Top Shelf

by Sidney Laramie and Ann Willard, SWC Librarians

Top Shelf is a weekly column where librarians share some of their favorite resources with you.

Book Selection
Historical Statistics of the United States : Earliest Times to the Present
Cambridge University Press, c2006 (5 vols.)
Call #: Ref HA202 H57 2006

I chose to highlight this source because I had never seen it before and because I envision more and more students being assigned to compare aspects of our current economy or government to those of an earlier period (e.g. The Great Depression). Such students should find the chapter on “Business Fluctuations and Cycles” in Vol. IV. to be helpful. There I learned that 3,460 banks were “suspended” in March 1933.

This work is actually a “… revised, updated, and [greatly] expanded Millennial Edition…” of the standard, two volume set last published in 1975. This new edition includes additional topics such as American Indians, slavery, the Confederate States, and poverty. It also gives broader coverage to existing topics and extends the old data by as much as an additional 30 years.

The five volumes which now comprise the set are subtitled as follows: I. “Population”; II. “Work and Welfare”; III. “Economic Structure and Performance”; IV. “Economic Sectors”; and V. “Governance and International Relations”. Each volume averages 850 pages, and contains from seven to nine chapters, all of which have at least one introductory essay. The introductions discuss the statistics in that chapter, the trends observed in them, and give references for further research.

The information available in this set is much broader than one would expect. For example, in glancing through the introduction to the “Population” volume I noticed the foundation of my alma mater listed in a chronology entitled “Important Events in the History of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender: 1619-2003. In the American Indians chapter of the same volume I discovered a list of the amount and price of timber cut on Indian land between 1910 and 1998. Vol. IV. even contains the attendance at NCAA basketball and football games.

-Sidney.


Website Selection
Petfinder
www.Petfinder.com is a wonderful website which links almost 12,000 animal shelters, humane shelters and animal foster care groups from around the country. If you are thinking of adopting a pet or are trying to find a pet you have lost, the pet finder search engine allows you to specify the type of animal, sex of the animal, age, color, and even the breed, located within a few miles of your zip code. Are you missing a pig? No problem, pet pigs are included on the list of animals. The search remembers the last few animals you have viewed, so after looking at perhaps a half dozen potential pot-bellied pigs to adopt, their photos will be displayed at the bottom of your screen. Each entry includes a little description of the personality of each animal and lets you know which group to contact for more information. The pet entries are even coded so that you can quickly identify cats which are declawed, or cannot be in homes with children, etc.

Ok, so community college libraries may not get many people asking about how to find their lost pets. Petfinder.com also has much more information on the site. There are cat breed and dog breed directories; pet training videos; volunteer and donation opportunities; articles on all kinds of pet-related subjects and FAQ’s, including how to ‘go green’ with your pet and how to deal with pet separation anxiety (for the pet’s anxiety, not yours); a PetFinder.com newsletter and blog; and a shopping site. And go to the Fun section of Petfinder and find free e-cards to send your friends. Petfinder.com is well worth a visit!

-Ann.