Did You Know? The Citation Tools “RefWorks” and “Zotero” Saves Time!

refworksZoteroDid you know that… the citation tools RefWorks and Zotero can save you time by organizing citations and PDFs? Both also format bibliographies to virtually any citation style!

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Pierce County Transforms to Paris During Pierce County READS event!

PierceCountyREADSPierce County Library System is bringing Paris to Pierce County this spring with its community one book program: Pierce County READS. Now through May 17, thousands of people will come together as a community and read copies of this year’s Pierce County READS’ book the New York Times best seller and award-winning “The Paris Wife,” by internationally known author Paula ParisWifeMcLain.

Be a part of the largest free reading event in Pierce County: the sixth annual Pierce County READS, presented by Pierce County Library System and The News Tribune and sponsored by KeyBank Foundation and Pierce County Library Foundation.

“The Paris Wife” gives an intriguing account of one of the world’s greatest authors, Ernest Hemingway, seen through the eyes of his first wife, Hadley Richardson. This book has been very hot on the best-seller’s list, and with significant social media chatter, it soared and stayed at the top of the list. “The Paris Wife” garnered the Winner for Best Historical Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Awards, which is the only major book award that readers decide.

During the Pierce County READS program people may participate in events where they may learn how to write and get their book published, plan their trip to Paris, and make art deco jewelry.

Ann

Professor Ann Putnam

In addition to the many hands-on activities, Pierce County READS will feature other authors including: author and Professor Ann Putnam who will discuss the role of women in Hemingway’s life and works at King’s Books, Thursday, May 2, 7 p.m.; Kathleen Flinn, an award-winning author of two memoirs with recipes, who will inspire listeners to participate in her passion for home cooking at University Place Pierce County Library, Thursday, May 16, 7 p.m.; and Gregg Olsen, a New York Times best-selling author, who will talk about how he researches and writes about the lives of others at Pierce College Puyallup, Friday, May 17, 12 p.m.

People may meet Paula McLain at a free event and book signing at McGavick Conference Center @ Clover Park Technical College, in Lakewood, Friday, May 17, 2013, 7 p.m. She will speak and sign books.

Twenty community partners participate in Pierce County READS: Associated Ministries, Barnes & Noble, Clover Park Technical College, Emergency Food Network, Garfield Book Company, The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, Joint Base Lewis McChord Libraries, King’s Books, Lakewood Arts Commission, Lakewood Historical Society and History Museum, Mostly Books, Pacific Lutheran University, Pierce College Puyallup, Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, Puyallup Public Library, Roy Public Library, Sumner Arts Commission, Tacoma Art Museum, and University of Puget Sound. Seventeen cities and towns and Pierce County are also signing proclamations for Pierce County READS.

Pierce County READS @ www.piercecountylibrary.org search site: READS

 

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Useful Economics Blogs

EconPenniesInterested in reading about current events from an economic perspective?

Concise and current, blogs are a great resource for keeping up with current events and conversations for scholars, laypeople, and those in between. Blog entries can run the gamut from serious to whimsical, but their very nature allows a uniquely unmediated opportunity for writers to communicate with their audience.

While they’re no replacement for our subscription databases when it comes to serious research, blogs are a fertile source for still developing ideas and research.

Here’s a select list of economics blogs that you can bookmark, or add to your RSS feeds (RIP Google Reader). Thanks to Prof. Matt Warning for helping to compile this list.

  • The Freakonomics blog
    Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner are the authors of the popular book “Freakonomics” and maintain a fascinating blog here.
  • Marginal Revolution
    Marginal Revolution is a blog written by Tyler Cowen and Alexander Tabarrok, two economists at George Mason University.
  • Planet Money
    Blog for NPR podcast, Planet Money
  • Conscience of a Liberal
    Blog by Paul Krugman of the New York Times
  • The NY Times Economix blog
    “From the business staff of The New York Times, the Economix blog interprets the economy and helps you understand our world”
  • The Economist blog
    Collection of blogs covering a variety of topics from the writers of the Economist
  • Financial Times blog
    Latest blogs and posts from the influential British financial daily newspaper.
  • Wall Street Journal blog
    “Real-time news and analysis from the Journal”
  • Econlib
    The Library of Economics and Liberty is dedicated to advancing the study of economics, markets, and liberty. It offers a unique combination of resources for students, teachers, researchers, and aficionados of economic thought.
  • Cafe Hayek
    Authored by Russ Roberts of Stanford and Donald Bordreaux of George Mason University

By Ben Tucker, Business, Economics and Social Sciences Librarian

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Spotlight: People Making a Difference at Collins – Marissa Irish

Example of Marissa's work

Marissa Irish is a freshman at Puget Sound and hopes to major in both English and Art. She loves her home in Portland, OR. and is learning to love Tacoma, WA too. Her favorite books include anything written by John Green, Jonathan Safran Foer, and of course, J.K. Rowling. Marissa has been working in the library since the beginning of the school year and plans to work there as long as they will let her. She enjoys the opportunity to create various posters and graphic design projects for the library and loves the wide range of people she gets to work with and meet there too.

