Kool Tools!



It's been some time since the blog has taken a look at some of the latest in free web tools available to you, so it seems like a good time to take a look at some of the latest goodies you can get.

Saving Content

One of the biggest areas of online tools these days are ways to preserve (and share) content. For example, you can capture little snippets of content (including images or videos) and store them in an online archive for however long you desire using Snipd.com, an online clipping service. You can also invite people to "follow" your snips, to which you can add comments. The possibilities for using this with students, co-workers, or any organization of which you might be a member are probably obvious. Snip out items of interest and then your followers can see what you feel is important. Snipd works with the Firefox browser. If you'd like to see how Snipd content appears, check out my sample Snipd account, which includes a terrific video about the internet age. Because this tool saves your snips for you online, nothing needs to be downloaded to your computer. (A word of advice: Don't sign up for a Snipd account until you begin Snipping. For some reason it is harder to associate your first snips with a pre-constructed account than to set it up at that point.)

If you want to preserve something more substantial than snippets of information, take a look at Zotero, the Firefox extension that enables you to save, mark, comment on, and cite resources you retrieve online so that you can refer to them for later use when you are offline (and thus making it easy to work when you are offline). This tool marks an integration of of reference software with web applications that enable bookmarking, tagging, and classification. Because this is a Firefox extension, you do not need Administrative privileges in order to install it on your system. Zotero is undoubtedly one of the best tools you could give yourself this holiday season, proving again that often the best things in life are free!

Zotero is just one reason to use Firefox as your primary browser. There are a number of Firefox extensions you can add to your browser to customize its performance. My personal favorite is Flashblock, which prevents Flash programs from running unless you give the ok. You'll be amazed at how much faster your pages load when the Flash advertising is suspended in this fashion. And you can always click the play button. Of course this will block things like the Meebo IM window on the Library's web site, so be aware there are trade offs with these kinds of choices.

Working Tools

In planning of any kind, it is useful to create concept maps. It is certainly possible to draw these using Office applications, but Bubbl.Us is a free online application that makes it sweet and easy to create and share concept maps with members in a work group. You can also turn the mind maps into images, print them, put them in a web page, or post them to a blog.

Chatmaker lets you create an instantaneous chatroom when you need it. Suppose you have a co-worker or student who needs to log in from another location? While IM might be one possible choice, chat works nicely because as many users as you desire can participate simultaneously in the same discussion. Less formal than online meeting software, Chatmaker gets you up and running in a matter of seconds. Just let people know the URL (web address) of the room and you're good to go.

Skrbl.com (say it out loud) is an online whiteboard program that like Chatmaker has the advantage of being an instantaneous multiuser workspace without the burdens of downloading meeting software. In this case, everyone in a group has access to the same whiteboard once they are sent the URL. They can then draw, type, handwrite, or import web pages or other information to the group work space. The makers of skrbl also produce GRAFFITI, a more artistically oriented version of the program. The program can even be imported into other utilities, like blogs or web pages.

Have Some Fun

Various sites on the web have created specialized graphics applications that let you play around with special effects to use on your photos without having to learn a lot of graphics applications to take advantage of them. For example: Dumpr.net offers up several entertaining photo apps to choose from, including turning photos into a drawing, having them produce reflections of themselves, turning them into easter eggs or museum art objects among others. There are premium effects you gain access to by purchasing a subscription, but personally I like the free ones best.

Thank Heavens Someone Finally Made That!

The award for the single best utility goes to PrintWhatYouLike.com. This site has remedied the problem of those web sites that won't let you simply print the convenient sections of their pages without burdening you with pages of advertising that wastes paper and toner. It helps you print the text of pages that would otherwise invariably bleed off of the right margin. The single exception to what it can do are the tedious All Flash All the Time web sites where the best you can hope for is a designer who has the good sense to realize that users aren't just there for the pretty pictures.

No Excuses! Write That (or Read) Novel!



November is not only the much beloved end to political commercials, but also NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for those of you among the uninitiated. NaNoWriMo is literally what it says it is, a month in which people write novels...in a month. The idea is to encourage people who've thought about writing a novel, but have been daunted by the scope of the task, to tackle the project through a feat of endurance and enthusiasm that will get them over the "can't do it" hump that the preconception of needing to produce something of high quality induces. So people commit to writing 50,000 words, or roughly a 175-page novel, in the 30-day period. According to the web site, NaNoWriMo signed up more than 100,000 aspirants last year, of whom more than 15,000 completed the task.

A Writer Reads

In conjunction with NaNoWriMo, the closest thing fiction gets to a celebratory month akin to April's benedictory to poetry, DACC's own Ryan Stone will give a reading from his published fiction on November 7, at 12:30, in the Vermilion Room. Ryan is also the faculty adviser for Waiting for Rain, the campus literary magazine, which he led through a significant change of format and direction with last year's publication.

