The Yocum Library Blog

Meet the Yocum Staff - Ken Bagenstose

2012-01-29T07:05:00.000-05:00

Name: Ken Bagenstose
Position in Library: Library Assistant
Educational Background: BS Secondary English Education, Millersville Univ.; Masters in Classroom Technology, Wilkes Univ.
Favorite Book: Fahrenheit 451Favorite Movie: North by Northwest
Favorite Area of Library: Reference
Special Interest: Reading, writing, and music
Hobby: Cars (real ones and model cars)

Word of the Day

2012-01-29T06:50:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 29, 2012

hotchpot \HOCH-pot\,

noun:the bringing together of shares or properties in order to divide them equally.

She continued, "This is what I can give into the hotchpot." I could not but note the quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place, and with all seriousness? "What will each of you give?..."-- Bram Stoker, "Dracula"

These amounts are to be deducted from my boys only in the event that their shares may be large enough to permit and are not to be brought into hotchpot, and shall be paid to my two daughters Elizabeth and Katharine in equal shares.-- Wallace Stevens, "The Letters of Wallace Stevens"

Dating back to the early 1200s, hotchpot literally meant "shake-pot" in Anglo-French. It is related to the word hodgepodge.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Fact of the Day

2012-01-29T06:35:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : Whose autobiography is entitled Disclosing the Past (1984)? (from A Dictionary of Scientists )

Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett (1903–1972) British anthropologist and archaeologist Leakey was born at Kabete in Kenya and educated at Cambridge University, where he studied French and Kikuyu. He held various academic posts at British and American universities, and was curator of the Coryndon Memorial Museum at Nairobi (1945–61). Apart from anthropological studies, notably of the Kikuyu people, Leakey is best known for his excavations of fossils of early humans, notably in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge. Here, in 1959, jaw, skull, and huge teeth fragments of a species that Leadky called Zinjanthropus (Australopithecus) were uncovered by his wife Mary.

The following year his son Jonathan discovered remains of the larger-brained Homo habilis. Both have been estimated at between 1,750,000 and 2,000,000 years old, but Leakey considered that only H. habilis was the true ancestor of modern humans, Zinjanthropus having died out: a view not shared by other researchers. Leakey also found, in western Kenya, remains of the earliest known hominid Proconsul africanus.

Leakey's work has not only provided evidence for the greater age of humans but suggests that Africa, and not, as was previously thought, Asia, may have been the original center of human evolution.Much of Leakey's work was carried out in close collaboration with his wife, Mary Leakey. She accompanied him on all his major field trips and worked alongside him as excavator, paleontologist, and author. She continued independent field work after her husband's death in 1972.

In 1976, working in northern Tanzania in the Laetoli beds near Lake Eyasi, she made what she described as “the most remarkable find” of her whole career. Still preserved in the volcanic ash she discerned footprints of hominids, clear evidence that human ancestors had already adopted an upright posture some 3.75 million years ago. An account of her own researches was included in her autobiography Disclosing the Past (1984).

How to cite this entry:"Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett" A Dictionary of Scientists. Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 29 January 2012

RACC Roots

2012-01-28T09:33:00.000-05:00

RACC Roots: Family History Workshops at The Yocum Library
Interested? Stop by the Library Reference Desk or email library@racc.edu.

MONDAY, February 6 from 2 to 3 p.m. in The Yocum Library 2nd floor Instruction Area.
Genealogy 101 - Basics of Family History Research.

MONDAY, March 5 from 2 to 3 p.m. in The Yocum Library 2nd floor Instruction Area.
Introduction to Ancestry and Census Basics.
(RACC has free Ancestry.com access on campus for students/staff/faculty.)

MONDAY,April 2 from 2 to 3 p.m. in The Yocum Library 2nd floor Instruction Area.
Advanced Research in Ancestry: Census Records and Other Records.
(RACC has free Ancestry.com access on campus for students/staff/faculty.)

MONDAY,May 7 from 2 to 3 p.m. in The Yocum Library 2nd floor Instruction Area.
An Introduction to the LDS Family Search Site.

MONDAY, June 4 from 2 to 3 p.m. in The Yocum Library 2nd floor Instruction Area.
Using other Genealogy Links from the Library Website.

MONDAY,July 2 from 2 to 3 p.m. in The Yocum Library 2nd floor Instruction Area.
Using Various Databases to Find Information.

Word of the Day

2012-01-28T09:28:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Saturday, January 28, 2012
birr \bur\, noun:
1. A whirring sound.
2. Emphasis in statement, speech, etc.
3. A whirring sound.verb:
1. To move with or make a whirring sound.

She pursed her lips and, expertly, imitated the red-winged blackbird's call: not the liquid piping of the wood thrush, which dipped down into the dry tcch tchh tchh of the cricket's birr and up again in delirious, sobbing trills…-- Donna Tartt,"The Little Friend: A Novel"

I turn to the woman. There's a wheezing birr coming from her own bleached-out face.-- Irvine Welsh, FilthBirr is derived from the Icelandic word byrr meaning "favorable wind."

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Fact of the Day

2012-01-28T09:25:00.004-05:00

Fact of the Day : If the Bolsheviks were the majority, who were the minority? (from A Dictionary of Contemporary World History )

Mensheviks (‘the minority’) The term for the faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party which derived its name from the 1903 party congress, when it lost a vote to the Bolsheviks (‘the majority’) over the editorial composition of the board of the party newspaper, Iskra (Spark). While Mensheviks generally enjoyed more support than the Bolsheviks, this vacillated over time, and they never managed to obtain a true mass base.

