New NCLive Resources

by Amy Notarius Rowan Public Library
Would you like to learn a new language, find out more about a favorite author, or search for articles on a current event? NC LIVE offers free electronic access to resources for all ages on topics ranging from careers, business, and investing, to auto repair, health, history, and genealogy. These are available free to anyone with a current Rowan Public Library card and pin number.

Beginning in January 2015, NC LIVE will be adding several new offerings to their collection. Highlights of the new resources include:

Literature Resource Center:  Articles, essays, work and topic overviews, full-text works, and biographies covering authors, their works, and literary movements.

Films on Demand Video Master  Collection: Thousands of high quality videos from travel and fitness programming, to how-to videos, indie films, popular music performances, documentaries, and curriculum-based educational videos. 

Pronunciator Language Learning:  Language learning for 80 languages and ESL for 50 non-English languages, including audio lessons, interactive textbooks, quizzes, phrasebooks and pronunciation analysis.

ProQuest Central:  General reference database for over 175 subjects from magazines, journals, and newspapers, including peer-reviewed and scholarly works. 

These are just a few of the many valuable resources available through NC LIVE.  To get started visit www.rowanpubliclibrary.org and click on NC LIVE under online tools. For questions or assistance with any of these resources please contact your nearest RPL location.

Books and Reading

by Rebecca Hyde Rowan Public Library

                Whenever I seem to flag in my reading (like an exercise regimen I’m not fully carrying out, with a

 good measure of guilt), I find that reading a book about books and their readers provides a surge of

energy.  The approaches offered in these books (subject heading “Books and Reading “) are varied. 

Some I can only partially adopt, but all are absorbing because I’m sharing the feeling that reading is

engaging and worth my time.

                My latest energy boost comes from “The Shelf:  Adventures in Extreme Reading” by Phyllis Rose.   Rose is a literary critic, author, and editor.  She’s also an engaged reader, experiencing the thrill of discoveries from the classics to gumshoe detective stories.  Her curiosity and doggedness lead to searches on the Internet, examination of films based on books, and tracking down reclusive authors. 

                The “Shelf,” Rose states in Chapter One, is the “history of an experiment.”  Rose believes that literary critics (and she is one), wrongly favor the famous and canonical.  She wanted to “sample more democratically the actual ground of literature.”  So Rose chose a fiction shelf in the New York Society Library, of which she’s a member with borrowing privileges.  She made up a few guiding principles in choosing:  no work by someone she knew, no more than three books had to be read of a run by one author, and the order of reading didn’t matter.  She selected shelf LEQ – LES, running from William Le Queux to John Lescroart. 

                Each chapter in Rose’s book is an adventure in reading.  In “The Myth of the Book:  A Hero of Our Time” by Lermontov, Rose reads four translations, with varying degrees of success.  The egotistical Pechorin  remains  uninteresting.  The “romantic hero” in her literary studies had never been appealing.   But now Rose makes a real-life association.  Looking at her own son, who happens to be visiting with his wife and baby, Rose sees a young man whose youthful egotism disappeared when he became a father.  This post adolescent Pechorin  needs to move on to fatherhood. 

                In the chapter “Literary Evolution:  The Phantom of the Opera,” Rose moves from the novel  by Gaston Leroux to an examination of the silent film, starring Lon Chaney, to  Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.  She researches the Paris Opera House (now the Palais Garnier) to gain an understanding of the architecture’s impact on the story.  She is intrigued by the silent film’s perfect retelling of the Phantom, and without music.

                Along the way (“Domesticities: Margaret Leroy and Lisa Lerner”), Rose reveals her philosophy of life and why reading great fiction fills a need:  “For me, spontaneity, inclusiveness, and uniqueness are marks of great fiction, as they are of a satisfying life, but that is a personal choice.” 

                In a final chapter (“Immortality”), Rose sums up the results of her experiment.  She has met eleven people (the “Shelf” authors), none of whom she had know at all.  She has gained a respect for the whole range of the literary enterprise, for writers of all sorts because life is difficult, and public attention may be short-lived.  They are all in some way “valiant.”             The book is an exhilarating experience.

