January 2006

New Fiction

• The Stone Woman -Tariq Ali
• The Christmas quilt : an Elm Creek quilts novel - Jennifer Chiaverini
• The Sempster's Tale - Margaret Frazer
• Get a Life - Nadine Gordimer
• The Constant Princess - Philppa Gregory
• Green Angel - Alice Hoffman
• The Lighthouse - P.D. James
• Light from heaven - Jan Karon
• The Wave - Walter Mosley
• Saving fish from drowning - Amy Tan

New Non-Fiction

• Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town - Nate Blakeslee
• Our endangered values : America's moral crisis - Jimmy Carter
• Consumer Reports Buying Guide 2006
• Kingston : City on the Hudson - Alf Evers
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures - Anne Fadiman
• First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong - James R. Hansen
• Dinner at the New Gene Cafe : how genetic engineering is changing what we eat, how we live, and the global politics of food - Bill Lambrecht
• JK Lasser's Your Income Tax 2006
• The politics of food - edited by Marianne Elisabeth Lien and Brigitte Nerlich
• The Hudson : a history - Tom Lewis
• Teacher Man : a memoir - Frank McCourt
• The Gladiators: History's Most Deadly Sport - Fik Meijer
• A field guide to Animal Tracks - Olaus J. Murie and Mark Elbroch
• Gary Null's Mind Power: Rejuvenate Your Brain and Memory Naturally - Gary Null
• Slow food : the case for taste - Carlo Petrini
• Leslie Sansone's Eat Smart, Walk Strong: The Secrets to Effortless Weight Loss - Leslie Sansone
• Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World - edited by Page Talbott
• Talk to the Hand : the utter bloody rudeness of the world today, or, six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door - Lynne Truss
• The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia - Piers Vitebsky

New Audios

• The Lincoln lawyer - by Michael Connelly
• The hidden diary of Marie Antoinettel - by Carolly Erickson
• S is for Silence - Sue Grafton
• The Lost Painting: The Search for a Caravagio Masterpiece - Jonathan Harr
• The Lighthouse - P.D. James
• Raising the peaceable kingdom: what animals can teach us about the social origins of tolerance and friendship - by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
• River of doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's darkest journey - Candice Millard
• Thrush Green - Miss Read
• Blue Smoke - Nora Roberts
• Birds of a feather - Jacqueline Winspear

New DVD's

• Constantine
• Five Children and It
• Grizzley Man
• The Interpreter
• Kingdom of Heaven
• Lilo and Stitch 2: Stitch has a glitch
• The Simpsons 6th Season
• Stand by Me
• West Wing 5th Season
• War of the Worlds

BOOKLISTS

Every month in this spot we feature reading suggestions. These include historic fiction, science fiction, mysteries, and more. Many of these titles can be found in the Mid Hudson Library System.

The Lighter Side Small Town Life

"If nobody knows the trouble you've seen, then you don't live in a small town." It should also be noted that two titles (Grisham's A Painted House, & Hassler's Staggerford series) made both the dark side and the light side of small town life (which really is a more apt description of small town life anyway isn't it?).

