Tarleton Thursdays: Did You Know?

The Townster’s Club

In celebration of Women’s History Month, today’s blog post is about a former
women’s organization at Tarleton called the Townster’s Club! It existed between January 1950 and the end of the 61/62 school year. Composed of Tarleton girls who lived in town, the group’s mission was to promote good will and encouragement of friendship among girls who lived in the dorm and girls who lived in town. All girls who lived off campus, including commuters, were encouraged to participate and become more aware of Tarleton activities.

Miss Helen Willard, Dean of Women, was the sponsor of the Townster’s Club when it
was created in January 1950. There were 30 members. Donna D’Arcy was president, Sammie Powers, vice president, Jean McLarty, secretary, and Dean McLarty, reporter.

One of the Townster’s first activities was to sell pendants at the Tarleton basketball games to help finance the club. They assisted with many campus events during their active years at Tarleton, including serving refreshments to a large number of visitors and potential Tarleton girls to campus. In 1952 they served some 75 high school senior girls from nearby towns who were visiting campus.

The photo above, taken on the stairs of the “new” library, shows the 1956/57 Townster’s Club members. That stairway was in approximately the same area as the current reference desk. The Townster’s last photo appeared in the 1961/62 Grassburr, standing on the stairway in the Hunewell dorm!

Have a wonderful Spring Break!

Grassburr, 1962.
J-TAC, January 10, 1950, December 12, 1950, October 9,1951.

Your Texan Card - It's Important

Do you have your Texan Card?  Do you carry it with you?  Here are just a few things you need your Texan Card for:

• building access
• check out materials and laptops at the Dick Smith Library
• entry into on-campus events
• swipe at new printer release stations  in several buildings on campus (when the system comes up after Spring Break!)
• Texan Bucks, a stored-value debit system for use on and off-campus
• reduced price when paying for photocopies on campus 
• receive a discount from some retailers when you show your ID
• meal plan

If you need to pick up or replace your card, just visit the Texan Card Office in the Tarleton Center, room 101. If you need to add additional funds to your cards, you can do that online at https://tarleton.managemyid.com/student/login.php

Texan Cards - they really are important!

Top Ten Tuesday: New Audiobooks

Going somewhere for Spring Break?  For you commuters or anyone about to take a long road trip, the Dick Smith Library has a growing collection of audiobooks in CD format, with many audiobooks still available in cassette format. They are located on the lower level of the library, just to the right, as you exit the elevator or the stairs, through the glass doors, in the Audiovisual Collection area. You can check them out for four weeks; plenty of time to take them on a vacation (just be sure you don't lose any of the pieces!).

Here's a post on how to search the library catalog for audiobooks. You can create lists for mysteries, historical fiction, or your favorite author, for example.

If you're in RDG301, Children's Literature, some of  you need to read five novels or chapter books for your investigation project! Spring Break is a great time to do this, and if you will be on the road part of that time, listening to an audiobook makes the travel time pass more quickly. Here is a list of 50 audiobooks that might work for this assignment.

Here, in no particular order, are ten of our newest titles (click the titles to check availability):

1. Life - ML420 .R515 A3 2010B - An autobiography by Rolling Stones founding member Keith Richards, this was the 2011 Audiobook of the Year and 2011 winner of the Audie Award for Biography/Memoir.

2. Moon Over Manifest - PZ7 .V28393 MO 2011 - With dual narrative lines set in 1917-1918 and 1936, this 2011 Newbery Medalist is the story of a small town in Kansas called Manifest (modeled after the real town of Frontenac, where author Clare Vanderpool's grandparents grew up), with an intriguing plot, compelling characters, and a lot of heart and soul.

3. The Reversal - PS3553 .O51165 R48 2010B - Part of Michael Connelly's Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch series, this audiobook won the 2011 Audie Award for Mystery.

4. This Body of Death - PS3557 .E478 T48 2010B - One of Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley novels, this audiobook was a finalist for the 2011 Audie Award for Mystery.

5.  The Postmistress - PS3552 .L3493 P67 2010B - The effects of war on those not fighting it are explored in Sarah Blake's 2011 Audie Award for Fiction finalist.

6.  Chapters from My Autobiography - PS1331 .A2 2010D - by Mark Twain was a finalist for the 2011 Audie Award for Distinguished Achievement in Production.