Finding a Good Book

Do you like to read fiction, but aren't sure what to read? Perhaps you'd like to check out an award winner? BookSpot, a web site that is all things book-y, includes links to all the significant awards, many of which have been recently announced. BookSpot includes a lovely collection of links to sources of online reviews, podcasts, book trivia, and other assorted bibliophiles' delights.

If you're a reading fan, let me suggest a couple of blogs you might enjoy. A longtime favorite is Bookslut. This snarky blog by Jessa Crispin (with editorial support from a party of favorites) has become, over the years, an online force to be reckoned with, without losing its companionable and personal edge. This is quite apparent by the fact that the site scores interviews with the likes of Neil Gaiman. A similar feel can be found in BookNinja, another blog/site that now reigns supreme in the Canadian literary world (and don't say "I didn't know there was one"). The Written Nerd is posted by a bookseller and avid reader that can give you a lively peek into the booksellers' world, which is often entertaining and informative. And finally, it would somehow be just wrong to leave out the book review blog of one of the world's most famous librarians (and don't say "I didn't know there were any"), Nancy Pearl, model for the librarian action figure.

Reading Guides

Do you belong to a book group and wish you had a little something to support your discussions? Several online sites can provide assistance. BookMuse, from Powell's Books (you have to join to access the resources, but membership is free), ReadingGroupGuides, and ReadingGroupChoices all provide solid supporting information for readers and reading groups to further their exploration of particular works. If you'd like to participate in an online reading group, take a look at Book-Clubs-Resource.com, which includes a section devoted to the topic as well as information on how to set up a club and a variety of other useful information.

In Memoriam

Finally, the last couple of weeks have been sad ones for readers. Three of our most compelling writers have passed away recently: Tony Hillerman, Studs Terkel, and most recently, Michael Crichton. Each of these writers brought a unique perspective to their writing that enabled them draw in large numbers of readers. Hillerman's Navajo-based mystery fiction was so rich that he was given special recognition by the tribe, his books were read in tribal schools and many Navajo told him that it was his works that inspired them to reconnect with their own cultural traditions. Terkel had an amazing talent for drawing out other people's stories and then recounting them in ways that wove them together into a complex tapestry that would become an essential account of a particular human experience, such as the Great Depression. In contrast, Crichton, with his scientific background, distilled our collective fears about living in a technological age beyond most people's understanding with such thrillers as The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Prey. The library has copies of works by all of these authors available. You can identify particular titles by searching for the author's name in the Online Catalog. If we don't have a particular title you're interested in, or you'd like to see a fuller list, you can also order titles through the I-Share system of libraries using your DACC library card. (If you need help doing this, call the library. We'll be glad to walk you through the process!)

Can't See the Forest for the ... Coal???



Next Thursday, November 6, area residents have an opportunity to hear Scott D. Elrick, one of the lead geologists on the project, present a free lecture, “Geologic Secrets of Illinois’ Fossil Rain Forest,” at the Beckman Center at the University of Illinois, at 4 p.m. At close to 10 square miles in size, the rain forest in question is the world's largest fossilized forest, which is 300 million years old and is located in a coal field just outside of Danville. It sits in the the Herrin coal seam in Peabody Energy's Riola and Vermilion Grove coal mines southwest of Georgetown. Extensive photos and fossils from the forest will be presented at the lecture. (If you'd like to see some of the fossils and can't make it to the lecture, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry coal mine exhibit includes a section of the shale "roof/forest floor" that visitors can see.)

Local Forest Makes History

The discovery of the underground forest made Discover magazine's Top 100 Science Stories of 2007 list, coming in at No. 82. At the time of the general announcement, National Geographic provided one of the best descriptions of the actual experience of discovering the fossil forest. Detailed information about the forest can be found on the Illinois State Geological Survey site, which also includes an amazing collection of pictures of the fossils and of people exploring the mine with the fossils in place. Recently the Weather Channel did a piece about the forest and Smithsonion also interviewed the researchers over the summer, leading in part to this online update. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect about this discovery is that the nature of its location makes it impossible to preserve. As reported in this original USA Today story about the site, the researchers are doing what they can to preserve and record everything they find, but as Elrick commented: "It's sort of like asking people to go to New York City and describe every store front in a day."

