Big Delivery of New Titles!

Late last week we were handed TWO STACKS of new books for the Social Sciences room. We have completely switched out our "New Books" display - you may want to come in and take a look! Below are most of the titles represented (some have already moved off of the shelves since I took the photos yesterday, & even more have arrived to take their place), organized by their Dewey Decimal numbers (for fun), and here is a link to the St. Louis Public Library catalog in case you would like to search for a title and place a hold to have it delivered to your branch for you to pick up.

·  iPhone in Easy Steps

·  Office 2016 in Easy Steps

·  Collaborative Grant-Seeking: A Practical Guide for Librarians

·  A Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy

·  Political Responsibility: Responding to Predicaments of Power

·  Inventing Socrates

·  Yoga & the Pursuit of Happiness

·  God is Always Hiring: 50 Lessons for Finding Fulfilling Work

·  Beyond Stewardship: A Church Guide to Generous Giving Campaigns

·  All Who Go Do Not Return

·  Babel

·  Drawn to Landscape: the Pioneering Work of J.B. Jackson

·  Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America

·  Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth Century America

·  Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children

·  Sex with Shakespeare: Here’s Much to do with Pain, but More with Love

·  Catastrophic Happiness: Finding Joy in Childhood’s Messy Years

·  My Girlfriend’s Pregnant: a Teen’s Guide to Becoming a Dad

·  The Right in Latin America

·  People Get Ready: the Fight Against a Jobless Economy

·  Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

·  The Essential Bernie Sanders and his Vision for America

·  The Fight for $15: the Right Wage for a Working America

·  Pensionless: the 10-step Solution for a Stress-free Retirement

·  The Spender’s Guide to Debt-Free Living

·  Exorbitant Burden: the Impact of the U.S. Dollar’s Reserve and Global Currency Status on the U.S. Twin Deficits

·  Detroit Resurrected: to Bankruptcy and Back

As you may already know, it's summer reading time at St. Louis Public Library (May 21 - July 30) - sign up using the Catalog link (click the bottom button on the left, then choose "Pageturners Adult Club"), check out some of our new books, & start keeping track of your reading. (There are prizes!)

Happy birthday to the Buddha!

According to the 18-month interfaith calendar offered by the Diversity Awareness Partnership, on May 21 we mark the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha. Here are a very few of the many Buddha- & Buddhist-related materials available in the Social Sciences room at SLPL Central Library.

Periodicals in the Social Sciences Room and at SLPL

Yesterday I opened the Social Sciences mail pouch and look what poured out! I took the opportunity to spread them out on one of our large tables & take some pictures - apologies for the less than perfect lighting (I'm a librarian, not a photographer after all), but I think the variety of titles (from AARP Bulletin to Weekly Standard) is impressive and gives a sense of the breadth of the collection in the Social Sciences room - and of course this is not even all of the magazines and other publications we have subscribed to and have on offer for your enjoyment.

Each of the rooms at Central Library has a wide array of daily, weekly, monthly, or irregularly arriving publications that correspond to their subject area (for example, the Business/Government/Law room has the Wall Street Journal); we also have a number of current newspapers (local, national, and international) and popular magazines available in the space around the café on the first floor by the Locust entrance for patrons to page through.

And with zinio, one of the downloadables available with your St. Louis Public Library card, you can choose from over 170 magazine titles that you can download to your home computer or mobile device to peruse at your leisure whenever and wherever you'd like. Click here for more more information and a link to a tutorial on zinio.  Happy reading!

 

More new books! (plus a "did you know?")

Today these three titles were delivered to the Social Sciences room (summaries from the SLPL catalog):

All Who Go Do Not Return by Shulem Deen 

"A moving and revealing exploration of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and one man's loss of faith. Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world - only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression - turning on the radio - is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs, until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely."

The Story of Mu by James Cordova

"This lush, beautifully illustrated narrative breathes humanity and warmth into one of the most famous and enigmatic koans of the Zen tradition.

