Cause for Revolt

The Declaration of November 7, 1835 or as it is otherwise known, The Declaration of Causes adopted by the Consultation at San Felipe was a declaration of reasons for taking up arms against Mexico prior to the Texas Declaration of Independence. The war had already begun with Mexican forces marching on San Antonio. The document explained Texas actions and made it clear to Federalists in Mexico that Texas desired only to preserve the Mexican constitution of 1824. The Declaration had eight points. First that Texas had taken up arms in defense of their rights and liberties and the republican principles of the Constitution of 1824. Second, Santa Anna's actions meant that the government of Mexico was no longer considered legal by Texas and therefore Texas was no longer bound by agreement made at the time Texas was settled. Also as long as Centralist forces were in Texas they would be attacked. In addition Texas had the right to establish an independent government, Texas was responsible for the debts of her armies and pledged to pay these debts. The last point was that Texas would reward with land and citizenship those who aided her in this fight. This last point would aid in the settlement of Texas, as the longer one fought for Texas the more land you would receive. Pictured is a image of Lorenzo de Zavala's copy of the declaration in Spanish. The document was printed in English and Spanish. The Handbook of Texas Online has more information at http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mjd02

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has a translation at https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/giants/zav-declaration.html

Ask a Librarian???

Need Help, like yesterday? You can call the reference desk during library hours at (254) 968-9249 or send an email via web form.


Ask A Librarian QR code

• Can't find the article you need in the databases?
• Frustrated with citations?
• Lose a book and not sure what fines you'll have?
• Not certain where to begin with your research?
• Need help resetting your NTNET password?
• Want to make a suggestion or request an item?

"Ask A Librarian" is the key to your success with any of these issues and more. Our Librarians will get you started in the right direction and help clear up any uncertainties. Feel free to email, call, come in person, or use the "Ask A Librarian" web form, it's that easy and convenient.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

Have you ever heard the saying, “Remember, Remember the 5th of November”?


Or perhaps you’ve heard of a man named Guy Fawkes?


Ever wonder about the history surrounding the phrase, date, and the man?


 The Dick Smith Library has three materials discussing the significance of Guy Fawkes and the date November 5th.

So why not celebrate by taking time to learn about this interesting day in history?

Feel free to check out these materials with your Texan Card.


Want to learn how people celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in modern day England?


Check out this article from The Wall Street Journal.

Veterans Day

Veterans Day as a national observance of our military veterans' service and sacrifice has evolved through time.

The designation of November 11 as a national holiday began with the Act of 1938.  The day was called Armistice Day and honored World War I veterans.  In 1954, the 83rd U.S. Congress amended the Act of 1938, renamed the day Veterans Day, and designated it as a day to honor all American military veterans.

In recognition of Veterans Day and to show appreciation for United States military personnel, Tarleton is hosting multiple campus events, which will give each of us opportunities to show our support and appreciation for veterans.  Kurt Mogonye's article "Events Planned at Tarleton to Observe Veterans Day" gives details about these events. Be sure to check it out.

To honor veterans and as part of campus Veterans Day observances, the Dick Smith Library has a new display in the lobby.

The display features

• "Post a Note to Our Veterans" - Write a message and post it on the whiteboard.  Let our veterans know your thoughts.
• Chief of Staff reading list - View the titles suggested for army personnel professional development.
• Books from our collections - Browse the titles or check them out.  Several of the books from the Chief of Staff's list are on the display.  Also, the library's databases offer many of the journals from the list.
• Pictures of three campus military landmarks: World War I cannon,  World War II marker, and the Tarleton State University Military Memorial

The library offers a wealth of information about veterans and military history in a variety of formats.  To locate items in our collections, you can 

• search for "military history," "military veterans," or "military science" in our library catalog, 
• search Discovery@Tarleton for articles (NTNET login required),
• browse our print and audiovisual collections,
• search for films in the Films on Demand database (NTNET login required),
• read online articles about Tarleton veterans in the J-TAC archives, or
• email  (reference@tarleton.edu) or call (254-968-9249) the library's reference staff for assistance.

Do you know about other events or have ideas for other ways we can show our support and appreciation to veterans and military personnel?  If so, please leave a comment and your suggestions.

How very Pinteresting--the library is now on Pinterest

You may have heard about or even be on Pinterest, the visual social network whose popularity has skyrocketed in the last year and a half.

The library's Pinterest account.

