Holiday Gift Ideas for Book Lovers

Whether you’re looking for a book for a fiction fan or a nifty, one-of-a-kind literary print, The Ames Library has assembled a pastiche of bookish gift ideas from other websites for all of your holiday-shopping needs.

The first guide, from Paste Music, highlights ten noteworthy music books from 2018. Maybe your giftee is a Lou Reed fan, in which case Ezra Furman’s newly released Lou Reed’s Transformer ($10.37 from Amazon) is the ideal thing.

Or perhaps they have a burning desire to answer the decades-old question of whether rock ‘n’ roll is dead. In that case, Steven Hyden’s Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock ($14.27 through Amazon) is a good pick.

If your giftee (or you) leans more toward art and fashion, then the Obvious State shop may be the perfect place to get started. They offer a variety of exquisitely designed journals ($10), art prints ($24), totes ($24), mugs ($16), and more.


The American Library Association has also gotten in on the action with a number of gifts to please the bibliophiles in your life, ranging from $3 to $95. Our favorites include a replica card catalog box from the Library of Congress ($19.95) and the ALA’s own prompt journal This Journal Is Overdue ($16.99), which is designed to get its owner thinking about the authors and books that have made an impact on them.


Finally, if your giftee is just looking for a good read in general, Library Journal has put together a slide of the 10 Best Books of 2018 in 19 categories, from graphic novels and biography to world literature and poetry.

If you’re more interested in treating yourself to all these book-related goodies, though, we promise not to tell! 📚

Extended Weekend Hours for Finals

The Ames Library has the following extended weekend hours for finals:
 
Friday, December 7:  7:45am – 12am
Saturday, December 8:  10am – 12am
Sunday, December 9:  10am – 1:30am
 
Good luck! We’re rooting for you!

Braccio di Bartolo

What’s with Braccio di Bartolo and his strategically placed moth? Braccio was a court jester of Cosimo I de’ Medici in 16th-century Florence and stood for this Agnolo Bronzino portrait around 1564. Somewhere in the ensuing centuries, Braccio was given a pair of underwear made of vines and his owl replaced with a goblet, transforming him into a more modest Bacchus. The painting was restored to its former glory for a 2010 exhibition on Bronzino.
 
You too can become the possessor of strange and wonderful facts when you browse The Ames Library’s collection of periodicals on the east side of the first floor, from which this issue of The Art Bulletin is drawn!

Celebrating CARLI!

If you’ve ever used I-Share (and if you haven’t, do it now) or searched our VuFind catalog for materials, you have CARLI to thank.

CARLI, which stands for Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois, is one of our most fantastic resources. Through CARLI, IWU faculty and students have access to incredible databases like EBSCO as well as many collections, digital and otherwise. CARLI also maintains a Last Copy program, meaning that they work to ensure access to monographs that exist in only a single copy across academic and research libraries in Illinois. Their diverse membership includes large libraries like the University of Illinois and small libraries like the Carl Sandburg Community College. Together, the libraries in this partnership advocate for you, the library user! As their new infographics demonstrate, CARLI served 800,000 students, faculty, and staff and delivered $43.1 million worth of materials and services to member libraries in the past fiscal year alone. It goes without saying that The Ames Library couldn’t be happier to be a member.

Films for Native American History Month

November is Native American History Month and Kanopy is streaming lots of related content, including PBS’s new four-part series, Native America: The World Created by America’s First Peoples. PBS’s description of the series reads:

Each hour of Native America explores Great Nations and reveals cities, sacred stories, and history that has long been hidden in plain sight. In America’s Southwest, First People emerge from the earth to build stone skyscrapers with untold spiritual power, and transform deserts to fertile fields. In New York, warriors renounce war and found America’s first democracy five hundred years before the Declaration of Independence – and later inspire a young Benjamin Franklin. On the banks of the Mississippi, rulers raise a metropolis of pyramids from swampland and draw thousands of pilgrims to their new city to worship the sky. And in the American West, nomads transform a weapon of conquest into a new way of life, turning the tables on European Invaders, and building an empire.

Kanopy is also offering a collection of over 250 films by and about native peoples. Some selections are derived from American Indian Film Festival winners, while others, like Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), star native actors. You can browse the collection here and watch the new PBS series here.

Holiday Gift Drive for Boys & Girls Club


Dear Campus Friends,

In the spirit of the upcoming holidays, The Ames Library is gathering presents for the Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington-Normal. Our local Club is hosting a Family Holiday Shopping opportunity for income-qualified families. Your gifts will help make this event possible.

If you would like to contribute, please bring unwrapped items to the Library Services Desk where we have a bin for donations. Suggestions for gifts have been provided by the Boys & Girls Club team:

Ages 0 – 12:

Popular asks this year include: Lego Sets, Lego Friends Sets, LOL Surprise, Shopkins, Hatchimals, Art Kits (Slime is a very popular item, Friendship bracelets), Unicorn themed items, Play Sets (like Melissa and Doug food, kitchen, construction), Littlest Pet Shop, Dress Up Kits, Nail Kits, Science Construction & Experiment Kits, Drones, Putty, Bath Bombs, Hot Wheels, Kinetic Sand, WWE Characters, Remote Control Cars, Dolls (Baby and Barbie)

Teens 12 – 18 (overlooked population this year):

Headphones, Earbuds, Speakers, Basketball (Compression) Socks, Basketballs, Hair Product and Accessories (our girls love the fat cloth headbands), Flat Irons, Gift Cards (Wal-Mart, Foot Locker, Rue 21, etc), Large Soft (furry) Pillows, Throw Blankets (fun)

Needs for all ages:

Socks, Mittens, Gloves, Hats, Scarves, Deodorant, Body Wash (Axe, Old Spice, Bath and Body, etc), Lotions (for boys & girls)

Board and Card Games

Puzzles (from 24 pieces to 1000 pieces)

How the Debt Stole Christmas

Or, The Ames Library Stealth Artist Strikes Again.

HeinOnline: We Have It

Remember back in August when we were extolling the virtues of our new trial database HeinOnline? How it has “160 million pages and 200,000 titles of historical and government documents in a fully searchable, image-based format?” (Source.) How it contains over two dozen smaller databases, from the Pentagon Papers to Slavery in America to Women and the Law? Well, we now have a subscription, meaning that you can access it any time and anywhere if you are an Illinois Wesleyan student or faculty / staff member!

HeinOnline also regularly add new content. The most recent examples include two new databases, Gun Regulation and Legislation in America and the John F. Kennedy Assassination Collection. If you are doing any research in the areas of law, government, politics, and history, then we cannot recommend HeinOnline enough. Log on today and do a little bit of browsing. We promise you’ll find it valuable!

 

What Are You Thankful For, IWU?

Every November, we set up gratitude trees on the main floor of the library and invite students, faculty, and staff to hang tags on the branches expressing what they are grateful for. Here are some of 2018’s selections, from the poignant to the humorous.


What are you grateful for this year?

Under Construction

Curtis at Work on Blog

The library website will be under development for the next couple months. This should not affect the accessibility of MegaSearch or any of our other electronic resources, but the look and feel of the website may change without warning. Please give the library a call at (309) 556-3350 if you have any problems or questions! Thank you for your patience.