Creepy Crawlies

In order to better understand the terrain we are talking about here, you may find it useful to take a look at the University of California Museum of Paleontology's web page explaining theCarboniferous Period. UCMP has an excellent site to help you get a handle on how the different parts of geologic periods fit together. The researchers working in the fossil forest have not found significant animal life, possibly a reflection of the way in which the forest was preserved in its pristine condition by an earthquake. They have, however, found a preserved example of a eurypterid, a 6-ft long scorpion-like water dweller that could not have been nice to cozy up to. UCMP provides a nice rundown of other creatures that would have been creeping, swimming and winging their respective ways through the forest. One particularly impressive one are the millipedes, which could grow to quite impressive lengths.

More Illinois Fossils

Find fossils fascinating? You may not know that the fabulous forest is not the only magnificent fossil site located in Illinois. The state is also home to the Mazon Creek Fossils, another set of closely related locations, this time on the earth's surface, that have yielded up amazing fossil discoveries. Part of what makes both of the Illinois locations so special is the fact that they have preserved so much of the soft tissue material of the creatures and plants they preserve. Unlike the more commonly recognized fossil bone beds, Illinois's great fossil finds have revealed the intact bodies of small, delicate animals and plants. They may not be as splashy as the big dinosaurs, but they are equally important and certainly rarer in terms of the density with which they appear in our state. If you'd like to get a good look at some of the Mazon Creek finds, you can browse through a fossil database at the Illinois State Museum that will truly let you see what kinds of wonderful things have been found, and in what quantity. If you'd like to go and collect fossils in the Mazon Creek area, you can do so by following the rules of the Department of Natural Resources for Mazonia-Braidwood Natural State Fish & Wildlife Area. Permitted collecting is over for 2008, however.

Why are there so many rules? Because fossil collecting by private dealers is decimating the scientific record. Many important sites worldwide have suffered serious damage from amateur and professional fossil collectors. As USA Today reported, looting of known fossil sites, especially in park lands has become a major problem.

Fossils Online

Want to expand your experience of fossils online? You can't go wrong with the Virtual Fossil Museum. It offers access to fossils from a variety of directions, allowing you to approach images by time period, geographic location, classification, or even, in a few special, rotating cases, general "coolness". The site also explores how fossils demonstrate evolution by means of a thoughtful discussion (with fossil images of course) of a Trilobyte Arms Race. Another excellent site is the Paleontology Portal. It lets users look at information and images of fossils organized by time, state, classification, or famous locality. It also provides access to a very sophisticated tool for searching the fossil collections of many of the major paleontology collections in the U.S.

A Final Reference

Although I have no particular wish to wade into the Creation/Evolution debate, the fossil forest raises one of the classic points of contention, that of polystrate fossils, in this case, vertical trees. Such fossils are often cited by Creationists as proof of a cataclysmic event or young Earth interpretation of science. This student web site does a nice job of demonstrating the arguments and geologic processes. (IE does not play the slides but you can go to a link that shows the series.)

Strike a Pose



With Sarah Palin's clothing allowance making headlines at the same time that news services across the country are noting the surge in thrift store shopping and touting its advantages, it seems like a good time to look at fashion and costume, with Halloween coming and all, and see just what kinds of things the web has to offer.

Retro Is the Word

When it comes to fashion, vintage and retro were already ruling the roost and the economic downturn isn't about to do anything to change that. All of which makes the web a wonderful resource for those interested in fashion. Fashion Era is huge site dedicated to the history of fashion and fashion accessories. Users can select eras and then follow through to particular elements within the time period or in certain cases can focus in on elements of the subject specifically and simply look at those. Another excellent site is Bissonnette on Costume, a site which offers what is termed a visual dictionary of how fashions and idealized body silhouettes changed from the 18th century through the 20th. A nice feature of this site is that it includes costume from other than strictly American and Northern European sources.

One of the hottest fashion eras these days is the 1960s, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a special online exhibit dedicated to its fashions and textiles. (Check out the one on Corsets and Crinolines as well!) The Victoria and Albert specializes in fashion and costume history (as well as other arts), and has long been where England's theater and costume designers both went for inspiration and donated their collections. Its clothing and theater repository is one of the richest in the world. Items can be viewed in 360 degrees, enlarged, and searched by keywords.

A definite fashion maven in her day was Jacqueline Kennedy, and it's possible to get a sense of why in this online exhibit hosted by the Field Museum. Another view of the exhibits can be seen at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, which is their permanent home. The First Lady is inevitably viewed through the lens of fashion, as noted in this NewsHour analysis of various inaugural fashion triumphs and gaffes the various women have made. (Speaking of first ladies, Film.com has this rather fun Face-Off of the two potential future first ladies' respective senses of fashion.) While that all seems like good fun, this serious analysis the complicated interaction of fashion and culture in The Spectacular Female Body: Dress, Fashion and Modernity in Victorian Women's Magazines reminds us that what seems like frippery has significant social and economic consequences. This site focuses on some particular fashion trends: corsets, bloomers, and bicycles and how they connected to the consumer culture and the notion of the fashion plate.