7.  A Visit from the Goon Squad  - PS3555 .G292 V57 2010B - by Jennifer Egan won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  This unusual novel about time is really a series of linked short stories.  Characters in one story will pop up in one or more later stories, set earlier or later in time (even somewhere into the 2020s).  The two main characters are Sasha, a kleptomaniac, and her one-time boss, Bennie Salazar, a music company executive.

8. Snakewoman of Little Egypt - PS3558 .E4753 S63 2010B -  The Snakewoman is Sunny, who has just gotten out of prison after shooting (but not killing) her husband, pastor of a snake-handling church in present-day rural Illinois. She rents a garage apartment from Jackson, a professor facing a midlife crisis.  Robert Hellenga's chronicle of their adventures (yes, it involves snakes) won the 2011 Audie Award for Literary Fiction.
9. In the Garden of Beasts - E748 .D6 L37 2011B - Erik Larson's latest narrative nonfiction is set in pre-World War II Berlin, and focuses on then-US Ambassador to Germany William Dodd and his reckless daughter Martha .  This audiobook follows the rise of Hitler and is a nominee for the 2012 Audie Award for History.

10. The Girl in the Garden - PS3614 .A565 G57 2011B - This debut novel by Kamala Nair is as lush as its cover.  It begins with an adult Rahkee Singh leaving her engagement ring and a long letter to her fiance, explaining why she cannot yet marry him and must go back to India to deal with her past.  The book then flashes back to a visit she made there in the summer when she was ten-going-on-eleven.  Rahkee has to deal with her parents' crumbling marriage, and the secrets being kept by her mother and her other relatives.  One of those is the mysterious girl in the beautiful garden...

The 1940 US Census

It's your America! Help the ten-year
roll call--1940 census, U.S.A.
United States. Bureau of the Census,
U.S. Government Printing Office,
circa 1940.  Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Division.

Four weeks from today, on Monday, April 2, at 8 AM Central time, the 1940 US Census will be released digitally.  Genealogists (like me) and historians have been waiting for this, as the 1940 (and later) original census forms have not been available for public use because of a statutory 72-year restriction on access for privacy reasons.  The digital images will be available for viewing and download for FREE at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) special 1940 US Census website, 1940census.archives.gov.

The 1940 US Census, officially occuring on April 1, 1940, asked the typical questions from earlier censuses: name, age, gender, race, education, and place of birth. But the 1940 US Census also asked some new questions. Lingering concerns from the Great Depression were reflected in numerous questions about employment status for those age 14 and older.  For example:

• Was this person AT WORK for pay or profit in private or nonemergency Gov't. work during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No).
• If not, was he at work on, or assigned to, public EMERGENCY WORK (WPA [Works Progress Administration], NYA [National Youth Administration], CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps], etc.) during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No).

There was also a question about income for the 12 months ending December 31, 1939, as well as one asking where one was living on April 1, 1935 (which will be a gold mine for genealogists!).

The 1940 also has a "supplemental schedule" for two names on each page, the persons enumerated on lines 14 and 29 (about a 5% sample of the population). The supplemental schedule is a section with additional questions to ask these two people.  It asks the place of birth of the person's father and mother; the person's usual occupation, not just what they were doing the week of March 24-30, 1940; and for all women who are or have been married, has this woman been married more than once and age at first marriage.

The 1940 US Census will not have a name index when it opens on April 2, 2012.  FamilySearch.org, a free website, plans to create a free name index of the 1940 US Census after it opens. You can sign up NOW to be a 1940 US Census indexer. In the meantime, you can get some practice by indexing other records through FamilySearch Indexing.

I have been a FamilySearch indexer for a few months now.  It involves downloading some software to your computer, then downloading batches, indexing them, and uploading them back to the FamilySearch indexing website.  It's been rewarding to see records I've indexed actually appear later on the FamilySearch site.  If you follow the detailed instructions with each batch, you will be successful and will help others access all sorts of records - lately I've been working with Texas birth records from the early 1900s.

Until name indexes are available, you will need to know the address of the person you are searching for and the Census enumeration district (ED) in which that address was located.  Initially, the 1940 Census WILL be indexed down to the ED level.  So, if you know the 1940 ED for an ancestor or relative, it will shorten your search considerably.  There are a number of tools available to help you figure out EDs.  The National Archives has a web page with links to various other sites and utilities for determining 1940 EDs.  There are other suggestions on the National Archives website on how to prepare to do research in the 1940 US Census.

