Just in Time for Summer: New at the LRC

We have so many new releases here at the LRC that we can only spare 3 words to review them! Here are some of our favorite new acquisitions:

Drood (Dan Simmons): “Historical, Literary Dream”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prep (Curtis Sittenfeld): “Intelligent, Witty Coming-of-Age”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heresy (S.J. Parris): “Monks+Murder= Mystery”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holes (Louis Sachar): “Perfectly Plotted Fun”

Tech Tips: Searching for Terms on a Web Page

It can quickly become tedious when you are searching a text-heavy web page for a specific section of content. However, instead of scanning the entire content you can (in most browsers) press CTRL+F to create a “Find” box in the lower left-hand corner of your window. Any word or phrase you type into the box will be highlighted on the page (provided it is present.) This feature is particularly useful when searching HTML versions of database record (NCLive journal articles, for example) or when trying to find on the actual web page the “featured phrasing” from your Google search results.

Beautiful Blooms

The arboretum is not the only part of campus with beautiful scenery. In fact, we get many comments from visitors on our landscaping. This gorgeous redbud tree was recently in full bloom right outside the LRC doors (photo courtesy of Bill Kinyon, Library Director)

Nonfiction for the Fiction-Minded: Two new additions that you can’t put down!

Every so often a nonfiction book will break out of the genre stereotypes and present fascinating true information in an accessible and highly entertaining style that will hook you as surely as easily as your favorite fiction author’s work. Imagine how excited we were this week when we received not one but two nonfiction books sure to cause you to stay up late: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot) and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance. (from author’s website)

 

 

For more information check out the book page on the NPR website. There you’ll find interviews, the history behind the book, and reviews.

“Steve Jobs, staring down death, had just received a new liver. He lay in a Memphis hospital bed in 2009, floating in and out of consciousness, but he was alert enough — and acting like Steve Jobs, authoritarian design sage — that he pronounced an oxygen mask totally unacceptable. He disapproved of the design.-Washington Post

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. (book description)

This Washington Post review offers a great look at both the book and its brilliant but controversial subject.

New YA Reading Collection on Display

We have recently added a number of new YA titles to our collection and they may be found on display near the circulation. We are hoping to add more YA books in the near future and hope that you stop in, check them out, and let us know what you think. We love to hear what people enjoy reading!

New at the LRC:

• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
• Divergent
• City of Fallien Angels
• Lockdown (and the entire rest of the Escape from Furnace series)
• The Maze Runner (and the rest of the series)
• The Night Circus
• The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series
• Trainspotting

*All series are up to date as of this post. We look forward to adding newer books for each series as they become available.

Monday Morsels: Titanic 100 Years Later

At 2:20am on April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic sank roughly 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean.  William James Pirrie, an Irish shipbuilder who controlled the largest shipbuilding firm in the world, designed Titanic (and her sister ship Olympic) to be one of the largest, fastest, and most lavish ocean liners ever built.  Often dubbed “unsinkable,” Titanic stretched over 883 feet from stern to bow, rose over 175 feet from keel to the top of the funnels in height, and extended over 92 feet in width.  Titanic could run roughly 24 to 25 knots[1] at maximum speed and cost $7.5 million dollars to build in 1912.[2]  The 16 watertight compartments of her hull allowed Titanic to remain buoyant if any of the first four compartments flooded while the 15 transverse watertight bulkheads allowed Titanic to stay afloat long enough to rescue passengers and crew if any remaining compartments took on water.  This innovation in ship buoyancy and her sheer size is why the editor of Shipbuilder Magazine referred to Titanic as “practically unsinkable,”thus spawning the ill-fated nickname.

Among the 1500+ passengers lost in the sinking, Titanic took the lives of some influential and affluent people of the early 20^th century:

• John Jacob Astor IV, American millionaire and builder of the Astoria Hotel in New York City.
• Benjamin Guggenheim, American millionaire and heir to the Guggenheim mining business.
• William Thomas Stead, English journalist and pioneer of investigative journalism.
• Isidor and Ida Straus, owners of Macy’s department store.
• Francis Millet, American painter and sculptor
• Charles Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada.
• Jacques Futrelle, American mystery writer and journalist.
• Archibald Willingham Butt, aide to President William Howard Taft.
• Thomas Andrews, Irish businessman and overseer/shipbuilder of Titanic’s construction.

However, due to sicknesses, changes in business plans, and simple twists of fate, the list of prominent and wealthy businessmen lost aboard Titanic might have included:

• Milton Snavely Hershey, confectioner and founder of The Hershey Chocolate Company.  Due to his wife’s illness, Kitty and Milton sailed home on Amerika a week earlier.
• Theodore Dreiser, journalist and novelist, most known for his novels Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy.  Although already booked on the Titanic, Dreiser was persuaded to changing bookings to a less expensive ship.  He sailed safely home aboard the Kroonland.
• Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, heir to the Vanderbilt railroad and shipping fortune and sportsman.  By cancelling his passage aboard Titanic at the last minute, newspaper reports at first listed Vanderbilt among the missing.  Alfred Vanderbilt would later be one of the A-list causalities from the sinking of the Lusitania three years later.
• Henry Clay Frick, a steel tycoon from Pittsburgh and business associate of J.P. Morgan.  Frick cancelled passage on Titanic when his wife sprained her ankle and was unable to leave Italy.
• J. P. Morgan, financier, banker, and creator of General Electric and U.S. Steel.  Due to his business connections with White Star Line, the owner of Titanic, Morgan had a suite and private deck aboard the ship.  He was rumored to sail aboard the ship but remained in Europe at the time.

To learn more about RMS Titanic or to check out other awesome resources, feel free to swing by the library!

Bibliography:

Daugherty, Greg. “They Missed the Boat.” Smithsonian. Mar. 2012: 38. Print.

Garrison, Webb. A Treasury of Titanic Tales.  Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 1998.

Meredith, Lee W.  1912 Facts About Titanic.  Mason City, Iowa: Savas Publishing Company, 1999.

“Pirrie (Of Belfast), William James Pirrie, Viscount.”  The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th edition. 2005. Print.

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[1] One knot is equal to one nautical mile per hour.  Therefore, Titanic could travel roughly 24-25 nautical miles per hour.

[2] Given inflation, $7.5 million in 1912 would equate to roughly $170 million in 2011.

Quiz Bowl Results

The 1st Annual Student Quiz Bowl Competition Final took place yesterday at Spring Fling and, after a heated battle, the team of Dustin Wilkes, Malia Crowe, and Richard Pollock emerged with the victory and a share of the $300 grand prize. Brad Wright, Nicole Raber and Chasity Albritton came in second place ($150 prize) and the Early College team of Dylan Greene, Joseph Rolland, and Zachary Perkins took third.

Teams qualified for the Final by scoring a top 3 finish in a 10 question Elimination Round that tested their knowledge of numerous subjects including history, arts & music, literature, mathematics, science, current events, and pop culture.

Thanks to all our of our participants for making our first Quiz Bowl a huge success! Thank you also to our volunteer judges, time keeper, and official scorekeeper as well as Rudy Beharrysingh, Clay Couch, and Preston Jacobsen, who created and organized the event.

And, of course, the biggest thank you of all goes to the HCC Foundation for generously donating the prize money.