Category: Websites

Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr

- Ann Leave a comment

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. and is observed on the third Monday of January each year. While it’s lovely to have an extra day off (if that applies to you), it’s also a reminder to stop and remember a great man and his many contributions to our society.

Are you interested in furthering his legacy and keeping it alive? here are some ideas to try today and throughout the year.

The day is frequently promoted as A Day of Service – reaching out to others in your community to help in some way, big or small. Teach for America has a great list of ideas that are easy to incorporate into your life any time, not just one day a year.

Another great way to celebrate is to read and promote Black authors. Often under-represented in traditional review journals, it is well worth your time to read these authors. The African American Literature Book Club is a great resource with author interviews, book lists and commentary all focused on books by and about people of African descent. They recently published a list of 170 New Books by Black Authors Coming Out Soon which lists books for both adults and children.

The staff at the Davenport Library has put together some LibGuides (a fancy name for subject guides) on African American Authors, African American Genealogy Resources and African American History in the Quad Cities to help keep you entertained and informed with our local resources.

 

 

 

Reading With TumbleBooks

- Valerie Leave a comment

Do you want help explaining the world to your children?  We have a resource that can help with that!  While TumbleBooks is primarily a source that can help your children learn to read, it includes books that explore a number of different topics.  For instance, science.

Do your kids know that Mauna Loa is currently erupting?  Introduce the idea of volcanology to beginning readers with the online picture book A Trip To The Top Of The Volcano With Mouse, by Frank Viva.  In this story book you’ll meet an adventurous human who explorers Mount Etna with his companion, a mouse, who just wants to be done so he can eat pizza.  As the pages turn, you are able to hear the story being read while seeing the words highlighted on the page.

More advanced readers can build both their reading skills and knowledge when TumbleBooks explains subjects in more detail.  For example, The Story Of Snow, by Mark Cassino (with Jon Nelson, Ph.D.) explains how snowflakes form.  Read along as each sentence is highlighted and take time to look at the illustrations that show how snow crystals develop.

Or read Faces Of the Moon, by Bob Crelin, which explains why the moon changes shape each night and introduces the concepts of waxing and waning.

TumbleBooks can grow with your child.  It contains both non-fiction and fiction titles that can be read to your pre-kindergarten child, your elementary beginning reader, and more advanced books that your child can read alone.  Sports books, poetry, all the way up to chapter books can be enjoyed in this robust resource.  All you need is your library card to being your adventure!

Freegal Music Celebrates Mother’s Day

- Callen Leave a comment

It’s the time of year when everyone starts thinking about their parents, as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, National Parents Day (4th Sunday in July), and Non-Binary Parents Day (3rd Sunday in April) help us kick off the spring and summer seasons. This May, Freegal Music, the digital music service we subscribe to as a library, has made a special playlist to help you celebrate the mothers in your life.

A refresher on Freegal: it’s available both on our website (linked under Digital Content) and as a downloadable app for your smartphone. On its website, once you log in with your Davenport library card it’s free to stream any available songs, albums, playlists, or audiobooks, but you can also download five songs per week for offline listening.

The mother’s day 46-song playlist includes a variety of artists, genres, and styles, from pop (Meghan Trainor) and country (Carrie Underwood) to R&B (Alicia Keys) and international music (Bad Bunny). So however you and the mothers you know like to jam, there’s something here to put you in a grateful, celebratory mood.

Lojo Russo: Discover Local Music!

- Callen Leave a comment

Lojo Russo recently, generously, donated copies of her most recent CD Fresh Oil – Loose Gravel to the library for circulation! If you’re not familiar, Russo is a local musician who has lived in California and Minnesota, but currently calls the Quad Cities home. She’s influenced by folk, funk, jazz, jam, Irish and indie music, creating a unique folk rock sound. Learn more about her here.

Here are some other QC musicians whose CDs are in our collection:

The Candymakers

Centaur Noir – Let’s Start A War

Three Years Hollow – Ascension

Meth and Goats – Leisure Time

Lewis Knudsen – Joy, Pain, Love, Songs

Broken Social Scene – Hug of Thunder

Metrolites – In Spy-Fi

Pro Tip: you can also search the term “local music” in our online catalog to get a list of all the local musicians’ CDs available at all the Rivershare libraries. Don’t forget to use the filters along the left side of the results page – if you check the box for “Music CD” you’ll narrow your results down to just the music.

Can’t play CDs? Then make sure to check out QC Beats, our online streaming audio collection including the original music of Quad Cities musicians and artists. If you’re a musician, submissions are open once a year to add  your music to the collection, so please share!

