Our National Parks

Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park, California.
Image from the Library of Congress American Memory

Last night PBS premiered Ken Burns' latest creation "The National Parks: America's Best Idea". If you missed it, you missed a beautiful beginning to the history of the how and why of our national treasures. However, you can catch it again, just check the schedule. You can also watch it on your computer.

The parks owned by everyone in this country cover 84 million acres, contains the tallest mountains, dense forests, hottest deserts, greatest collection of geysers, breathtaking waterfalls, deep lakes, cool dark caves, wandering rivers, grand canyons, idyllic islands, live volcanoes, and are peaceful refuges for animals and humans alike. Wallace Stegner was right when he said "National Parks are the best idea we ever had."

Watch the videos, tune into PBS, read the books, remember again what it's like to be in a park here in our great country.

A Passion for Nature: the Life of John Muir by Donald Worster

To Yosemite and Beyond: Writings from the Years 1863 to 1875 by John Muir

The National Parks: America's Best Idea: an Illustrated History by Dayton Duncan

Sierra Club: 100 Years of Protecting Nature by Tom Turner

Wallace Stegner and the American West by Philip Fradkin

Ken Burns' other films available at the Library

Green Day's American Idiot

The Berkeley Repertory Theater recently premiered American Idiot, a rock opera drawn from Green Day's album of the same name and featuring 21 songs from the band's canon.

Back in 2004, American Idiot reintroduced the concept album back into music. The album sold 12 million copies and has been compared to The Who’s Tommy, which become a Broadway hit in 1993, and critics are saying that's where the rock opera American Idiot is headed.

One reviewer said that the poetic twists and angry puns of the band's words come through with greater clarity in the musical than on the album, even with all the thrashing choreography, flying bodies. and pulsating video.

American Idiot, the musical, is being directed by the same team who won a Tony in 2004 for Spring Awakening, another musical about reckless youth.

The Library has many other musicals on cd. Search for musicals as a subject (drop-down menu) and then select "music on cd" under material format.

Fall is here. Time to hike.

Fall is here and the temperature will soon break for the season…hopefully. While the summer is considered the active season by many, the fall is the bee’s knees to me. The cooler temperatures and softer ground are perfecting for hiking. Austin and Central Texas offer vast and diverse hikes. We have numerous state parks close by as well as great municipal hiking areas. The Austin Public Library offers numerous Texas hiking and travel guides.

• 60 Hikes within 60 Miles, San Antonio & Austin


• 100 Classic Hikes in Texas


• Best Hikes with Dogs: Texas Hill Country and Coast


• Hiking and Backpacking Trails of Texas

Information about each Texas state park.

Juanes in Cuba

Hundreds of thousands, possibly as many as over one million Cubans attended a concert in support of peace in Havana’s historic Plaza de la Revolución this past Saturday. The event was organized by the Colombian Pop star Juanes and featured 14 other artists representing six different countries. Juanes is quoted as having said, "This concert is one little grain of sand more in the process of improving relations through art." This follows the current administration’s decision to allow family members currently living in the United States to return to the island to visit relatives, some of whom they haven’t seen since 1959, and to send remittances to help support them financially.

The Austin Public Library has several recordings by some of the artists that participated in this historic event in support of bringing people together through music.

Juanes:
Fijate bien [sound recording]
Un día normal [sound recording]
Mi sangre [sound recording]
La vida-- es un ratico [sound recording]

Olga Tañon:
Nuevos senderos [sound recording]
Llévame contigo [sound recording]
Te acordarás de mí [sound recording]
Una nueva mujer [sound recording]
Yo por ti [sound recording]
Sobrevivir [sound recording]
A puro fuego [sound recording]

Miguel Bose:
Salamandra [sound recording]
Los chicos no lloran [sound recording]
Bajo el signo de Caín [sound recording]
11 maneras de ponerse un sombero [sound recording]
Lo mejor de Bosé [sound recording]
Por vos muero [sound recording]
Papito Bosé [sound recording]

The Guiding Light has been Turned Off

A lot of you may not even watch TV during the day, but did you know that the final episode of Guiding Light was aired today? The soap opera had a 72 year run, first on the radio and then television. That is a long running story. I, myself, am not familiar with the storylines of Guiding Light, as my Mom and Grandma watched Days of Our Lives, Bold and the Beautiful and Young and the Restless and I watched with them occasionally. However, I do find it simply amazing that a television show can have that long of a run.

