Extended Hours Begin Wednesday!

It's that time of the semester again...

We'll have extended hours, beginning Wednesday, May 4.

FINAL EXAMS
Wednesday, May 4	7:45 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Thursday, May 5	7:45 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Friday, May 6	7:45 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 7	8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 8	12:00 p.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Monday, May 9	7:45 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Tuesday, May 10	7:45 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.

Do you need an exam schedule? Click Here.

Taming the Wild Wild Web: Bing Health Maps

We get a lot of questions about statistics and although we do have resources that we pay for (such as Historical Statistics of the United States and Statistical Warehouse), sometimes our patrons want to a slightly different experience.

Bing Maps, Microsoft's map platform, offers a series of different map apps or overlays that enhances the content of the maps. At this writing, there are 59 different apps covering a variety of topics, such as restaurant suggestions, Japanese earthquake information, roadside attractions, and so forth. Bing Health Maps offers Health and Human Services data by county, with many popular statistics as obesity, infant mortality, and smoking rates.

Here's how you use it:

Go to http://bing.com/maps

Look for the itty bitty map apps button down in the lower left hand column:

You'll then get a pop-up box with the map apps listed. Bing Health Maps should be among the first you see:

Note the update date. The stats here are a little less than a year old, at least. Hopefully, the Bing Apps team will strive to update these numbers as they become available.

The map app takes a minute to load, and it should load (if geolocation is enabled in your browser), to your home state. Interestingly enough, it loads North Carolina if you are on Coker's campus, because the campus Internet service provider is based in the Rock Hill/Charlotte area.

You can pick which state, and the select which community health indicator you want to examine. The map is broken down by county, which is one unique feature that Bing Maps has over the more popular Google Maps.

Clicking on the county brings up a popup with all of the community health indicators listed, in three separate categories. As it stands now, there isn't an easy way to print the information or even compare counties (or states). But it does give you some important information easily, and it invites serendipitous knowledge discovery.

What other Bing Map Apps do you find interesting? Post in the comments below.

Picture of the Day

A green anole keeps a leery eye on the librarian with the camera.

Picture of the Day

Daniel Meyer (History major) positioned himself outside the Daniels Boardroom wearing a sandwich board sign to petition the Board of Trustees for higher admission standards. He was able to meet members of the BOT and share his thoughts.

LITC BOOK REVIEW: Just Kids by Patti Smith

Reviewed by Donald Quist:

Just Kids is the National Book Award winning memoir by musician, writer, artist, Patti Smith. The book's main focus is to serve as an homage to Robert Mapplethorpe, her former friend and lover, and not to mention one of the most famed photographers of all time! This book has become one of my instant favorites. Smith’s narrative voice is so strong and the relationship between her and Mapplethorpe is so compelling, I forgive her redundancy and endless name dropping. She is a braggart, offering readers a glimpse behind the velvet curtain of the arts scene in 1970’s New York, and though that is somewhat the book's biggest appeal—the sense of voyeurism and exclusivity that sells tabloids—she is sincere. I found myself immediately drawn to her vulnerability, how her words read like a letter from a really close friend. If you strip away the cameos, her story is still meaningful and hopelessly romantic. There is a line in the book where Smith, speaking about Mapplethorpe’s work, says, “His obscenity was never obscene.” Her writing is very much the same. Smith approaches even the darkest aspects of her recollections, things like carcinoma, contracting the clap, head lice, intravenous drug use and dating two male prostitutes, with the frothy poeticism one would expect from a literary romance. But that is what it is, a story about two young people in love, with their art and each other, trying to craft an identity for themselves, walking in the shadows of giants and inevitably becoming giants themselves.

Share your thoughts on Just Kids, Friday, April 8th, 2011 @ 3:30pm, as the Coker College Library hosts a public book discussion with the Chair of the Art Department, Professor Jean Grosser in Room 228.

New E-book Collection!

Great news! We have added Springer E-books to our collection! By the end of this year, this collection will grow to over 25,000 books!

As always, e-books are a great resource that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

An advantage to the Springer E-book collection is that we have unlimited access to each title that we own: all 1200 Coker students, staff, and faculty could technically have the same book open at the same time!

There are no restrictions for printing, as most titles are opened as PDF files. Also, these files can be loaded on any mobile device without any modification or compatibility issues.

For now, search the link on the E-books link on the library homepage. We will be adding the books to our online catalog later in the semester.

Spring Break Hours 2011

It's that time already! Spring break hours start this weekend:

We will be closed on Saturday and Sunday, March 5-6.
Monday-Thursday, March 7-10: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Friday, March 12: 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 12: Closed
Sunday, March 13: 1 p.m. to 11 p.m.