Catching the E-Book Wave -- Lessons@Lunch

Been thinking about purchasing an e-book reader?
Have a reader and want to find more sources for e-books?
Want to see what else your device can do?

If so, next week's Lessons@Lunch (March 5, 7 & 9) should help you get the answers you need. The sessions will be held in the Library Instruction Classroom (#139) from 12:10-12:50 p.m. The presenter will be Beverly Tackitt, psychology major and e-book enthusiast.

Each session will cover different topics:

• Mon., March 5: Picking the Right Device for You
  -- How do LCD & E-ink differ?
  -- Popular devices.
  -- Which devices use what file formats?
  -- Languages supported.
  -- How to pick the right device for you.
  
  
• Wed., March 7: Where & How to Get Books for Your Reader
  -- Where to get books (free books, low cost books, library books, and more).
  -- How to get books onto your device (downloading or sideloading).
  -- Exploring your options (conversion programs or services).
  
  
• Fri., March 9: What Else Can My E-Device Do?
  -- Listen to music, watch movies, play games.
  -- Enjoy audiobooks.
  -- Use text to speech features.
  -- Download apps.
  -- Search the Internet

This Lessons@Lunch series is sponsored by the Dick Smith Library. If you need more information, please email Cathy Wilterding at wilterding@tarleton.edu

See you in Library #139 on March 5, 7 & 9!

Google Changes Its Privacy Today

In case you somehow missed it, Google has changed its privacy policy today. in place of the 60 separate policies they did have there is now one policy. In the past information Google collected was partitioned off so information from You Tube was not mingled with Gmail or Google search results. Now all that information will be linked together. Google says this is not bad because if you are doing Google searches for recipes now it will give you You Tube videos about cooking, where in the past Google was unable to do this. But what if your searches could reveal your location, health concerns, sexual orientation, or religion. you might not want all this being linked together.

There is a way to change your search settings so that past searches are deleted and search history is turned off. Google will still collect the data, but it will be for internal use only and after 18 months be partially anonymized. Law enforcement agencies will still have access to the data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has provided a guide to remove your Google search history at: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-remove-your-google-search-history-googles-new-privacy-policy-takes-effect

Of course if you are not logged in to any Google services while searching, then none of the results wouls be directly linked to your accounts.

Trends in Higher Education

If you have been on the Tarleton Campus for any length of time, you have probably noticed some pretty significant changes in access to technology and learning methods. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC) recently published their 2012 Horizon Report for Higher Education that explores technology trends predicted over the next five years.

The following article from MindShift examines 6 key trends found in the report

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/02/whats-on-the-horizon-in-higher-education/

1. People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever/wherever they want.
2. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based.
3. The world of work is increasingly collaborative.
4. The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators.
5. Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models.
6. There is a new emphasis in the classroom on more challenge-based learning and similar methods foster, which more active learning experiences, both inside and outside the classroom.

What do you think are some trends we should be paying attention to?

Write, Read, Read Aloud, & Share

Maybe they should have read it again.

Writing a paper can be a hard difficult task, but you might be even more frustrated when your professor returns your paper and you realize that your professor has found simple writing errors that costs you points off your grade.  You really thought that you had read that paper thoroughly, but somehow you missed didn’t see the errors.  How did that happen?! Did you find the three previous errors? I’d say that it was easy for you to see them because you did not write this paper and my mistakes just jumped off the page at you. (See * for corrections.)

What would be a good way for you, as the writer, to catch your writing errors before you turn in your paper?  Page 70 of "The APA Manual" has three suggestions for improving your writing: 1) reread your paper with the caveat of waiting a few days after you have written it to reread it, 2) read your paper aloud, and 3) have a friend(s) or colleague(s) read your paper.

Have you ever tried reading your own writing aloud?  Did it sound awkward?  Did you immediately change a few words because you knew that it sounded wrong the way you first wrote it? Reading your own writing aloud is one of the easiest things that you can do to improve your writing.  Pages 104-106 in Robert Fry’s book, ImproveYour Writing, suggests that not only should you read your paper aloud, but read it backwards so that you are reading the words and not phrases; you will catch more mistakes that way.

