March is Women's History Month

Take a look at some of the Library's great resources  about, by, and for amazing women:

Follow CCC Library's board Women's History on Pinterest.

This Flickr set from the Library of Congress has some amazing photographs - including these gems...

Operating a hand drill at Vultee-Nashville, woman is working on a "Vengeance" dive bomber, Tennessee, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Penn[sylvania] on the picket line-- 1917, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division

Also take a look at History Pin, which includes several collections from National Archives: Women's Suffrage, Famous Women, Women in the Military, and Women at Work:

Women Electric Welders at Hog Island Shipyard City Hall Station, 1918, Philadelphia, PA, National Archives

And I stumbled across this comic book treasure: Wonder Woman ran a back-up series called Wonder Women of History featuring real-life female superheroes like Sojourner Truth, Emma Willard, and Marie Curie.

Sojourner Truth - Famous African-American women's rights activist and abolitionist - Wonder Women of History

So celebrate Women's History and take it from Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

Our New Library Advisory Board!

We are excited to announce the formation of our Library Advisory Board with student representatives from the Student Government Association. It promises to be a fruitful partnership; the Library learning more about Columbia students and their academic needs and students sharing their ideas and opinions regarding library services.

Hanging out in the new classroom. 

Our inaugural meeting was held on Friday, March 14th with five students representing several academic departments. Highlights included a pizza lunch and a tour of the library.

Testing out the whiteboard wall.

We look forward to future meetings (2-3 per semester) which will include activities like website usability testing, discussions about how to better reach students with library marketing, and much more!

Papermaking Workshop with The People’s Library

In collaboration with the Center for Book and Paper Arts, The People’s Library will lead a DIY paper making workshop on the 3^rd Floor of the Library tomorrow between 10am to 1pm. Drop-in at any time to participate! 

The People's Library re-purposes discarded books otherwise headed for a landfill by making new paper from their pulp. The Columbia College community is invited to participate in making paper and binding the paper into blank books. After the workshop concludes, students can contribute their own content to the blank books until April 15th. 

So join us for the open workshop Friday, March 14^th from 10am until 1pm or stop by the Library between March 18^th and April 15^th to contribute content to the blank books.

Additionally, visit The People’s Library at Chicago Zine Fest this Saturday, March 15^th. 

Need Help with Research? Just Ask.

Image by karendalziel http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Do you need to find a good monologue for an audition, research a company, brand, or industry, find a short story, identify scholarly research, track down statistics?

Columbia Library's reference librarians can help with all that and more. Reference librarians are expert researchers, and we would love to help you! There are lots of ways to reach us:

• Ask A Librarian Chat 
• At the 2nd floor Ask Desk in the Library
• By phone (312) 369-7153
• Text us at (312) 257-3906
• Tweet us @LibraryTweet 
• Schedule a Research Consultation 
• Ask Us FAQ and Email

When We're Here:

M-Th: 8 am - 8 pm
F: 8 am - 6 pm
Sa: 9 am - 5 pm

Don't be shy! Ask us today!

Spring Fever? Now there's a problem we could get behind!

Winter blues are no fun. But what about spring fever?

We went looking for an excuse to day dream about the end of winter and found some facts about a malady some of us are looking forward to.  Spring fever can have a real impact on your day-to-day life.  Forget about snow and sub-zero temps for a minute, and prepare for the glorious problem that sometimes comes with longer, warmer days.

From the Huffington Post Healthy Living section:
Spring Fever: Why You Feel Different With the Change in Season
 

Even Elvis understood the problem!  But it looks like he knew how to deal with it.

Does anyone really know what time it is?

Groove this tune and read on:

This Saturday at 2am marks the beginning of Daylight Saving Time (DST) for 2014. And with it comes the dreaded mantra, “spring forward”! For days after the start of DST, every clock you meet will have a different time. You will be constantly in wonderment as to whether the clock before you has been changed. You find yourself checking and re-checking the time, for every clock seems to say something different. And it doesn’t help that some ARE woefully wrong. 

It was not always this way. According to the Crystal Reference Encyclopedia, DST is “a means of making fuller use of the hours of daylight over the summer months, usually by putting clocks forward one hour so that daylight continues longer into the evening. This idea was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin, and later by William Willett, an English builder. Adopted during World War 1 by Germany in 1917, it was retained after the war by the UK, where it is known as (British) Summer Time. In the USA it was enacted in a federal regulation of 1966, but states were given the choice of whether to ignore it (and some have done so). Many countries now have some form of daylight saving time. 

Nor did it always go smoothly. In its May 12, 1967 issue, Time Magazine reported that “forty-five states are now keeping D.S.T.; still out of step are Alaska, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan. The ultimate in confusion is Kentucky; there local option prevails, and the state must therefore cope simultaneously with four different times! (Exclamation is mine!)

(Pssst! Need a fascinating topic for a paper or speech? Read up on DST in Seize the Daylight by David Prerau.)

OK! Back to the real world! And this affects you how?

An article on October 27, 2007 in the Chicago Tribune opined that the time change “can confuse the body’s circadian rhythm, leading to poor concentration, excessive sleepiness and difficulty remembering things”. So not good for a student, right? The article posits a quick method for sailing through the switch.

Quick is not always best. My recommendation for the coolest, best-est route can be found at: http://www.wikihow.com/Adjust-to-Daylight-Saving-Time.

Hurry, time is running out!

Library Cats

A wise person once said, "the internet is made of cats." But the relationship between libraries and cats dates back centuries. Cats in ancient Egypt protected ancient papyrus from rodents and snakes. The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg Russia is still patrolled by cats descended from Empress Elizabeth's court (they even hold a Day of the Cat celebration for these felines!). In fact, a library in Russia employs Kuzma the Russian Library Cat, protects the books and sports a bow-tie collar. 

Kuzma the Library Cat, on the job.

While the Columbia College Library doesn't have a cat wandering the shelves, we do have many, many books about cats. 

Follow CCC Library's board Library Cat on Pinterest.

You can see some highlights on our Pinterest board some of my favorites include:

Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics

Dancing with Cats

Feng Shui for You and Your Cat

And finally, here's a silly interactive game to occupy your during your study breaks. Enjoy!

Cat Bounce - an interactive game for your enjoyment

March 4 - National Grammar Day

Today is National Grammar Day!

Grammar can be tricky and many people make mistakes in their writing. Here are a couple of resources to help you remember when to use their, they're and there, or the one that always trips me up, affect or effect.  

10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling from The Oatmeal: 

Fix Your Grammar from Glove & Boots:

And finally Grammar Girl weighs in on the Top Ten Grammar Myths: 

Impress your professors or at least stop making them literally crazy!

Extended Hours

Did you know that the Library has extended its hours?

We are now open until 8pm on Fridays and 7pm on Sundays! This in addition to staying open until 10pm Monday through Thursday and until 5pm on Saturdays.

This change was the result of feedback we received from students. You asked, we delivered!

For a complete listing of hours visit: http://www.lib.colum.edu/about/hours.php.