A few Guiding Light facts:

• longest-running soap opera in production and the longest running drama in television and radio history by the Guinness Book of World Records
• started on radio in 1937, moved to television in 1952
• won 69 daytime Emmy Awards
• the main characters were from the Spaulding and Bauer families
• over 15,700 episodes were aired

The Austin Public Library has a few of those early episodes on vinyl record. Check it out!

Browse through the TV y novelas U.S.A. periodical in Spanish.

And if you're interested in Jonathan Randall's character, we've got the book: Guiding Light: Jonathan's Story.

Check out Guiding Light online too:
CBS' link to watching the show and other GL features
a neat interactive website dedicated to all things Guiding Light

It’s all about fashion!

You cannot escape it, it’s everywhere, it’s going to be with you no matter your age, social status or country in the world. Yes, we are talking about fashion. When you hear this word you might feel completely connected to it because you might like to stay on top of the new fashion seasons and its colors and trends or you might feel that this is a word that doesn’t have anything to do with you because you don’t care much about it.

The truth is that everything we wear, whether we like it or not, was designed by somebody in the fashion industry that wanted to start a new trend and make you look in a certain way. Colors, textures, fabrics, everything is used with you in mind. The good thing is that you can choose and take what you like and create your own style.

Nowadays, singers and actors are mostly the ones that dictate a new fashion to follow. In the past, kings and queens stated what was “in” what was “out.” Like in the case of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire known for her extravagant style and Marie Antoinette who used her clothes to rebel against strict court etiquette and became a fashion icon of her time. This also shows that fashion is not only about looks but it is also linked to social revolution and struggle, like Lubna Hussein, Sudanese journalist, who will have to pay a fine of $200 or go to jail for wearing pants in public.

Fashion is also a vast area that covers photography, dressmaking, design, and art. These are some of the books related to this topic available at your library:

Basic Pattern skills for fashion design

200 projects to get you into fashion design

Producing fashion: commerce, culture, and consumers

Wagashi : handcrafted fashion art from Japan

Avedon fashion

Style clinic : how to look fabulous all the time, at any age, for any occasion

Queen of fashion : what Marie Antoinette wore to the Revolution

Fashion sketchbook

Colors for modern fashion : drawing fashion with colored markers

Fashion inside out : Daniel V's guide to how style happens from inspiration to runway & beyond

Fashion designers

Dogtown to the Rescue

This year, Dogtown, the largest no-kill homeless animal facility in the country celebrates its 25th year of pioneering animal rescue efforts and innovative and humane solutions to problems of pet over-population and animal abuse. Acquiring a former "movie ranch" in Angel Canyon and 33,000 adjacent acres in 1980, the sanctuary moved operations from its original location in Arizona to the beautiful canyon in Utah. The Library has the National Geographic DVD and a book about the sanctuary.

Dogtown: Second Chances
DVD 636.70832 Do
Three programs profiling life at Dogtown. Each episode of "DogTown" takes viewers on a journey inside the bustling grounds to meet the dogs and the skilled professionals dedicated to ensuring that even the toughest cases survive.

Dogtown : a Sanctuary for Rescued Dogs
636.70832 SO

One & Other

A co-worker introduced me a few months ago to an art project going on at Trafalgar Square in London called One & Other. The project, the brainchild of renowned sculpture artist Antony Gormley, involves everyday people picked at random to stand upon one of four plinths for one hour. Different people will take turns standing on the plinth (the fourth plinth, which does not have a statue on it) for 24 hours a day/7 days a week over a period of 100 days. A website is dedicated to the project where you can watch a live feed of the various randomly selected “plinthers” and their activities atop the fourth plinth. Admittedly, I’ve become addicted to tuning into this website and checking up on the plinthers every now and then to see what they’re up to. Some people just sit there and enjoy the view or surf the Internet on their laptops, while others rally for various causes or things they’re passionate about, but there is no limit to what a person can do while up there. One of my favorites was an hour late evening on a Friday night where the plinther, a girl in a silver-sequined dress with a small CD player, danced the whole time to her favorite tunes. Critics of the project say that it is not art and the plinthers are uninteresting, but, personally, I really like it. It’s difficult for me to put into words why exactly – maybe it’s that it is so distinctly human and it allows so many people (2400 total once the project is completed) to take part.