Thrift Is So In

Since everyone you know is looking for ways to stretch their dollars these days, here are a couple of web sites to keep you looking good while keeping within your leaner, meaner budget. The first is Celebrity Style: The Budget Babe: a blog for the fiscally sublime with a sense of style. The nice thing about this blog is it tells you exactly where to get things for less after telling you how to make them look good. Another good stop is The Budget Fashionista, which is a whole site that includes product reviews, coupons and advice. For men, there's See Jack Shop, a blog that focuses on men's clothing and style issues for the dollar-conscious. If the idea of a men's fashion blog is a little too metrosexual for you, head over to About.com's Men's Fashion--Style on a Budget section instead.

Part of the trick of dressing up on a dime though is having a good sense of style, and there is no better place to get that than the premier fashion site on the web: firstVIEW. Professionals pay big bucks to access the very latest designs off the site, but if you're willing to go back a bit in time you can get lots of wonderful material for free! Simply click on Collections and then All Free Collections and you're in.

Speaking of Costumes...

With Halloween just around the corner, perhaps you're looking for ideas for costumes for yourself or a smaller member of your family. Well there are a number of sites that can give you ideas. The Costume Page, a web site dedicated to the needs of professional and amateur costumers has an entire section devoted to Halloween costumes. The site is intended to meet the needs of theater people, researchers, re-enacters, sci-fi fans, and people who just have an interest the subject.

Just for Fun

And if all of this fashion stuff just isn't your idea of interesting, there are a couple of related sites that may tickle your fancy. Stardoll.com is a virtual paper doll site that lets you dress up celebrities in your own combination of fashion faux pas. Unfortunately they limit themselves to film and pop stars and royals so you can't dress the candidate of your choice in something less than fashionable. What a missed opportunity! Or how about Feed the Model, a flash game that encourages you to feed the starving fashion model? (Note: It's easy to miss this game on the cluttered AdiosBarbie web site. It is on the right side.) And for something a little Halloween themed...how about the World's Worst Halloween Costumes. I'm not sure these are the absolute worst, except for maybe the Asteroids game one... And because it is my favorite site this time of year, here is the link for ExtremePumpkins.com. They're not your ordinary jack-o-lanterns.

Lincoln v. Douglas: Debate of the Century?



Tomorrow and Saturday Vermilion County’s “Celebrating Lincoln: a Year of Remembrance” gets underway right here at DACC in the Bremer Theater at 7 p.m. both nights with a sesquicentennial "re-creation" of the Lincoln-Douglas debates by Don Richter of the Vermilion County Museum Society. (The program is free, but tickets are required. Contact Glenda Boling for ticket information: 554-1536 or gboling@dacc.edu.) The production draws on the texts of the original debates held elsewhere, newspaper accounts and first-person reports to develop the script that will be used by the players. As part of the program, Four on the Floor will be performing music from the period. If you'd like to take a look at some of the music from that time period, you can do so thanks to the Library of Congress, which offers up "We'll Sing to Abe Our Song", a sheet music collection representing Lincoln and the Civil War in popular music. In recognition of the Bremer event, let's take a look at some of the many wonderful resources available to people interested in the history of these events and the participants.

The Events' Significance

So why were the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas so important? After all, these men were not even competing for the White House, but merely for the Senate seat from Illinois. Nevertheless the events were important nationally at the time, not simply in retrospect because it was Lincoln who was involved. This was true for several reasons, both political and technological, as outlined in this Smithsonian article. Recent innovations in communication and transportation, such as the telegraph and expanding rail service made possible the first rapid news reporting, while Douglas's position as the most powerful member of the Senate and the drafter of the Kansas-Nebraska Act made his political fortunes news. And Douglas's decision to entertain a debate challenge from his challenger was itself new. Incumbent politicians simply did not engage in debate interchanges. But ultimately what made the debates so significant was the fact that the two speakers, both of them talented rhetoricians, presented the critical and defining issues for the time, speaking directly to their audiences and offering distinctly different perspectives on the direction Americans needed to move. The issues they discussed, while still freighted with more political spin and pandering than people tend to realize today in their mythologizing of the events, continue to resonate in crucial ways. If you would like to see the actual texts of the debates, these are available online through Bartleby.com. The texts are divided into the original speeches, the responses, and the rebuttals. If you'd just like to get a feel for the time, the library has an interesting resource that you can play around with: HarpWeek is an online digitized version of Harper's Weekly, one of the most important national weekly magazines of the period. Perusing its pages will give a real sense of "being there" that only original documents can. (User i.d. and password required off-campus.)

