""Too Much Dancing Going On" is the account of an independent-minded young woman in a wide-open Montana who loved books and horses, and later a certain literary young man. When Lyle Hardiman, easy-going, illiterate, Montana cowboy, accidentally blunders into the new library with his horse (he thought it was a livery), he meets the new librarian, Miss Rebecca Spark, and sets into motion a chain of events that will ensure the little town of Burnt Creek a place in the history books. With the help of the local saloon/shop sweeper, Lyle will discover a path laid out for him by destiny . . . a path that leads to the heart of Miss Rebecca Spark. In "The Book Mama", Lady Jane Woodruff is stranded with an abusive husband in a harsh new country and relies on the wisdom of an ancient African American woman to guide her to freedom." Fourteen-year-old Pearl Ellingson learns life's hard lessons as she struggles to start a library in frontier North Dakota in "Terrible and Wonderful""--
I have found just the work for me, for I love it more all the time. Thus wrote one of several hundred professionally trained women who carried the gospel of books and libraries throughout the West during the early twentieth century. Pioneers in a profession, they regarded the West as a fertile field for their cultural crusade which included establishing traveling libraries in rural areas, participating in community-building activities, and professionalizing existing public and academic libraries and as a place where they could develop as independent women. Passet uses extensive archival material to provide a picture of the women librarians' experiences. She explores their education, family relationships, degree of autonomy, and reactions to the West. Her account is enlivened throughout by the words of the women themselves. It is further enriched by brief biographies of four women exemplifying the combination of personal and professional goals that motivated many women librarians to move west.
Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users provides readers with a view of the changing and emerging roles of electronic books in higher education. The three main sections contain contributions by experts in the publisher/vendor arena, as well as by librarians who report on both the challenges of offering and managing e-books and on the issues surrounding patron use of e-books. The case study section offers perspectives from seven different sizes and types of libraries whose librarians describe innovative and thought-provoking projects involving e-books. Read about perspectives on e-books from organizations as diverse as a commercial publisher and an association press. Learn about the viewpoint of a jobber. Find out about the e-book challenges facing librarians, such as the quest to control costs in the patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) model, how to solve the dilemma of resource sharing with e-books, and how to manage PDA in the consortial environment. See what patron use of e-books reveals about reading habits and disciplinary differences. Finally, in the case study section, discover how to promote scholarly e-books, how to manage an e-reader checkout program, and how one library replaced most of its print collection with e-books. These and other examples illustrate how innovative librarians use e-books to enhance users’ experiences with scholarly works.
A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy “A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The Economist • Outside • Foreign Affairs Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.
Teaching novice computer users, including seniors and individuals with disabilities such as low vision or motor skills, how to do what they want and need to do online is a formidable challenge for library staff. Part inspirational, part practical Without a/the Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide is a summary of techniques, approaches, and skills that will help librarians meet this challenge.||Jessamyn C. West's experience as a librarian is deeply immersed in technology culture, yet living in rural America makes her uniquely qualified to write this book. Taking a big-picture approach to the subject, she demystifies and simplifies tech training for the busy librarian, providing an easy-to-use handbook full of techniques that can be used with all of a library's many populations. As an added bonus, she also examines the players in the library technology arena to offer firsthand reports on what works, what doesn't, and what's next.
This work is the first in an important, five-volume series addressing the unique role libraries have played in building and preserving Western culture. Mr. Staikos has become one of our foremost scholars on library history, writing such books as this as well as works like "The Great Libraries," a classic in its field.This first volume reveals the rich history of the early archive libraries from Crete to the famous library of the Ptolemies in Alexandria. Through well-researched text and many full-color illustrations, the author guides his readers over 1800 years of mankind's struggle to preserve his knowledge by the written word.
Positive Parenting for Those Important Teen Years Adolescence is often a time of great stress and turmoil—not only for kids going through it, but for you, their parents as well. During the teen years, kids aggressively begin to explore a new sense of freedom, which often leads to feelings of resentment and powerlessness for parents who increasingly are excluded from their children's lives. This revised edition of Positive Discipline for Teenagers shows you how to break the destructive cycle of guilt and blame and work toward greater understanding and communication with your adolescents. Inside, you'll: ·Find out how to encourage your teen and yourself ·Grow to understand how your teen still needs you, but in different ways ·Learn how to get to know who your teen really is ·Discover how to develop sound judgment without being judgmental ·Learn how to use follow-through—the only surefire way to get chores done Over the years, millions of parents have come to trust the classic Positive Discipline series for its consistent, commmonsense approach to child rearing. Inside, you'll discover proven, effective methods for working with your teens. Over 1 million Positive Discipline books sold! "I highly recommend this book to parents, teachers, and all others who work with young people. It is one of the best books I have seen on helping adults and adolescents turn their conflict into friendship. Remarkably, it shows how to accomplish this while helping young people develop courage, confidence, responsibility, cooperation, self-respect, and trust. I urge you to read it." —H. Stephen Glenn, Ph.D., coauthor of Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World.
In fierce, textured voices, the women of Ovid's Metamorphoses claim their stories and challenge the power of myth I am the home of this story. After thousands of years of other people’s tellings, of all these different bridges, of words gotten wrong, I’ll tell it myself. Seductresses and she-monsters, nymphs and demi-goddesses, populate the famous myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses. But what happens when the story of the chase comes in the voice of the woman fleeing her rape? When the beloved coolly returns the seducer's gaze? When tales of monstrous transfiguration are sung by those transformed? In voices both mythic and modern, Wake, Siren revisits each account of love, loss, rape, revenge, and change. It lays bare the violence that undergirds and lurks in the heart of Ovid’s narratives, stories that helped build and perpetuate the distorted portrayal of women across centuries of art and literature. Drawing on the rhythms of epic poetry and alt rock, of everyday speech and folk song, of fireside whisperings and therapy sessions, Nina MacLaughlin, the acclaimed author of Hammer Head, recovers what is lost when the stories of women are told and translated by men. She breathes new life into these fraught and well-loved myths.
From the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes an unforgettable novel of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition and the four women who enter for a chance to better their lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • “This story had me so hooked, I literally couldn’t put it down.”—NPR Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest—and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives. For a young widow, it’s a chance to pay off her husband’s debts and keep a roof over her children’s heads. For a kitchen maid, it’s a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For a lady of the manor, it’s a chance to escape her wealthy husband’s increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it’s a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession. These four women are giving the competition their all—even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together only serve to break it apart?