Gormley is a fantastic artist known for installations in natural environments and public spaces. For example, “Another Place” is a very effecting installation of 100 body form sculptures on Crosby Beach near Liverpool (see it here). He’s also used some interesting materials to construct his pieces, such as white bread slices for his work “Bed” (see it here). Here are some excellent websites and articles about Gormley’s works and artistry:

About One & Other
More about the project including a video of Gormley explaining the project

Flickr: One & Other
Pictures of the plinthers during their hour on the plinth

One & Other
This is the website to the One & Other project where you can watch the current plinther live from the plinth, view profiles of the plinters, and much more.

One & Other: Highlights
See each week's plinther highlights

SlowTV: Antony Gormley
Video in which Gormley discusses his work

Tate: Antony Gormley
This is one of the most well done websites I’ve ever seen complete with images from every angle and audio and video commentary on four of Gormley’s major works.

Too Human to Put on a Pedestal
*Requires an Austin Public Library card
Article from the London Times criticizing the project’s result. Use FindIt Plus to search several of our most popular databases at once including FindIt, the library catalog. This is a great way to find newspaper, magazine, and journal articles on people, such as Antony Gormley, current events and much more.

Lawyers and Wannabe Lawyers

For those trying to get into law school, the Library has various LSAT exam guides, and online LSAT practice tests as part of the LearningExpress database. The Library also has a good selection of legal materials for the lay person, including many self help books on divorce and wills, legal research guides, and a Texas legal forms database. For lawyers. we have books ranging from technology in the law office to the legal aspects of bicycle accidents. Lawyers can also look up news reports on legal topics and cases in Factiva, a database with full text articles from thousands of newspapers, newswires, magazines.

Mexico City Megalopolis

Mexican culture fascinates me. There is something that resulted from the mashing together of European culture with that of the many cultures of the native people of Central America that I find irresistible. The food is delicious, the people are so gracious, and the artifacts they produce tap into something deeply human. Of course, my perspective is that of a foreigner, a tourist, someone who watches comfortably from a distance. The real Mexico is vastly more complex, dynamic, and perplexing. The real Mexico is infinitely more interesting. Let David Lida be your guide as he leads you into one of the world’s great megalopolises, Mexico City. In his book, First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21^st. Century, the reader is treated to an intimate portrait of a place that is equal parts crushing reality and surreal dreamscape. Perhaps best of all, this is a work of non-fiction and Mexico City is an actual destination that can be experienced first hand. Fair warning however, this is a world as potentially addictive as coffee or chocolate. Be prepared to be transformed.

David Lida at BookPeople

Here are some related titles that the Austin Public Library has in its collection:

The Mexico City reader

Mexico City : a cultural and literary companion

Maexico : craonica en espiral

Labor Day Blues

The Library will be closed Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for Labor Day. Also this weekend, Mike Judge’s new film, Extract, opens. Judge returns to the workplace in Extract to once again comment on the stupidity of people. Office Space, the very funny 1999 cult movie directed by Judge, was about the stupidity of bosses, and Extract is from the perspective of the boss, who must deal with his lazy employees. Of course, these days, we who have jobs are just happy to be working, no matter what the environment is. If you are looking for a job, please use the Library’s Job Searching Research Guide where you will find both the traditional and newer ways to land a job.

If you would like to read good fiction about the workplace, try one of the novels below.

Because She Can. 2007.
Very funny novel about the NY publishing scene.
Company. 2006.
Satire of corporate America.
Company Man. 2005.
Corporate intrigue.
Exception 2006.
Spins office intrigue into a deeper examination of evil
The Finder 2008.
Edgy thriller about billionaire investors.
Intuition 2006.
Competition in cancer research
JPod. 2006.
Techongeeks working in an amoral video design company.
Kings of Infinite Space. 2004.
Temp worker slaves away at the Texas Department of General Services where incompetence is rewarded and talent ignored.
Little Pink Slips. 2007.
Delightful insider's view of the elite in magazine publishing.
Mergers and Acquisitions. 2007.
The world of finance.
Personal Days 2008
Comic and creepy satire about a downsized staff.
Then We Came to the End. 2007.
Ad agency employees are all recognizable office personalities.
Transmission. 2004.
High-tech thriller with insights into immigration and globalization.
Who Moved My BlackBerry? 2006.
Light-hearted dig at the corporate world.

Traveling Librarian Goes to Vancouver Public Library

In late June of this year, I took a train from Seattle to Vancouver, in southwest Canada. As a traveling librarian, I like to visit a library or two when I first visit a place. With the help of a friendly bus driver, I found the Central Library of Vancouver Public Library on the first day I was there. I spotted the distinctive curving façade from several blocks away. Visitors to the Central Library are first greeted by a lively, sunlit space, officially known as “The Promenade.”

