California’s “wide open” poet turns 90

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

On March 24, Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 90.  He still claims he never wrote Beat but rather ”wide open” poetry, even though most would say he was a key to the 1950’s Beat movement.

As part of his birthday celebration, SCC readers will want to dip into the poet’s work on the third floor of the library at PS3511.E557.

A Book by any other name…

Readers can carry around hundreds of books in a hand-held eReader.

Students walk into class with iPhones, laptops, e-Readers, and backpacks.  They say they’re carrying books, and maybe they are.

To parody Gertrude Stein, a book is a book is a book.  Or is it?  Today books are available in forms never imagined by printer Johannes Gutenberg.
Handheld e-book readers are a burgeoning business these days.  Consumers now have the choice of hand-held readers such as Sony, K2 (Kindle 2), e-bookwise, be-book, with more heavy-duty readers like the iRex targeting business.

Unlike reading e-books on computer screens, many handhelds use e-Ink, a technology that makes reading much easier on the eyes.  Some readers, like Kindle, also make it sinfully easy to buy and download books by using Whisper-net, the technology used by cell phones.

In a revolutionary move, Amazon offers free Kindle technology to iPhone.  While the iPhone doesn’t have the e-Ink feature, the Amazon-iPhone partnership heralds a new era in reading.

Web sites like Project Gutenberg, Many Books, Free-ebooks, and many more offer a huge range of classics to recent fiction and non-fiction for handheld owners.  (Use keywords “free ebook” in any Web browser to get page after page of Websites.)

While textbooks aren’t readily available as eBooks, this should be the next big jump for textbook publishers given the number of students who own and use handheld devices.

Currently online e-books like those offered by the SCC library can’t be downloaded into handheld devices although they can be read on those with Internet access.  All one needs is an active SCC library card and a pin number to read a book from an off-campus computer.

Are paper books dead?  Of course not.  But reading them has branched into new avenues.

Now it’s not just your credit card you shouldn’t leave home without.  Take your entire personal library with you too.

March into Environment Month

The Library is spotlighting the environment throughout the month of March.  Send your students over to learn about recycling and find out how to reduce their carbon footprint. 

RAFFLE!

Students can win cool recycling stuff, displayed in the first floor lobby and donated by the California Department of Conservation.  Fill out entry forms at the Reference Desk on the second floor of the Library.  The drawing will be held on March 31.

 

Social Networking ~ The World is Watching

Students love social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace because they offer quick, informal connections between people who share interests.  Messages, pictures, videos, and instant messages reach a few friends or the whole world in seconds.  But there’s no taking back a statement or photo that’s been published.  How will parents, school officials, future and current employers, or online predators interpret a student’s online profile?

Facebook: Helping employers eliminate applicants one drunken post at a time.

You can challenge your students to think about what is private and personal.  Print a poster from Ohio State University, pick up a thought-provoking handout on social networking at the SCC library reference desk, or read “10 Privacy Settings every Facebook User Should Know About” on allfacebook.com (a blog about Facebook) for step-by-step instructions on how to protect your privacy on Facebook.

Start your searches with our new widget

The library has developed a new tool: a “widget” that allows you to start searching the library catalog and a few of our subscription databases without going to the library home page first.

If you enter keywords into the search boxes and click “Search,” you’ll be taken directly to a page of results.

If you are an instructor using the new Desire2Learn courseware, when you create a new course you’ll see this widget on the home page. If you already have a course and don’t see it, you can add the widget to your home page. For more information on using the widget, including the code you’ll need to embed it elsewhere, go to its home page.

Does this seem like a useful tool to you? Would you like to see more tools like it? Do you have suggestions or other feedback? Let us know!