The Incumbent: Stephen Douglas

Stephen Douglas was one of the most powerful men in the United States in the mid-1800s, a fact that explained his nickname: "The Little Giant", a nod to his even-then diminutive 5-foot 4-inch stature. An articulate speaker, he worked vigorously to try and find compromise solutions to the growing differences between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North. This biography from Ohio History Central, an online encyclopedia of Ohio History, offers a nice synopsis of his life and work. A more in-depth one can be located in the library's American National Biography resource. You can actually access a full-length online biography of Douglas by William Gardner for free via Project Gutenberg.

The Challenger: Abraham Lincoln

The debates with Douglas mark Lincoln's movement from a political also-ran to a major figure in the newly formed Republican party. Recent recalculations show that Lincoln actually won the Senate race, had Senate seats been decided on the basis of direct election at the time. But instead Senators were appointed through complexly gerrymandered legislative districts, and Douglas's Democratic party effectively managed district legislative control and thus successfully returned him to office with significantly less than a majority of the popular vote total. The Library of Congress has an amazing collection of Lincoln material, including a digitized version of Lincoln's personal scrapbook of the debates in which he pasted news stories about each debate and wrote margin notes that are clearly legible in the digital copies. To see them, go to this link for the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolnia and scroll down the page to find the scrapbook. You can use "Pageturner" to flip through the images of the volume. If you'd like to know what he looked like at the time, scroll down farther and check out the life mask made at the time of the debates. The collection also includes some other interesting items, such as the wanted poster for Lincoln's murderers, the items he was carrying in his pockets on the night he was killed. (No, none of the items are bloody. Anything that was, sheets, handkerchiefs used to staunch the bleeding, etc. were kept as sacred mementos or sold as souvenirs in a society whose conceptions of the proper way to cope with death differed quite radically from our own. For an interesting review of some of these practices, see Dan Meinwald's Memento Mori online project about nineteenth-century America's photography of all things related to death and the dead.)

With a bit of history under your belt, enjoy the program by Glenda Boling's Acting II students and recall the great debates of last century.

Historian and political commentator and humorist Sarah Vowell appeared on The Daily Show (requires FlashPlayer 9) the other night promoting her new book The Wordy Shipmates. But she began her interview with Jon Stewart talking about how she was having a hard time being inspired by any political leaders today. So for solace and encouragement in these dark times she had, with her historian's instincts, turned back in time and looked to the last president elected to cope with such monumental economic strife, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She sought out his Fireside Chats on the internet and found them good -- inspiring, encouraging, comforting and somehow touching just the right notes of explanation and responsibility. It struck me that this might be a good thing for others to do as well.

The Fireside Chats

FDR took advantage of the newly popular medium of radio to address the nation and offer fatherly comfort in a time of national distress. A consummate politician, FDR recognized the opportunities that the medium possessed and capitalized upon them while also benefiting from the limitations that it afforded. He recognized that in a time of national crisis people want explanations and courses of action and he took this opportunity to provide these. For a good background explanation to how FDR used the Fireside Chats to promote his New Deal programs, take a look at this Teaching with Documents site from the National Archives. Whatever you may think of his decisions, you have to respect his ability to capture and guide the national discussion, a skill that was much in need at that moment in time. To experience for yourself the power of his rhetoric, check out: American Rhetoric: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Fireside Chat. If you enjoy the experience, you can listen to all of the Fireside Chats by registering for a free online account at the Museum of Broadcast Communication and looking them up in the catalog. (The Museum is a great online resource, by the way. Currently it is running exhibits of elections past, including one dedicated to the raucous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.) If you would like to read the texts of the chats, you can do so at the Franklin D Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum web site.

Crash Course in the Economy 2008 Style



Fannie and Freddie... Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., WaMu, Wachovia, AIG, a suddenly bearish Merrill Lynch bull... "Subprime" -- a term Merriam Webster only added to its dictionary in 2007 and which the Oxford English Dictionary retains in draft form only, linking its first "banking" related appearance only as far back as 1976, which means it only barely pre-dates the S&L crisis of the 1980s... Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson getting more media face time than the latest OJ trial, Bragelina or all the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates put together. What's going on?

