Requesting Books from the Other Campus Library

When you use the library online catalog and find a book you want, often the book is housed at the other campus library. To have it delivered to the library you are at, you click on the blue "Request" button and it gets delivered by 12 noon the next day. That is, until the library building on the San Luis campus decided to get remodeled. As of this Friday, it will take an extra day for delivery of books back and forth between campuses. This will last for several months until the remodeling is further along.

Tina Lau, North County Librarian
(in Library insider, Research help)

Show Me the Money

The Cuesta College Financial Aid Department, in collaboration with the Associated Students of Cuesta College, will be hosting "Show Me the Money" a Financial Aid Literacy Fair. The event will take place on the North County campus on Tuesday, March 28th from 5:00 to 8:00pm in the Courtyard [N.B. Due to rain, it has been moved from the courtyard to the cafeteria and the
lobby of the 1000 building], and on the San Luis Obispo campus on Wednesday, March 29th from 11:00am to 2:30pm in room 5401.
"Show Me the Money" will feature interesting and informative workshops on such topics as "Financing Your Education," "All About Credit Cards," "Is Your Financial Future At Risk," "Identity Theft," and "Achieving Your Financial Goals." Local and national lending institution representatives will be present to answer questions. Free pizza, soda, and Cowboy Cookies will be available. There will be drawings for gifts, gift certificates, and scholarships ranging from $20 to $200 dollars. The band KARMA will provide live music. [taken from the campus headlines section of the Cuesta website]

Tina Lau, North County Librarian

Creating categories in Blogger

I finally found out how to create categories for this blog--there is a hack at http://netcf2.blogspot.com/2005/11/blogging-categories-categories.html that I used. Hope you like the categories! [If you understand this posting, you have passed the Geek Test.]

Tina Lau, North County Librarian
(in Technology)

Summer and Fall Schedules are Available

The Summer and Fall 2006 class schedules are available starting this morning in PAWS using the Open Class Finder, but they're not finalized yet. Listings could change. Print schedules won't be available until sometime in April. (in Cuesta news)

Tina Lau, North County Librarian

Corporate Donations to Republicans/Democrats

Want to know which corporations spend money supporting the Democrats, and which support Republicans? Check out this website:
http://vfp92.org/CorporateDonors.html

Interesting to note that, for example, Wal-Mart gave over 2 million dollars in 2004, 80% of it to Republicans, while Price Club/Costco gave $208,000, of which 98% went to Democrats. Looking at the website might change where you spend your money.

Tina Lau, North County Librarian

Finding the Book You Need

When only a book will do, first I check Cuesta library's online catalog to see if we own it. For example, if I were needing to find a copy of Smart Mobs : the Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold, I would go to the library homepage at http://library.cuesta.edu/, go to Webcat, and see if Cuesta owned it. If we didn't, I would next check the public library system at http://www.blackgold.org/. If they owned it, I would reserve a copy and have it sent to the Atascadero branch, closest to where I live. (You need to get a free library card in order to use the public library system.) If that still didn't work, I would borrow the book from another library by using Cuesta's interlibrary loan system. It's free (unless the other library charges to loan the book) and takes 7-10 working days usually. The form is at the bottom of the library homepage at http://library.cuesta.edu/illoan.htm. Nowadays, you can get practically any book you want for free.

Speaking of free: If you wanted to buy the book, you could shop locally at one of the bookstores, or go to Barnes and Noble in San Luis for a very large selection. If you wanted to get a deal on it, you could go to AddAll http://www.addall.com/ and shop for the lowest price. The hardback edition of Smart Mobs is now out of print, but used to retail for $26. Using AddAll I found the book for 10.25 including tax at Half.com. The paperback edition retails for $16 and is available for $8.20 including tax when I checked AddAll.

And if you only wanted to read a little section of the book, you could use the Search Inside the Book feature at Amazon.com to look at a part of it. Many (not all) books sold on Amazon allow you to search inside them and look at several pages. What I do is look at the table of contents, then type in words from the particular chapter title that interests me. It works great! (You could also use Google Book Search at http://books.google.com, which basically does the same thing as Amazon's Search Inside the Book.)

Happy reading!
(in Money, Research help)
Tina Lau, North County Librarian

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

I've started reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a very funny book about punctuation. (Believe it or not.) The author is quite tongue-in-cheek about the topic. If you want to have a fun read, and painlessly learn something about correct punctuation in the process, I would recommend this book.

Speaking of painlessly learning something, I like to painlessly learn by reading novels, historical and otherwise. I read The Kite Runner recently and learned a lot about the culture of Afghanistan. A lot of the history I know I've learned by reading historical novels.
(in Good reading, Fun)
Tina Lau, North County Librarian