The nooks are in

Oteni Dema
Our first Nook borrower

Ever used an eReader for school work before? 

Well, here's your chance, The Ritz library has picked up ten Barnes & Noble Nooks, loaded them with commonly assigned works of literature and is now loaning them out to students. 

These are the latest GlowLight models, ultra light in size and  with the highest text resolution of any eReader out there.

Each Glowlight comes with a selection of classic plays, short stories, poetry, primary sources and novels, many of which  are required reading assignments for  English, History & Speech courses. 

We are adding new books to the Nooks all the time, if you have a suggestion, see us at the Reference Desk, call 431-8634, or send email.

A  GlowLight can be taken out for two weeks at a time. Sorry! No renewals.

Puttin' on the Ritz: Science Fiction Classics

The library has just updated its book collection to add some of most famous science fiction novels out there. Here's the list of books with links to our catalog so you can find out if a book is in or not.

• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
• Foundation by Issac Asimov
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by William Miller
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Sirens of Titian by Kurt Vonegut 
• Four Novels of the 1960's (Man in the High Castle, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik) by Phillip K. Dick
• The Phillip K Dick Reader
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• I am Legend by Richard Matheson

 
                                               

Big Read 2013

Poughkeepsie's Big Read for 2013 features Cynthia Oznick's novella, The Shawl.  Comprised of two short stories, "The Shawl" and "Rosa", the novella captures the pain and devastation wracked on Rosa and her family from Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, commonly considered the beginning of the Holocaust. "The Shawl" is set in 1938 and "Rosa" is set 39 years later in Miami, FL.

Additional information, including links to events relating to the Big Read may be found by clicking here. 

The Big Read

DCC is once again a proud partner of the Poughkeepsie Big Read.

The selections this year are Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Louis Rey and Our Town.

Stop by and see the Library's Big Read Display and pick up a copy of these books and other books written by Thornton Wilder.

Do you love books?

If you love books and enjoy all things literate, you might want to check out this weekend's Empire State Book Festival being held in Albany, NY. Saturday's event is free and is open to the public and will feature a variety of activities and exhibits.

Seeking book recommendations?

As previously posted in this blog, several websites exist for recommending titles to read based on an author or an author/title. A recent suggestion that can be added to this list is The Book Seer which uses Amazon and LibraryThing as a back engine to come up with suggested titles to read. Book Seer works best with classic titles where more relevant data has been gathered, but it will list other books by a specific author even if it doesn't have any "outside" recommendations. Check it out!

Textbooks at DCC!

Looking for textbooks at DCC? The college bookstore is located on the 2nd floor of Dutchess Hall past the theater. You can also look online at http://www.dccbookstore.com/ where you can select the course you are taking and be directly taken to the materials needed for that course. For example, if you are in BIO 101 section 10, follow these steps:

1. Click the Textbooks link on the left
2. Fall 2008 is automatically selected for the term
3. Check the department(s) that you need to look up textbooks for. In this example, check BIO
4. Click the Continue to "Get Course Materials" button on the bottom of the page
5. Check the course number(s) that you need to look up text books for; for example, BIO 101, section 10
6. Click the Continue to "Get Course Materials" button
7. Select the books you are interested in purchasing, either new or used and add them to your shopping cart OR click on the "Print Book List" link
8. Check out your materials or click "Print Course Materials List" button

and voila! Now you have a list of the materials necessary for your class which you can do with as you will.

Enjoy a good audio?

Do you enjoy audiobooks? If so, check out LibriVox whose tag line is "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain" and whose latin translation is "book voice". LibriVox has over 1500 titles already set up for download in mp3 format. Downloading is FREE! If you'd like to check out their offerings, click on LibriVox Catalog and either use the search box that comes up or click on Browse entire catalog for a running list of titles. When downloading, look for the "zip file of the entire book" link.

What's particularly interesting about LibriVox is that YOU can volunteer to read for this project. All you need is a computer, some free software and a microphone. They have a forum set up so that questions can be asked and answered and people can contribute to on-going discussions. Whether you contribute only a few chapters on a collaborative project or single-handedly read an entire book for audio publication, you are making a positive contribution to the "acoustical liberation" effort. So, here's an opportunity to help bring your favorite works of classic literature to the internet world. Oh yea, in case you are wondering, the materials that are considered to be in the public domain are all works published prior to 1923.