The movement's greater moderation compared to Bolshevism resulted from the fact that in some ways it was actually more orthodox in Marxist terms, in that it advocated the cementing of the bourgeois revolution before a proletarian revolution could take place. The Mensheviks never gained control of the Duma, and after the Russian Revolution of February 1917 they only shared control of the major Soviets (e.g in Petrograd and Moscow) with the Socialist Revolutionaries.

Their participation in the coalition provisional governments, various party splits, and in particular their support of the increasingly unpopular Kerensky, led to a crucial decline in their popular support in the months before Lenin's October Revolution of 1917. After Lenin had acquired power, Mensheviks were persecuted almost immediately, although the party was not formally outlawed until 1922.

How to cite this entry:"Mensheviks" A Dictionary of Contemporary World History. Jan Palmowski. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 28 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-27T07:15:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Friday, January 27, 2012
conciliate \kuhn-SIL-ee-eyt\, verb:1. To overcome the distrust or hostility of; placate; win over.
2. To win or gain (goodwill, regard, or favor).
3. To make compatible; reconcile.4.
To become agreeable or reconciled.

"Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, resuming as much as he could of his arrogant composure, "you will not conciliate me, or turn me from any purpose, by this course of conduct."-- Charles Dickens, "Dombey and Son"

But this was sufficient, and served to conciliate the good will of the natives, with whom our congeniality of sentiment on this point did more towards inspiring a friendly feeling than anything else that could have happened.-- Herman Melville, "Typee"

Conciliate comes from the Latin word conciliāre meaning "to bring together." It is related to the words council and calendar.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Book Review

2012-01-27T06:50:00.000-05:00

HV9306.S27 S38 2009

Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption and One Woman's Fight to Restore Justice to All by Sunny Schwartz\

America's Prisons: Is There Hope?

A review by Helen Epstein

America's prison system is in a dire state. Some 2.3 million people in this country are now behind bars, five times more than in 1978. Our incarceration rate is now higher than that of any other country in the world. Many, if not most, inmates probably should not be there. Sixteen percent of the adult prison population suffers from mental illness and should be in treatment; a similar fraction is made up of children under eighteen.

Although there is little evidence that blacks are more likely to use drugs than whites, they are six times more likely to be imprisoned on drug-related charges. Of those, most have no history of violence or drug dealing, and were arrested mainly for possession of drugs.

Sexual and other forms of abuse in prison are common, reported by some 20 percent of inmates. These "monster factories," as the lawyer and author Sunny Schwartz calls them, do little to break the cycle of violence in society and may even accelerate it. Roughly two thirds of those released from US jails and prisons end up back inside within three years. Some studies suggest that the experience of imprisonment can be so brutal and humiliating that it actually makes men, in particular, harder and meaner, so that the crimes they commit the next time around are even worse than what got them incarcerated in the first place.
Continued on link...

http://www.powells.com/review/2009_06_01.html

Fact of the Day

2012-01-27T06:30:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : What's the name of the Jewish moneylender in the Merchant of Venice? (from The Oxford Dictionary of Reference and Allusion)

Shylock [Shakes.] The Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice (1600). Shylock lends the sum of 3 000 ducats to the merchant Antonio on condition that if the sum is not repaid by the agreed date, Antonio will forfeit a pound of his flesh. When the time to pay falls due, Antonio is unable to refund Shylock, who insists on being paid his pound of flesh.

Portia, the betrothed of Bassanio for whom Antonio has borrowed the money, disguises herself as a lawyer and conducts Bassanio's defence. When a plea for mercy fails, she outwits Shylock by insisting that, although he can take his pound of flesh, he must not spill a drop of blood in the process, since the bond allows only for flesh, not blood.
> Someone demanding or extorting repayment

‘You want paying, that's what you want,’ she said quietly, ‘I know.’ She produced her purse from somewhere and opened it. ‘How much do you want, you little Shylock?’
L. P. Hartley The Go-Between 1953

How to cite this entry:"Shylock" The Oxford Dictionary of Reference and Allusion. by Andrew Delahunty and Sheila Dignen. Oxford University Press Inc. The Oxford Dictionary of Reference and Allusion. Oxford University Press. 27 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-26T07:17:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Thursday, January 26, 2012
mettle \MET-l\, noun:
1. Courage and fortitude.
2. Disposition or temperament.

Who is so ignorant as not to know that knights-errant are beyond all jurisdiction, their only law their swords, while their charter is their mettle and their will is their decrees? -- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, "Don Quixote"

"--must do something to justify your existence," Marlene was saying to Tim, "and now is the chance to show your mettle."-- Muriel Spark, "The Bachelors"

Mettle was used interchangeably with the material metal until the early 1700s. Mettle continued to be used in the figurative sense of "stuff of which a person is made" even as the spellings diverged.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Scheduled Classes for Computers

2012-01-26T07:14:00.000-05:00

6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Reserved
Where: Yocum Instruction Area
Description:Ms. Field GED815 (15) Finding books on the library catalog presented byMs.Valerie Schaeffer

Hangover Part II

2012-01-26T06:50:00.000-05:00

Hangover Part II now in The Yocum Library Collection.