FICTION

• Barker, Raffaella - Hens Dancing
• Beaton, M.C. - Hamish Macbeth & Agatha Raisin series
• Bodet, Tom - End of the Road Alaska stories
• Braselton, Jeanne - A False Sense of Well Being
• Braun, Lillian Jackson
• Brown, Rita Mae - Mrs. Murphy mysteries
• Burns, Olive Ann - Cold Sassy Tree
• Cannon, Julie - Homegrown series
• Chiaverini, Jennifer - The Quilter's Apprentice
• Christie, Agatha - Miss Marple series (Mystery)
• Dallas, Sandra - The Persian Pickle Club
• Earley, Tony - Jim the Boy
• Edgerton, Clyde - Walking Across Egypt, Raney
• Finney, Charles G - Past the End of the Pavement
• Flagg, Fannie - Redbird Christmas, other novels
• Gearinbo, G.D. - What the Deaf Mute Heard
• Gillespie, Karin - Bet Your Bottom Dollar, A Dollar Short
• Grisham, John - A Painted House (also darker side of small town life)
• Gulley, Phillip - Harmony novels
• Hart, Caroline - Death on Demand Series (Mystery)
• Hassler, Jon - Staggerford & Others (also darker side of small town life)
• Hess, Joan - Maggody, AR series
• Karon, Jan - Mitford Series
• King, Cassandra - The Sunday Wife
• Keillor, Garrison - Lake Wobegeon
• Landvik, Lorna - Patty Jane's House of Curl, & others
• Macleod, Charlotte - Peter Shandy Stories
• Macomber, Debbie - Cedar Cove Series
• McManus, Patrick F - almost any of his stories
• Medlicott, Joan - The Ladies of Covington Send Their Love
• Miller, Hugh - Ballykissangel
• Montgomery, L.M. - Anne of Avonlea
• Pearson, T.R. - A Short History of a Small Place
• Pederson, Laura - Beginner's Luck
• Perelman, S.J. - Acres and Pains
• Pym, Barbara
• Read, Miss
• Ross, Ann B - Miss Julia series
• Russo, Richard - Empire Falls
• Shaw, Rebecca - The New Rector
• Sholem Aleichem - Many of his Short Stories, esp Tevye the Dairyman (the basis for fiddler on the roof)
• Smith, Annettte - Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights
• Smith, Madeline Babcock - The Lemon Jelly Cake
• Tarkington, Booth - Penrod Trilogy (&others?)
• Trigiani, Adriana - Big Stone Gap Novels
• Trollope, Joanna
• Valentine, Katherine - A Miracle for St Cecelia's, A Gathering of Angels, Grace Will Lead Me Home
• Warren, Nancy - Turn Left at Sanity
• White, Bailey - Quite a Year for Plums, Mama Makes Up Her Mind
• Wingate, Lisa - Trilogy:Texas Cooking, Lone Star Café, Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner ALSO Tending Roses, Good Hope Road, The Language of Sycamores

NON-FICTION

• Benjamin, David - The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked
• Herriot, James - Any title
• Hickam, Homer - Rocket Boys
• Hoose, Phillip - Hoosiers: The Fabulous Basketball Life of Indiana
• Kimmel, Haven - A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana
• Laskas, Jeanne Marie - Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm & the sequel - The Exact Same Moon: Fifty Acres and a Family
• Lende, Heather - If You Lived Here I'd Know Your Name: News From Small Town Alaska
• Perry, Michael - Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

Knitting Group

Saturdays, January 7, 14, 21, 28 10am-Noon

Our knitting group meets every Saturday in the Library's Reference room. All levels are welcome.

A Message for our Rochester Patrons

As you know, Rochester residents pay a membership fee for library support. The residents of Marbletown support the Library through property tax assessments for the library district. Currently the average Marbletown household pays $78 a year to support the Library’s services and programs. This fall the Library Board made a proposal to the outgoing Rochester Town Board requesting Town funds to reduce the membership fee for Rochester residents. The outgoing Board decided that it could not provide support and appropriated no funds for the Library in the 2006 Town budget.

Thus, to provide needed budget support and to keep up with increases that Marbletown residents are now paying, the 2006 membership fee for Rochester uses will be $50. It may be paid in one amount or paid in two payments of $25 each, good for a six month membership.

The Stone Ridge Library board and library staff look forward to serving the library needs of our many Rochester patrons in 2006. Thank you for your support.

On behalf of the Stone Ridge Library Board, James Hoover
President

Seek and Ye Shall Find: Top Ten Alternative Search Engines

lifehacker by Wendy Boswell - 12.15.05

Next to email, search is Internet users' primary activity. But most people don't realize that there's a LOT more search engines out there than just the Big Four: Google, Yahoo, AOL, or MSN. In fact, there are literally hundreds of really great niche, or vertical, search engines that focus on all kinds of topics: images, jobs, Bit Torrents, blogs, etc. You can find all sorts of great stuff using these alternative search engines that you might not be able to find on the more general, Big Box-type of search engines; plus, most of these niche search engines have really interesting features that are fun to play with.

Here are just a few of the great alternative search engines out there on the Web.

1. Clusty: Clusty is a metasearch engine, meaning it combines results from a variety of different sources. However, Clusty adds a bit of extra search engine goodness in the mix by giving you clustered results. Basically, clustered results are extra search suggestions arranged by category - for example, if you type in "coffee", Clusty responds with clustered results to the left such as Tea, Espresso, History of Coffee, etc.

2. Indeed: Indeed.com is a job search engine. It is not a list of message boards, or a place where you can actually submit your resume. Indeed is extremely simple to use, and covers all the major job boards, newspaper classified sites, niche industry sites and corporate job sites. I found more jobs in five minutes on here than I did searching on other job boards. You have to go to the individual websites in order to apply (which is kind of a pain) but this is a great way to generate job leads. Indeed also offers a nice toolset for the job searcher, including a JobRoll, "a customized, dynamically-updating list of jobs that may be placed on your blog or website."

