We all do a variety of things. I maintain the library website, troubleshoot and work with databases, and put statistics together for reports. I promote the library and write articles for various Ivy Tech Community College-Northeast publications. I teach library information skills to students in their classes, and help them with their research when they come into the library. I’m in charge of our online Ask a Librarian service, which allows students to get help from a librarian without actually coming to the library. And sometimes I even help check out books.
Q. Where does your expertise come from?
I taught high school history and English for nine years before I became a librarian. As an undergraduate student at Indiana University, I studied a lot of history, which gives one a broad working knowledge on just about everything. I also received my Library Science master’s degree from IU Bloomington. I was there in the early days of the Internet/World Wide Web revolution, so I learned about both traditional, print resources and the emerging Web products.
Q. What is unique about you that could be of service to the Ivy Tech community?
I’ve always been interested in geography and history, the world outside the United States, and current events/news. I was a real news junkie when I was a teenager; I would watch all three major network evening news programs if they were on at different times. As an adult I’ve always subscribed to a weekly news magazine and the daily paper. And I’ve always liked science—I was a biology major when I started college. Consequently, when students need help researching a topic, I probably already know something about it.
Q. Recommend a book to us that you enjoyed.
You can’t go wrong reading Twain or Vonnegut. You know those novels and plays you had to read in high school English classes? They’re all better if you read them again as an adult. Unfortunately, I don’t read many books. But I get The Economist, Sky and Telescope, Natural History, and Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History at home, and those magazines keep me busy.
Q. What’s your favorite thing to do outside the library?
I watch way too much television. I moved to Fort Wayne almost three years ago, and bought a house a year later. Any homeowner knows how much time it takes to keep a home in order. I spend a lot of time puttering around out in the yard, mowing, working on the landscaping, cutting firewood, clearing brush, etc. At this stage it’s still fun, but eventually it will become a chore.
In this documentary produced to bring attention to various ways of life that stand on the brink of extinction due to rapid progression in the modern world, filmmakers travel to five continents to explore the values and behavior of endangered societies in an era where culture seems to take on a new meaning with each sunrise. In one such case, the influential leader of New Guinea’s Kawelka tribe spends five years amassing an abundance of valuable items including 600 pigs and a motorbike only to give them away in a festive ceremony called the moka. A key component to Kawelka culture, the moka ceremony finds those seeking to gain influence attempting to do so not by acquiring valuable objects, but by giving them away. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned and the leader of the tribe is ultimately threatened with violence as a result of his outwardly selfless act of giving. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi Watch Trailer
Don’t forget to check our new catalog where you can look up hundreds of popular fiction titles, new non-fiction, biographies, and your favorite authors!
Effective Communication Practices for Healthcare Professionals describes different techniques that can be used to impart knowledge and facilitate learning, provide support to patient and family members when serious or life-threatening illness or injury is diagnosed, and to help loved-ones cope with unexpected death. Topics include Components of Effective Communication, Blocks to Effective Communication, Delivering Bad News, and Application of Therapeutic Communication. Scenarios are used throughout this four-part series to illustrate effective communication as well as ineffective communication and its consequences. Tips are provided that describe techniques that are beneficial to the patient as well as staff members.(From Cengage Learning)
The Art of Living / Touching the Timeless
The Art of Living: Travel to the Wodaabe tribe of Niger and the Dogon peoples of Mali to witness the ways they celebrate life and death with acts of beauty and grace. Meet an HIV positive Canadian artist who shows viewers his way of connecting his art to the meaning of life and death. Touching the Timeless: Accompany the Huichol people of Mexico on their annual pilgrimage to collect peyote, the sacred food of the gods, and visit the house of a Navajo medicine man who invites the spirits into his world through sand painting, chanting, and ‘walking in beauty’.
Mistaken Identity / An Ecology of Mind
Mistaken Identity: Explore the question of who you are and where your individual identity begins and ends through scenes taken from the family life of an abortion counselor in Toronto, a boy’s initiation in the Brazilian Xavante tribe, a high school girl’s attempted suicide, and an Indonesian Sumbanese tribesman’s relationship to his dead relatives. An Ecology of Mind: Learn how the Makuna of Columbia pass their sophisticated ecological awareness from generation to generation through complex myths and rituals. Understand how tribal peoples views’ contrast with the evolutionary ideas handed down to the modern world from the Bible and from 19th century Darwinian theory.