Fact of the Day

2012-01-26T06:21:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : What is a chiasmus? (from A Dictionary of Psychology)

chiasmus n. A figure of speech in which the main elements are repeated in a reversed order to create a symmetrically balanced structure, as in Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country (The inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, 1917–63, 35th US president, 20 January 1961).

Two of the best psychological examples are I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full-frontal lobotomy and the following mordant comment on achieving something that makes others jealous: It's champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends. chiasmi pl. chiasmic adj. [From Greek chiasmos a crisscross arrangement, from chiasma a cross, named after the shape of the upper-case letter chi (X) + ismos indicating a state or condition]

How to cite this entry:"chiasmus n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Edited by Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 26 January 2012

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2012-01-25T07:20:00.000-05:00

Rise of the Planet of the Apes in the Yocum Library Collection.

Word of the Day

2012-01-25T07:09:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 25, 2012

bleb \bleb\, noun: .
1.A bubble.
2. Medicine/Medical. A blister or vesicle.

One day, as he was bathing her, a bleb of shampoo had streamed into her eye, and she had kept a hand pressed to it for the rest of the day, quailing away from him whenever he walked past.-- Kevin Brockmeier, "Things That Fall From the Sky"

His gaze skims over the computer out the side-yard window, to rest on a fat avocado, a bleb of green light hanging from a branch.-- Diana Abu-Jaber, "Birds of Paradise"

Bleb was first used in the early 1600s. It is considered imitative of a blister itself. It is also related to the Middle English word blob.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Free Museum Pass at The Yocum Library

2012-01-25T06:55:00.000-05:00

The Prints of Andy Warhol at the Reading Public MuseumMarch 3 - June 17, 2012

More than 60 pop prints and four paintings are the focus of an exciting exhibition in The Museum's second floor temporary galleries.

Iconic works by one of the leading figures in twentieth-century art include Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Mao Tse-Tung, Mick Jagger, Ronald Reagan, and Judy Garland, along with the artist's famous Soup Cans and Camouflage prints.

This exhibition provides an outstanding overview of Warhol's career as a printmaker. The photographic silk screens date from the early 1960s to the late 1980s.

In addition to the prints and paintings, this special "expanded" exhibition will feature two more engaging aspects of Warhol's career - in one gallery, an installation of "Silver Clouds" which recreates a 1966 exhibition that the artist mounted at the Leo Castilli Gallery in New York City consisting of large, free-floating Mylar® pillow-shaped balloons, and in another, a continuous screening of a dozen of Warhol's famous "Screen Tests." Some of these highlight well-known figures such as Dennis Hopper, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Salvador Dali, and Marcel Duchamp.

The exhibition was organized by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is underwritten by the Marlin and Ginger Miller Exhibition Endowment, and supported in part by Clermont Wealth Strategies at Fulton Bank.

The Reading Public Museum is supported in part by grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.Image:

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, ca.1967, screenprint on ivory paper. Image © 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

500 Museum Road • Reading, PA 19611 • 610-371-5850www.readingpublicmuseum.org

Fact of the Day

2012-01-25T06:31:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : In which year was the Bunsen burner developed? (from The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science)

Bunsen burner. Robert Bunsen (1811–1899) was one of the finest and most versatile chemists of the nineteenth century. When hired by the University of Heidelberg in 1852, he was promised a new laboratory building, which was ready for occupancy in the spring of 1855. Coincidentally, Heidelberg had just begun to light city streets by coal gas, and Bunsen specified that his laboratory should be similarly equipped.

At this time, chemists used a variety of fuels for heating: “spirit” (alcohol) lamps, oils, coal, and charcoal. Coal gas had been tried as well, but incomplete combustion produced a flame more notable for its luminosity than its heat.In the fall of 1854, Bunsen suggested to the university's mechanic, Peter Desaga, a way to obtain a very hot, sootless, nonluminous flame by mixing the gas with air in a controlled fashion before combustion.

The flow of the gas could pull in air through apertures at the bottom of a cylindrical burner, the flame igniting at the top. Given this concept, Desaga developed a workable design and had produced fifty burners by the time the new lab opened for business. Bunsen published a description of the burner two years later.

It was rapidly and widely adopted. He never sought a patent, in effect donating this important invention to the world of science.The Bunsen burner, simple, inexpensive, and effective, immediately displaced its predecessors. The easily adjusted flame burned hot and clean, and was perfectly suited to laboratory operations. The present form of the Bunsen burner, familiar to every science student today, has scarcely changed from the original of 1855.

BibliographyG. Lockemann, The Centenary of the Bunsen Burner , Journal of Chemical Education 33 (1956): pp.20–21.A. J. Rocke

How to cite this entry:A. J. Rocke "Bunsen burner" The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. J. L. Heilbron, ed., Oxford University Press 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 25 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-24T07:12:00.001-05:00

Word of the Day for Tuesday, January 24, 2012

educe \ih-DOOS\, verb:
1. To draw forth or bring out, as something potential or latent.
2. To infer or deduce.

Forty or fifty minutes of vigorous and unslackened analytic thought bestowed upon one of them usually suffices to educe from it all there is to educe, its general solution…-- Edited by Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok, "The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce"

If, after this, you can possibly want any further aid towards knowing what Sir Lionel was, we can tell you, that in his soul "the scientific combinations of thought could educe no fuller harmonies of the good and the true, than lay in the primaeval pulses which floated as an atmosphere around it!"...-- George Eliot, "Middlemarch"

Related to educate, educe is derived from the Latin roots ex- meaning "out" and ducere meaning "to lead."