3. Isohunt: Isohunt is a Bit Torrent search engine. Isohunt does not host files; Isohunt only helps you find files, and therefore is a completely legal service. From an Isohunt forum thread: "IsoHunt crawls several torrent sites, and when you search for torrents here, you get links to HTML pages on these sites where the. Torrent files can be found." Finding Bit Torrent files on Isohunt is made even easier by viewing the Isohunt Zeitgeist..

4. FoodieView: With a brand new site design, FoodieView is one of my all-time favorite alternative search engines. FoodieView is a recipe search engine searching over 175,000 recipes from all different kinds of sources, including AllRecipes.com, The Food Network, Martha Stewart Recipes, and many more. FoodieView is a targeted recipe search engine with a lot of really interesting features; it's also extremely easy to find good recipes on FoodieView that are actually relevant to what your search query is, which, if you've ever tried to find a recipe using certain ingredients on one of the bigger search engines, you'll agree with me when I say that it can be a huge time-waster.

5. Ditto: Ditto.com is a free image search engine that enables users to search for images, quickly and easily. Ditto recently announced that they have 500 million pictures in their image search (and counting), and they claim to have the "largest searchable index of visual content on the Internet via proprietary processes." Basically, Ditto is a way to find images fast and effectively - they've also been around for a pretty long time in Internet years (I remember using them back when they started in 1999). A good alternative to Google Images.

6. Healthline: Healthline.com is a medical information search engine, with lots of interesting features that make it very simple to use (in other words, you don't have to have an MD degree to find what you're looking for here). Healthline is solely dedicated to finding medical information online, and it offers medically filtered results developed by trained medical personnel.

7. FirstGov: FirstGov.gov is an absolutely mammoth search engine/portal that gives the searcher direct access to searchable information from the United States government, state governments, and local governments. It can be overwhelming, simply because there is SO much information here. I would suggest that you get your feet wet with FirstGov by using the Information By Topic directory, or you can choose to drill down by viewing the Site Index. In addition, FirstGov offers an above average Advanced Search help page.

8. AuctionMapper: AuctionMapper is an extremely cool search engine that focuses only on eBay listings. Sure, eBay has it's own site search; but AuctionMapper takes that site search and goes a few steps further. There's all sorts of geeky fun to be had with AuctionMapper; the whole site is full of maps, animated thingies that fly around, Star Trekky sounds - it's just a really well-done search engine that is not only fun to play with, but it's actually useful, a combination that seems to be hard to come by these days.

9. Daypop: Daypop is a current events/blogosphere search engine. Daypop crawls sites that are updated frequently in order to bring searchers the latest news; included in Daypop's index are newspapers, blogs, online magazines-any site that is updated on a regular basis will make it into Daypop's index. You can use Daypop to search a small slice of the Web for news and information, see what people are talking about in real-time, view what links are being passed around most frequently, and more. I use Daypop as my own virtual office water-cooler; it's a great way to catch Web trends before they become trendy.

10. Blinkx: Blinkx TV is basically a search engine that allows you to search for audio, video, and podcasts using not only keywords and phrases, but also content in the actual clips that you're looking for. For example, if you wanted to find Kermit the Frog's "It's Not Easy Being Green", you could type in "having to spend each day the color of the leaves", and Blinkx would be able to fetch your data using not only your content, but the concept behind your content - the spoken word (or in this case, the lyrics). It's also another search engine that's just beautifully designed - you're going to want to make sure you have relatively high-speed access in order to view the site the way it was intended.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Internet search engines; over at About Web Search I've been profiling a new search engine every day this fall - 100 Search Engines in 100 Days - and I haven't run out of material yet. The Web is just so massively ginormous that one search engine could not ever possibly hope to index all that information in one place. Alternative search engines are an excellent way to get different snapshots of the Web than what you may be used to.

RECIPE OF THE MONTH

Shrimp Etouffe Cajun

• 1/2 cup Butter
• 1/4 cup Flour
• 1 cup Onion, chopped
• 1 Stalk Celery, chopped
• 1/2 cup Green Pepper, chopped
• 1 Tbl. finely chopped Garlic
• 1 tsp. coarse Salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground Pepper
• 1/4 tsp. Cayenne Pepper
• 1 Tbl. Lemon Juice
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced Scallions
• 2 Tbl. minced Parsley
• 1 cup cold Water, or Fish Stock (or use the shrimp skins to make a quick stock)
• 1 Lb. raw Shrimp, cleaned

In a 5 quart saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour; this is a roux. Stir roux constantly over medium heat until it is a dark peanut color. This may take as much as 30 minutes but this step is essential as the brown roux produces tha authentic Cajun flavor. Add onion, green pepper, celery and garlic and cook the roux for 20 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil and add shrimp; lower heat and simmer until shrimp just turns pink. Season and serve over rice. Serves 4-6.