Cutting Through the Crisis

Several major banking institutions have shuddered, others have collapsed in the last few months, weeks and days. How could that happen? And what the heck do all those words mean? Let's start there. If you feel as though there's an entirely new vocabulary you're not up on, the BBC has a guide to help you out: The Layman's Finance Crisis Glossary. Soon you'll be "leveraging" and "unwinding" with the best of the them. Now let's get a handle on the chain of events that have led up to the most recent events. This credit crisis timeline assembled by Jason Cox of the University of Iowa's Center for International Finance and Development traces events, going all the way back to June 2003 when then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan lowered the prime interest rate to 1%, the lowest rate in 45 years, through Monday of this week when the House of Representatives dropped its bombshell vote on the bailout package proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson. Events are all linked to appropriate Financial Times and other articles for more in-depth commentary. For a more slimmed down guide to events, check out this Dummy's Guide to the U.S. Banking Crisis. This site walks you through several of the key events and players in the crisis, providing links to supporting news stories. So that brings us to today, more or less. One question that many people want to know is what, exactly, is this bailout supposed to achieve? Time addresses 18 Tough Questions (and Answers)about the Bailout, including such things as why isn't the money being directed to homeowners, if it is them defaulting on their ill-advised mortgages that lies at the heart of the crisis, and is this truly a financial apocalypse? One of the concerns frequently raised in relation to the bailout is the drying up of credit. The Washington Post looked at the uneven impacts of credit tightening across the country. An at risk group of particular concern here at DACC are student loan recipients. At this point, it is unclear how the student loan market is going to be effected by the banking crisis. For now, the consensus seems to be that federally backed loans will be safe for the time being. The real concern is the in the private lender market as it becomes increasingly difficult for those with less than perfect credit to get assistance and as more companies pull out of the student loan market.

Ack! What Does This Mean to Me??

With all the crisis predictions, bailout talk, and casual references to the Grapes of Wrath and the Great Depression, you are probably wondering what all this means to you. In many ways, not a whole lot, in the sense that you have little control over the big picture issues. But you can do a number of things to secure yourself against hard times as much as possible. After the bailout of AIG, the nation's largest insurer, it is not unreasonable to wonder about the security of your insurance policies. According to MSNBC's Personal Finance specialists, your insurance coverage should be fine, but you can take some steps to find out and protect yourself. What about your other assets? Money in the bank? Unless you are more fortunate than many of us, and have to worry about over-topping the $100,000 per person FDIC limit, you are protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's guarantee, which protects depositors from losing money in the case of a bank failure. If you want to sleep more easily, you can go to their site and follow the links to make sure that your bank is covered (almost all U.S. banks are). But maybe you keep your money in a credit union. Are you still protected? Probably. Almost all U.S. credit unions are covered by the National Credit Union Administration, which provides the same kind of guarantee. Ok, so you know those assets are secure; what about your retirement? SURS offers information about its portfolio on its web site which may make you breathe a little easier. If you have other investments, most investment planners are offering advice similar to that spelled out on this CNN's Your Money. The general rule of thumb for the average investor is hold tight and think long term. The really big question for most consumers has to do with credit, regardless of what you need it for. Keep a close eye on your credit card company. Many are lowering credit card limits and raising fees, especially those imposed on late payment. Aware that retirees and near retirees are among the most vulnerable in economic hard times, AARP offers these 10 Easy Tips to Help You Make the Most of Your Money. The association also reports that most nearing retirement age are, of necessity, planning on continuing to work longer.

Can There Possibly be Anything Funny about This?

Hmmm. That depends. The Onion offers a graphic breakdown of the $700 Billion Bailout Spending Plan and Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show acts as a loan officer to Ben Bernecke and Henry Paulson seeking bailout money (note FlashPlayer 9 needed), both of which ought to give you a chuckle even in these trying times.

Get Something For Nothing -- Banned Books Week

Don't forget! It's Banned Books Week and the library is celebrating by giving you an opportunity to win a free book. Three winners will be drawn from those who submit correctly completed answer sheets to the Banned Books Challenge.

Halo Anyone?



CERN, the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or European Council for Nuclear Research, (aka the world's largest particle physics laboratory) made headlines over the last two weeks with the official launch of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). So it seems appropriate to take a look at what this means (and what it doesn't mean) and a few such questions. First, you should know the LHC has a new, sexier name -- Halo. Only not really. This is the result of a contest put on by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London, and as such has no real weight. Personally I thought some of the other contenders: the Matter Splatterer, the Big Banger and the Colliderscope all had something going for them.

What the Heck is Particle Physics Anyway?

If you thought the fundamentals of the atom stopped with the proton and the neutron and the electron, you've got a whole new world of delightfully named particles to meet, and Peter Kalmus is a great guide. Kalmus will get you down to your quarks and leptons without making your head spin. If you feel ready for something a bit more detailed, head over to Hands-On-CERN for a more in-depth look at how quarks make up hadrons, how particle accelerators work and subatomic forces. For a look at a darn funny and yet still informative rap video about the LHC, check out this YouTube video The Large Hadron Rap. For a somewhat more detailed explanation, that is nevertheless clear and easy to understand, take a look at The LHC for Dummies. (By the way, both this article and Kalmus's come from a wonderful online magazine called +plus, which tries to connect the real world to mathematics in an engaging fashion.)

