Creative Use of Your Library Card

image source : flickr commons

"One girl said she used a butter knife and a library card to break into vacant houses."

The New York Times published the first of two articles on the increase in youth runaways. This piece supposedly ties runaways with the current economic climate, but only one sentence out of 4 pages mentions the recession. Still, it is definitely worth a read.

On a somewhat related note, the Sociology October book displays are on National Domestic Violence Awareness Month as well as Crime Prevention Month. Be sure to check them out in the next few days.

Books on street kids/teen runaways: SOC 362.74

Prison Stripes or Candy Stripes?

According to this article, more than 3,000 people die each year of natural causes in US correctional facilities. Of course this is bound to happen with over 7 million people imprisoned in this country and 1/3 of them over 50. This reality has led to a number of hospice programs starting up within correctional facilities. And who better to volunteer at these hospices than prison inmates themselves?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/health/18hospice.html?ref=global-home

Books on hospice : SOC 362.175
Books on prisons/incarceration : SOC 365.973

Shamans! Coming to a hospital near you.

The Nytimes recently published an article on Hmong Shamans and medical care and it reminded me of a great book on Sociology + Health: Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Head to 306.461 F145 for that title and peruse the nearby stacks for more books on transcultural medical care, social medicine and health and sickness from a social standpoint. Watch PBS's film The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America for even more information!

News of note.

source: flickr commons

Wapo has an article about the Quest Institutes "Books Behind Bars" program. Apparently a CD-ROM and paper clip halted the entire program. Books Behind Bars donates prisoner-requested books to Virginia Corrections facilities. The active DC based Quixote Center's Books to Prisoners project can be found here.

Nytimes has an op-ed by social sciences favorite Michael Pollan. He's got something to say about health care reform and it makes me hungry.

Holder's can of worms

Hanging around mlk library? Start your own 'investigation' into the CIA through the books in the Social Sciences division. Peruse our display table for titles on the CIA, Department of Justice, human rights, terrorism and torture .

Here is the NYTimes take on prosecuting the CIA.

Questioning the sex of an athlete

source : flickr commons

Caster Semenya, a South African teenager, won gold in the 800 meter race at the world athletics championship last week. what was quite a remarkable feat - she finished a full 2.45 seconds ahead of the closest opponent- is quickly becoming overshadowed by the debate over her gender.

While this may seem incredulous to some (including Semenya's family and the South African government), there have been cases of female impersonation in athletics. according to the daily mail, the most famous case is German athlete Dora Ratjen, a high jumper who claimed he was forced by the Nazis to disguise himself as female in the Berlin Olympics. the first athlete to be caught through gender testing was Polish runner Ewa Klobukowska who won medals during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

The ny times has an interesting piece on Caster Semenya and sex determination in sports here.

Books on women in sports: MUS 796.082
Books on gender and sex: SOC 306.7

Tintin au la bibliotheque? Non en brooklyn.

source: flickr commons

The controversy around Tintin and his trip to Congo isn't news to those aware of censorship issues. How do libraries deal with patrons and book challenges like Tintin au Congo? NYTimes shares the Brooklyn public libraries approach as well as some interesting examples of book challenges.

Interested in books on libraries, censorship, and intellectual freedom? Poke your nose around LIT 025.

tonight!

come down to mlk for a screening of stealing a nation - an award winning documentary about the displacement of the chagossian people of the island diego garcia.

followed by a book discussion with local author david vine on island of shame: the secret history of the u.s. military base on diego garcia - his new book on the same subject.

tonight! 6pm in auditorium A5

Obama on Gates

image source: www.harvard.edu

If you haven't seen President Obama's comments on the Henry Louis Gates/Cambridge police incident check them out here.

Books by the Harvard scholar are found in the History/Biography division. Topics such as racial profiling and police misconduct are found in Sociology and Black Studies.

racial profiling 363.2308 K839
Henry Louis Gates 92 G2585
police misconduct 363.232 W724

hearing of the week

image source: getty

Lots of interesting hearings this week! but really...this week it is all about Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Follow the live stream on www.cnn.com or keep up with the #Sotomayor tweets!

Ray Bradbury loves libraries!

image source: nytimes

Literary legend Ray Bradbury says...

“Libraries raised me...I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

"Yahoo called me eight weeks ago...They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.'"

