The blogosphere and traditional news are full of appeals and information about how to give money to help Haiti. If you decide to give money, it is important to make sure that the charities you give to will use your money wisely, not just now in a time of crisis, but on a regular basis. There are several places online that you can go that evaluate charities. My favorite is Charity Navigator. From their website:

Charity Navigator's rating system examines two broad areas of a charity's financial health -- how responsibly it functions day to day as well as how well positioned it is to sustain its programs over time. Each charity is then awarded an overall rating, ranging from zero to four stars. To help donors avoid becoming victims of mailing-list appeals, each charity's commitment to keeping donors' personal information confidential is assessed.

This information includes the CEO pay, how much money goes to fund-raising and operational costs, versus how much goes to actually doing their charitable work.

The Better Business Bureau also has a database with information about charities for donors.

Moving Update: The library is in the process of settling in to the new building. We are still closed to the public, but are taking phone and email reference requests. No firm re-opening date has been set, although it is likely to be in late February or early March.

Moving Reminder

This Friday, December 4th, is our last open day here at One Capitol Mall. Effective December 7th, public access to the library will be restricted to the following:

• returning checked out materials
• filing documents with Document Services
• returning materials to the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
• email and phone reference services. This means that you can still call us at 501-682-2053 or use our Ask A Librarian form to ask reference questions. This service will be available as long as we have access to resources to answer questions.

The public access computers will not be available during the move. Nor may any materials be checked out.

Keep watching this blog for information about our reopening some time in late January or early February.

Thanksgiving resources

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and the Christmas feast is just a month away. If you are stuck for ideas, or want to do some research about the history of turkeys, check our databases. In particular, the Culinary Arts Collection includes 150 of the major cooking and nutrition magazines. Coverage includes thousands of searchable recipes, restaurant reviews, and industry information.

Have a safe and fun Thanksgiving!

Autumn facts

Here are a few facts about autumn, gleaned from our databases:

• "Though not as popular as spring, autumn has been a frequent subject of poetry since the classical Roman era, when certain conventions were established. Autumn, of course, has two aspects: it completes summer and it anticipates winter, it celebrates the harvest of the summer’s crops and it mourns the death of the year; it is, in Dickinson’s words, “A little this side of the snow / And that side of the Haze” (no. 131). " In A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/litsymb/autumn

• "English acquired autumn from Latin autumnus, partly via Old French autompne. Where Latin got the word from is a mystery; it may have been a borrowing from Etruscan, a long-extinct pre-Roman language of the Italian peninsula. In Old English, the term for ‘autumn’ was harvest, and this remained in common use throughout the Middle Ages; it was not until the 16th century that autumn really began to replace it (at the same time as harvest began to be applied more commonly to the gathering of crops). Fall, now the main US term for ‘autumn’, is 16th-century too." In Word Origins. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/acbwordorig/autumn
• From the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, autumn is the :
  

• season of the year between summer and winter during which temperatures gradually decrease. It is often called fall in the United States because leaves fall from the trees at that time. Autumn is usually defined in the Northern Hemisphere as the period between the autumnal equinox (day and night equal in length), September 22 or 23, and the winter solstice (year's shortest day), December 21 or 22; and in the Southern Hemisphere as the period between March 20 or 21 and June 21 or 22. The autumn temperature transition between summer heat and winter cold occurs only in middle and high latitudes; in equatorial regions, temperatures generally vary little during the year. In the polar regions autumn is very short . . .

  The concept of autumn in European languages is connected with the harvesting of crops; in many cultures autumn, like the other seasons, has been marked by rites and festivals revolving around the season's importance in food production. Animals gather food in autumn in preparation for the coming winter, and those with fur often grow thicker coats. Many birds migrate toward the Equator to escape the falling temperatures. A common autumn phenomenon in the central and eastern United States and in Europe is Indian Summer, a period of unseasonably warm weather that sometimes occurs in late October or November.

We're moving!

It is official - the Arkansas State Library will be moving house. Our last day open to the public before the move will be Friday, December 4th. We will reopen at our new location, 900 W. Capitol, just down the road from our current address, sometime in late January or early February.

Any books that have been checked out can be returned before we close, or you can hold on to them, with no penalty, until we reopen

Check back here for more news and updates as they becomes available.

Halloween is coming!

Did you ever wonder about the origins of Halloween? Are you interested in cultural analysis of Halloween customs or movies? Well, we have databases that can help you fulfill both those needs, and many more.

For scholarly takes on Halloween, or other pop culture phenomena, try out the Pop Culture database. This collection provides useful information for any researcher in a social science, history, art, or liberal arts course. The collection is made up of 100 subject-appropriate periodicals, which are predominantly full-text.

For less-in depth, but still useful information, check out Credo Reference, a reference tool containing full-text entries from encyclopedias, traditional and bilingual dictionaries, biographies and quotations. That is where I found this description of the history of Halloween, taken from the Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary:

Halloween has its ultimate origins in the ancient Celtic harvest festival, SAMHAIN, a time when people believed that the spirits of the dead roamed the earth. Irish settlers brought their Halloween customs—which included bobbing for apples and lighting jack-o’-lanterns—to America in the 1840s.

In the United States children go from house to house in costume—often dressed as ghosts, skeletons, or vampires—on Halloween saying, “Trick or treat!” Though for the most part the threat is in jest, the “trick” part of the children’s cry carries the implication that if they don’t receive a treat, the children will subject that house to some kind of prank, such as marking its windows with a bar of soap or throwing eggs at it. Most receive treats in the form of candy or money. But Halloween parties and parades are popular with adults as well.

Because nuts were a favorite means of foretelling the future on this night, All Hallows’ Eve in England became known as Nutcrack Night. Other British names for the day include Bob Apple Night, Duck (or Dookie) Apple Night, Crab Apple Night, Thump-the-door Night, and, in Wales, APPLE AND CANDLE NIGHT. In the United States it is sometimes referred to as Trick or Treat Night.

These and other databases are available to state employees for remote access. Please contact the Circulation Department for more information. The general public may use the databases for free here in the library.

Patents and Trademarks at ASL

The Arkansas State Library is designated a Patent and Trademark Depository Library (PTDL) by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As a PTDL, The Arkansas State Library offers access to the following materials and services:

• Backfile Collections and Current Issues of Patents
• Official Gazette - Patents
• Official Gazette - Trademarks
• Reference Assistance and Referrals
• Patent Classification Research Instruction
• Supplemental Reference Materials
• Training Opportunities

While we do not file patent or trademark applications for you, and we cannot actually do any searches for you, we can show you where to go and the steps you will need to follow to file. We can also show you how to conduct a patent or trademark search (an essential step of filing for a patent or trademark), and provide additional resources to help you along your way. For any specific questions, you can call the library and ask to speak with a reference librarian (501-682-2053) or fill out an Ask a Librarian request.