More notes from a Circ worker...

My name is Bellamy and I’m an Elementary Education major at Coe. This is my second year working at the library and I love it. This semester I’m taking a class on children’s literature that requires me to read and bring in a selection of children’s books to class every Friday. I’ve been able to find all of my literature selections for this class from the children’s section of the Coe library. This area is located in the basement of the library and houses picture books on one side and chapter/young adult books on the other. At first I wasn’t sure if the library’s children section would have enough of a variety for all of different types of genres that I had to obtain. But now it’s halfway through the semester and week after week, I’ve been able to find great quality children’s literature books. The children’s section in the library may appear small, but there’s lots of great material!

Notes from a Circ worker.....

I am a senior nursing student and Stewart Memorial Library has been my second home for the past couple years. Whether it is studying, researching, or working I am normally here in the library. Apart of the nursing program we are expected to learn and know how to find evidence based research, I often use the library web site to help guide me. Because we are expected to know evidence based research so well I have become very comfortable with the databases we have here at Coe. I prefer to use Pub Med or CINAHL. I can normally find good sources that pertain to my topic which helps to strengthen my papers. The staff in the Reference office have helped me many of times and are always willing to help if problems or issues ever occur. ~~Allie

Book Thief

The end of September and start of October are always punctuated by Banned Book Week, which is, in short, a celebration of books that tend to be challenged by various groups because of content, word choice, characters, titles, covers, and so on. And while that could be a perfect excuse to wax poetic about Mark Twain, Voltaire, or yes, even Harry Potter, my annual celebration of Banned Books is to reread a very ironic book on that list:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

 Why is it an ironic choice? Because The Book Thief is not only a surprisingly funny and heartfelt story about World War II Germany, it centers on books and book burning.

The New York Times described the book as “not really… ‘Harry Potter and the Holocaust.’ It just feels that way.” It’s narrated by Death, who shouldn’t be as fabulous as they are, but they’re fabulous (even if I can’t shake the image of Death being a tiny, sassy Australian woman). The main character (the titular “Book Thief” who is really named Liesel) is an adolescent girl whose life has been tinged with death, but has remained resilient, warm, kind, and sweet. The first book she steals is a manual for grave diggers, and her love of learning proves insatiable. She and her adopted family show a tiny slice of the War from the perspective of German citizens and every act of defiance her family commits feels like a victory.

It’s completely worth the read, and the film version is set to be released in early November. ~~Maisie

Editor's note--If interested, call # is PR 9169.4 Z87 B66 2006

What I did last summer.......

Over the summer I worked in the library archives developing a finding aid for part of the William Shirer Collection. Shirer, a journalist from Cedar Rapids popular for his memoirs of fascist Germany and Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, donated his entire collection of documents to the college archives near the end of his career. My job was to read through a collection of his personal correspondence from the year 1979 and create a document that summarized the collection and contained subject headings for important events and persons of note mentioned in the letters.

It was interesting to get a peek into the personal life of a famous author and journalist, as well as see the sorts of acquaintances Shirer had made throughout his life. Many of the letters Shirer received were from aspiring journalists and novelists hoping to get some advice about the writing process. Overall I enjoyed the experience, even if it did get a bit tedious sorting through his letters for the third time. ~~Eric

Check out new displayed journal titles

Another Book sale success

Thanks to all who helped with the Library Book Sale and a thank you to all for coming in and contributing to the endowment.  We were able to add over $400 to the Brian Schappert Endowment which will help us to purchase new titles.

I've been hacked!

On Facebook lately, I noticed a friend complaining that some pins and boards that she had never pinned or created showed up on her Pinterest account (using social media to complain about social media.  How meta.)  Although she joked that the weight-loss ads that had popped up were "Pinterest fat-shaming me for all the desserts that I post,"  account security is something to be cognizant of.   What do you do if you get hacked?

First of all, any time you get hacked, or suspect that you've been hacked, your immediate priority should be changing your password for the site.  This is also a good time to remind yourself that make sure that you have different passwords that you change/update regularly.  It's not a great idea to have the same password for your Facebook account, your online banking, and your Google account.  You don't want to hand over the keys to your entire online kingdom in one fell password swoop.  Similarly, you should be updating your passwords on a regular basis.  If you've been using the same password for 2 years, it's time to retire it and come up with something new.

Once you've updated your passwords, it's time to go ahead and run a virus scanner on your computer.  Computing services can clue you into some great software for your devices, and it's also worth exploring ad-block or no-script programs that can stop hijack attempts.  Lastly, you will want to make sure that you go in and delete the posts that the hacker/program made on your behalf (which sometimes can't be done until you've changed the password.)

Hopefully these tips will help your accounts get cleaned up after a hacking.  As for protecting your account, make sure that you change/update your passwords regularly, and be vigilant when deciding to click on links.  Remember the old caveat that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is, which means that Sony probably is not going to give you a free PS4 just so you can help them test it by clicking on some random link that you see on your Facebook feed. These types of ads can contain phishing programs searching for passwords and other sensitive date, so be careful And when in doubt, you can always check on Snopes or Google an ad or story to see if something has been debunked. Forewarned is forearmed!