Read the rest of the article here!

monday night fun!

image source: flickr commons

make the quick trip from MLK library over toE street cinema tonight - i wish that i could! catch Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and food safety advocate Barb Kowalcyk on a panel with the filmmakers of "Food Inc." one of the latest docs on the food industry and how we eat.

update: the screening is full!

check out http://www.foodincmovie.com/ for more info on the film
and the nytimes article on it here.

Study from Utrecht University in the Netherlands Shows Most People Replace Friends Every 7 Years

image source: Arizona state government

A new study by sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst of Utrecht University in the Netherlands indicates that people replace close friends with new ones every seven years. The conclusion of the study was that our social networks tend to remain about the same size.

If you are interested in learning more about friendships visit DCPL's Social Sciences Division. We have a diverse collection of books on meeting people and maintaining friendships.

This list is includes some of the more recent titles:

Bisexual Women: Friendship and Social Organization. –Marlene Paz Galupo
306.765 B6216

Friendship: An Exposé. - Joseph Epstein
302.34 E646

I Can Tell Her Anything: The Power of Girl Talk - Annette Annechild
302.34 A6137

The Girls: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship-Nina Barrett
305.244 B274

The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship- Jeffrey Zaslow 305.4092 Z38

Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendship. – Emily Bernard
302.34 S693

The Red Hat Society: Fun and Friendship after Fifty - Sue Ellen Cooper
305.244 B274

Friend or Frenemy?: A Guide to the Friends You Need and the Ones You Don't. Andrea Lavinthal
302.3408 L412

what is it those corporate agribusinesses don't want WSU freshman to know?

image source: Library of Congress Flickr Commons

Some news from the academic library world ...Washington State University announced last week that it decided to pull The Omnivore’s Dilemma - Michael Pollan's super popular book about "the ecology of the food humans eat and why"- from their required reading program for freshman. possible reasoning behind that one? pressure from corporate agribusiness, say some faculty members.

Well you could pick up The Omnivore's Dilemma from your local dcpl branch, if all the copies weren't already checked out! Place a hold on citycat and check out Pollan's latest: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Books on food and eating start around SOC 394!

Stop by MLK Library to check out a great article on the WSU controversy in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education - one of the many journals and newspapers we receive in the Social Sciences division. check out The Chronicle's blog post on it here!

UPDATE: Looks like WSU found a way to make it work!

txt u l8r

image source: Library of Congress Flickr Commons

Check out this interesting NYTimes article on the psychological and physical effects of texting. bonus! the article features a Bethesda teen.

Something the article does not fully address is text message bullying. Text message bullying is highly prevalent in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada and for some reason doesn't seem to get reported in the United States. Here is an article written by a teen on the subject.

Interested in reading up on the topic?

Cyber-bullying : issues and solutions for the school, the classroom and the home - Shaheen Shariff
371.58 S531

The mobile connection: the cell phone's impact on society - Richard Ling
303.4833 L755

Yourspace: Questioning New Media - Heather E. Schwartz

JUV 302.23 SCHWARTZ

need some more? here are some online resources on text bullying and cyber-bullying:
http://www.stopcyberbullying.org/index2.html
http://www.cyberbullying.us/index.php

Robert C. Byrd, 91 and the Longest-Serving Senator in History, Hospitalized

Source: United States Senate

Robert C. Byrd the longest-serving senator in history was hospitalized, last Friday.

You can read more about about Senator Byrd on the following news resources:

Sen. Byrd hospitalized with 'minor' infection
Charleston Gazette, May 18, 2009
http://wvgazette.com/ap/ApTopStories/200905180266

Byrd ‘Responding Well’ to Treatment
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003119645
CQ Politics, May 18,2009

Senator Robert C. Byrd United States Senate site
http://byrd.senate.gov/

A new kind of scout

source: nytimes

I remember fondly my years as a brownie scout- singing, camping, crafting, eating cookies. fast forward to 2009 and this is what the kids are doing.

Is it gay marriage?

"Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, Tex., is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, Tex., and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male.”

the lines continue to fuzz

Immigration limbo

Interesting story this morning in the New York Times on a Chinese immigrant and mental illness. Perhaps they are looking into the issue further- this could easily become a series of articles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/nyregion/04immigrant.html

Amazon's glitch

While Amazon's 'de-ranking' of books with non-hetero-normative 'adult' material may already be yesterday's news, it is still something of note! Especially because the book featured in the Los Angeles Times' article is sitting on our Sociology new books shelf. Citycat won't be de-ranking books anytime soon.