Along the left side of The Promenade, there were retail shops and a daycare for children and to the right, the entrance to the Library proper. The variety of programming throughout the Vancouver library system was advertised on flyers that covered a cube, which was about six feet on each side, as one approached the entrance.

I went to the Lower Level to see the Children’s Story Room, which felt the way I imagine a Pueblo Indian kiva might feel, with its circular shape and light from a polygon of glass above the center of the ceiling. The acoustics seemed perfect for storytelling. On my way to the Special Collections room on Level 7, I saw a little of the other floors which held an abundance of books and many places to sit and read. It was late on a Monday afternoon and the place was packed with people, but was not noisy. I found more information about the Central Library in the Special Collections room and saw a display of some of the images from the collection of historical photographs of the region. Just over the rail beside the table where I sat at was an open space that reached down to the ground floor. A multi-storied Reading Arcade, with tables and chairs and readers, curved along the exterior wall.

The Central Library, located in downtown Vancouver, was built in 1995 and it currently holds 1.3 million items. I found this library to be an example of an amazing building that seemed to work well for people, while also being an inspiring space.

We Miss You Diana

Twelve years ago today, August 31, 1997, Princess Diana was killed in Paris. It seems like just yesterday when the earth stood still and everyone was talking about the same thing, her tragic death.

Are you or someone you know really into the royal family? Do you have all the books and magazines with Diana's face on the covers? Do you spout royal trivia and dates with ease? Yeah, I know someone like that too. I remember growing up my mother was absolutely mad about Princess Diana and everything English royalty. She claims that she is related to Prince Charles, a cousin of a cousin of a cousin or something, and loved seeing the two get married on television decades ago. She was thrilled with the births of each of their sons, was sad when the two decided on divorce and even more saddened with Princess Diana's death. If you needed any kind of royal question answered you would call on my mom.

Today, however, I just use the library. There is so much available, even today, on Princess Diana and the English royal family in the library, in print and online. First, there are countless books and DVDs in our library catalog that will bring you up to snuff on Princess Diana and anything royal. I did a simple search for Princess Diana and a list of 103 items popped up. That should keep you busy for a few days.

And don't forget about our databases. There are several that I used to learn a little bit more about Princess Diana. Encycloepdia Britannica, Biography Resource Center, MasterFILE Premier, any of the magazine & journal or newspaper & current events databases will give you much, much more.

Now, I wonder if you read up on Princess Diana you could beat my mom in a trivia contest. I bet you could, but don't tell her I said that.

"You can have New Orleans back, but you’ve got to want it bad."

Four years ago tomorrow, the first report of a levee breach in New Orleans, Louisiana was made (see a timeline of Katrina here). New Orleanians that had weathered the brutal Category 5 Hurricane Katrina were to realize shortly that the worst of the storm would begin only after it had ended. The flooding was terrible and, undoubtedly, still remembered by even those of us who have never called New Orleans home. Today New Orleans is slowly rebuilding, but it hasn’t been and still will not be easy. Some sections of the city are coming up just fine, while others, particularly the poorer areas, are still abandoned and have been left untouched since Katrina.

There are a ton of books out there about New Orleans, and, if you’ve ever been there, you would understand why. New Orleans has a culture all its own and its food, music, and people are well-known in the Western world. Katrina’s impact on New Orleans has been the central theme of most books that have been published about the city in the past few years. For example, there’s Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza (2005), a New Orleanian who describes the city so intimately that there’s no doubting his love and passion for it. Or, Nine Lives by Dan Baum (2009), who arrived in New Orleans after the storm as a reporter and became so intrigued by the city he wrote the stories of nine of its inhabitants and their hurricane experiences. A similar story portrayed in graphic novel format, is A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge by Josh Neufeld (2009), who captures the Katrina experiences of seven people in bold, color-infused panels, that was originally serialized in Smith magazine. Celebrate this fine city, its past as well as its future, with a great book or documentary from the Austin Public Library. Do a subject search in FindIt, our online catalog, by choosing Subject in the dropdown menu and search for “Katrina, 2005”, to see all of the materials we have about the storm, or “New Orleans and biography”, to see all of the materials we have about New Orleans and its culture.

Books

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
Read all about this comic and see it in its web format here.

City of Refuge
A novel by Tom Piazza about two families weathering Katrina.

Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans
An excellent idea for an excellent book - listen to the story behind it here on NPR.

