Start your day with a look at the stars

Want a boost to energize your morning? Take a look at NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. It's one of the first things I look at after powering up my computer in the morning and it never fails to be interesting and, sometimes, inspiring. The pictures cover everything from the farthest reaches of the visible universe, to our neighbors in the solar system, to the machines that allow us to see these marvelous things. Some of my favorites have been Hubble galaxy images like this one and the amazing views sent back by the Mars rovers. Here's a sample of these. The site has a search feature and you can also browse their archives, so if you skip a day you can always find out what you missed.

Take a look! And boldly go where no one has gone before!

How much do you know about Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is a great holiday to relax, spend time with friends and family, and eat too much food. Still, you may want something to think about when you aren’t feasting.If that’s the case, take some time out to learn about Thanksgiving, an all-American holiday.

Thanksgiving in North America: From Local Harvests to National Holiday
From the Smithsonian Institution…an overview of early American thanksgiving celebrations and a history of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

Facts for Features: Thanksgiving Day
The U.S. Census provides some fascinating statistics about Thanksgiving.
Scary statistic: the “typical American” ate 13.4 pounds of turkey in 2004 with “a hearty helping devoured at Thanksgiving time.” [my italics]

If you want more information, you can find hundreds of articles about Thanksgiving Day in the library’s databases. For a taste, here is a list of articles from Academic Search Premier on the subject “Thanksgiving Day.”

Lastly, the Blume Library will have different operating hours during the holiday. The library website lists our Thanksgiving hours.

Best wishes for a happy holiday from the Blume Library’s faculty and staff!

Note: image from the American Memory database, citation: Neffsville, Pennsylvania. Thanksgiving dinner at the house of Earle Landis.

Native American Indian Resources

Visitors to the Blume Library recently have been able to enjoy an interesting and colorful display of artifacts and books just to the right of the entrance. A joint effort of the Library and the Native American Student Association, it celebrates November as National American Indian Heritage Month. If you'd like to see more on this topic, the National Museum of the American Indian, one of the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, D.C., is celebrating it, too.

For more in-depth information on American Indians, you might want to browse through these comprehensive link collections from the Library at Southeastern Oklahoma University and the University of Louisville Library. You can find online legal materials pertaining to American Indians through this page provided by the Law School at Washburn University (it also includes links to the webpages of many different tribal organizations).

--Kathy Amen, Government Information Librarian

Welcome to In Blume!

The Librarians at the Blume Library are starting this blog to share with the St. Mary's Community news about the library, and news related to information resources from our campus, our city, state, country and world. We hope you will enjoy reading it, and will frequently send us your comments.

Let us know if you have suggestions for blog topics!

--Blume Library Staff