If you find this subject interesting, consider taking a trip to visit Illinois' own particle accelerator, Fermilab in Batavia, 45 miles west of Chicago. Even if you aren't fascinated by particle physics, Fermilab may be of interest because it is a National Environmental Research Park and incorporates examples of ecosystems reflective of most of those found in the midwest. The lab maintains a herd of about 60 bison on its tallgrass prairie and also encourages bird watchers.

Will the LHC Destroy the World?

Two different legal challenges in the last few months have attempted to halt or delay CERN's startup of the LHC, the most recent filed in Europe early this month. CERN addressed the essential concerns in a detailed scientific response that was reviewed by outside scientists. You can view the summary of this report online or the report in its entirety. For a quick and easy layperson's guide that addresses these concerns, check out Neat-O-Rama's 10 Things About the Large Hadron Collider You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask. In addition to explaining why the fears of naysayers are not a concern, the 10 Things list also explains why the LHC is like a werewolf. This site also includes a link to the "Hooray No Black Holes! Go Science! I survived the Large Hadron Collider!" T-Shirt

Why Should You Care?

So, you're not a particle physicist, what do you care about a huge hadron collider in Europe? Well, much like the space program, the technology inherent in the LHC and the information it uncovers will have "real world" implications. One of the most immediately anticipated is the way in which the necessary information processing involved offers a view of the potential future of the internet. Other "practical" benefits are harder to predict, but if previous colliders offer any clues, they will include medical and communications technology. PET scans and proton cancer therapy are two technologies that have come from the work done using this kind of research. To get a good idea of the kinds of things that can result from this sort of work check out Pulse, an online exhibit from Fermilab. But many scientists will tell you, such practical considerations really aren't the right way to think about projects of this sort. They are actually secondary benefits to the expansion of human knowledge itself, as Stephen Hawking explains in this article in the Telegraph.

I'd Like to Help

If you'd like to be involved with the LHC project (and other ongoing particle physics projects), check out lhc@home, a system that enables you to donate your computer's "down" time to the researchers working at the accelerators.

It Feels Like Fall



With the abrupt drop in temperature, the return of students and the fanfare over the re-opening of the renovated Memorial Stadium in Champaign, it seems inevitable that one's mind should turn to other fall related themes. So this edition of the library blog looks at ways in which you can appreciate some of the ways nature manifests itself in this season of change.

On the Move--Migrations

Before long a variety of animals will begin their annual shift from summer to winter habitats in the northern hemisphere. The major migratory routes, or flyways, can be located on this site, and several of the major routes pass not far from here. It's not too soon to begin considering participating in this year's Project Feederwatch, a program that uses local bird enthusiasts to keep track of birds chowing down at their feeders during the winter as well as using them to help monitor songbird health. The program officially begins November 8, but you can sign up now. If you enjoy birdwatching, another way to make your hobby "count", so to speak, is to participate in Birdsource, an organization which sponsors several monitoring activities, including eBird, an online inventory system birdwatchers can use to help scientists keep an eye on species' movement and success. Need help identifying birds? Check out eNature's online FieldGuide to Birds. It is just one of a series of online species field guides eNature makes available free on the web. From their home page you can access field guides to everything from mammals and reptiles to wildflowers, spiders or butterflies. (They also provide information about gardening for wildlife, national and state parks, and an archive of nature articles.)

But birds are not the only animals that migrate. Monarch butterflies have begun their annual flight south (an amazing sight if you ever have a chance to witness it -- in part because it's absolutely silent). This site gives weekly updates and reports concern that this year's population numbers may be down significantly, although it may be too soon to tell. And in the Shawnee Forest, the Illinois snake migration should be getting underway, as recorded in this article from previous edition of Southeast Missouri State University's Big Muddy online journal.

Make Like a Tree and Leave...

But perhaps what you look forward in autumn is the changing color of the leaves. Have you never been quite sure what made that change happen? Chemical of the Week explains how this process works. Before long, you'll be able to check the U.S. Forest Service's Fall Colors web site to check out the locations of the best foliage displays. It may sound a little odd, but if you can't get out to the trees, you can now bring the trees in to you, or at least into your computer via Leaf Cams. This About.com site offers the cream of the U.S. and Canadian Foliage Web Cams. Want to keep some of fall's color around a bit longer? Here are a couple of different sites that recommend strategies for preserving leaves for varying lengths of times and purposes.

"I owe my soul to the company store"*



Labor Day is almost upon us and while we tend to think of this holiday more in terms of picnics, reunions, and a weepy Jerry Lewis pleading for "his kids", the holiday's origins are, in fact, with the American worker. And so the library blog takes this opportunity to provide information about how to find a variety of employment-related information as well as some information about labor history.