Finally, share your paper with a friend and help out your friend by reading their paper too.  Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch’s book, VirtualPeer Review: Teaching and LearningAbout Writing in Online Environments, gives some suggestions about online sharing. I’ll bet that you both get better grades on your next paper.

And yes, I did follow all three suggestions: reread, read aloud, and share.

* The errors were 1) at the beginning of the first sentence: “…hard difficult task…” where either “hard” or “difficult” should be deleted, 2) the end of the first sentence: “ …simple writing errors that costs…” where “costs” should be “cost”, and 3) in the second sentence: “…somehow you missed didn’t see the error…” where either “missed” or “didn’t see” should be deleted.

New Database: PsycTests!

PsycTests has been added to our databases!

PsycTest is a repository of the full text of psychological tests and measures from the American Psychological Association.

Comprehensive Test Coverage:

• Focuses primarily on unpublished tests, those developed by researchers but not made commercially available

• Most records link to a variety of materials describing the test in peer-reviewed literature, technical reports, or dissertations as well as links to related peer-reviewed literature describing test development, review, or use.

• All records include a summary that describes the test, with its purpose and some history of its developmentMost records include the actual test instrument

Lessons @ Lunch: iPad Tips

Are you thinking about getting an iPad?

Maybe you have one already but you feel like something is missing.

Stop by the Dick Smith Library on Tuesday, February 28, from 12:10-12:50 p.m. in the Library Instruction Classroom (#139, near the cafe).

Stephen Wilson, the Manager for User Support Services, will discuss how to secure your iPad, find and use the best productivity apps, and how to connect to Tarleton's wireless system, calendar, and e-mail functions.

Have a question? You can ask it on our Facebook page for the event here.

Tarleton Thursdays: Did You Know?

Wintertime in Texas!

You never know what wintertime in Texas might bring! Yesterday it reached 80 degrees.....and it is only February! The photo above shows snow and the home economics building during the winter of 1937 - seventy five years ago!

The home economics building was located in Heritage Park between what is now the education building and the new replica of the Hunewell bandstand. It was originally built in 1915 as the Mollie Crow administration building but became the home economics building when the new agriculture/later administration building was completed in 1919.

The cornerstone of the new administration building, later the home economics building, was laid by the Chancellor Commander of the local John Tarleton Lodge No.227 Knights of Pythias, Ben Compton. The Pythian Home Band from Weatherford headed the parade from the lodge hall to the college. Mayor J.J. Bennett gave a short speech, followed by Judge W.J. Oxford, who delivered the main address. Judge Oxford told of the history of the Knights of Pythias. The cornerstone contained a college catalog, words from former mayor J.T. Lockhart, the John Tarleton Lodge No.227 Knights of Pythias roster of members, the Twentieth Century Club roster of members, and a poem by Theo Bauer!

Classes were held in this building for many years.....in fact, the library and study hall were in the top floor of the home economics building at one time, and the chemistry department was once in the home economics building! After the chemistry department moved out the area was "freshened up" with new furniture and draperies! I attended classes in this building in the 1960s! This building was demolished in 1981.

Guthrie, Christoher E., John Tarleton and His Legacy.
King, C. Richard, Golden Days of Purple & White.

Check out our Bloggies!

Do you need a video camera for an assignment, or just for fun? The library has six Sony Bloggies that are available for a 7-day checkup. Just bring your picture ID to the circulation desk and check one out.

Leap Year

Leap Year: 2012 is a Leap Year

Upcoming Leap Day: 29 February, 2012

A birthday every 4 years?



A Leap year consists of 366 days, as opposed to a common year, which has 365 days.

Why do we need Leap Year?
How do we calculate Leap Year?
Who invented Leap Year?
Leap Year in other Calendars
Calendar Tools
For more information on Leap Year go to:
http://www.timeanddate.com/date/leap-day.html

Black History Month

Every year since 1976, the U.S. president has designated February as Black History Month.  It celebrates the achievements of black Americans. Many other countries around the world devote a month to celebrating black history.

Here are some resources to find out more about Black History Month including biographies, timelines, quizzes & games, even some lesson plans.  Take a look!

• African American History Month 
• History.com
• Wikipedia
• Infoplease
• TeacherVision