Kansas City Public Library’s national award

Of course Billington Library is wonderful. But have you heard about the other top-notch library in our area? The Kansas City Public Library will receive the National Medal for Museum and Library Service at a White House ceremony tomorrow night.

KCPL was recognized for its Books to Go project, which delivers books monthly to more than 7,000 preschool-aged children through Head Start programs and other similar venues; its extensive menu of monthly special events featuring presentations by historians, novelists, economists, and journalists; and its kid-friendly Once Upon a Time exhibit and related programming that took place in winter 2008.

Any Kansas or Missouri resident is eligible for a library card at KCPL.

Book of the Day (2008 – )

Fact: My mom’s parents made tombstones for a living, and her family friends were in the funeral home business. My mom was one of those people who could watch Six Feet Under without blinking. I think because of this, I’ve always been around death, and have only seen it on an intimate level for families. In perusing for today’s BotD, I noticed Beyond the Good Death: The Anthropology of Modern Dying by James W. Green. Here’s a quick blurb from inside the bookjacket:

Death is political, as the controversies surrounding Jack Kevorkian and, more recently, Terri Schiavo have shown. While death is a natural event, modern end-of-life-experiences are shaped by new medical, demographic, and cultural trends.

Beyond Good Death takes a look at the factors in what people consider a “good death” or a “bad death”, whether it be heroic, peaceful, or an ethical madhouse, and peers into the evolution of societies that shape our modern views on one of the few inevitable events in life. Regardless of one’s own views, it provides an interesting dissection of why we think what we think when the end arrives.

Start Your Engines, It’s the Book of the Day

Here’s a weird one: Today’s BotD is Small Gas Engine Repair by Paul Dempsey That’s not really the weird part. What struck me is that one could argue, “Interesting, Barry, but with all this hybridization/alternative fuel sourcing/farm-animal-utilization going on now-a-days, how long will this book be relevant?” That got me thinking. First, have people talked about alternative energy sources for anything other than home and car? Is there a hybrid riding mower out there? The answer got a lot weirder when I found sites like Evatech, who apparently make remote control hybrid mowers. Freaky! But think of the fuel economy when it doesn’t have to carry you around, and the energy economy on yourself when you don’t have to push it. It’s like a Roomba for your backyard!

Well, all of that aside, what struck me beyond that point was a consideration of obsolete technology. Who could still make a record player? Who, in 50 years, will be able to make a record player? Who in 50 years will know how to make a small gas powered engine? What about in 100? After all of that, now I’m interested in how these things work. The biggest problem with doing the Book of the Day is never having enough time to complete them all myself.

This Book of the Day is Quite Spicy

I have an absolutely disgusting confession. I don’t know if you’re prepared for it, so grab your barf bag and cross your fingers: I absolutely love Tabasco-flavored Cheez-Its. I know, right!? They’re so gross! Yet, I cannot get enough of them. And the real kicker is that I don’t like Tabasco on anything else. But when I saw our brand new edition to the library, Tabasco: an Illustrated History, I knew I’d found today’s book. Fantastic images and an interesting stories about the McIlhenny family who started the product. Even beyond the fact that Tabasco Sauce is the focus of this, its really interesting to read the story, see the old pictures, and learn a little about an American family success story.

Book of the Day

As we push towards Banned Book Week Awareness, it is only right that I point at a book that has a real chance of provocation. Lynching to Belong: Claiming Whiteness Towards Racial Violence is such a book. Written by a Texas historian, Cynthia Skove Novels, this looks at how a group of immigrants in post-Civil-War Texas associated themselves with the culture of lynching in order to assert where they belonged socially. The awful effects of a society whose value has shifted to hate and violence has the potential to upset, provoke, and insight outrage, but perhaps this is where librarians end up on the battlefield. Of course, this book hasn’t been banned, or attempted to be banned, but maybe you can see where one might think banning it is a good idea.

Yes: The content of this book should upset you. It should upset you because it happened. But how do you learn from history if you ban the accounts from accessibility? Don’t hate the book, hate that it had to be written. By better understanding the value racial identity holds in this country, and by also seeing the difficulties immigrants have, do, and will face when becoming members of the United States, one can perhaps gain insight into a solution to this disgusting social tendency to find such an alliance. And if we’re lucky, future generations can prevent such set-ups from perpetuating.

2008 Kansas Notable Books

Looking for a good read? Check out these titles selected for the 2008 list of Kansas Notable Books. They are all available from JCCC’s Billington Library (we even have one in audiobook format!).

The Farther Shore, by Matthew Eck.
In this adrenaline-filled critically acclaimed novel, Matthew Eck puts readers inside the mind of a young man caught in the fog of the unexpected battle of Mogadishu, the most intense combat Americans had engaged in since Vietnam.

The Rest of Her Life, by Laura Moriarty. (Available as an audiobook.)
Bestselling Lawrence author Laura Moriarty explores the complex moral dilemma of parents being sued for actions of a teenager, how all families involved cope with a terrible accident, and the tenuous mother/daughter relationship that remains.

Writing in an Age of Silence, by Sara Paretsky.

Best known for her bestselling mysteries, including the V.I. Warshawski novels, the native of Lawrence turns her attention in this nonfiction work to five different periods of her life: the traditions of her childhood in Kansas, the political climate of the 1960s, the awakening of her own feminism, the attack on civil liberties, and our obsession with terrorism and biological warfare.

Click here for the complete list of 2008 Kansas Notable Books.

Book cover images and descriptions courtesy of Kansas Center for the Book.

Book of the Day

I had a high school teacher who told me that the moon landing was a hoax. I cannot blame him for this. I mean, if you think about it, the Apollo (which is a sun god) Program was supposed to travel to the moon (which is, you are aware, not a sun). That sounds fishy to me.

Maybe he should read this book, How Apollo flew to the Moon. It is a user-friendly, non-technical book about one of the most technically challenging events in the last 50 years. It is well researched and avoids scientific jargon, the same jargon that my high school teacher would argue was put into place to confuse the public with ‘mumbo jumbo’. This man also gave me a C- on my leaf collection…

Personal vendetta aside, this book is an excellent resource if science, physics, and engineering terms have kept you away from learning about the United States’ missions to the moon.

INFODESK: Fingers

“Where’s the … “

Wheres the ...

The library veterans call it air traffic control.

The first few weeks of the semester we spend most of our time directing students to the restrooms, Student Center, Testing Center, Writing Center and just about any other “center” on campus (except the center of a Tootsie Roll pop, which is where I will direct myself in a few moments).

Anyone walking into the library is likely to catch us pointing (sorry, mom) to the “invisible” wooden doors on the staircase to the second floor. We call them invisible because no one seems to be able to see them unless we point to them like bird dogs.

So don’t worry if you see big Hispanic guy at the Infodesk extending a finger, it’s probably just me to telling you where to go … you know, on campus.

Book of the Day

Every day, we’ll peruse our latest entries into the catalog and select a brand new edition to our catalog we find interesting. This week’s is Dying to Live: a story of U.S. immigration in an age of global apartheid. As the issue of illegal immigration is likely to remain relevant for awhile in the US, this non-fiction piece may be of interest to those with an interest in the topic, or those who may be studying it.