The Shock of the Other / Strange Relations
the Shock of the Other: Through scenes of the decimation of the rainforest and interviews with indigenous people, discover why so much is at stake when modern industrialism meets the tribal world. Strange Relations: Intimate scenes of Western societies and marriages in the tribal societies of Nepal and the plains of Niger, show how individuals can discover a balance between personal desire and social needs in the context of a loving and nurturing family. A Poor Man Shames Us All / Inventing Reality
A Poor Man Shames Us All: Explore the alternative views of wealth and society that are exhibited in lives of tribal cultures. Trace the development of free market economics and explores how its characteristics contrast with tribal conceptions of wealth. Inventing Reality: Through tribal villages in Mexico and a cancer centre in Toronto, understand how the certainties of science can combine with natural conceptions of physical disease both in the tribal world of the shaman and in modern medical science. The Tightrope of Power / At the Threshold
The Tightrope of Power: Viewers contrast Western form of states to the practice of democracy through consensus. Witness the struggles of the Ojibwa, Cree and Mohawk tribes against the Canadian federal government. Understand how their visions can help us refine our definitions of democracy, pluralism and the state. At the Threshold: Travel to central France to explore the most perplexing dilemmas of the Western World – heart versus mind, body versus soul, the desires of the individual versus the needs of society. Through intimate views of family life in tribal and Western societies, understand why our survival as a species may now depend on the wisdom of our tribal past.
Over the summer, several new additions have expanded Grove Music Online including 88 new articles, the first installment of from the forthcoming second edition of the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, and 190 articles from the Grove Dictionary of American Music. Visit What’s New to read more.
As an authority in music research for over a century, Grove Music Online strives to ensure that you get the most out of music research.
With more than 50,000 music articles, Grove Music Online has a breadth of musical information features you might not have discovered yet.
Did you know?
Detailed composers’ works lists make excellent material for research projects.
Grove Music Online includes Music Timelines that provide a concise history of several subjects in music such as Women in Music.
CultureGrams has released its Fall 2011 update of all editions. On top of statistical and general updates to every text, there are new photos, slideshows, and a few key mentions:
* WORLD TEXTS. Antarctica, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands have been added since last Fall. Turns out Antarctica has 40 different permanent research stations!
* MAPS. Check out the new GeoAtlas physical and political maps, conveniently located in a drop-down box on each country home page!
* EXPANSIONS. Explore some of the 50+expanded CultureGrams texts, where our unique culturally-focused content has been increased by 50 percent. Many, many more are in development.
* KIDS TEXTS. Find 10 new and 17 expanded Kids texts! Great for English Language Learners of all ages.
* INTERVIEWS. Of kids and adults–more than 217 from 96 countries.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, recognizes the individual’s right “to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care.” More than 60 years later, despite the rapid advancement of science and technology and the proliferation of humanitarian efforts, inadequate nutrition remains a major health and social problem worldwide. Food insecurity–chronic malnutrition, persistent hunger, even starvation–still afflicts more than one in seven of the world’s people.
As Butterly and Shepherd show, hunger is not the result of inadequate resources and technologies; rather, its cause is a lack of political will to ensure that all people have access to the food to which they are entitled–food distributed safely, fairly, and equitably.
Using a cross-disciplinary approach rooted in both medicine and social science to address this crucial issue, the authors provide in-depth coverage of the biology of human nutrition; malnutrition and associated health-related factors; political theories of inadequate nutrition and famine; historical-political behaviors that have led to famine in the past; and the current political behaviors that cause hunger and malnutrition to remain a major health problem today.(From Google Books)
In a grand sweeping narrative, Pacific Air tells the inspiring story of how, despite initial disastrous defeats, a generation of young naval aviators challenged and ultimately vanquished a superior Japanese air force and fleet in the Pacific. The instruments of the United States aviators’ triumphs were the elegantly designed F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat, as well as the lethal TBF Avenger torpedo bomber. With superbly trained U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviators at their controls, these planes became the most successful aerial weapons in naval history. A majestic portrait of a proud era from dual perspectives–the inventive minds of young aeronautical engineers and the deadly artistry of even younger combat pilots–Pacific Air brings this important yet underappreciated chapter of World War II vividly to life. (From Google Books)
A profound, learned and detailed analysis of Negro slavery. It covers an incredible range of topics and offers fresh insights on nearly every page… the author’s great gift is his ability to penetrate the minds of bothslaves and masters, revealing not only how they viewed themselves and each other, but also how they contradictory perceptions interacted. (From Google Books)
Fort Wayne & Warsaw Library Blogs 