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Yocum Library Collection

Free Reading Museum passes at the Yocum Library - 1 week loan

Theresienstadt's Children and Their Art

Exhibition to Open at the Reading Public Museum
February 18 – May 13, 2012

This meaningful exhibition features more than 30 objects from the Beit Theresienstadt Holocaust Museum, Archive and Educational Center in Israel.

The works, including collages, drawings, embroidery, dolls, diaries, magazines, games, and marionettes, were created by children at the Theresienstadt ghetto in what is now the Czech Republic.

The Theresienstadt Ghetto, (Terezin in Czech) was established in the northwestern part of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on November 24, 1941. It was alleged to be a "Jewish town" for the Protectorate's Jews, but was in fact a Concentration and Transit Camp, which functioned until its liberation on May 8, 1945.During its operation, 12,171 Jewish children (born 1928-1945) were sent to GhettoTheresienstadt; 9,001 of these children were deported to the "East", of whom 325 survived.

For many of the children, these objects are the only things that remain from their lives.This exhibition is part of The Theresienstadt Project, a collaborative educational effort among the Reading Public Museum, the Reading Symphony Orchestra, and the Jewish Federation of Reading.

For related events and additional funding information, click here.Opening Reception - Saturday, February 18 – 6 - 8 p.m.$15 for Members / $20 for Non-Members. Light hors d' oeuvres and refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to lauren.mccarroll@readingpublicmuseum.org or by calling 610-371-5850 x264.
http://www.readingpublicmuseum.org/index.php

Word of the Day

2012-01-17T06:44:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Tuesday, January 17, 2012

alate \EY-leyt\, adjective:

1. Having wings; winged.
2. Having membranous expansions like wings.
noun:
1. The winged form of an insect when both winged and wingless forms occur in the species.

Vainly a few diehard physicists pointed out that wings are of no propulsive help in airless void, that alate flight is possible only where there are wind currents to lift and carry.--Robert Silverberg, Earth is the "Strangest Planet"

There are no words branded into this gate, only the shape of a large bird with its wings stretched out over the width of the road like an alate protector.-- Jenny Siler, "Easy Money"

Alate is comprised of the Latin roots āla meaning "wing" and the suffix -ate which was used in Latin to make a word an adjective (like separate) but in English came to be used to create a verb out of a noun (like agitate).

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Fact of the Day

2012-01-17T06:25:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : In British history who succeeded Queen Victoria to the throne? (from A Dictionary of Contemporary World History )

Edward VII ( Albert Edward ) (b. 9 Nov. 1841, d. 6 May 1910). King of Great Britain and Ireland and Dependencies Overseas, Emperor of India 1901–10 Born in Sandringham, Norfolk, the second child of Queen Victoria. He waited many years to become King, and when he did so, he refurbished many of the monarchy's ceremonial aspects. He also asserted his right to be consulted over political decisions.

His claims were disregarded by Prime Ministers, but he did have a role in foreign affairs. Many saw him as influential in securing the Entente Cordiale and the Anglo‐Russian Entente, through his influence on European royal families and dignitaries.

How to cite this entry:" Edward VII " A Dictionary of Contemporary World History. Jan Palmowski. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 17 January 2012

Martin Luther King Day 2012

2012-01-16T07:09:00.000-05:00

I Have a Dream SpeechMartin Luther King's Address
at March on WashingtonAugust 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.

" When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Fact of the Day

2012-01-16T06:52:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : In which year was the medical textbook Gray's Anatomy first published? (from The Oxford Companion to the Body)

Gray, Henry Henry Gray (1827–61) was a London surgeon, who, in 1858, published the first edition of a medical text book entitled Anatomy: descriptive and surgical. In later years — first informally, and, after 1938, formally — the book became known as Gray's Anatomy. It is one of the few medical texts known by name to the general public.Henry Gray was born in Windsor Castle, but lived in Belgravia for most of his life. The family had moved to be closer to Buckingham Palace on the accession of William IV, to whom Gray's father, William, was Deputy Treasurer.

Aged 18 Henry entered St George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner in Central London, and he qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1848, the same year in which he won one of the College's triennial essay prizes for an account of the nerves of the human eye. As a student he was known for his diligent attention, especially in anatomical studies, and in particular for performing numerous dissections himself. Gray remained at St George's in House Surgeon positions, and continued his anatomical work, publishing several of his anatomical observations in papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

In 1852 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. From that time on he devoted himself to anatomy, serving St George's as a demonstrator, later as Lecturer on Anatomy, and as Curator of the Museum.The appearance of his book was timely. Medical education in Britain was being professionalized and formalized — in that same year, 1858, the Medical Act was passed in Britain, creating the General Medical Council (GMC), the regulatory and licensing authority of the medical profession. This epitomized the growing professional status of medicine in Britain, with regulated access and recognized training procedures and courses taking place in properly accredited institutions.

Simultaneously, new scientific approaches to medicine were developing, which were being incorporated into the medical curricula. Gray's book was not the first anatomy textbook — especially since the passing of the Anatomy Act of 1832 (which provided legitimate sources of bodies for dissection), guides and manuals had been produced for medical and surgical students. What distinguished Gray's book was the number and quality of illustrations, and his emphasis on anatomy as the practical basis of surgery.

