El día de los niños / El día de los libros

Celebrate Children's Day / Book Day today -- April 30!

El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day), is a celebration of children, families, and reading. The holiday emphasizes the importance of literacy for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

"Just 20 minutes a day reading aloud with young children strengthens relationships, encourages listening and language skills, promotes attention and curiosity, and establishes a strong reading foundation. These skills are essential for success in school and in life." Sources: Children's Reading Foundation and Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading.

Join a celebration!
Chula Vista Public Library
San Diego Public Library
San Diego County Library

Website of the Week

Digital Public Library of America - http://dp.la

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) offers convenient online access to over 2 million items including books, photos, video and audio from libraries, museums, and archives around the country. Content providers include the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the New York Public Library, and various academic and regional libraries.

Search the collection by keyword, or browse by subject, place or date. Create an account (free) to save searches or items, or to create playlists.

Special online exhibits include Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States (learn the origin of the "Sidecar") and This Land Is Your Land: Parks and Public Spaces (see an amazing photo of a black bear looking into a car window at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park).

Bear on side of car with photographer taking its picture, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Also check out the apps built on the DPLA platform. The StackLife app displays DPLA books as a vertical stack of books. The darker the blue book cover, the more times the book has been accessed. The thicker the book, the more pages it has. The longer the book, the older it is. Search by keyword, title, author or subject, and browse by scrolling through the stack. To start reading, simply click to select the book and choose "Read Book". Fun reads include classics by Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, and works by lesser-known authors including Shepherd's Across America by Motorcycle from 1922 and Long's Motor Camping from 1926.

Review by Rachael Smithey, SWC Librarian

Have a question?

We can help.

Real People

24/7

Ask Us Now Chat Reference

Hungry?

Support your library by eating a yummy meal!

Eat at the Pick Up Stix in Eastlake TODAY - April 24 - between 11:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Twenty percent of your order will go to the book club to purchase new books for the SWC Library and the Chula Vista Public Library.

Bring the attached flier to present when ordering. Copies of the flier are available at the service desks in the library.

Book News

The Story of How a Book Stolen by the Nazis Made Its Way Back Home
by Rebecca J. Rosen
The Atlantic
April 17, 2013

"The book itself is nothing so special -- just a periodical from a German Alpine club -- but when Peter Schweitzer, a rabbi living in New York, saw it listed among the results of a Google search last spring, it took his breath away.

The book once belonged to Schweitzer's great-grandfather, Franz Fuerstenheim, a Berlin Jew who had fled his home as the Nazis rose to power. Schweitzer had stumbled into a project of the Central and Regional Library of Berlin to reunite possibly as many as 250,000 Nazi-seized books with their owners or descendents, (or, in most cases, the descendants of those owners)."

This Week in CQ Researcher

Law Schools: Is a legal education worth the cost?
by Kenneth Jost

"Rising tuition and declining job prospects are creating a crisis for law school students and graduates, who face the likelihood of earning incomes below what they need to finance staggering debt. Students leave law school these days with debts averaging more than $100,000.

The legal job market is difficult, partly because of the recession and partly because of technological changes that allow outsourcing of legal work or do-it-yourself lawyering. Nearly half of the 2012 graduates failed to find a long-term, full-time legal job nine months later. The median income for graduates who do find jobs is about $60,000 per year.

Law school tuition rose rapidly over the past decade, but schools are now facing pressure to cut costs as the number of applicants shrinks. Some professors and outside observers bluntly warn that law school is a bad investment for many students. But others insist that a legal education is still valuable as a path to a profitable career and an active role in public affairs."

Read the entire report. Access from off campus is available with the current passwords.

Check It Out

San Diego Poetry Annual : The Best Poems from Every Corner of the Region (2011-2012)
New Books: PS 572 .S3 S26 2011-2012
Available for four-week check out with your SWC photo ID card.

What could be a better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than to read a collection of poems from every corner of San Diego County?

Prior years are available in the Stacks: PS 572 .S3 S26

Thinking about getting a job?

The library has career and job resources for you!

• Find a book or e-book to help you create the best resume possible
• Watch a video or read about interviewing skills
• Explore job resources on the Internet
• Find out all of the details about your career choice - including work conditions, salary and whether it's a growing field (Occupational Outlook Handbook)
• What can I do with a major in... ? (Compiled by University of NC Wilmington)

And don't forget SWC's Career Center, located in the Cesar Chavez building.

Need help? Ask a librarian!

Drawing Lesson

Ask Us Now

Need help with your research? 

Ask Us Now 

Real People, Real Help, 24/7

Celebrate National Library Week

 April 14 - April 20, 2013

Communities Matter @ Your Library

Stop by the library - it's your community! Or visit us online.

