Swan”
Lush instrumental by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Traveling Librarian visits Sydney and Brisbane, Australia

I attended the Fifth International Indigenous Librarians’ Forum: Culture, Knowledge and Future in Brisbane, Australia, June 4th-7th, 2007. The conference brought together the aboriginal people of Australia, the first Nations people of Canada, and the indigenous people of New Zealand and the United States. Presentations were devoted to four topics - culture, knowledge, sharing, and future. We were immersed into the aboriginal culture by visiting nearby Stradbroke Island to visit the Quandamooka tribal community for sharing of local foods, cultural dances, and artwork. We also visited the Dunwich Community Library, very small but used by many!

The conference was hosted by the State Library of Queensland and the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Library & Information Resource Network, Inc. (ATSILIRN). The state library is located on the South Bank of Brisbane, recently opened November 2006. Its modern architecture was designed by Donovan Hill and Peddle Thorp. The collection contains over 3.5 million items!

Consisting of five floors, the first floor, called the I-Zone housed public computers and some aboriginal art. The second, third, and fourth floors housed the music collection, periodicals, new books, periodicals, microfilm and reference. The fifth floor was administrative offices. I especially enjoyed the exhibit room used for displays and author readings looking out over the river.

Visit the State Library of Queensland Website: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/

New Seven Wonders of the World

The New Seven Wonders of the World were announced in Lisbon, Portugal on, appropriately enough, 07/07/07. The New7Wonders Foundation hosted the survey which nearly 100 million people voted on worldwide by web, SMS and telephone. The winners were:

• 
• The Great Wall, China
• Petra, Jordan
• Christ Redeemer, Brazil
• Machu Picchu, Peru
• Chichén Itzá, Mexico
• The Roman Colosseum, Italy
• The Taj Mahal, India

The original Seven Wonders of the World are the Pyramids of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Statue of Zeus, Temple of Artemis, Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, Colossus of Rhodes, Pharos of Alexandria.

Check out these items to find out more about these and other wonders:

• The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: A Journey Back In Time


• Dreams of Iron and Steel: Seven Wonders of the Nineteenth Century, From the Building of the London Sewers to the Panama Canal


• Seven Underwater Wonders of the World


• The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World


• The Great Wall of China: With 149 Duotone Photographs and 6 Maps; Including Texts By Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Luo Zhewen


• Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas


• The Colosseum


• The Complete Taj Mahal: And The Riverfront Gardens of Agra

Furry staff members

If you had the chance to visit Little Walnut Creek branch you probably met Junie and Ramona. They have beautiful long brown and black hair, and they are the only ones allowed to eat in the library. Of course we are talking about Junie and Ramona the guinea pigs!!! Their names are inspired by the juvenile fiction book characters Junie B. Jones created, by the writer Barbara Park and, Ramona Quimby, protagonist of a series of books by Beverly Cleary.

But Little Walnut Creek is not the only library in the country that has “furry staff members.” Dewey Readmore Books was the resident of the Spencer Public Library in Iowa for 18 years. A staff member found him in the book drop with his paws frozen a cold morning. Since then, he has been one of the most famous library pets in the United States. Tourists often included this library in their trips so they could meet Dewey. He received mail and still has a fan club.

Ocean Shores Library in Washington has Olivia and Waldo, two beautiful cats welcoming patrons. Azle Public Library in Azle Texas has Molli, the cat as their library pet.

If you haven’t met Junie and Ramona, you will have to wait until December when Little Walnut Creek reopens, but if you are planning on traveling nationwide or even abroad, why don’t you check the following map? You might be visiting a town where the library is the home of a celebrity pet: http://www.ironfrog.com/catsmap.html.

Raku: pottery to enjoy!

Raku is one of many kinds of Japanese pottery; it is characterized by using low temperatures to fire the clay and lead glazes. The combination of both fire and smoke create distinctive patterns and texture on the external surface of the pottery. This kind of technique started in the second half of the sixteenth century and its name originates from the place from which the clay for this kind of pottery was dug, in Kyoto, Japan.

Ceramic artists from all over the globe have been trying new variations in the techniques of Raku pottery. In United States, Paul Soldner is the pioneer of what is known as the American form of Raku.

If you want to have a better idea of this pottery technique, you can visit our display of Raku pottery made by one of our talented staff members here at the Faulk Central Library. The display is located on the first floor and if you want to know and read more about it, we recommend the following resources for you:

Raku: a practical approach

Raku : a review of contemporary work

Raku generation

Happy Fourth of July!

The Fourth of July brings fireworks, picnics, BBQs, parades, flags, and patriotic music all to commemorate the passage of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia. According to the Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, “the holiday was first observed in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776, at which time the Declaration of Independence was read aloud, city bells rang, and bands played. It was not declared a legal holiday, however, until 1941.”

Don’t miss the Austin Symphony Orchestra performing its traditional Independence Day Concert at 8:30 p.m. July 4 at the Northeast Triangle of Zilker Park (Lou Neff Point) with fireworks beginning at 9:30 p.m.

Please note that all Austin Public Library locations will be closed on July 4th, but will reopen on Thursday, July 5th at 10:00 a.m. Check out these patriotic books if you just have a hankering for more after the holiday:

• Flag: An American Biography


• Stars & Stripes Forever: The History, Stories, and Memories of our American Flag


• Long May She Wave: A Graphic History of the American Flag


• The Stars and the Stripes: The American Flag as Art and as History from the Birth of the Republic to the Present


• The Pocket Book of Patriotism


• Founding Myths: Stories that Hide our Patriotic Past


• Patriotism and the American Land: Essays

Self-Help Award Winners

Cupcake Brown, author of Piece of Cake

Last February, the New York Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society announced the winners of the 2006 Books For A Better Life Awards, which honor titles and authors of motivational and self-improvement titles. The Library owns all the titles, because we know from our own experience, there is always room for improvement!

The Books For A Better Life Awards winners are:
Suze Orman First Book: A Piece of Cake: A Memoir by Cupcake Brown
Childcare/Parenting: Packaging Girlhood by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Brown
Inspirational Memoir: A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas
Motivational: CrazyBusy; Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap: Strategies for Coping in a World Gone Add by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D
Personal Finance: The Number : A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life by Lee Eisenberg
Psychology: Social Intelligence: the New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman
Relationships: The Faith Club; a Mulsim, Christian, Jew - Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner
Spiritual: Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life by Irwin Kulwith and Linda Loewenthal
Wellness: What to Eat by Marion Nestle