Wellness Resources @ Your Library

- Callen Leave a comment

Trying to improve your mental, physical, or emotional health? Your library provides a wide variety of resources to help you adjust your lifestyle, whatever your goals. Check out these recently published nonfiction books on wellness:

Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab focuses on emotional wellness, and the ways we can improve our mental and emotional health by establishing reasonable boundaries for ourselves.

Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety by Drew Ramsey describes the data that suggests dietary changes can impact mental health, as well as physical health.

The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook by Martina Slajerova is all about the famous and well-recommended diet and lifestyle that supports physical health as well as emotional health by encouraging sociability.

The Dance Cure by Peter Lovatt suggests using dance to support not only your physical health but emotional and mental health as well.

Clean Mama’s Guide to a Healthy Home by Becky Rapinchuk suggests ways your home environment can affect your wellness, such as using natural cleaning products to avoid harsh and harmful chemicals.

Or browse our related Libguides, curated by our librarians:

Mental Health Guide

Learning Collection Resources

Things to Do While Social Distancing – Exercise and Meditation

You might also like these other wellness resources from credible sources:

Get a holistic picture with the 8 dimensions of wellness as defined by the American Library Association Allied Professionals Association

Make a customized wellness plan from the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Move Your Way activity planner

However you do it, be sure to make time to take care of yourself!

 

 

Waste-Free World: Recycling and Sustainability

- Callen Leave a comment

We all know we should be doing more to protect the planet and dispose of waste responsibly. But if you’re like me, you might spend a lot of time wondering what’s recyclable and what’s not, and what sustainability really means. Here are three ways we at the library and in the city of Davenport are here to help you figure out the world of eco-friendly living.

READ: The Waste-Free World by Ron Gonen is a manifesto highlighting what companies can and should do to make recycling and reuse part of their normal daily processes in order to protect the earth and increase sustainability.

Can I Recycle This by Jennie Romer is a more practical guide to reducing plastic waste in your home.

WATCH: Going to green. Volume 1, Towards a more sustainable community is a series of documentary episodes discussing specific environmental and sustainability issues with helpful information for all ages.

PLAY: the Quad City Recycling Quest Game through the City of Davenport Public Works department website is a fun way to test and build your knowledge of waste disposal practices locally. The game allows you to pick whether a given item goes in recycling, compost, trash, a hazardous materials facility, or an electronics facility. It doesn’t take long to play and it will definitely teach you something!

Check out this LibGuide for more resources on how to make an eco-friendly home – and thanks for anything you do to make this world a greener, healthier place.

Hidden Database Gems: Credo Reference

- Callen Leave a comment

Today I’d like to tell you about another database that, like Chilton Auto Repair, used to be represented in the library by shelves of big heavy books: encyclopedias. For the record, we do still have some encyclopedias in our library branches, but they’ve also gone digital. There are a number of encyclopedias online, of course, from the controversial Wikipedia, to the generic Encyclopedia.com, to Britannica.com (the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica), and all have their good points. But with your library card, you have access to Credo Reference, a database with a unique functionality and power beyond the others I’ve mentioned. It’s a great place to start if you’re working on an assignment and need some background information, or if you’re just curious and want to learn more about something!

In Credo Reference, you can search a word or name and see full-text results from a huge variety of books, encyclopedias, and websites. You can find definitions and historical accounts and contextual details from a variety of sources, as well as concept maps which link your search term to related ideas and topics. Specific articles also come with a ready-made citation of that source in APA, Chicago, Harvard, or MLA formats. Here are some screenshots to show you how it works.

First, get to Credo Reference from the library website’s Online Resources page, under Research Tools.

Then scroll down the list to the C’s to find “Credo Reference“. Click on it, and you may be asked to enter your library card number.

Enter your search term in the search box (or scroll down through popular topics and research tips).

Your search will result in a page like this one: various sources are listed on one side, and a concept map appears on the other. You can use the options at the top to view articles or images, and to filter results by type, collection, subjects, and media. Beneath the concept map, you can use links to other library resources to find even more information.

Once you select an entry to read, you can save, print, or cite that resource, or do a new search for related topics.

Great Podcasts: Fake News (in a good way!)

- Callen Leave a comment

I’m back with another set of podcasts to highlight! Today’s two are a unique type: structured like a news or interview show, but set in fictional places, sharing fictional news. Hijinks and hilarity ensue, providing a welcome respite from real news and interview shows, which for me are almost universally exhausting. Again, as a disclaimer, I’m nowhere near caught up with either of these podcasts, so I can’t vouch for their entire content. As always, share your tips and recommendations in the comments! These podcasts are also available through Spotify, their websites, and other podcasting platforms like iTunes.

