From June, 2007 to June, 2008, Dutchess Community College celebrated its 50th anniversary. As part of this landmark event, the Dutchess County Historical Society published a special issue of their yearbook that focused on the history of the college.
Last September I was asked by Dr. Andrew Rieser to write an essay that told the history of DCC's Ritz Library. It turned out to be a semester-long project that found me poring through news articles, library director's reports and photographs in search of info telling the story of how the library came to be an integral part of the campus.
It turned out to be more intriguing that I'd imagined.
The most interesting part of my research was interviewing several past staff members of the library's lengthy existence. They were all very helpful & had many fascinating details to share with me.
The essay has been uploaded to this blog. You can read it here.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
A new way to search the internet universe
Let's face it - most of us are diehard Google fans when it comes to searching for relevant information fast. And while we might use another search engine occasionally, generally we end up back at Google when the going gets tough or simply out of habit. But there's a new player in town by the name of "Cuil" (pronounced "cool") intending to give Google a run for its money. According to Cuil's website, they search 3 times the number of websites as does Google and the output is organized based on page content and relevance. The simple search for cuil is located at http://www.cuil.com/ and the output is tabular making for a balanced look to the screen. Check it out!
For those Firefox fans, at the bottom of a cuil search, there is a "Add cuil to Firefox" link. Click there to bring cuil into your search engine bar.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
New Facebook feature to cite books!
There's a new application you can add to your Facebook account that can really speed up the process of creating work cited pages.
When you type in the name of a book in this widget, called CiteMe, it produces a perfect citation in all the popular documentation styles. As an added bonus you can also use this feature to search for books at the Ritz Library too!!
Interested? Once logged onto Facebook, seach for the term "citeme". At the CiteMe information page, follow the instructions for installatiing the widget and you're good to go.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Got the programming blues?
Tired of having to manually check every link in a webpage you've designed? Frustrated with using a website whose links seem tenuous at best? Check out this Firefox extension called LinkChecker: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/532
Ok, so you've downloaded it - now what? Go to View --> Toolbars --> Customize and look for the check mark. Drag and drop the button onto your toolbar. Go to any webpage, click on the check and see what happens. If a link is valid, it will highlight in green. If a link is invalid, a reddish pink highlight occurs, and if a link is a forwarded or forbidden link, it will appear in yellow.
Instead of spending hours verifying links, LinkChecker will check them all for you in seconds!
Ok, so you've downloaded it - now what? Go to View --> Toolbars --> Customize and look for the check mark. Drag and drop the button onto your toolbar. Go to any webpage, click on the check and see what happens. If a link is valid, it will highlight in green. If a link is invalid, a reddish pink highlight occurs, and if a link is a forwarded or forbidden link, it will appear in yellow.
Instead of spending hours verifying links, LinkChecker will check them all for you in seconds!
Color your world
Dress up Firefox or Flock with a little color when using tabbed browsing! The colorful tabs extension brings a little spice to the look of your browser. ColorfulTabs for Firefox is located at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1368 and ColorfulTabs for Flock is located at http://binaryturf.com/software/colorfultabs-for-flock/
You can select a specific tab color by right clicking on the tab and selecting "ColorfulTabs" and "select a color". If you right click on ColorfulTabs and select "options", you can then choose to use a default palette for color generation, you can generate colors by URL or you can stick with teh default to generate colors randomly. Enjoy giving your browser a splash of color!
You can select a specific tab color by right clicking on the tab and selecting "ColorfulTabs" and "select a color". If you right click on ColorfulTabs and select "options", you can then choose to use a default palette for color generation, you can generate colors by URL or you can stick with teh default to generate colors randomly. Enjoy giving your browser a splash of color!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Goodreads
Awhile back I spoke about LibraryThing, a website that allows you to record the books you read in your own personal library. Having become an avid LibraryThinger, I can't imagine reading a book without entering it into my account. I've found keeping track of what I read allows me to make recommendations to others, enables me NOT to buy the book, reminds me of the plots and gives me clues as to what types of books I am enjoying at the moment. Plus, by using tags I can categorize my items in ways that make sense in my brain.
Goodreads is also a book cataloguing site with a bit more emphasis on the social end of book sharing. It automatically prompts you when you log in to check to see if you'd like to connect with more friends. The "my books" tab allows you to enter new books into your library and Goodreads lets you determine what book shelf those books are to go on. There are 3 default shelves:
currently reading, read, and to-read with the capability of creating any number of additional shelves. You can assign a book to as many shelves as you'd like to. Like LibraryThing, Goodreads offers widgets to place on your blog or website and has active applications in Facebook and mySpace. So far I've been unable to determine if there is a limit to the number of free books that you can enter on Goodreads (200 is the number on LibraryThing before you need to pay a fee), so I'm working off the assumption "no". They also have a tab that I find enticing - the authors tab. The authors tab allows authors to connect with readers through the author program. Through the "meet people" tab you can see who is currently online, check out their shelves and recommendations, and try to connect.
Before I sign off here, you may want to check out Novel Action which is a book exchange program with minimal fees. Click here for information on "how it works".
Goodreads is also a book cataloguing site with a bit more emphasis on the social end of book sharing. It automatically prompts you when you log in to check to see if you'd like to connect with more friends. The "my books" tab allows you to enter new books into your library and Goodreads lets you determine what book shelf those books are to go on. There are 3 default shelves:
currently reading, read, and to-read with the capability of creating any number of additional shelves. You can assign a book to as many shelves as you'd like to. Like LibraryThing, Goodreads offers widgets to place on your blog or website and has active applications in Facebook and mySpace. So far I've been unable to determine if there is a limit to the number of free books that you can enter on Goodreads (200 is the number on LibraryThing before you need to pay a fee), so I'm working off the assumption "no". They also have a tab that I find enticing - the authors tab. The authors tab allows authors to connect with readers through the author program. Through the "meet people" tab you can see who is currently online, check out their shelves and recommendations, and try to connect.Before I sign off here, you may want to check out Novel Action which is a book exchange program with minimal fees. Click here for information on "how it works".
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