Library and Writer's Studio Hours This Week

It will be closed the rest of the week and reopen on Monday, November 28th at 3PM.

The Library will close at midnight on Tuesday and reopen Sunday, November 27th at 2PM.

Storage Wars

It's that season once again - crunch time.  Everything was due yesterday, test/quiz/lab tomorrow, rinse, wash, and repeat...We've all been there.

Although there isn't much we can do to help with tests (other than to provide a quiet place to study), we can make some suggestions on how to store all of those precious papers and assignments.

As some of you may know, the library computers are configured to wipe clean any files and settings changes made after you log off or shut down a computer.  Here are some recommendations on online or physical storage services and devices:

1. Flash/thumb drives are the most popular way to store files.  These are relatively cheap and can be purchased at the bookstore.  Get a big enough drive and you can travel with your music (instead of carrying a separate MP3 player) as well.  The problem with flash drives is also one of the reasons they are popular: their size.  They can get lost easily (we recover 2-3 flash drives, on average, a week), can be forgotten in pockets and run through the washing machine (I've done this, sadly), and they tend to break from time to time.  It's my suggestion not to rely on flash drives alone.

2. External hard drives are essentially large flash drives, and most computer users should own one anyway for MP3/audio, video, and photo file backup storage.  Like most things tech, these drives are getting smaller and smaller, and thus more portable.  Unfortunately, the prices for these drives will skyrocket because of severe flooding in Thailand, where most of the world's hard drives are assembled.  Before the flooding, a 2 TB drive could be found on sale for $100 - an incredible deal.  I remembered my father's office buying a massive 20 MB (yes megabyte) drive 20 years ago for several thousand dollars.

3. Cloud storage refers to a service that provides online networked data storage. Services such as Dropbox.com, SugarSync.com, and Box.net provide some level of free document and file service, with options for larger storage amounts for a small monthly fee.  Dropbox and SugarSync offer a referral service where you storage amounts will grow for every friend that becomes a new user.  These services all have mobile apps and are accessible on any PC or Mac.

4. Google Documents are an online office productivity suite from the people who brought you...uh, Google.  You can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online and are saved in Google Docs' cloud storage.  You can also upload (and convert) existing Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files for storage.  These files will be converted to Google's proprietary format, however, and you might lose some formatting (but not content).  Users can also download the files in a format of their choice.  Google Docs are a great way to work on a group project, because the common document is available online (and can be password protected).  The presentation software will also work remotely, as you could launch a presentation that can be viewed in multiple locations.  As with most Google products, it's free.

5. E-mailing the file to yourself is probably the easiest way to back up files and documents, as most of us use e-mail daily (ahem, students: you should be checking your Coker e-mail at least once a day).  I wouldn't recommend doing this with your Coker e-mail, as the storage space is fairly small (as of this writing, but that will change later this year), but it will work well with small documents.  Most free e-mail services (Gmail,  Yahoo!, Hotmail) offer huge storage space, from 5 GB to 7+ GB, and plenty of methods for organizing these files.  Simply login in to your e-mail account, create a new e-mail message with a memorable subject line, attach the file, and send it to that same account...and bam!  You've got your own cloud storage!

I would actually combine one or two of these options for redundancy - the more places you have a document stored, the smaller the chance of catastrophic file loss.  Combining one physical storage medium with an online or cloud storage is probably your best bet for keeping those files safe and for having access to them when you need to.

Photo courtesy of the Daily Trojan.  A student newspaper from the University of Southern California.

Have you seen our iPad?

Have you seen our iPad?  It is missing from the library!  It is a first generation iPad, engraved with "Coker College Library" on the back and was wearing an OtterBox Defender case.  A reward will be offered for its safe return.

Thank you.

Daylight Savings Ends Sunday at 2:00 a.m.

This is more of a public service announcement than library update, but Daylight Savings Ends Sunday, November 6 at 2 a.m.  Move your clocks back one hour, or you will be early for everything.  And we can't have that, can we?