The Story of Mu uses luminous illustrations and a mythic narrative structure to convey the great potential for peace and enlightenment that we all carry hidden within ourselves. Shot through with ineffable "thisness and thussness," Mu spins a visually rich, cosmogonic fable about the origins of the universe of space, time, matter, and life. It also touches something lost but always present within the human heart: an awakeness that is without flaw, from the beginning before the beginning."

Word 2016 in Easy Steps by Scott Basham

"Microsoft Word 2016 represents the latest in a series of improvements in functionality during the word processor's long history. Today, more than ever, people expect to be able to work easily across locations with different people and devices, all without having to worry about the underlying technologies. Word's new version helps us to quickly access the features we need, work collaboratively with unprecedented ease, and access information from the widest range of sources, and Word 2016 in easy steps covers the new features, including:

• Creating, structuring and adding styles to documents; text editing and formatting
• Adding pictures, graphics, video, hyperlinks and faster shape formatting
• Working with equations, symbols and tables
• Sharing documents and working collaboratively in real time
• Getting help quickly with Tell Me
• Using Smart Lookup to find things on the web

The visual nature of Word means that a clear, concise and colourful visual reference guide is an invaluable tool for both newcomers and those upgrading from older versions. Word 2016 in easy steps meets this challenge head on, using detailed images and easy-to-follow instructions to quickly get you up to speed."

Did You Know?

At the bottom of the SLPL Catalog page under "Helpful Links" is a "Select a Purchase" link - tell us what book(s) YOU would like to see in the Library! If it is purchased we'll send you an email when it arrives - we can even hold it at your preferred SLPL location so you can be the first patron to check it out!

Happy 100th birthday, Jane Jacobs!

While I don't anticipate doing a daily birthday post from the Social Sciences room, it occurs to me that there could be worse ways to explore and promote our collection. Today, as noted above, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jane Jacobs, author, activist, and inspiration (along with Lewis Mumford) of the "New Urbanist" movement.

We have her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities here in the Social Sciences room, on the shelves at Dewey 307 (Communities). The book is also found in our Fine Arts room at Dewey 711 (Area Planning/Civic Art), though it looks as if their copy is in the stacks (a reminder - if you can't find a book on the shelves where you think it should be, it is likely in the stacks & will need to be retrieved by library staff - which we are more than happy to do).

Thanks to Google for the reminder about Ms. Jacob's birthday - & for the cool Google Doodle!

 

Happy 547th birthday, Niccolò Machiavelli!

Politician, philosopher and adjectival inspiration Niccolò Macchiavelli was born on this day in 1469. His quintessential work, The Prince, can be found in the Social Sciences room at Central Library (if not on the shelves, then in the stacks - just ask and we'll fetch it for you). And in addition to complete versions of the book, such as this 1893 edition of The Prince and Other Pieces from the Italian, we have the Cliffs Notes to help you wade through it.


A true Renaissance man (both in the literal and figurative sense of the term), an exploration of Central's holdings of Niccolò's works will give you a pretty good tour of the library: in addition to The Prince in our room, we have his Art of War (call number 355.02) in the Government/Business/Law room next door; across the Great Hall from us in the Entertainment/Literature/Biographies room are his "lively comedy" Mandragola (852.3) and his poem The First Decennale (851.3).

Upstairs on the third floor you can find his History of Florence and the affairs of Italy, from the Earliest Times to the Death of Lorenzo the Magnificent (English and Italian - call number 945.5) in the History/Geography/Travel room. And downstairs on the first floor you can find representations of Machiavelli in fiction in such works as Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence (the book is available in our Center for the Reader while the audio book can be checked out in the Studio) and throughout Michael Scott's young adult "Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel" series (Teen Lounge - though audio version of those books also available in the Studio). And while you are at the Studio, you can also borrow some episodes of The Borgias or The Tudors, in which he appears as a supporting character. (Thanks Wikipedia!)

Buon compleanno, Niccolò!