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember

Why New Orleans Matters

Zeitoun
This one was just recently published, was written by the acclaimed Dave Eggers, and has received nothing but raves, such as this one here.

Documentaries (DVDs)

The Old Man and the Storm
A PBS Frontline documentary

The Axe in the Attic

Trouble the Water

When the Levees Broke
Acclaimed 3-disc documentary by the legendary Spike Lee

Articles and News

Barriers to Mental Health Services for Children Persist in Greater New Orleans, Although Federal Grants Are Helping to Address Them *requires an APL card
An interesting report compiled by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on New Orleanian children and their mental health

Hope, Reality Collide in Post-Katrina New Orleans

The State of New Orleans
Op-ed from the New York Times

Then and Now: New Orleans After Katrina
Carl Lastie is the man behind the quote that titles this blog post. More about his and others' rebuilding triumphs can be read about and seen in this article.

Rick Bass is good.

Discovering a new writer is special. It might be the cadence of the writing that attracts us. It might be the subject. It is often something entirely indefinable. I recently stumbled across the works of Rick Bass and am and will remain a firm fan.

I like dogs. I prefer to be outside. I like stories. Mr. Bass covers all those. He lives in rural Montana and poignantly depicts the intersection between animals and humans as well as the dual need for community and isolation. Plus, he was raised in Texas.

The Austin Public Library has a fine selection of Rick Bass’ work.

Colter: The Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had

The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana

Why I Came West

The Lives of Rocks: Stories

Falling from Grace in Texas

Where the Sea Used to Be

The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness

JOBView: Thousands of Jobs at Your Finger Tips!

The Austin Public Library has a very handy new tool for job seekers called JOBView. The database serves as an aggregator for job openings within the state of Texas as well as the rest of the country. Position descriptions can be printed, emailed, or sent to your cell phone in the form of a text message. The database will automatically route you to the employer’s or program’s website in order to apply.

Other features include:

• Job searches can be statewide or isolated to a specific city.
• The job radius search feature allows you to look for employment within a set distance from the center of a chosen city.
  
• Search only for Hourly and Part Time positions.
• Search for jobs in specific categories such as Accounting and Finance, Construction/Trades, Government/Military, Hospitality/Travel, Law Enforcement/Security, Non-Profit/Volunteer, Retail, Sales, etc.
• Federal Contractors with Veteran Preference and Work in Texas positions are clearly noted.
• A general search will list all jobs within the category as well as the employer. Click on the position’s title to see the full job description.

Shark Fiction

With summer coming to a close, and beach vacations on hold until next year, it’s now safe to read about sharks. Guys especially seem to enjoy a good shark story. And it just takes one good book to convince someone that reading can be as entertaining as watching TV. In the list below, only the Meg series is a total shark attack story like Jaws, but sharks or the fear of sharks play a role in the other titles.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bizell
Comic thriller about Dr. Peter Brown, a successful Mafia hit man who entered witness protection and turned to medicine, and who also has a fear of sharks.

Blind Willow by Huraki Murakami
Stories in this collection have Murakami’s matter-of-fact style combined with plausible but surreal premises to produce a dizzying adventure. In one story a mother loses her only son to a shark attack in Hawaii and then travels to the site of the accident for a vacation every year.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Already a classic, a survival story about 16-year-old Pi Patel who drifts in a lifeboat for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger.

Meg: a Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten
A riveting tale of prehistoric Megalodon sharks spawned a series with the following sequels:
Meg: The Trench
Meg: Primal Waters
Meg: Hell's Aquarium

Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall
In this tale of awakening and discovery, a young man learns that the agony of losing the love of his life in a scuba-diving accident three years before has destroyed his memory.

Mom= Mamá=матушка= μητέρα

We all know that babies have an amazing capacity to learn. If you think about it, the first five years in the life of a human are very dramatic. We learn so much in a short period of time: walking, running, eating, and, of course, talking. Children do not only have the capacity of learning how to talk and to communicate in just one language, but to learn up to four languages at once. Yes, that’s correct, that’s why people say that children are like sponges, they are literally absorbing every bit of knowledge available, in this case, languages.

According to Richard Tucker from the Carnegie Mellon University, there are more bilingual or multilingual people in the world than monolingual ones. He also mentions that worldwide the majority or children learn more than one language at once at an early age. CNN also published a brief article a while back with some interesting facts about world languages in which they found that “66 percent of children in the world are raised bilingual.”