From Taster's Choice, by The Stone Ridge Library. Recipe by Maryjean Tocco.

To place a hold on this book, or any other item in the Mid-Hudson Catalog click http://www.midhudsonlibraries.org/

Thanks

Thank you to all patrons who filled out our recent on-line survey. For those of you who may have missed it there are still paper copies available at the Library.

GREAT WEBSITES !

Fimoculous: Lists

Find hundreds of year-end "best-of" (and some "worst-of") lists. Topics include books, film, music, automobiles, words (such as banished word list and word of the year), people, and more. Includes links to lists from previous years. From Web personality and chronic list-compiler Rex Sorgatz. Fimoculous

History of the Super Bowl

These articles discuss each game that has been played in this National Football League (NFL) annual event, which began in 1967, and which pits the winner of the American Football Conference (AFC) against the National Football Conference (NFC) winner. Also includes a list of games, with teams and scores. From the website for Sporting News magazine. SuperBowl

Winter Olympics History

Historical information about all Olympic Winter Games back to the first games in Chamonix, France, in 1924. Includes medal totals, and list of gold, silver, and bronze medal-winners in each event. Also includes links to information about the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy. From CBS SportsLine. OlympicsHistory

Classical and Opera Music Used in Movies

"Have you ever wondered what that music in a movie was?" This site provides "a listing of classical and opera music used in [selected] movies and films." Browsable by movie title or composer. Most entries are for movies from the 1990s to the present. From an opera enthusiast. MovieMusic

Baby Boomers' Retirement Prospects: An Overview

This November 2003 report looks at retirement preparedness and prospects "of the baby-boom generation (people born from 1946 to 1964)." It discusses Social Security, Medicare, private pensions, retirement saving rates, savings needed for retirement, and more. A table provides summaries of retirement preparedness studies from the 1990s through 2003. From the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Retirement

Snowshoe Magazine

The website for this publication contains information about recreational snowshoeing and snowshoe racing. The "First-Timer's Guide" discusses snowshoes, other gear, and where to snowshoe. The site also includes selected articles about snowshoeing topics, an events calendar, and photos. Snowshoe

History of Cars Timeline

A brief timeline of the invention of small engines and cars from 1769 to 1997. Includes information about a steam-powered vehicle built in 1769, the invention of the four-stroke and two-stroke engines in 1876, the formation of the Ford Motor Company in 1903, and the impact of the energy crisis of 1973. Also includes links to other materials about cars and car design. From the Discovery Channel, U.K. Cars

Are we set for information overload?
As books get digitized and TV shows get downloadable, will it be too much?

12.20.05 - The Associated Press

Books are being scanned to make them searchable on the Internet. Television broadcasts are being recorded and archived for online posterity. Radio shows, too, are getting their digital conversion - to podcasts.

With a few keystrokes, we'll soon be able to tap much of the world's knowledge. And we'll do it from nearly anywhere - already, newer iPods can carry all your music, digital photos and such TV classics as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" along with more contemporary prime-time fare.

Will all this instantly accessible information make us much smarter, or simply more stressed? When can we break to think, absorb and ponder all this data?

"People are already struggling and feeling like they need to keep up with the variety of information sources they already have," said David Greenfield, a psychologist who wrote "Virtual Addiction." "There are upper limits to how much we can manage."

It may take better technology to cope with the problems better technology creates.

Of course, if used properly, the new resources have vast potential to shape how we live, study and think.

Consider books.

Nicole Quaranta, 22, is a typical youth. The New York University grad student in education does most of her research online. She'll check databases for academic journals and newspaper articles - but rarely books, even though she acknowledges an author who spent years on a 300-page book might have a unique perspective.

"The library is daunting because I have to go there and everything is organized by academic area," Quaranta said. "I don't even know where to begin." Were books as easily searchable as Web pages, she'd reconsider. Otherwise, they might as well not exist.

With a generation growing up expecting everything on the Internet, libraries, nonprofit organizations and leading search companies like Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are committing hundreds of millions of dollars collectively to scan books and other printed materials so they can be indexed and retrieved online. HarperCollins Publishers even announced plans in mid-December to digitize its vast catalog.