Essay Contest Winner Announced

The winner of this year’s Friends of the Library essay contest is Julie Barrios. Julie is taking classes at Southwestern as well as at SDSU, where she hopes to major in Marine Biology.

The prize for her winning essay is an iPad mini, which she happily picked up at the Library on April 5.

Thanks to all who entered the contest and to the judges. Congratulations, Julie!

Check It Out

Student's Guide to Writing College Papers

by Kate Turabian

University of Chicago Press, 2010.

New Book Area, Call Number: LB2369 .T82 2010 

This book will introduce you "to the art of defining a topic, doing high-quality research with limited resources, and writing an engaging and solid college paper."

There are three sections to guide you through writing your paper. In Part 1, you'll learn about the research process, including how to choose and develop your topic, validate sources, plan arguments, write drafts, and how to avoid plagiarism. Part 2 gives you the nuts and bolts for how to cite your sources. Part 3, "Style," discusses, punctuation, spelling, and other important elements of writing.

New books are available for four-week check out with your SWC photo ID card. Many more books on this topic are available in the library. Have a question? Ask a librarian!

Literary Festival Begins Tuesday

SWC Guest Writers Series

Spring 2013 Literary Festival 

Celebrating National Poetry Month 

Tuesday, April 9
Session 1: 9:30 am-10:45 am
So Say We All
Writing and Performance Workshop with Justin Hudnall (room L238 N/S)

Justin Hudnall holds a BFA from New York University‘s Tisch School of the Arts, by way of the Department of Dramatic Writing. His graduating year coincided with September 11th, which heavily influenced both his writing and his adoption of a career in international humanitarian aid, serving with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as an emergency operations officer in New York and Southern Sudan. Currently, he serves as the Executive Director of So Say We All, a San Diego based non-profit arts collective which provides opportunities for expression and arts education to populations without access. In 2012 he was selected as a San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst Fellow and recipient of the Rising Arts Leader Award. Justin is a twice finalist for the International Story Contest of Cork, Ireland. His plays have been performed off-broadway at The Atlantic Theater and Director’s Club, as well as several national regional theaters. His prose has been published by The Quotable, Citybeat, Voice of San Diego, Pinchback Press, Naughty American, The Huffington Post, Heinemann Press, and other alt. journalism and literary titles. He is co-editor of Last Night Night On Earth, a collectivist novel chronicling the day leading up to the end of the world through the perspectives of 20 writers all over the world, and The Far East: Everything Just As It Is, a people’s history of San Diego’s East County.

Tuesday April 9th
Session 2: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
So Say We All
Performance (room L238 N/S)

Writers/performers from So Say We All bring their multimedia VAMP showcase to Southwestern College on April 9th from 11-11:50am for a special showing of some of the funniest and toughest writing from their catalog, and to tell you how to get involved in the new literary revolution. For more information about So Say We All, visit http://www.sosayweallonline.com/.

Need help with your research?

Ask us now! Real people, real help, 24/7.

Database of the Month

Magill's Medical Guide - Salem Health

This resource covers diseases, disorders, treatments, procedures, specialties, anatomy, biology, and issues in an A-Z format, with sidebars addressing recent developments in medicine and concise information boxes for all diseases and disorders.

Access is available from off campus with the current passwords. Have a question? Ask a librarian!

April is National Poetry Month

Celebrate National Poetry Month by reading, memorizing, or even writing a poem!

The library has many poetry books and critical works about poetry. Search the library catalog to find books and e-books by your favorite poet -- or to discover a new favorite.

The Academy of American Poets came up with 30 ways for you to celebrate poetry for each day in April.

Have a question? Ask a librarian!

This Week in CQ Researcher

Gay Marriage: Will the Supreme Court end curbs on same-sex unions? by Kenneth Jost.

Cuc Vu and Gwen Migita, right, leave the courthouse in Washington, D.C., after applying for a marriage license on March 3, 2010, the first day licenses were available in the District of Columbia. (Getty Images/The Washington Post/Bill O'Leary)

"The Supreme Court is set to confront the issue of gay marriage for the first time in 40 years in two cases set for argument in late March. Same-sex couples are asking the justices to strike down California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state just six months after a court ruled that preventing gays and lesbians from marrying was unconstitutional.

In a second case, a New York City widow is urging the court to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which limits federal benefits for same-sex couples. Edith Windsor had to pay a $363,000 federal tax bill on her late wife's estate that would not have been levied on an opposite-sex spouse.

The Obama administration says both laws are unconstitutional. House Republicans stepped into the Windsor case to defend DOMA. Court watchers say the justices are likely to be closely divided along conservative-liberal lines, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy widely seen as having the pivotal vote on the nine-member bench."

Read the entire report via CQ Researcher, one of the library's research databases. Off-campus access is available with the current semester's passwords.