Workplace Information

In incredible amount of information useful to both employees and employers is available on the web, much of it provided by the U.S. Department of Labor. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a rich resource of information about employment, pay, benefits, and workplace injuries and safety. The Occupational Outlook Handbook, published annually and available in its entirety online, provides detailed information about job classifications and the prospects for employment in each. The BLS provides such detailed information that much of it can be broken down into tightly defined geographical categories, such as state, county or city and you can locate extremely accurate information for the local region, or another region a student, child, or other individual might be interested in. Know of someone who is working in a dangerous or unsafe condition but is afraid to report it? Check out the DoL's Whistleblower Protection information. But the Department of Labor is not the only government agency that provides resources of potential interest to workers. If you would like to investigate issues related to workplace safety, a good place to begin is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health web site, which is part of the complex of web sites operated by the Centers for Disease Control. Disability.gov is a key resource for those in need of resources related to disability issues in the workplace. As an increasing number of Iraq War veterans return to regular employment, more employers will need to understand what their obligations are in relation to these potential workers as well as what kinds of opportunities they might be able to offer them that would be of mutual benefit. This site provides that information. If you would like to get further information about your rights in the workplace, a good place to start is the American Civil Liberty Union's Workplace Rights section, which includes information on discrimination, harassment, electronic surveillance, whistleblower protection and the entirely new category of genetic discrimination that aims to protect workers from genetic screening and profiling.

Unions

Labor Day is specifically connected to the development of unionized labor in this country, so it seems appropriate to point out links to relevant sources of union information available on the web. College employees can find information related to their respective unions on the web at the IEA-NEA web site. Check the site for details on free online computer training, scholarships for dependents, finding grants, retailer discounts and information on topics ranging from home-buying advice to making a will. Another important union-related site is the National Labor Relations Board, the federal office that oversees relations between unions and employers. Are you or your students interested in the subject of workers' rights on a global scale? Questions related to who's really paying the price for Wal-Mart's cheap manufactured goods or whether a company is making an exorbitant profit on the back of slave labor? Check out the National Labor Committee's web site. Current campaigns on the site focus on Speedo, Chinese toy manufacturers who sell to Mattel and Hasbro and McDonalds, and pushing for anti-sweatshop legislation in Congress.

Labor History

Illinois played several key roles in the history of labor in this country, including the Cherry Hill Coal Mining Disaster, the Pullman Strike(this site includes great images and videos as well as a section on Illinois in the Gilded Age), the Haymarket Square Riot (this impressive site from the Chicago Historical Society presents the events in the Haymarket as a online drama), and the creation of the wonderfully named Wobblies. Other significant events in Illinois labor history can be found on this site from the Illinois Labor History Society. Another interesting site related to labor history is Lost Labor, an image and document archive of material related to jobs that no longer exist as a result of automation, computerization, economic changes, downsizing and globalization.

Documenting Work in Art

The Labor Arts Museum offers an impressive online collection of artwork related the history of labor. You will find everything from a photodocumentary of some of the memorials spontaneously created after the 9/11 attacks to recordings of songs of the labor movement as well as amazing murals, paintings, posters, buttons, banners and flyers.

Updates on Previous Topics



Free Credit Reports

A reader contacted me after the posting a couple of weeks ago regarding network security and identity theft in which I recommended separating out your three free credit reports from the three credit agencies over the course of the year and said that the agencies were pushing a large variety of charges and services and could these be avoided. So I have subsequently checked and determined that the agencies do have a variety of services that they are now pushing people to opt in on, including a 30-day online availability choice, all of which they can legally charge for. However they are mandated by law to maintain an absolutely free option and they do. It is just in small unobtrusive links at the bottom of the lists. It is, however, also the one that if you don't change any defaults will be the one you get. But you must also print off your report at the time you view it (or be satisfied with viewing it once online) because that is all you are legally entitled to. Anything else will cost you. You also are not legally entitled to know your credit score. Your credit score is determined by a calculation which, as the contents of the different reporting agencies may vary, itself will vary from one to another and is not open to review. It is also vitally important that you go into the credit bureaus via the www.annualcreditreport.com website or they will direct you into other methods of retrieval that make it more difficult to retrieve your information free even if you have not yet done so for the year. So you can get what you want, you just need to take your time and pay attention to get what you want.

South Ossetia and Georgia

In relation to ongoing activities and issues in EuroAsia, here are a couple of additional web sites that may be of interest. This page provides excellent background on South Ossetian Separatism in Georgia, while Eurasianet.org is a news and analysis site that focuses on central Asia and Caucasus nations as well as Russia, the Mideast and Southwest Asia. If you are interested in keeping up to date on the rapidly changing events in this region and would like to vary your perspective, Eurasianet.org is a good place to start.