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Drowning in a Sea of Opinionated Information

Read this great Huffington Post article about challenges students face sifting through opinionated information!

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Broom Handles and Bell Towers: W. W. Kilworth's Contributions to the University of Puget Sound

Robert Sconce and G.J. Schulmerich inspect the carillon after it was installed, 1954.

I should hope that most of us are familiar with the Kilworth Memorial Chapel located on the Northern edge of campus. A spiritual center for students, the chapel itself was built with funds left to the University in 1967 in the will of one William Washington Kilworth, a local entrepreneur and board of trustees member. However the chapel, while impressive, is far from the most interesting thing that Mr. Kilworth donated to the University, to say nothing of the man himself.

Mr. Kilworth earned his fortune in the logging industry. When he first arrived in the Pacific Northwest after moving from Kansas, lumber was Washington’s single largest export, and he had a plan to integrate himself into the system. Purchasing the slabs of bark-covered wood that most mills considered wasteful byproducts, Kilworth began producing and selling broom handles, and as it turns out, he was spectacularly successful at it. After several years, his company sold more than seventy five percent of all broom handles used in America, and Kilworth, at the head of it all, was more than well off financially. A generous philanthropist, Kilworth was unafraid to spend his money where he thought it was needed. A civic leader in Tacoma, he donated to boy scout troops, churches, and seminaries. It was around this time that he became a trustee here at the University. He was, however, not without some peculiarities.

Kilworth was a grand connoisseur of bell towers. And being that he had plenty of money on hand for donations, his intentions were clear; he would donate the money to have a bell tower named after him. His first offer he made to the city of Seattle, but they quickly refused him. His second offer, naturally, was to the University of Puget Sound. Unfortunately, not only did the University have little to no need or desire for a bell tower, but no one was willing to shell out the $200,000 (around $1.5 million in today’s money) needed to build one on the University campus. Kilworth, however, would have nothing of it. His money was going to be used to build a bell tower, or it was not going to be used at all.

Kilworth and the University faculty eventually came to an unsteady agreement: No tower would be built, nor any bells commissioned. Instead, his donation would be used to purchase an electronic carillon to be placed in the music building. Reproducing sound on a computer nowadays may be a simple task, but in 1954, it needed several very large and very expensive racks of electronics. In fact, the total donation that he had originally pledged to build a tower was spent entirely on purchasing the carillon, and it filled the entire attic of the music room it was installed in.

To read more about W.W. Kilworth and other University figures, check out President Thompson’s histories online at Sound Ideas.  Find the above photograph in A Sound Past.

By Zebediah Howell

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Recommended Reading:"The Perks of Being a Wallflower"

I recently read “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and found it very moving.  It presents all the ups and downs of life, and shows how individuals can learn and grow despite obstacles.  It also provides an interesting and fresh perspective on the importance of friendships.

Library student staff

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Did You See the Images from the Past?

Come see the images from the Archives and Special Collections – along the hallway to the left before you reach the Learning Commons!

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Did You Know? Librarians Don't Just Say "Shush"!

Librarians know more than how to say “shush”! Librarians have master’s degrees in information science.   Collins Librarians are experts and are here to help you find information on your topics!

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March 14th: Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein!

My life changed one day in college when my astronomy class was treated to a look at Saturn through a small telescope. I was astounded. Why didn’t it fall? What kept the beautiful, ringed planet suspended in space?  This one event, and that course, inspired me to learn all I could about gravity, Albert Einstein, and the universe on its largest scales of space and time. For many years, on March 14th I would bake and decorate a cake and throw a party for Albert.

In the course of his life, Einstein published more than 600 scientific papers, books, essays, reviews, and opinion pieces. Collins Library has no less than 127 titles about Einstein and 30 works written by Einstein.

He is most famous for developing the Special Theory of Relativity (1905) which has to do with what happens as an object approaches the speed of light (time slows, mass increases and distances shrink), and the General Theory of Relativity (1916) which goes beyond Isaac Newton’s description of gravity to one that explains the force in terms of warped spacetime. He won a Nobel Prize in 1921 for work on the photoelectric effect (1905), did important work on Brownian Motion, and is also widely remembered for his opposition to the use of nuclear weapons, which are the horrible manifestation of his famous equation E=mc2. Here you can listen to him speak on nuclear weapons and world peace: http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/voice3.htm

However, Einstein was as eloquent with words as he was with equations. The Einstein book I have read and re-read the most is Albert Einstein, The Human Side, a small compilation of his writings selected and edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman and published in 1979. Here is one of his quotations from 1920:

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by
passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees
us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those
who are the best and the greatest.

Head to the fourth floor of Collins Library to browse books on or by Einstein (call numbers start with QC 16 E5), visit this American Institute of Physics online exhibit: http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/ , or explore the Albert Einstein Archive http://www.alberteinstein.info/, for more on this remarkable man.

Submitted by: Elizabeth Stiles Knight, Interim Science Librarian, eknight@pugetsound.edu

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