Halloween and Day of the Dead

Dr. Rhonda Knight sent me a link to an interesting way to celebrate Halloween - All Hallow's Read.  It's easy, too - just give a friend a scary book during the week before or the day of Halloween.  Author Neil Gaiman explains further:





Don't forget your library - even recommending a scary book still counts for All Hallow's Read!

Coming up on November 2, Coker College Culture Club (CCCC) will celebrate the Day of the Dead.  From Dr. Mac Williams, faculty liaison to CCCC:

We'll have it in the Davidson Hall Courtyard/Front Porch area. It is free and the entire Hartsville community is invited, so please feel free to invite friends, neighbors, and family.

The Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday that chooses to remember the dead with bright colors, songs, dancing, food, candles, and "altares" or altars decorated with scenes from the person's life. This celebration of the deceased's life is a major holiday in many parts of Mexico and border areas with the United States (e.g. San Diego, California and Corpus Christi, Texas), and CCCC thinks it's a fun and educational way to learn about the culture of our southern neighbor while also offering a bit of healthy remembrance of those we love who are no longer with us.

CCCC invites all of you to come and enjoy FREE chorizo tacos, snacks, and Mexican Cokes in glass bottles. We will also have sugar skull decorating, pan de los muertos (bread of the dead), and a display of several altars made by faculty and students.

Please feel free to make and bring your own altar, or simply bring a photo or memento of a deceased loved one, friend, or even a celebrity, and light a candle to their memory during this festive but low-key observance. While CCCC focuses more on the secular side of the holiday, the atmosphere will be one where a private quiet prayer offered will not be disturbed by loud music.

I will be there to answer questions as best I can, and CCCC has invited our local Mexican community to participate.

Finally, from our great art and humanities database ARTstor, comes a blog post that explains some of the history behind both holidays, and how different cultures celebrate Halloween and Día de Los Muertos.  From ARTstor's Giovanni Garcia-Fenech:

Halloween stems from the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain (roughly, “summer’s end”) held on October 31–November 1, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. The festival was integrated into All Saints Day, a Catholic holiday observed on November 1 to honor saints and martyrs. The evening before All Saints Day was referred to as All Hallows’ Eve, which eventually became Halloween.

In countries with Roman Catholic heritage, All Saints Day and All Souls Day (November 2) have long been holidays in which people commemorate the departed. The tradition in my native Mexico is known as Día de los Muertos, “Day of the Dead,” and celebrations take place on the first two days of November, when family and friends gather to remember loved ones who have died. Similar to the evolution of Halloween, the celebration conflates the Catholic holidays with an Aztec festival dedicated to a goddess called Mictecacihuatl, the “Lady of the Dead.” I have fond memories of visiting the cemetery with my family to clean my grandfather’s grave and play with the children of other visiting families. People in Mexico often build altars using brightly decorated sugar skulls, marigolds (popularly known as Flor de Muerto, “Flower of the Dead”), and the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased. I was particularly fond of the sugar skulls; I always tried to bite into them, but they tend to be so hard that I would have to ask my father to break mine with a hammer.

Many Latin American countries hold similar celebrations, with some colorful regional differences:  In Ecuador, the Day of the Dead is observed with ceremonial foods such as colada morada, a spiced fruit porridge, and guagua de pan, a bread shaped like a swaddled infant; in addition to the traditional visits to their ancestors’ gravesites, Guatemalans build and fly giant kites; and in Brazil, Dia de Finados (“Day of the Dead”) is celebrated on November 2.

The blog post also describes some Halloween/Day of the Dead "friendly" collections inside of ARTstor.

Got Jobs?

We do...on our Kindle.  Coker students, faculty, and staff can check it out today.

Our ALA Emerging Leader: Megan Johnson

We are very excited to announce that our very own Megan Johnson has been named an American Library Association Emerging Leader!

From ALA.org:

The American Library Association (ALA) Emerging Leaders (EL) program is a leadership development program which enables newer library workers from across the country to participate in problem-solving work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity. It puts participants on the fast track to ALA committee volunteerism as well as other professional library-related organizations.

Megan will represent Coker College and South Carolina libraries at both the ALA Midwinter Conference in Dallas, Texas as well as the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California.

Congratulations, Megan!