Welcome to Night Vale

This is a quite famous podcast in some circles, so you may well have already heard of it. If you’re not familiar, it’s structured as a local radio news program broadcast in the fictional (hopefully) town of Night Vale. The show reports strange happenings including strange creatures, ominous surveillance, and bizarre happenings with deadpan delivery, because in Night Vale, the odd and terrifying is also the everyday and normal. This makes for quite a bit of dry, tongue-in-cheek humor which may not be for everyone, but can be delightful.

Hello From the Magic Tavern

I discovered this podcast by accident a few years ago, and the main reason I stopped listening to it on any kind of consistent basis was because it always made me laugh out loud in the public places where I listened to it. This podcast’s structure is fairly typical for the medium: a host interviews a series of guests, hearing their stories and getting their take on current events. However, it’s set in the magical land of Foon, where the host ended up after falling through a portal behind Burger King. The improv comedy is often inappropriate but it’s always hilarious.

Great Podcasts: Storytelling

- Callen Leave a comment

To be honest, I’m notoriously fickle when it comes to podcasts. I can’t seem to remember to listen to them, because I just haven’t figured out how to work them into my everyday routine. But I know it’s a great medium with a lot of die-hard fans, so I keep trying, and there are a few I really like, even if I’m nowhere near caught up on any of them. The Adventure Zone, which you might remember my recommending in an earlier post, is a big one. Two other podcasts, which I’ll share with you today, both revolve around history, sharing little-known facts and crafting interesting narratives out of them. Quick disclaimer: I’ve only listened to bits of these, so I can’t vouch for all the content they contain. You may know lots more about podcasts than I do – and if you do, please share your tips and recommendations in the comments! These podcasts are available on their own websites, as well as Spotify, iTunes, and other podcast platforms.

The Myths and Legends Podcast

This podcast is about what it sounds like: each episode, the host tells a different story from the realms of myths and legends. Some of the stories he shares are little-known myths from countries around the world, and sometimes he shares the original myth behind a now-famous story like Aladdin or Mulan. He tells the story in a conversational and engaging way, with modern asides, and each episode also features a profile of a different mythical creature, which may or may not be drawn from that episode’s main story. Sometimes the stories are funny, sometimes they’re gruesome or tragic, but for me they’re always intriguing, entertaining, and I always learn something new. If you like myths, legends, fairy tales, fantasy, or Disney, you may like this podcast.

The British History Podcast

Again, the name is fairly self-explanatory. The host takes on the massive job of telling the story of Britain’s history — from the beginning. The VERY beginning. Starting from its most ancient roots, he tells the story of the individuals, groups, and events that drove British history forward. Like the Myths and Legends podcast, the stories are explained in modern terms and delivered in a straightforward, conversational style. I really like the way he makes historical people relatable, fascinating, and sympathetic, bridging the huge gap of centuries between them and us. If you’re an Anglophile like me, or just a history buff, this may be a good podcast for you.

What Should I Read Next? Resources From Your Library (Part 1)

- Callen Leave a comment

Chances are, at one point or another you’ve found yourself at a loss for what to read next. With browsing time still limited at our branches, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you of the various ways the library provides for you to explore what your next read should be. I’ve tested all of them and want to share with you the features and effectiveness of each of them.  First up, I’m going to go over the benefits and hidden magics of the catalog. You may not know some of the very powerful ways to narrow down your search on this page, or to find similar things. If you’re interested in a detailed description, see below.

The benefits of the catalog search is that it lets you easily find titles similar to ones you already like, as well as what’s new, and it lets you narrow your search based on many different filters and criteria, including whether we own it at our Davenport Library locations. And, of course, you can put items on hold directly from the catalog interface, which saves you a step as you’ll see in future posts about other resources. I recommend the catalog for semi-directed browsing or for looking for very specific materials..

To get to our catalog: go to our website and type a search term in the box on the top right-hand side of the page (Fig. 1). You can enter any search term you like and you’ll be redirected to our catalog website (Fig. 2) to narrow it down and browse your results.

Fig. 1

First,  check out the filters in the left-hand column. Here, you can narrow your search by subject, author, format, the target audience, which libraries own it, and more. If you search a general term (“romance”, “murder”) these filters can help you create a narrow list of possible titles you’d be interested in.

Fig. 2

Another way you can find books you’d like is to search a book you know you like, and when it comes up in the catalog, click “details” on the right-hand side. From this page (Fig. 3), you should see a list of blue subject headings. If you click on one of these you can see other titles that are labeled with the same subject.

Fig. 3

You can also scroll down the “details” page of a book you like to a section that says “Suggestions and More” (Fig. 4). This links to the website Goodreads and will show you similar books you might like.

Fig. 4

If you’d just like to see what’s new, click on the library logo (top of the page) at any time to be taken to our catalog’s main webpage. Here, our on-order and new materials are highlighted for you to browse.