The premier medical journals of the time, The Lancet and The British Medical Journal, praised its style and content, and the latter's review prophesied that it would become the manual of anatomy. A year after its appearance in Britain, an American edition was produced, and a second edition was produced in London in 1860 — just before the death of its young author, at the age of 34, from smallpox contracted after nursing a nephew.

Gray's loss to anatomy was mourned by many colleagues; one of them, Timothy Holmes, who was a fellow surgeon from St George's, continued to produce new editions of Gray's book up to 1880 (the 9th edition). He in turn was succeeded by another practising surgeon, T. Pickering Pick, and it was not until 1901 (the 15th edition) that a professional anatomist — one who earned his living by teaching and studying anatomy, rather than from surgery — was appointed as editor.

In 1995 the 38th edition appeared. Continuing the tradition of generous illustrations begun by its eponymous founder, Gray's Anatomy now provides a coherent account of the structure of the human body from the ultra-microscopical to the population level — and anatomy is now presented as a central discipline in the natural sciences, not merely of relevance to the practising surgeon.E.M. TanseySee also anatomy.

How to cite this entry:E.M. Tansey "Gray, Henry" The Oxford Companion to the Body. Ed. Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 16 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-16T06:21:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Monday, January 16, 2012

perspicacious \pur-spi-KEY-shuhs\, adjective:
1. Having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning.
2. Archaic.Having keen vision.

You are perspicacious, know the ways of the world, and are more tactful than most men of your age.-- Alexandre Dumas, "The Count of Monte Cristo"

More perspicacious neighbors, the Paulsens among them, suspected that Joey also enjoyed being the smartest person in the house.-- Jonathan Franzen, "Freedom"

Perspicacious is derived from the Late Latin word perspicācitās meaning "sharpness of sight."

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Word of the Day

2012-01-15T07:14:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 15, 2012

outrance \oo-TRAHNS\, noun:The utmost extremity.

"Its prevailing features are equability, ease, perfect accuracy and purity of style, a manner never at outrance with the subject matter, pathos, and verisimilitude."-- Edgar Allen Poe, "The Linwoods"

I pretend not to be a champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance. I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for decency's sake.-- Sir Walter Scott, "Kenilworth"

Outrance came from the Old French word oltrance meaning "to pass beyond." It is probably related to outrage.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Movie review: 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2'

Fact of the Day

2012-01-12T06:30:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : In meteorology what is a Dansgaard-Oeschger event? (from A Dictionary of Weather)

Dansgaard–Oeschger event A period of extremely rapid temperature change (increases of 10 deg C or more) that occurred during the last ice age. Strictly speaking, our knowledge of these events is confined to Greenland, where 23 have been identified by the oxygen-isotope method from deep ice cores, and where they are correlated with snow deposition rates.

The ice cores show, however, that the events also coincide with large changes in methane concentrations and dust deposition rates, which probably relate to conditions in tropical wetlands and in eastern Asia, respectively. These imply major climatic changes throughout the northern hemisphere. See also Heinrich event.

How to cite this entry:"Dansgaard–Oeschger event" A Dictionary of Weather. Storm Dunlop. Oxford University Press, 2008.Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 12 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-11T07:12:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Wednesday, January 11, 2012

expostulate \ik-SPOS-chuh-leyt\, verb:

To reason earnestly with someone against something that person intends to do or has done.

The tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections; and sometimes I would expostulate with myself, why Providence should thus completely ruin his creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without help abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.-- Daniel Defoe, "Robinson Crusoe"

Peter at last determined one day, all of a sudden, that he would step into this highland reaver's den, and expostulate with him on the baseness and impolicy of his conduct, and try to convince him of these, and persuade him to keep his own laird's bounds.-- James Hogg, "Tales of the Wars of Montrose"

Expostulate is derived from the Latin word expostulātus which meant "demanded urgently or required."

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Book Review - "Life Itself," a Memoir

2012-01-11T06:52:00.000-05:00

General Collection
PN1998.3.E327 A3 2011

"Life Itself," a Memoir by Film Critic Roger Ebert
A review by Gerald Bartell

In the 1950s, long before he won a Pulitzer Prize for his film criticism, Roger Ebert spent many a Saturday afternoon sipping root beer and munching jawbreakers, Necco Wafers and licorice at the Princess Theater in his home town of Urbana, Ill. Five cartoons, a newsreel, a Batman, Superman or Rocketman serial and then a double bill -- a Lash LaRue western followed by a Bowery Boys or Abbott and Costello comedy -- flashed before him.

Ebert's memoir, Life Itself, resembles one of those movie marathons. Tales from childhood, interviews with film stars and directors, funny and touching stories about colleagues, and evocative essays about trips unspool before the reader in a series of loosely organized, often beautifully written essays crafted by a witty, clear-eyed yet romantic raconteur.

Ebert begins with his childhood, a time when he did not, as one might think, escape an unhappy home at the movies. His parents sometimes quarreled over money, but mostly Roger's account of the family's life in Urbana suggests the Midwestern comfort of a Booth Tarkington short story.

On summer nights, the Eberts sipped homemade lemonade on the front porch of a two-bedroom white stucco house with green awnings. They talked to neighbors and watched for fireflies as "the sounds of radios, voices, distant laughter would float on the air." Young Roger founded the Roger Ebert Stamp Company, published a neighborhood newspaper and read voraciously, developing a passion for the novels of Thomas Wolfe.

