The Library is open on Saturday!

Don't fall behind on your classes! The Library is open on Saturday, 10 am - 2 pm. 

Use the time now to catch up, to finish an assignment, or to prepare for next week.

See you at the Library!

Arts & Culture for Hispanic Heritage Month

Google Arts & Culture: U.S. Latino Cultures

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, explore Google Arts & Culture's newest platform, U.S. Latino Cultures. If you love travel and culture, Google Arts & Culture is the next best thing to being there.

Here, you can immerse yourself in almost anything related to art and history. The high quality images are impressive and offer detailed descriptions about the included works, links to related information, and most notably the stories behind the images.

Google Arts & Culture is curated to illustrate a diverse collection of content from around the world; ranging from historical sites, fashion, cultural heritage, street art, folk art, and the traditional arts. It will engage you with cultural experiences across art, history, and wonders of the world across 70 countries and more than a thousand museums.

Review by Margaret Drehobl, SWC Librarian

30-Minute Thursdays

30-Minute Thursdays begin on October 5!

Join us at noon in L-244 every Thursday for a half hour. We'll cover various topics each Thursday, so feel free to attend one or attend them all! Ask your instructor if Extra Credit is available for attendance.

Banned Books Week

Celebrate your freedom to read! 

Banned Books Week is September 24 - September 30

SWC Library has a collection of books that have been challenged and banned throughout the years. Some of those books are currently on display in the Reference Area. Check any of these books out for four weeks with your SWC photo ID card.

Some titles included:

• The Autobiography of Malcom X with the assistance of Alex Haley
• Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• The Words of Cesar Chavez by Cesar Chavez 

Have a question?

Ask us now!

Chat with a librarian

Free research assistance

Available for all SWC students

24 hours a day, 7 days a week

What's yoga?

September is National Yoga Month

Visit the Library's display on the third floor. 

We have books and many other resources to learn about yoga!

Have a question? Ask a librarian!

Get Unstuck

Free Tutoring

Stuck in one of your classes? Get unstuck!

Free tutoring is available on the third floor of the Library.

 

Hispanic Heritage Month

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at the Library! 

September 15 - October 15, 2017

Visit our display on the second floor near the main entrance. We have books, e-books, articles, videos, and much more on this topic.

Want to know more about DACA?

National Immigration Law Center: DACA
https://www.nilc.org/issues/daca/ 

What is DACA? How are the DREAM Act of 2010 and the 2017 DREAM Act involved?

The DACA section of the National Immigration Law Center website is a great online resource that describes these terms and provides the latest legislative news state-wide and nationally.

The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) is a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles with offices in Washington, D.C. and Berkeley, California, that dedicates itself to advancing the legal rights of low-income immigrants in coordination with other national civil rights organizations. Not only does the NILC provide legal counsel, but also publishes educational materials to inform the public.

Recent events involving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program spurred legislative action by Congress to propose the 2017 DREAM Act bill. The NILC produced a free downloadable, 4-page PDF table comparing the provisions offered between the DACA program, 2010 DREAM Act, which failed to pass as federal law, and the proposed 2017 DREAM Act.

Knowing what each one provides can help you and your friends understand the legal complexities of this current issue.

For more information, especially current lawsuits or articles from journals, magazines or newspapers, go the LexisNexis: Academic online database at the SWC Library’s Articles and Databases website and type DACA in the Academic Search box.

Review by Arnold Josafat, SWC Librarian

Monday -- Celebrate Constitution Day with us!

After you grab your piece of cake from the Cesar Chavez Center, don't forget to stop by the Library to see our Constitution Day display! It's near the Reference Desk by the main entrance.

We are open on Saturday!

The Library is open 10 am - 2 pm on Saturday!

Ready to get some work done? Take a break from the noise and heat and join us at the Library this weekend.