The Dick Smith Library, in addition to being on Flickr, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, and of course Blogger, is now on Pinterest. Be sure to follow us.

By the way, the Texas Social Media Research Institute is having a Pinterest party in the Library Instruction Classroom (#139) on December 5 from 12:10-12:50.  Attendees are encouraged to bring food and crafts inspired by Pinterest.

Picture from the TSMRI Spring 2012 Pinterest party.

Check out how some other libraries are using Pinterest.

Top Ten Tuesday - Ready for Halloween?

Tomorrow is the big day!  I have my candy, and my jack-o-laterns are made.  I thought I would give you a list of fun movies you might watch as you wait for the trick-or-treaters. (Sorry I don't do scarey.)

• Beetle Juice - 1988
• Hocus Pocus - 1993
• The Goonies -  1985
• The Nightmare Before Christmas - 1993
• Corpse Bride - 2005
• Casper - 1995
• Monsters, Inc. - 2001
• Ghost Busters - 1984
• Young Frankenstein -1974
• Germlins - 1984

Hope you all have a GREAT Halloween!

Dyslexia Awareness Month

 

Dyslexia Awareness Month is coming to an end but those that suffer from the disease will continue with their struggles. Every person with this disorder is challenged with different things. My 11 year old daughter is dyslexic and deals with it like a champ. Sure she has her moments of throwing her hands up and wanting to give up. But we have taught her that she has to work that much harder to overcome the simplest tasks. I have learned that I must be her strongest advocate and I have learned that I shouldn’t have to apologize to her school because they now have to make provisions in her curriculum.

Recently we heard about Chromagen lens glasses that help with dyslexia, color blindness, migraines and other disorders.  We made an appointment with one of the doctors I saw on a WFAA channel 8 News segment in Plano, Tx. My husband and I sat in the waiting room hoping and praying these glasses would help her out. The doctor was amazing and came out several times after testing, re-testing and testing her again and told us that with the glasses her reading level improved by 10-12% immediately. I was so excited for her and knew we had to purchase these glasses for her.  So after they picked me up off the floor when they told us the price for the glasses we got them ordered and went home to wait for them to come in the mail.

Her new glasses came in and she loves them. They look different due to the purple lens color but she has an amazing attitude and was able to take all the questions and comments for her classmates. The glasses are helping her focus more at school, she is able to complete most of her homework on her own and she has more confidence in her work.

Below are some links to information I found helpful:

·         http://abcnews.go.com/Health/EyeHealthCorrectiveLenses/chromagen-lenses-keeping-dyslexics-page/story?id=15044246

·         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejcphVO4abo (This is my daughter’s doctor in Plano, TX)

·         http://www.dyslexia.com/library/information.htm#See

 

Consumer Reports: Used/New Car Buying

I just bought a car recently after doing some research for a couple of years. Yes, I said a couple of years. I knew absolutely nothing about cars; so, to catch me up on different types available, I searched every company site and listed each type of vehicles being advertised, price (I limited my search to everything under $25k), picture, and mpg based on the basic automatic models. That’s a lot of information to obtain and very grueling depending on the site...hence the years part. There was no rush at the time because I couldn't afford it, and I had a good running vehicle so I took my time compiling all the data necessary until the time when it would come in handy. Anyway, after compiling all that data, I put it into an Excel spreadsheet to compare and contrast. It narrowed down my list of vehicles to a certain extent, but I still had quite a few on my list and no other way to narrow down besides closing my eyes and pointing randomly at a vehicle on my list.

Then my friend and then-boss, Janie, introduced me to Consumer Reports. Luckily, the Dick Smith Library subscribes to this, so it’s a free service to use for staff, faculty, and students. I found that I absolutely love their Buying Guide. You can find it in the periodicals section of the library or you can search Discovery@TarletonLibraries for “Consumer Reports Buying Guide” and it will pull up the most recent buying guide. You can save the PDF to your personal folder and take it with you when going looking for cars in case you forget or see something new that you hadn’t considered.

Consumer Reports lists all the problem areas for each vehicle per dealer per year. It provides an average rating scale for each vehicle per year as well as an overall rating based on “the percentage of survey respondents who reported problems for that trouble spot, compared with the average of all vehicles for that year” – Consumer Reports. It’s interesting to see how each car measures up to the other, and definitely helped to narrow down my search. However, I do have to state that not all cars find their way into Consumer Reports. For example, I have no idea why they don’t have ratings for the Chevrolet Camaro prior to 2010. I know they were out then, so I’m not sure why they weren’t included. The Kia Rio is not listed either, and there are newer models that won’t show up on the list until they have the necessary data to be compiled and presented. All in all, it takes about 2 years for a car to show up in the Consumer Reports Buying Guide.