Also emerging was a passion for journalism. At 16, Ebert covered high school sports for the Urbana News-Gazette, and then, as a student at the University of Illinois, became the decidedly liberal editor of the Daily Illini. After graduation he landed a job at the Chicago Sun-Times, where, in 1967, the features editor named Ebert the paper's film critic.

With no formal film education, Ebert headed to the movies, heeding Pauline Kael's approach to film: "I go into the movie, I watch it, and I ask myself what happened to me."

Over time, Ebert developed guidelines for his work. He likes movies about "Good People," an elastic definition that includes Hannibal Lecter ("the victim of his unspeakable depravities...he tries to do the right thing.") And Ebert hesitates to hurt people: "I feel repugnance for the critic John Simon, who made it a specialty to attack the way actors look. They can't help how they look any more than John Simon can help looking like a rat."

Ebert's take on film critic Gene Siskel, his co-host for the TV series "At the Movies," should quell persistent rumors that the men disliked each other. Yes, they feuded over films so intensely that the studio where they taped often had to be cleared. But underneath the tensions, Ebert says, he cared for Siskel like a brother. Of Disney and CBS execs who dropped plans for a sitcom starring the men as rival critics, Ebert says, "Maybe the problem was that no one else could possibly understand how meaningless was the hate, how deep was the love."

Ebert's work as a film critic sent him traveling, and his wonderfully personal essays on places around the world where he seeks solitude are highlights of the book, rich in reflections, imagery and sensory detail. Travelers who return year after year to the same destination will savor Ebert's reflections on these rituals:

I have many places where I sit and think, 'I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again.' Sometimes, lost in reverie, I remember myself approaching across the same green, or down the same footpath.... These secret visits are a way for me to measure the wheel of the years and my passage through life. Sometimes on this voyage through life we need to sit on the deck and regard the waves.

In 2006 Ebert received a diagnosis of thyroid cancer. The surgeries that followed left him unable to eat, drink or speak and looking "like an exhibit in the Texas Chainsaw Museum." Is he unhappy? Not really, partly because he began pouring his "regrets, desires and memories" into a blog, which led to his doing this book. Because of the writing, Ebert says, he was lucky: "I wrote, therefore I lived."

Ebert's luck is also our luck. We can nibble Twizzlers, Twinkies and Milk Duds and enjoy Ebert's marathon of memories.

Bartell is an arts and travel writer based in Manhattan.
http://www.powells.com/review/2011_09_21

Fact of the Day

2012-01-11T06:23:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : What is a gorblimey? (from Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable)

Gorblimey. A rakish hat, as supposedly worn by a Cockney or anyone prone to exclaiming ‘gorblimey’, as a slurring of ‘God blind me’. (‘Blimey’ is a short form of this.) The hat so named evolved in the early years of the 20th century as a type of unconventional military headgear in the form of a floppy field-service cap.

Gorblimey trousers were in similar style, and both terms were directly inspired by a ribald Liverpool folk ditty, ‘My Old Man's a Fireman on the Elder-Dempster Line’, which had the couplet, ‘He wears Gorblimey trousers/An a little gorblimey 'at’. This same song was adapted by Lonnie Donegan for his Number 1 hit, ‘My Old Man's a Dustman’ (1960), which again popularized the garments.

How to cite this entry:"Gorblimey" Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable. Edited by John Ayto and Ian Crofton. Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. 11 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-10T07:08:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Tuesday, January 10, 2012

paregmenon \puh-REG-muh-non\, noun:

The juxtaposition of words that have a common derivation, as in “sense and sensibility.”

Although as artificial as his use of traductio, this use of paregmenon at least reveals Sidney's ingenuity and wit.-- Sherod M. Cooper, 'The Sonnets of Astrophel and Stella"

The recurrence of the same word with a different inflection, as in the polyptoton, or of different words of the same origin, as in the paregmenon, draws attention to the word thus recurring, and adds somewhat to its logical worth.-- Josiah Willard Gibbs, "Philological Studies with English Illustrations"

Paregmenon comes from the Greek word parēēgménon meaning "to bring side by side or derive."

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/

Meet The Yocum Staff - Sara Moyer

2012-01-10T06:57:00.000-05:00

Name: Sara Moyer

Position in Library: Staff

Educational Background: Antietam Middle Senior High School, Reading Area Community College

Favorite Book: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Favorite Movie: The Thief of Bagdad(1940)

Special Interest: Dance, Music

Fact of the Day

2012-01-10T06:40:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : What award was given to Adolf Hitler during World War I? (from The Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World )

Hitler, Adolf. Probably no leader in world history has been so despised, adulated, and feared as Adolf Hitler. His responsibility for endless human suffering and vast numbers of deaths is rivaled only by Stalin. During the twelve years of the Third Reich his charismatic sway enthralled millions of Germans who listened raptly to his words and followed his leadership to the very end. At the height of his power in 1942 he dominated almost all of Europe and western Russia while his armies and Schutzstaffel (SS) units moved from conquest to conquest.

To the present time he is virtually the only historical figure whose malignant notoriety has not been subject to significant revisionist interpretations.The meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler presents an exception to Newton's principle that no effect can be greater than its cause. He was a man who came out of nowhere. Until the age of thirty he showed no evidence of superior talents, no disciplined work habits, and no capacity for stable relationships.

