Just
in time for Easter, and for all those who have not yet seen this charming
and hysterically funny web site, we bring you Peeps at the Library. Peeps,
for those of you who have not spent your formative years in North America,
are those marshmallow/sugar treats vaguely shaped like baby chicks and
widely eaten at Eastertime by children whose parents know nothing of good
nutrition… Anyway, some librarians at Milliken University, having nothing
better to do during spring break, decided to put together a story entitled
Peep Research: A study of small fluffy creatures and library usage.
The comparison of peeps to college students is incredibly insightful.
I
I highly recommend a visit to
this site. There are video clips
which will fascinate you, such as the one of the whirling dervish, a Sufi
(Islamic mystic) who does a ritual whirling dance as a type of prayer. There
are stories from various traditions which will be read to you with
accompanying images. There’s even a side-by-side comparison of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. It’s a beautiful site which is likely to stimulate
visitors to learn more about their own and other faith traditions.
This site offers an
expanding Latino/a bibliography of works in theology, not all in Spanish.
The following news note is from American Libraries Online, 2/27/08:
Tat-controlled gadgets
Here’s a design that
Dracula would love: a subcutaneously implanted, wireless, digital tattoo
display whose fuel cell is powered by blood.
An entrant in the Greener Design Competition, the concept uses Bluetooth to
communicate with your portable gadgets—or even devices implanted elsewhere
in your body. Jim Mielke’s concept taps into your bloodstream, converting
the oxygen and glucose into electric power. It also acts as a touchscreen
input device, so you could manage your cellphone calls by tapping on your
arm.
Did you ever think you’d live to see the day humans would be transformed
into batteries?
HarperCollins is trying out a
new program, making a selection of newly published books available online,
for free. This is certainly an effort to be encouraged, so visit HC and take
a look.
This site is remarkably
useful, so be sure to bookmark it. Sometime you may be searching for an
article which is not available online through our subscription databases,
especially in areas such as literature or psychology. When that happens, try
accessmylibrary.com. If the
periodical is available from another library nearby, this site will tell
you, and sometimes, even without the appropriate library card, you will be
given access. It’s worth remembering.
For all you Latin students, you can download a free
Latin/English dictionary
from this site:
For Lent, and any other time---Practicing
God’s presence, according to Brother Lawrence, a 17th c.
French monk. "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet
and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only
can comprehend it who practice and experience it." ... Brother Lawrence
Here’s a fun way to spend a minute.
This site
will create a montage for you. Try it with "Jesus" or even with "St.
John’s Seminary." (For some reason, the seminary montage includes multiple
images of Paul Ford.) Here’s one of California:
This could be a really fun way to decorate a wall, with framed, colorful
printouts of your favorite people and places.
One of the dollar bills which the
library recently acquired from a booksale had a small purple stamp on it
which read "WheresGeorge.com."
Curious, I went to the site and found the dollar bill had been registered so
it could be tracked as it moved through the economy. This particular bill
made its way to California from Alabama! The site tells you how far the bill
has traveled, its average mileage per day and where it’s been reported along
its route. Totally useless information, but fun, nonetheless!
As referenced in American Libraries Online:
Take
a seat
How hard is it to find
a chair or something to sit on in the library? Usually they are taken up by
people who spend all day reading the papers. Dutch designer
Jelte van Geest
found an amazing solution for it. You get your own seat the moment you enter
the library, and it stays with you the entire time. Sounds weird? Watch the
video
to see it in action. (This is apparently a concept video; the robot chairs
have not actually been manufactured.)...
Kimbooktu, Dec. 17; YouTube, Oct. 31
I’m not sure I’d like to have a chair following me around the library,
although it would be nice if my reading glasses and office keys did that.
Here’s another announcement of interest:
"Microsoft and open-source site
SourceForge plan to offer a free plug-in…that will convert Office 2007 files
to the Daisy format, which translates text to speech. The free tool will add
a "Save as Daisy" option within Word 2007 and 2003. Daisy, or Digital
Accessible Information System, XML files can be ‘read’ aloud by speech
synthesizers, paired with audio narration, and used to create electronic
Braille. Users can navigate open-standard Daisy documents quickly by jumping
between page elements such as headers and indexes.
"The Daisy Consortium of 70 nonprofits has aimed since 1996 to make all
published information available to people with visual impairments and
learning disabilities. Digital narration serves computer users with visual
impairments, people with learning challenges like dyslexia, as well as those
with Parkinson's disease and other conditions that make it hard to type or
hold a book."
I want to remind you again of this very useful FREE download called
Biblia Clerus.
It allows you "to connect Sacred Scripture to the complete works of many
Doctors of the Church, Councils, Encyclicals, teachings of the Popes,
Catechisms, as well as commentaries from secuar literature." Incredibly
valuable and useful for all seminary students.
The Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley has
customized the
Google search engine by different areas of religious studies. As you
know, whenever you use any search engine, it flies through millions of
sites, some of high quality and some of barely comprehensible content. If
you use this customized search engine, you can be assured that GTU has
vetted these sites beforehand, so you will retrieve fewer, but more useful,
hits. Another such customized engine is
http://www.searchpigeon.org
which is directed to researchers in the humanites, which includes, but is
not limited to, the study of philosophy and religion.
This site has also been recently added to the library’s web pages. It’s
called
Vetus Latina and
cites resources for the study of the old Latin Bible.
Finally, we will end
with this web site which
claims to be able to predict the date you will die and even the most likely
cause and place of your death, after asking a few questions about your
physical condition.
The Prophet’s
fate is to die at age 92 in a nursing home, of heart disease. I’m not sure
how to react since I hadn’t planned to retire till 95.
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