You might be thinking: what are the pros and cons of raising a multilingual child? Well, the pros are easy to count: it’s easier for a person to learn a new language from birth than later in life; your child will learn to appreciate other cultures; it will facilitate communication with other members of the community; and it helps children develop stronger writing and reading skills. When we consider the benefits of learning more than one language, the cons seem minuscule in comparison: multilingual children tend to speak later than monolingual children; they also have a tendency to mix languages (something that they overcome with consistency in the use of one language or the other by family and friends); and parents of multilingual children need to make an extra effort to provide them with materials and an adequate learning environment. Visit the Multilingual Children's Association web site for more information.

In case you want to learn more about multilingualism and children, here are some resources for you:

• 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child
• The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach your Child a Second Language
• The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact
• The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
• Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children

Here are some tools in case you want to expose your children to a new language in a fun way:

CDs

• Baby's First Steps in Chinese
• Baby's First Steps in French
• Baby's First Steps in Italian
• Baby's First Steps in Spanish

DVD

• Mommy Teach Me Spanish. Volume 1, Tengo hambre!
• Mommy Teach Me Spanish. Vol. 2, Que duermas bien
  

Les Paul, a True Legend

Les Paul, born Lester Polsfuss, died last Thursday, August 13, at the age of 94. If you do not recognize his name, shame on you. Mr. Paul is the inventor of the famous Gibson guitar named after him and the "sound-on-sound" technology so many musicians and bands use today. Every time you turn on the radio, you hear Paul's influences, be it in country, jazz or rock and roll. Check out our copy of PBS' American Masters episode on Les Paul, Chasing Sound for a wonderful interview and clips of his life. You can also look at the PBS website for more. Mr. Paul was so full of life even until the end, he played in New York City clubs weekly.

Les Paul was an honorary board member of the organization, Little Kids Rock. This organization makes sure underprivileged kids get music instruments and instruction when they wouldn't otherwise. This participation shows that Mr. Paul was a giver; he wanted to extend his innovations and talent to the world and was successful every time. Musicians around the world are influenced by him and will continue to be long after today. Even though he has many honors and has won many awards, it all boils down to the fact that he touched everyone from those learning how to play guitar at a wee young age to those who are listening to the masters play it for the first time.

Thanks Mr. Paul. We appreciate you, your vision and what you've done for us.

For a little more info on Mr. Paul, check out the Biography Resource Center database. Search our FindIt catalog as well.

Dress Up

I love to dress up. As a little girl I used to stroll around the house in my grandmother’s old hats and gaudy costume jewelry. As a teenager I took the first part-time job I could to afford my closet full of clothes. As an adult I have fallen in love with vintage clothes and the thrill of the bargain hunt. It’s no wonder then that I also love fashion photography. I like to look for inspiration in what other people wear and what designers are creating and have created. In particular, I have been a devout follower of the blog, The Sartorialist – a photo blog of photographs taken by Scott Schuman to, as he says, “share photos of people that I saw on the streets of New York that I thought looked great”. Mr. Schuman puts up pictures from all over the world now and he photographs men, women, and children. While I enjoy looking at the designs created by designers like Christian Lacroix, Cynthia Rowley, and Christian Dior, it’s the photos on The Sartorialist that really get me going because what is usually on display is individual style, rather than the latest fashions. Fashions come and go, but style is forever.

I can always find inspiration at the library as well. From books about fashion, developing and honing your own style, and basic upkeep and tailoring of your clothes, we’ve got it all:

Fashion:

Avedon Fashion 1944-2000

Christian Lacroix on Fashion

Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937

The Golden Age of Couture: Paris And London, 1947-57

The Sartorialist
(just published – copies on order – place a hold today!)

Valentino

Vogue Fashion

Style:

Freakin' Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Behave, Eat, Drink, Entertain, Decorate, and Generally Be Better than Everyone Else

How to Have Style

The One Hundred: A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own

Style Clinic: How to Look Fabulous All The Time, At Any Age, For Any Occasion

Tim Gun: A Guide to Quality, Taste, & Style

Mending, Tailoring, and Upkeep:

Hand Mending Made Easy: Save Time and Money Repairing Your Own Clothes

S.E.W.: Sew Everything Workshop: The Complete Step-By-Step Beginner's Guide

Sew Fast Sew Easy: All You Need To Know When You Start To Sew

A Stitch in Time: Life's Most Essential Hand-Sewn Repairs

Websites:

Fashion Shows
See any designer’s complete collection here, photo by photo.

The Sartorialist