Either way, if you’re looking for a new or used car, I would start with Consumer Reports. It’s been the most helpful database with car shopping as well as other important purchases. Not only does it compile data for cars, but it also compiles data for cell phones, appliances, and electronics and many more things. So, you might want to check it out next time you’re shopping for something expensive. It might just save you a ton of money and a whole lot of grief from buying something that's probably not going to measure up to your expectations. 

P.S. This has nothing to do with Consumer Reports, but it's just a helpful little tip that I found out when I went car shopping. You want to compare and contrast dealerships as well as cars when shopping. Some dealerships just have the worst service and others are very helpful and efficient. So, just be aware of that little tidbit as well. The site I visited to find this information out was dealerrater.com, but there are others as well. 

Tarleton Thursdays: Did You Know?

What’s in a Name?

Tarleton, McIlhany, Doc Blanchard, Nancy Golden….do you see the pattern??  Then there is Military Drive, and Centennial Lane too.  Of course they are streets within or near the Tarleton campus.  Now, we all know for whom Tarleton Street was named.  But did you know that it wasn’t always Tarleton Street?  And, you may have heard that there was a McIlhany Academy here in Stephenville, or that Stephenville College’s president was Marshall McIlhany – but is there more?  My September 27, 2012 blog was all about Doc Blanchard…and Nancy Golden was Tarleton’s first female student body president.  Tarleton has a long history of training military cadets, thus Military Drive.  Then, Tarleton celebrated its Centennial in 1999, and named the little street over by John Tarleton’s grave Centennial Lane.

Want to know more about Stephenville streets?  The fifth annual Spirits of Erath Cemetery Walk will be held Sunday November 4, 2012 at 2 PM, across the street at the West End Cemetery.  Admission is $5 per person.  The event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Tarleton Dick Smith Library and the Friends of the Stephenville Public Library.  The event strives to bring Erath County’s history to life by portraying people in its past.  

This year the Spirits will be people in Stephenville and Erath County’s past for whom Stephenville streets were named.  The short vignettes will relate biographical information about the person or family by actors dressed in period costumes.  Featured in the walk will be Tarleton, Orr, Kight, Groesbeeck, Stephen, Erath, McIlhany, and Long streets.  The photo shown above is of H.J. “Harry” McIlhany.

The tour starts at 2 pm, as soon as the tour groups are organized.  Please come – you might even see some “characters” that you recognize.  What a fun way to spend a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon and learn a little about our local history at the same time! 

Hope to see you there! 

Freedom of Speech

 National Free Speech Week

Join the Society of Professional Journalists and the Department of Communication Studies in celebrating Free Speech on campus. Tuesday, October 23 through Thursday, October 25, 11:00 am and 1:00 pm.

What is Freedom of Speech?
Freedom of Speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas.

http://www.uscourts.gov/EducationalResources/ClassroomActivities/FirstAmendment/WhatDoesFreeSpeechMean.aspx

Thsrs, the shorter thesaurus

Here's something some of you may find useful: Thsrs is a tool, created by David Friedman of Ironic Sans, that allows you to search longer words and retrieve a list of shorter synonyms. It was created to allow Twitter users to shorten their potential tweets without having to resort to weird abbreviations. Firefox and Internet Explorer plugins are available for easier/quicker use. Give it a try!

Litter Airy Miss Quotes...Oops! I mean "Literary Misquotes"

It started with a book that I was reading in which the author used the phrase, “to mulch it over” in describing the contemplation by a character. Suffice it to say that this writer will never win an award as the world’s best author. The phrase she was trying to use was “to mull it over.” This got me to thinking of some of the most common literary misquotes that I know.

Here’s a few.  See if you can give the actual quote. Answers can be found at the very end of this blog.

1.      "Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!” resulted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner meaning that the speaker was at sea with salt water surrounding them but none of the water is fit to drink.

2.      "Pride cometh before a fall” originated from The Bible Psalms 16:18 meaning that a person who becomes so full of pride becomes arrogant which often leads to disappointment due to wrong decisions.