Free Tutoring in the Library

Math -- Better Explained

Better Explained: Math Lessons for Lasting Insight - https://betterexplained.com/

Math lessons! If you are like me and consider math not your friend, than this web page can be a big help for you. The site owner, Kalid Azad, originated this site while still at Princeton University, and developed it into books (Math, Better Explained and Calculus, Better Explained), a blog, and this current site. If you want to learn more about him, visit the About page for tons of links to interviews, his books, testimonials, etc. https://betterexplained.com/about/

His philosophy can be summed up in one Einstein quote: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

The home page can be used as a Table of Contents for the web site. You'll see the most current blog posts, then popular articles, then articles organized by subjects, such as Arithmetic and Numbers, or Algebra and Counting. https://betterexplained.com/

The Articles page is an archive for all the blog articles. It is organized by the categories in the blog and also by date. https://betterexplained.com/archives/
 

Azad included a page, Calculus Guide, that can come handy for the time deprived learner. He offers short and long explanations of calculus theories, depending on how much time the interested party would like to spend. You have 1 minute? No problem! You can learn how to turn a circle into a triangle. https://betterexplained.com/guides/calculus/  If you have 20 or 30 minutes or an hour or 12 weeks, you can learn even more.

If you like this blog, you can sign up for his newsletter here: https://betterexplained.com/newsletter/ 

Of course, for me the most interesting articles were not about calculus or any other theories, but some fun facts about math, such as shortcuts to do Math mentally. https://betterexplained.com/articles/mental-math-shortcuts/  How fun! Or the article about developing a sense of scale, which is, tie what you want to understand to something that you know or see for easier understanding.

Here is one example: "We like to see, not imagine abstract numbers. To our brains, a million, billion, and trillion all seem like large, vague numbers. Apple knows this....Many of its ads compare products to everyday objects, rather than touting the raw dimensions. The Macbook Air fits into a manilla envelope. The ipod nano is as thick as a pencil. Certain cameras fit in a box of altoids. You know their size without busting out a ruler."

This site is not strictly about Math, but other things as well, that Azad is interested in. I enjoyed reading about his advice about web development https://betterexplained.com/articles/category/web/  or personal development https://betterexplained.com/articles/category/personal-development/
 

His style of sharing his understanding of concepts is intuitive, based on what you already know, to "approach ideas from a different angle."
As a bonus, his book Calculus, Better Explained is available on his site for free (text only): https://betterexplained.com/calculus/

Review by Erika Prange, SWC Librarian  

What would you do in a disaster?

Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed. 

Ready San Diego - http://www.readysandiego.org/

During a disaster, federal, state and local emergency services may be overwhelmed by the volume and extent of incidents and therefore delayed in assisting citizens in need. As FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) notes, “People need to be the help before the help arrives." 

FEMA reminds citizens to:

 • have a personal emergency plan

 • store at least a 3 day supply of food and water

 • be ready to help your neighbors

 • be prepared to be immediate responders 

In support of this goal, Ready San Diego offers extensive information for citizens on disaster readiness including preparing for:

 • wildfires

 • earthquakes

 • pandemic influenza

 • tsunamis

 • flooding

 • terrorism

Ready San Diego also includes information on:

 • creating a personal emergency plan 

 • assembling an emergency kit (including for your pets!)

 • locating resources (including the regional notification system AlertSanDiego) for becoming/staying informed in a disaster

Ready San Diego also provides an informative list of San Diego maps including:

 • Emergency Map - an interactive web map with data including local hazards, fire perimeters, AlertSanDiego emergency notification areas, evacuation centers, evacuation routes, traffic control

 • Know Your Hazards - enter a street address to display a map of wildfire, earthquake, flood and tsunami hazards

 • Wildfire Hazard Map Tool - find the level of wildfire hazard in your area and learn how to reduce your fire risk

 • Adverse Weather Map - displays the 100-year floodplain, recent fire burn areas, and weather alerts

Ready San Diego also offers links to organizations for additional training. I highly recommend the CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) Academy, where you will learn (1) disaster preparedness for area hazards and (2) basic disaster response skills including:​

 • managing utilities (electricity, gas, water) and extinguishing small fires

 • medical aid including how to open airways, control bleeding, and treat for shock

 • how to search for and rescue victims safely

 • collecting disaster intelligence to support first responder efforts

More info on CERT can be found here:

http://www.readysandiego.org/get_involved/

Review by Rachael Smithey, SWC Librarian ​