STEM Access

Learn about Science and Scientists through Graphic Novels

Did you know that Baylor Libraries has graphic novels in their collection?  Did you know that they are not just about superheros?  Did you know that you can learn about science through graphic novels.  Below are just some of the graphic novels we have in our collection. Some of them are Biographies Logicomix about Bertrand Russell Feynman Darwin : a graphic biography : the really exciting and dramatic story of a man who mostly stayed at home and wrote some books Primates : the fearless science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas Some of them focus on...
Continue Reading »
STEM Access

Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

  From time to time, I will review books that have to do with STEM.  Some of them will be very practical like Scientific English and some of them more general interest like today’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This book made many “best book” lists a few years ago.  I remember the first time I tried to check it out…it had already gone missing.  I figured that it was so popular and so interesting that someone didn’t want to give it back.  But never fear, we now have two hardback editions and a paper edition of the...
Continue Reading »
Awaiting Discovery

Readers, Printers, and their Records

Have you ever wondered what people are reading or what was available to them to read?  Amazon’s stats and the New York Times Best Sellers list makes it fairly easy to track what is popular, but these figures are largely based on sales or production runs. I’d like to suggest two sources of information for finding out what actual readers thought about books, how books and ideas influenced lives, and what was available to readers to read from the early modern period through the early 20th century. RED: The Reading Experience (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/) documents what individuals in Great Britain and Canada actually read from...
Continue Reading »
STEM Access

Book Review: Scientific English

On occasion I plan to review books on the blog.  Some will be of professional interest; others will be of general science interest.  I doubt if too many of them will be for fun (unless I find a really good mystery novel set in a science department of a university).  Today I will review Scientific Writing by Robert Day and Nancy Sakaduski. I was first introduced to this book by the writing center at my last institution.  We called it the dancing pencil book because that was what was on the cover of the second edition. As you can...
Continue Reading »
STEM Access

Reading Library E-Books

So, finally after last week‘s e-book explanation, this week we will actually read library e-books on the Nook (I feel I should give the Nook a name).  We will download books from OverDrive, EbscoBooks, and Ebrary.  After trying, I am happy that I got a Nook instead of a Kindle because a Nook can read many more e-books especially those that have DRM. I started by downloading Adobe Digital Editions on both my work PC and my home Mac. This is a fairly simple process but does require registering a username with Adobe and authorizing each computer to access the...
Continue Reading »
STEM Access

E-Books and DRM and E-Book Distributors

Last week, I said we’d look into downloading books onto the Nook, but I realized that before I could do that I should do some research on e-books and especially library e-books. The standard format for e-books is ePub (except for Kindles which use Mobi) although some ebooks use pdf.  There are many desktop, iOS, Android, and even Blackberry apps that read ePubs.  You can even find plugins so that you can read ePubs on your browser.  In general, any ePub reader will also be able to read a pdf.  ePub e-books are nice because they repaginate when you...
Continue Reading »
STEM Access

My New Nook Tablet

For my birthday, my husband who blogs here, bought me a Nook tablet.  Now you have to understand that we are not a smartphone family so a tablet was rather exciting.  I’ve been looking for something to bring on vacation with me that I can use to check and triage email, but only respond if absolutely necessary since typing is not as easy as it would be on a computer.  I also wanted an e-reader so I wouldn’t have to haul books around when traveling (I usually bring alumni magazines and newsletters to read and then just chuck them...
Continue Reading »
Library 411

Halloween in the Library

Halloween is upon us tomorrow, and the library is the place to find Halloween-related information. If you want to read up on the history and traditions of Halloween, search in BearCat for the subject “Halloween” and you will find some great resources. If you are looking for some lighter reading, check out the collection of kids books on Halloween we have in our Zeta Collection. Search BearCat for the subject “Halloween – Juvenile Fiction.” Want to entertain your friends with Halloween movies or music? The library has that covered too, including this Peanuts classic: I found all these resources...
Continue Reading »