He had little education and few coherent ideas. Before he came to power in 1933, most dismissed him as an eccentric nonentity or an unreliable extremist. Finally, he was not even a German.Hitler was born in 1889 at Braunau am Inn in Austria. The son of an Austrian customs official, Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, and his third wife, Klara, who came from a peasant background, Hitler was a sullen, rebellious child. The early conflicts with his authoritarian father were soothed by his indulgent mother. When she died of cancer in 1908 he lost an anchor in the stormy seas of his adolescence.

By that time he had already abandoned the Catholic church and any pretensions to middle-class respectability.From 1907 to 1913 he lived a vagrant life in Vienna. Rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts, he drifted aimlessly, taking odd jobs and hawking his own sketches on streets and in taverns.

Although he claimed impoverishment, it was really self-imposed; he received orphan's benefits from the state and could have lived comfortably if he had wished.During this period Hitler picked up his basic political ideas, most of them from the seamy netherworld of lower-class Vienna. They included crackpot Aryan racism with a fanatic preoccupation with “purity of blood,” a stereotypical antisemitism set forth in violent sexual imagery, and a polyglot list of enemies: Marxism, capitalism, democracy, pacifism, the stock exchange, and the press. Suffusing all of these ideas was the dream of a Greater Germany.

Continued..
http://www.oxfordreference.com/pub/views/fact-of-the-day.html?date=2012-01-10

How to cite this entry:Richard M. Hunt "Hitler, Adolf" The Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World, 2e. Joel Krieger, ed. Oxford University Press Inc. 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 10 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-09T07:57:00.001-05:00

Word of the Day for Monday, January 9, 2012

heterotelic \het-er-uh-TEL-ik\, adjective:

Having the purpose of its existence or occurrence apart from itself.

You're of heteroteleic value, that means you were invoked for an extraneous purpose alone, the outcome of which won't even be known to me until I'm back with my physical body in the physical world…-- William Cook, "Love in the Time of Flowers"

Therefore, what has been proposed above as a means of redirecting the development of postmodernity toward more livable, human dimensions is a heterotelic narrative transitivity—an active reimmersion of narrative in the social—which contrasts sharply with the autotelic concern for their own procedures and the hermetic intransitivity of modernist self-consciousness and late modernist self-reflexivity.-- Joseph Francese, "Narrating Postmodern Time and Space"

Heterotelic is directly derived from the Greek roots héteros meaning "other", tele- meaning "distant", and the suffix -ic which denotes an adjective, as in metallic and athletic.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
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From the Desk of Valerie Schaeffer - Charity Navigator

2012-01-09T07:05:00.000-05:00

Charity Navigator

In hard economic times, it’s important to know how every penny is spent. Charitable giving is no exception. When you give to a charity, you want to know exactly how well the charity uses your money and where it goes. If you want to find out how your money is used, check out Charity Navigator (http://www.charitynavigator.org/)

According to its website, Charity Navigator “has become the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities.” Founded in 2001, Charity Navigator is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that rates over 5,000 charities in the United States. Charity Navigator rates charities in two areas: how the charity handles daily responsibilities and also its potential of long-term health. With these to areas assessed, Charity Navigator gives each charity a rating of zero to four stars.

When you search for a charity, you will be shown current rating with organizational efficiency and capacity for growth. In addition, revenue and expenses are listed for the previous year. You will see the contact information for the charity, including email and website information.

Also, the current executive director and his or her compensation are listed, along with what percentage of the expenses that compensation takes. This is an important factor. For example, a director’s salary of $100,000 may seem high, but if it’s it only one percent of expenses, that’s a good sign that your money will go towards charitable programs.

In contrast, if a director makes $100,000 and that salary is 30% of expenses, there’s a good chance your donation may be going towards the take-home pay of the director. That’s no necessarily a bad thing, as long as you know that possibility exists and you can make better choices in donating money.

In addition to rating charities, Charity Navigator also includes articles, tips and studies in the area of philanthropy (charitable giving). Plus, Charity Navigator includes top ten lists of various charities. Some examples of top ten lists include the top ten most requested charities, the top ten charities drowning in administrative costs, and the top ten charities regularly in debt.

Charity Navigator also maintains a blog and a list of Hot Topics, which are current issues in philanthropy, such as giving during an economic recession and a holiday gift giving guide.

You can register for free and log in to maintain a list of your own charities you are supporting or interested in supporting. You can also comment on a charity’s rating and/or performance.

In addition, you can donate money to Charitable Navigator (remember, they too are a non-profit). To keep informed, you can sign up for the site’s monthly e-newsletter and follow it on Facebook and Twitter.

To check out Charity Navigator, go to http://www.charitynavigator.org/

Fact of the Day

2012-01-09T06:30:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : Who invented the hovercraft? (from A Dictionary of Scientists )

Cockerell, Sir Christopher Sydney (1910–1999) British engineer and inventor Cockerell was born in Cambridge and educated at Cambridge University, graduating in engineering in 1931. Initially he joined a small engineering firm, then returned to Cambridge to study electronics, and in 1935 he joined the Marconi Company as an electronics engineer.