RFID

by April Everett Rowan Public Library

According to library sage S.R. Ranganatham, “An organism which ceases to grow will petrify and perish.”  Libraries have historically demonstrated a propensity to grow by adapting to technological change.  In the mid-20^th century, librarians pioneered computerized metadata framework, a technology that revolutionized the sharing of bibliographic and holdings information.  Automated circulation arrived shortly thereafter, and the card catalog went the way of the eight track tape.  Personal computers and online cataloging, acquisitions, and circulation carried the profession through the 1990s, and the introduction of a new technology known as radio frequency identification (RFID) has carried the profession into the 21^st century. 

While traditional barcodes remain the identification system of choice for most libraries, there are currently more than 120 library systems worldwide using RFID to make checkout more efficient for their patrons.  While its exact date of creation is unknown, RFID is believed by many to have been begun as a friendly-fire-avoidance tool used during World War II by U.S. and British airplanes.  RFID allowed communication between the planes and receivers on the battlefield.  In more recent history, RFID has been utilized heavily in supply chain management industry, and is also being used by the U.S. government in passports, in EZ Pass gates at toll booths, and even in healthcare.

Rather than scanning individual items, RFID allows library staff to scan multiple tagged items simultaneously.  It increases efficiency, allowing a patron to check out ten items in less than one minute, a considerable time saver for staff and patrons.  It also allows for accurate inventory and a reduction of incorrectly shelved books.  Holding an RFID wand, staff will be able to walk through the stacks and locate misshelved items with ease.

Rowan Public Library first introduced RFID at its South Rowan Regional Library in 2006.  In 2014, Rowan Public Library was awarded a Project Access and Digitization Grant from the State Library of North Carolina to continue RFID usage throughout the system.  The Rowan Public Library East Branch and Headquarters staff will spend the next few months tagging items to prepare them for the switch to RFID.  RFID checkout at those branches is set to begin in Spring 2015, bringing our customers faster, more efficient service. 

Things That Go Bump in the Night

By John Tucker Rowan Public Library

            Do you like tales of things that “go bump in the night?”  What about investigations of historical people who appear to have a paranormal presence?  With Halloween just around the corner, come and see what Rowan Public Library has in its non-fiction Ghost story collection.  For starters, you will want to pick up the book “Dark World” by Zac Bagans.  Mr. Bagans is the former lead investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew and his book includes “behind the scene” information on some of the most haunted places visited on the television show.  In the name of time allocation, some of the film footage is left on the cutting room floor, so this story fills in the details.  Every good ghost story requires details.  Zac Bagans wants the reader to experience each haunting through his eyes; to feel what it’s like to be scared, pushed, cold, sluggish, whispered-to, creped-out…and more.  Be sure to return it because books like this might just have more frights in store than a mere late fee.  

            A personal favorite of ghostly haunting is the text “Ghosts and their Haunts: The Legends and Lore of the Yadkin River Valley” by Frances H. Casstevens.  The book traces the river valley county by county and shares several tales from each            community.  The chapter on Yadkin County reveals several tales that one might wish to investigate with their own camera and recorder applications on a cell phone.  There are things to see and electronic voices to record during the day light hours.

            On the local front, the book titled “The Wettest and Wickedest Town” by Karen C. Lilly-Bowyer presents a collection of legends and ghost stories from right here in Salisbury, North Carolina.  The book is the result of historical research and paranormal investigations with groups from Charlotte, Greensboro and Lexington.  Local haunted sites include: the Wren House, Hall House, County Administration building and many more.  This collection of haunted tales comprises the Downtown Ghost Walk which began in 2010.   

            Should you prefer to travel to Ashville, North Carolina for your ghostly tales, check out the book “Haunted Ashville” by Joshua P. Warren.  Here you can read about the haunted past of the Grove Park Inn, Reed House which is now the Biltmore Village Inn and let us not forget Zealandia Estate featuring Helen’s Bridge.  The stories are captivating and the historic photos add to the eeriness of each tale.  These phantoms and specters would be fun to investigate on site, but not for the weak of heart.

            Whether your inspiration for ghost hunting stories is to supplement your television viewing, your need for scientific proof, or a walk in the dark where ghost stories come to life; your next step should be directed to Rowan Public Library where many spirited books can haunt your curiosity.