3.      “Elementary, my dear Watson” attributed to the fictional character, Sir Sherlock Holmes, in reply to his assistant, Watson. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes is the key to this misquote.

4.      “Find a penny, pick it up” stems from the first line of a poem in the children’s book, The Real Mother Goose. This simplistic misquote is actually a mondegreen, meaning that the phrase is misheard, thus misspoken.

5.      “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is derived from William Congreve’s play, The Mourning Bride. Angering a lady could be trouble!

6.      "At one fatal swoop” is a misquote from Shakespeare’s MacBeth. The phrase is about a hawk diving to kill its prey, and is not about a death fall. What’s the real quote?

7.      "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” developed from Dante’s Inferno where the inscriptions on the gates of Hell have the slightly changed, but greatly different literary inscription.

8.      “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast” arose from William Congreve’s play, The Mourning Bride where one would have trouble finding that musically inclined monster.

9.      “Theirs but to do or die” is a subtle change from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade. This poem is a memorial to a suicidal military charge by British soldiers during the Crimean War. Given this information, can you guess what the correct quote is?

10.  “Open says-a-me!” seems a reasonable phrase for Ali Baba to use to open the cave of treasures in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, however the correct phrase might make you hungry. What’s the phrase? 

 

Answers:

1.      “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

2.      “Pride goeth before destructions and an haughty spirit before a fall.” KJV

3.      “Excellent!” I cried “Elementary” said he.

4.      “Find a penny and pick it up.”

5.      "Heaven has a rage like love to hatred turned. / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

6.      “At one fell swoop”

7.      “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

8.      “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.”

9.      “Theirs but to do and die.”

10.  Open sesame!”

Preserving Texas' Civil War Records

The theme for Archives Month in Texas is about preserving Civil War records in Texas. While we do not have any Civil War records here at the Dick Smith Library we do have books in the Local History Room that can help you research the Civil War in Texas and there are several websites you can search for records. We do have in the Local History Room Index to Applications for Texas Confederate Pensions. The book is organized into three sections: 1. Index to Approved Pension Applications; 2. Index to Residents of the Confederate home and the Confederate Woman's Home; 3. Index to Rejected Pension Applications. The listings are alphabetical and give the application number and county of residence. The Local History Room also has several books on Texas units that served in the Confederate forces. The Texas Library and Archives Commission has a searchable database of Confederate Pension Applications located here: https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/apps/arc/pensions/ The site is searchable by name or application number and the search can be limited by county. None of the pension applications are digitized, so you would have to order copies of the application from the archives. The State Archives also has a Confederate Indigent Families List, this was aid paid to families of those serving in the Confederate forces. Instructions on using the list can be found here:
https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/cif/index.html

At the federal level the National Archives is working on digitizing the 1.28 million case files from the families of deceased Civil War Union soldiers. An excellent short video about the project with views of some of the records is at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWV9ObQUDRc&feature=youtu.be
The pension records are online at http://www.fold3.com/
To read the interesting story of one woman's attempt to keep her widow's pension see this article written by one of the volunteers working on the project: http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=10707
The National park Service has an excellent Civil War website: http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/index.htm One of my favorite features is the "Find a Person" search box at the bottom of the page. This allows you to search the 6.3 million records in the soldiers and sailors database. The database is searchable by name, unit, state, battle, and keyword to name a few of the available search terms. This does link to digitized records. information is also given for the units such as when and where they were formed, sometimes even listing in which county they were formed. Members of the units are also listed and the battles the unit fought.

Hopefully these sources will help you get started on your own research.

Homecoming and More in the Library

Tarleton is "Celebrating 100 years of the Tarleton Alumni Association" during Homecoming Week 2012. We kicked off the week with Midnight Madness on Sunday, Silver Bugle Hunt on Monday, and the Purple Out Picnic last night. Tonight we will have Yell Contest followed by the Snake Dance and the beginning of Beating the Drums. Midnight Breakfast is tomorrow night, Bonfire on Friday, and the Homecoming Parade, Queen Crowning & Game on Saturday (Texans vs. Kingsville @ 6pm).

Photo by: Tracy Holtman

Where does the Library fit into all of this, you might be thinking? Well, the Library has put together a Homecoming display to add to the festivities. We used Homecoming issues of the JTAC, opened Grassburrs to the Homecoming pages and proudly displayed the Purple & White. You can come to the Library and discover what previous Homecoming events were like, who was crowned Homecoming Queen, and if the Texans won their game.