Here he worked on the development of airborne navigational equipment and on radar.In 1950 he left Marconi to set up his own boat-hire business on the Norfolk broads. As an amateur yachtsman, Cockerell was interested in the effect of water drag on the hull of a boat. He had the idea of raising the boat above the water on a cushion of air. In 1954 he performed a crucial experiment using kitchen scales, tin cans, and a vacuum cleaner to show that a properly directed stream of air could produce the required lift.

The next year he built a working model out of balsa wood, powered by a model-aircraft engine.He was granted a patent on his idea in 1955 and in 1957 the Ministry of Supply commissioned a full-size craft from the company Saunders Roe. The first prototype, SR-N1, weighed 7 tons and was capable of 60 knots. It crossed the English Channel in 1959 (with Cockerell aboard). Hovercraft entered regular cross-channel service in 1968.Cockerell was a consultant to Hovercraft Development Ltd. until 1979. He was also interested in the development of wave-power generators.

How to cite this entry:"Cockerell, Sir Christopher Sydney" A Dictionary of Scientists. Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 9 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-08T07:14:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Sunday, January 8, 2012

profligacy \PROF-li-guh-see\, noun:

1. Reckless extravagance.
2. Shameless dissoluteness.
3. Great abundance.

The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay at Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice.-- Jane Austen, "Pride and Prejudice"

The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion, than that of a man of meaner condition.-- Adam Smith, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments"

Profligacy comes from the Latin word prōflīgātus which meant "broken down in character or degraded."

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
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Library Hours: 2012 January Session

2012-01-08T06:55:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, January 3 through Thursday, January 19

Days Hours
Sunday CLOSED
Monday 8:00am - 7:00pm
Tuesday 8:00am - 7:00pm
Wednesday 8:00am - 7:00pm
Thursday 8:00am - 7:00pm
Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
Saturday 9:00am - 12:00pm

Closed

Martin Luther King Holiday -- January 16

Fact of the Day

2012-01-08T06:30:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : In which country was Greenpeace founded? (from A Dictionary of Contemporary World History )

Greenpeace The world's largest environmental campaign organization, with 2.8 million supporters registered in forty countries worldwide. It was founded in 1971 in British Columbia (Canada) to organize protests against US nuclear testing at Amchitka Island, Alaska. It has campaigned against nuclear testing, whaling, and the dumping of toxic and radioactive waste. Its methods have been direct and spectacular to attract maximum media attention, but always non-violent. Despite this, in 1985 its ship Rainbow Warrior was sunk by French intelligence agents off New Zealand.

http:\\www.greenpeace.org The official website of Greenpeace.

How to cite this entry:"Greenpeace" A Dictionary of Contemporary World History. Jan Palmowski. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 8 January 2012

Word of the Day

2012-01-07T07:12:00.000-05:00

Word of the Day for Saturday, January 7, 2012

Cimmerian \si-MEER-ee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Very dark; gloomy; deep.
2. Classical Mythology. Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of a western people believed to dwell in perpetual darkness.

I was ripe for death, and along a road full of dangers, weakness led me to the boundaries of the world and the Cimmerian land of darkness and whirlwinds.-- Arthur Rimbaud, "A Season in Hell"

Once beneath the over-arching trees all was again Cimmerian darkness, nor was the gloom relieved until the sun finally arose beyond the eastern cliffs, when she saw that they were following what appeared to be a broad and well-beaten game trail through a forest of great trees. -- Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Tarzan the Untamed"

Like gasconade, cimmerian was originally a toponym. It referred to the Cimmerii, an ancient nomadic people who live in Crimea, according to Herodotus.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day
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Books on Screen

January 1-7 2012 Hours

2011-12-30T06:52:00.000-05:00

Sunday, January 1 - Closed

Monday, January 2 – Closed

Tuesday, January 3 – 8 a.m.-7 p.m. - Interim Session begins.

Wednesday, January 4 - 8 a.m.-7 p.m.

Thursday, January 5 - 8 a.m.-7 p.m.

Friday, January 6 - 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Saturday, January 7, 9 a.m.- 12 p.m.

Fact of the Day

2011-12-30T06:33:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : Who wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? (from The Oxford Companion to American Literature)

Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The, short story by James Thurber, published in The New Yorker (1939) and collected in My World—and Welcome to It (1942).

Henpecked Walter Mitty daydreams as he drives his wife downtown, attends to errands she requires, and waits while she has her hair done, envisioning himself as the beloved commander who gets his men through the worst storm in 20 years of navy flying; as the brilliant surgeon who saves the life of a millionaire banker; as the world's greatest pistol shot testifying in a murder case and refusing to be bullied by a nasty district attorney; as the British bombardier preparing to attack a German ammunition dump on a dangerous solo flight; and then, as his wife momentarily leaves him waiting outside a drugstore, he snaps away his cigarette, disdains a blindfold, and faces “the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.”

How to cite this entry:"Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The" The Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart, ed., rev. Phillip W. Leininger. Oxford University Press 1995. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 30 December 2011

Fact of the Day

2011-12-29T07:10:00.000-05:00

Fact of the Day : Where in the body is the scaphoid bone? (from A Dictionary of Nursing)

scaphoid bone (skay-foid) n. a boat-shaped bone of the wrist (see carpus). It articulates with the trapezium and trapezoid bones in front, with the radius behind, and with the capitate and lunate medially. It is commonly injured by falls; for example, a scaphoid fracture is usually caused by a fall onto the outstretched hand.

How to cite this entry:"scaphoid bone n." A Dictionary of Nursing. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 29 December 2011