(Access to most works still in copyright remains limited, though. Google Inc., for instance, is displaying only portions and sending those wanting more to a bookstore or nearby library. Even so, publishers and authors groups have sued Google.)

The online access will let scholars and everyday readers obtain firsthand accounts from books rather than secondary interpretations in Web postings that can be inaccurate or biased.

"There's a lot of really good, although not well-known, books that are really almost impossible to get hold of," said Dick Gross, 61, a retired radiological physicist in Oregon City, Ore., who seeks older books for bible teachings. "They are locked up in somebody's library without people who live very far away having access to it."

Alan Staples Jr., 23, a Lawrence, Kan., businessman, likes the idea of online books so much that he's even willing to pay a few pennies a page just to avoid a library.

Indeed, Amazon.com Inc. announced such a program in November and is working with publishers to get the necessary rights.

Meanwhile, television shows formerly locked up in network or studio vaults are starting to emerge online.

"Before, once it has been aired, it's gone, and it doesn't really contribute to our knowledge space," said Jakob Nielsen, a Web design expert with Nielsen Norman Group.

For the past year, Google has been digitally recording news and other programs from several TV stations in the San Francisco area (although Google has limited display to still images and closed-captioned text until it settles copyright matters).

Early next year, America Online Inc. and Warner Bros. will offer free access to dozens of old television shows, including "Welcome Back Kotter." And Apple Computer Inc. recently started selling episodes of shows old and new from ABC and NBC Universal for $1.99 each - viewable on computers and its newer iPods. The catalog includes "Lost" and "Law & Order."

TiVo Inc. is also getting more mobile, expanding its digital recording service to permit video transfers to iPods and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable.

In audio, National Public Radio has been producing free podcasts featuring clips or entire programs. Anyone with a music player can listen anytime, anywhere.

And then there are materials born digital: Photos from digital cameras can now be easily shared, even among strangers, at sites like Yahoo's Flickr.

Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says centralization and easy access could make people smarter: Instead of wasting time finding information, they can focus more on assessing its worth.

But there's the danger, he says, that people will simply take information for granted: Assuming that whatever pops up first is the best.

Worse, people may simply tune out.

Field research by Jennifer Kayahara, a sociology graduate student at the University of Toronto, shows people are overwhelmed as it is.

"For people who don't search extensively online, that's the reason they give: `There's too much,'" she said, adding that people worry they might miss something yet don't have the time to seek it out.

The key may lie in technologies that push to the top items you seek - or would like, even if you don't know to look. Search analyst Danny Sullivan describes such a tool as "some sort of metal detector or magnet to pull all the good stuff out of the haystack."

Virtual communities may contribute to that end.

An online bookmarking service called del.icio.us, just purchased by Yahoo, lets you discover new sites by checking those frequented by people with bookmarks similar to yours. The idea is that people who share bookmarks are also likely to share interests.

Imagine the potential if a group of scholars in African history could get one set of search results, perhaps with an emphasis on books and academic journals, while music lovers could get another set, entertainment-oriented, using the same search terms.

Del.icio.us, Flickr and several newer services also support tagging, the ability to organize items by keywords. The collective human wisdom that goes into tagging is bound to identify things a computer might not otherwise know to retrieve.

Not that technology itself won't be important, and search companies are actively seeking better techniques, particularly for audio and video.

"Social networks, search engines and things yet invented are critical as we bring millions of movies, books and musical recordings online," said Brewster Kahle, a search pioneer who created the Internet Archive, a nonprofit preservation group.

Even more important will be good research skills - infoliteracy, if you will. That means knowing where and how to look, and evaluating what you get back.

And that's crucial as people get inundated with electronic information 24/7 - not just at their computers. Cell phones are being transformed into search and browsing tools, and iPods are becoming small television displays.

Rachel Edelman, 21, an NYU junior in communications studies, finds her vintage, music-only iPod enough of a distraction.

"If I'm listening to music, I'm not going to be thinking about other things, about school work, friends, family or relationships, even just noticing things on the street and noticing changes in the city," she said.

And with wireless Internet access creeping into every niche of life - it's even coming to airplanes and taxis - we'll have to carve out retreats from the information age.

"If you fill every waking minute with more media, you never do any independent thinking," Nielsen said. "You may have all the specific pieces of information, but the higher level is knowledge and understanding. You don't have time for that reflection if it's being thrown at you at never-ending streams.

"All you can do is duck."

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