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...
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Library 411

All the words fit to print – and then some most excellent stuff

I’m going to start this post with one of my favorite language stories. If I called you a “nice person” you’d feel that was a complement, right?  Ah, but that’s by today’s standard.  For Chaucer to call someone a “nice” person was to say that person was foolish, silly, or ignorant.  Both Chaucer and Shakespeare could also use it to describe someone as “wanton” or “dissolute” (think of the Prodigal Son, here). The resource, par excellence, for exploring the past use of words in English is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).  Not only does this dictionary give you the...
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Triple Deckers and Penny Dreadfuls, Oh, My!

Have you gotten a Kindle eBook reader recently?  Then you’ll be glad to know that the British Library is set to make over 65,000 19th century books available for free downloading.  According to the article in the Times Online, between 35% – 40% of the British Library’s 19th century books being digitized are “inaccessible” in public libraries and extremely difficult to find in used or rare book stores.  The ebooks will be available sometime this spring....
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