A short list this month, mostly periodicals…
Category Archives: Library
New Books March 2015
This month’s new books include recent volumes of several genealogy society periodicals and a few more military books. In addition, we had a researcher interested in Kansas Mennonites, so I found some online genealogies and linked to them from the catalog.
New Books in the Library (February 2015)
Most of the additions in February are online resources to help you learn about the Chisholm Trail. To read an online resource, simply go to the library catalog entry as usual — there will be a “read the book” link that will take you directly to the book.
Snow Day! Library Closed
It’s cold, it’s snowing, and the Shocks are playing this afternoon. The library is closed today.
See you Tuesday!
New Books in the Library (January 2015)
Thanks to a couple of generous donations, we have lots of new books in the library, including a lot of Kansas yearbooks and several books on the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia. They’re all on the shelves, so come on down!
Continue reading New Books in the Library (January 2015)
You Should Be Reading the Great Plains Quarterly!
Recently, while looking for something else (isn’t that always the way?), I discovered the Great Plains Quarterly. This is an academic journal published by the University of Nebraska, and it focuses on the history and culture of the great plains states! Imagine — a whole journal focused on “flyover country!”
There are straight historical articles (a couple by Jay Price, of WSU) and other articles that bring in art, sociology, psychology, literature, and even movie criticism. There are also a lot of book reviews, which can help you discover books you didn’t know you needed to read. Topics range from Coronado to the Lebanese in Wichita to the naming of Nicodemus.
Many of the issues are available online. They seem to have gone through at least three different online publishing schemes, so although the official website is at http://www.unl.edu/plains/publications/GPQ/gpq.shtml I would recommend using our library catalog, where I’ve created links to as many issues as I can find (the most recent appear to be behind a fire wall.)
Read it! And if there are any other journals out there I should know about, please email me at library@mhgswichita.org.
Library Closed Saturday, Jan 3
The forecast is for ice and snow, so we’re not going to open the library on Saturday.
Stay home and stay warm!
Library Catalog is Working!
Yay! The library catalog is working and we’re back in business!
Huge thanks to our tech guru, Vince!
We’ll see you on January 3rd!
(Is that too many exclamation points? I am a bit excited about this…)
Subject Headings in the Library Catalog
We are trying to make our subject headings more consistent, both within our catalog and with the broader library community. For the library nerds among you, we are basing our headings on the OCLC/Library of Congress FAST system (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology,) which is a simplified version of the Library of Congress subject heading system.
Most of the time, FAST subject headings look a lot like you’d expect – Kansas, is, not surprisingly, listed as Kansas. But the unpleasantness in Europe from 1914 to 1918 is not called World War I; to the Library of Congress and FAST, it is World War (1914 – 1918). Our librarian made an executive decision to call this World War I (1914 – 1918) in our catalog.
We have adopted one convention to reflect our library’s focus on genealogists. Instead of having subject headings for biographies and genealogies and profiles, we use the single heading Families. So, a book that falls under the topic Families might be a full family history, or it might include biographies or profiles. The subject heading Genealogy, on the other hand, is used for books and periodicals containing miscellaneous genealogy data; we use it mostly for genealogy society periodicals.
Our master list of subject headings is always evolving, but you can find a link to the most current list on the main page of the catalog.
No DAR SIG in December
The DAR SIG meeting Saturday, Dec 20, has been cancelled. We’ll see you Jan 17!