From Clement C. Maxwell Library...

MEXICO CITY ? Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on 21 December 2012.

After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists.

"I came back from England last year and man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him.

Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said.

"We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

The full article is available in the library's LexisNexis database

By Pete Blackshaw
from nielsonwire

When is a phone not a phone? In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call. Parents are getting dialed in to the social media phenomenon and beginning to understand—and limit—how children use new media.

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Every year, PW selects its top 100 books, and for the first time ever PW has upped the ante by choosing the 10 books that stood out from the rest. The titles, whittled down from the more than 50,000 volumes considered this year, were picked by the PW reviews editors to reflect the very best of 2009. Here, PW reviews the 10 books.

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Big Machine by Victor Lavalle

Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford

Stitches by David Small

Reviews are available at http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704263.html.

The library has switched its print subscriptions for Biography Index 1984 to Present, Book Review Digest Plus, and Current Biography 1940-Present to online access from H.W. Wilson. Online access provides flexible searching features, 24 hour access, and links to full text available in other library databases.

Biography Index: 1984 to Present, updated daily, cites biographical articles from more than 3,000 periodicals as well as books, interviews, obituaries, letters, diaries, and memoirs. People covered range from antiquity to the present. Book Review Digest Plus, updated daily, includes more than 1,300,000 entries with book summaries, bibliographic data, review indexing, review excerpts, full-text book reviews, and links to full-text reviews in other library databases. Current Biography 1940-Present, updated monthly, includes 2500 word biographical articles on contemporary figures and historical figures back to World War II.

Links to these databases are available from the library’s home page under Research Tools.

by Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson
Chicago Review Press, 2009

Hailed as a “spectacular achievement” by Publishers Weekly

In this eloquent and eye-opening adventure narrative, authors Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson, two Americans fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Uyghur, throw away the guidebook and bring a hitherto unexplored side of China to light.

They journey over 14,000 miles by bus and train to the farthest reaches of China to meet the minority peoples who dwell there, talking to farmers in their fields, monks in their monasteries, fishermen on their skiffs, and herders on the steppe. As they uncover surprising facts about China’s hidden minorities and their complex position in Chinese society, they discover the social ramifications of inconsistent government policies--and some deep human truths as well.

The November eBook of the Month is provided through Chicago Review Press. Don’t miss the opportunity to share this engaging and provocative exploration of China’s remote border and interior regions. This ebook will be available with free, unlimited access November 1-31, 2009.

You can go the Library's NetLibrary eBooks web site to read this book online. (If the link doesn't work, please use the refresh button to reload the page.)

The Library is conducting an ILL/DDS online survey to measure the quality of our services and to learn how we can best serve you. Please help us to further improve Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Services (ILL/DDS).

The survey is designed for three user groups: undergraduates, graduates, and faculty/staff. Please click on the link below relevant to you to take the survey. Your help will be greatly appreciated!

A Featured Title of the Month from Credo Reference!

The struggle to abolish slavery is one of the grandest quests--and central themes--of modern history. These movements for freedom have taken many forms, from individual escapes, violent rebellions, and official proclamations to mass organizations, decisive social actions, and major wars. Every emancipation movement--whether in Europe, Africa, or the Americas--has profoundly transformed the country and society in which it existed.

This unique A-Z encyclopedia examines every effort to end slavery in the United States and the transatlantic world. It focuses on massive, broad-based movements, as well as specific incidents, events, and developments, and pulls together in one place information previously available only in a wide variety of sources. While it centers on the United States, the set also includes authoritative accounts of emancipation and abolition in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition features primary source documents, a map of the transatlantic slave trade, illustrations, cross-references, a comprehensive chronology and bibliography, and covers a wide range of individuals and the major themes and ideas that motivated them to confront and abolish slavery.

A few of the interesting entries:
• Palmerston Act (1839): measure enacted by the British Parliament to suppress the international slave trade
• "Forty Acres and a Mule"
• Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797-1883): former slave and inspirational leader of the abolitionist movement
• Abolition in the British West Indies
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859): French jurist, statesman, and social theorist as well as a leading abolitionist during the July Monarchy (1830-1848) of King Louis-Philippe
• Quakers (Society of Friends)
• James Ramsay (1733-1789): one of the most influential British abolitionists writing in the 1780s

Credo Reference is featuring history titles for the month of October. Eight new books featuring historical figures and history subject encyclopedias have been added. These titles are also accessible from the library's online catalog, Voyager. Below is the list of the new history books:

• Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World, M.E. Sharpe
• Encyclopedia of World Trade From Ancient Times to the Present, M.E. Sharpe
• First Ladies of the United States, Lynne Rienner
• Great Irish Lives: An Era in Obituaries, Collins
• Great Lives: A Century in Obituaries, Collins
• Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage - From Waterloo to the Falklands
• Great Victorian Lives: An Era
• The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations, M.E. Sharpe

Other added titles:

• Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Locations
• Great Thinkers A-Z Philosophy
• Key Ideas in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language
• Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Science A-Z

Credo Reference is a searchable database containing more than 400 encyclopedias, dictionaries, quotations, biographies, obituaries, and more. The link to this database is listed on the library's Research Tools page.

By Joel Achenbach
From Washington Post

Film & Internet Rumors Fuel Doomsday Babble

The world is coming to an end.

In, like, 4 or 5 billion years. The sun will get old and cranky and eventually immolate the entire planet.

The world, however, is not coming to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, contrary to the viral Internet rumor propounded by pseudo-scientists, hoaxers, Hollywood movie promoters and assorted void-between-the-ears people who wouldn't recognize a scientific fact if it tried to abduct them.

The notion that 2012 heralds the End of Time has something to do with a mysterious Planet X that will supposedly hurtle into, or perhaps merely perturb, Earth. Also, there might be geomagnetic storms, a Pole Reversal, and a newfound unsteadiness in the planet's crustal plates. All of that, or variations thereof, can be studied in depth in scores of books now jostling for eschatological primacy with such titles as "Apocalypse 2012," "The World Cataclysm in 2012" and "How to Survive 2012."

This is no joke to David Morrison, senior scientist for NASA's Astrobiology Institute. He's counted 200 different books for sale about 2012. As the author of an online feature called Ask an Astrobiologist, he's gotten nearly 1,000 e-mails from people who think something dire is about to befall the planet. One teenager wrote to Morrison that he'd rather commit suicide than see the world destroyed. Many of the letters, Morrison said, presume that the government is covering up the imminent catastrophe. Letters begin, "I know you can't tell me the truth, but . . . "

The full article is available in the library's LexisNexis database.

From NGA News Release

A new report from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) addresses the alarming rate at which students in the United States drop out of high school.

Achieving Graduation for All: A Governor’s Guide to Dropout Prevention and Recovery identifies the root causes of the high school dropout problem and offers a comprehensive action plan for states to curb dropouts, help youth succeed and strengthen state economies. Currently, one in five students drop out of high school, and dropouts cost the United States more than $300 billion each year in lost wages and increased public sector expenses.

Full Report