Another free audiobooks site is http://freeclassicaudiobooks.com/. There are far fewer titles at Free Classic Audiobooks, but the site is simple and easy to use. Plus downloads are also offered in the m4b format for iPods and iTunes. If you've never experienced an audiobook, it is a fascinating way to "read". Audiobooks can bring literature to people who have trouble concentrating on the written word, who have learning disabilities, who are physically disabled, who prefer to learn through listening - any number of scenarios apply. Once the materials are downloaded, you can cut CDs to listen to them while driving or in some cases download directly to an iPod. It's another approach to reading!

Not sure what to read this summer?

If you're at a loss for what book to read next, here's a couple of websites to check out: What should I read next? and Literature Map.

www.whatshouldireadnext.com is a simple to use website that looks for you to input a title and author of a book that you enjoyed reading and to hit enter. Once you do that, you will be returned with a list of books and authors that you would likely enjoy. From there you can decide what you'd like to do.

www.literature-map.com is also an easy to use site - it requires you to enter the name of a favorite author and it returns a graphical image with your author at the center surrounded by the names of others who write in that genre. The closer the name is to your author's name, the more similar the writing styles. Be advised, enter the full name of the author, and not just the last name. You end up with better results that way.

Book Glutton

Back in October, we mentioned some websites that allow for free online reading of older or out-of-copyright books. Book Glutton is another opportunity to access books online. What makes Book Glutton so interesting though is their added functionality. Book Glutton allows you to read a book online, but also chat about the book while you are reading it with other readers. You are able to mark a section of text and comment on that section, thereby promoting intelligent discussion about a text.

You can access Book Glutton's catalog of materials without logging in, but you are unable to access the talk and mark functions without creating an account. Creating an account is free, and you are able to update your profile with a photo and other relevant information, if so desired. Follow the "FIND a BOOK" link to search through the catalog of materials by author, title or group. A group is a book discussion group - individuals gathered together online to talk about the books they are reading as they are being read. You can create your own group, or you can request an invitation to join someone else's existing group. When you are done reading a work, you are able to bookmark the text, so that you can return to the place that you left off at the next time you go online. Hit the "JUMP into the READER" button to resume your place in the book.

The talk and mark panels can be found to the left and the right of the reader pane. There is also a help button which explains how to use these tasks. If you like your print to be a bit larger than normal, especially while reading online, you can do so at the click of an icon, and the forward and back buttons take you where you would like to go in the book.

Book Glutton is fairly simple and easy to use, plus if you are an author or have permission to publish someone else's work, you can upload your title to the site. Try it out and see what you think!

Usage Dictionaries

Oftentimes, in the midst of composing a paper, you’ll find that your spell check just doesn’t help (of all those suggestions in the drop-down box which one is right?) and only later do you discover, when your paper comes back, that you should have used effect instead of affect, or that you have erroneously substituted the word discreet for its nearly identical counterpart discrete. In any case, to avoid the scourge of red pen, students should refer to a Usage Dictionary when they have any doubts concerning the proper use of a word. What, you might ask, is a Usage Dictionary? Well, a Usage Dictionary differs from normal dictionaries in that it gives explanations instead of definitions, and shows specific examples of proper use. Paul Brians is a Professor at Washington State University and has created a handy little website called Common Errors in English Usage that is much like a usage dictionary. For those looking for fuller treatments on particular words nothing can beat the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage where a typical entry spans half a page. We also have a collection of others here!

So whether you lean more toward the descriptive side of the linguistics debate or tend to be one those who insist on using King’s English even in Instant Messages, consider that Professors and Employers appreciate attention to detail in all matters and you can certainly convey that in your written work.

E-text books coming this way?

An age-old argument is about the cost of textbooks to college students. Is it time for reading habits to change and for textbooks to go digital? Well, maybe... for further information, click here.

Just for FUN reading!

Stop over by our periodicals and check out the Ritz Library's "Just for Fun" reading collection. Every month new books are selected by our librarians to be added to this collection. Twice a year, books are weeded out and returned to the lending vendor, thereby ensuring a fresh rotation of titles. Here, you'll find both fiction and non-fiction titles ranging from mysteries and science fiction to politics and spirituality. So take some time and find a title that appeals to you, and READ!!!

Online books available!

Besides the NetLibrary and Ebrary, there are other places to find books online. Project Gutenberg, The Internet Archive, and Google Books have thousands of books ready to access at the click of a button. Generally speaking, these are books that are a little older and have fallen out of copyright. So use them if you have an assignment where you need primary sources or are studying classic works of literature, philosophy, history, or science. Formats vary from Plain Vanilla ASCII to DjVu.

Project Gutenberg

Internet Archive

Google Books

Microsoft


*Google has scanned books both in and out of copyright. Books protected by copyright are only avaliable in a limited preview. You can modify your search to include or exclude these works.