Digital Collections from the University of North Texas

Located at http://www.library.unt.edu/govinfo/digital-collections, the first digital collection on this web page is called the A-to-Z Digitalization Project and it includes pre-1960 government documents. The Farmers’ Bulletin has been digitized and they are planning to digitize the War Department Technical Manuals. Other digital collections include the Congressional Research Service Reports Archive, CyberCemetery, Federal Newsmaps and the World War Poster Collection. The CyberCemetery collection provides permanent public access to websites and publications of defunct U.S. government agencies and commissions. The Federal Newsmaps collection, which were published by the War Department of the U.S. during World War II, feature narrative descriptions, photographic essays, and/or poster-like designs on various themes such as enemy insignias, demobilization, and farm loans.

Regional Economic Accounts from the Bureau of Economic Analysis website

The Bureau of Economic Analysis website has a section called Regional Economic Accounts, which is located at http://www.bea.gov/regional/index.htm. The Regional Economic Accounts web page contains access to two major types of information. They are Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by state and metropolitan areas, and state and local area personal income. The Regional Economic Accounts gives information about the geographic distribution of U.S. economic activity and growth. This type of information is used for analyzing and comparing individual state and local area economies. Data can be created by using interactive charts, maps and tables. There is also something called BEARFACTS (BEA Regional Facts), which is narratives that describes an area's personal income using current estimates, growth rates, and a breakdown of the sources of personal income.

Groundhog Day--Feb 2

Groundhog Day is comming. "Groundhog Day, February 2nd, is a popular tradition in the United States. It is also a legend that traverses centuries, its origins clouded in the mists of time with ethnic cultures and animals awakening on specific dates. Myths such as this tie our present to the distant past when nature did, indeed, influence our lives. It is the day that the Groundhog comes out of his hole after a long winter sleep to look for his shadow."

"The groundhog tradition stems from similar beliefs associated with Candlemas Day and the days of early Christians in Europe, and for centuries the custom was to have the clergy bless candles and distribute them to the people. Even then, it marked a milestone in the winter and the weather that day was important."

"The Roman legions, during the conquest of the northern country, supposedly brought this tradition to the Teutons, or Germans, who picked it up and concluded that if the sun made an appearance on Candlemas Day, an animal, the hedgehog, would cast a shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of bad weather, which they interpolated as the length of the "Second Winter."
"Pennsylvania's earliest settlers were Germans and they found groundhogs to in profusion in many parts of the state. They determined that the groundhog, resembling the European hedgehog, was a most intelligent and sensible animal and therefore decided that if the sun did appear on February 2nd, so wise an animal as the groundhog would see its shadow and hurry back into its underground home for another six weeks of winter."

Information about Groundhog day came from the following site: http://www.groundhog.org/info/ Come to this site to find out more information.

Google To Host Terabytes of Open Source Data

The Wired Blog Networkhas a posting by Alexis Madrigal that says that:

Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all. The project, known as Palimpsest and first previewed to the scientific community at the Science Foo camp at the Googleplex last August, missed its original launch date this week, but will debut soon.

The Worst Hard Time: the Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl is a must read. 978.032 EG1W

Synopsis
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years
of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since.
Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter
of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical
reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through
the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to
carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the
death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe,
Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become
his heroes, "the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he
opens up with urgency and respect" (New York Times).

In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst
Hard Time is "arguably the best nonfiction book yet" (Austin Statesman
Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited
upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of
trifling with nature.

Winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak

From the Publisher
In 1930 a plucky girl detective stepped out of her shiny blue roadster, dressed in a smart tweed suit, ready to restore a stolen inheritance to its rightful owner. Tied up by the villains, she managed to free herself and bring them to justice - all while wearing a pencil skirt and high heels. Eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women's libbers), and emerged as beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers. Now, in a narrative with all the fast-paced thrill of one of Nancy's adventures, Melanie Rehak solves a page-turning literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go from pulp heroine to American icon?
With ebullience, wit, and a wealth of little-known source material, Rehak weaves a behind-the-scenes history of Nancy and her groundbreaking creators. Taking us from The Secret of the Old Clock to The Secret of the Spa, Rehak tells all about our fearless sleuth - including the fact that both Nancy and her "author," Carolyn Keene, were invented by Edward Stratemeyer, a dime-novel genius who also created the Bobbsey Twins and the Hardy Boys. But Nancy Drew was actually brought to life by two remarkable women: original author Mildred Wirt Benson, a convention-flouting Midwestern journalist, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a wife and mother who transformed herself into a CEO to run her father's company after he died. Together, Benson and Adams created a character that has inspired generations of girls to be as strong-willed and as bold as they were.
Melanie Rehak will send you back to your old Nancy Drews -- but thanks to GIRL SLEUTH you'll never read them the same way again.

Martin Luther King Day

On Monday, January 21, 2008, we celebrate the anniverasary of Martin Luther King. King was born on January 15, 1929, and was killed by a sniper's bullet on April 4, 1968. There are many books in the SOSU Library on Dr. King. Here are just a few of them:

• Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Biography 2006 323.092 K53BR


• Martin Luther King: A Life 2006 323.092 K53FR


• King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. 2000 323.092 K53J


• Martin Luther King, Jr. A Man and His Dream (Videorecording) 1997 393.092 K53E


• Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King 1964 301.451 K58WH


• A Martin Luther King Treasury by Martin Luther King 1964 323.4 K586M

There are also lots of Internet sites on King at: http://www.sosu.edu/lib/mlking.htm

Time Magazine Archives

Time Magazine has its entire magazine content from 1923 to the present available for searching and printing. All you do is enter a search term in the search box and every article, every page of text in all of the issues of Time Magazine are searched in seconds and the results displayed. The archives are located at: http://www.time.com/time/searchresults. You can then view and print out the article too.

Come and See the Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary Online

"When you know what something looks like but not what it’s called, or when you know the word but can’t picture the object, The Visual Dictionary has the answer. In a quick look, you can match the word to the image." The Dictionary is located at: http://visual.merriam-webster.com/, and it is also located on the SOSU Library's Electronic Resources under Encyclopedias Dictionaries and other Reference Tools at: http://www.sosu.edu/lib/electres.htm