http://www.librarypreviews.com
"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Genealogy"
by Rhonda McClure
Check Sale Price
If you want to learn more about your family, now's the time
to start. With the advent of the Internet, there's more
information available than ever before, and it's easier to
access now than in the good old days of musty libraries and
records halls. "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online
Genealogy" by Rhonda McClure will have you wired and digging
up dirt (or gold) in just an hour or two. Even the most
ardent computer hater will have to admit that the search is
simpler, and McClure makes the case clearly. Her charming
prose is well complemented by online images and hint boxes
scattered liberally on each page. Specific sites are
mentioned as well as general means of searching for family
data, so even if one site disappears you can still get what
you need. The book covers the basics of both gathering
family data and online searches, so if you're not quite up
to speed on one or the other, you can quickly figure it
out. After you've browsed a bit and started collecting
information, the later chapters help you to communicate with
other researchers, mine government records, and even publish
your own results online. It's not hard to learn plenty about
your family's history; whether you want to get in touch with
your roots, glean medical information to improve your own
health, or give your kids something to think about, "The
Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Genealogy" is for you.
"Getting Permission: How to License & Clear Copyrighted
Materials Online & Off"
by Richard Stim
Check Sale Price
Whether you're a musician, writer, or collage artist, at
some point you'll run into the problem of copyright. Nolo
Press has come to the rescue with "Getting Permission," by
intellectual property attorney Richard Stim, providing
everything you need from information about the proper permit
and how to get it, to ready-to-use forms and links to
information resources online and off. Even if you've never
looked into the sometimes murky world of copyright law,
you'll be up to speed on concepts such as public domain and
fair use after just browsing the first chapter. Additional
material on tracking down copyright owners, writing
permission letters, and tracking permits makes your job
simple, especially if you plan to use many different
materials.
Specific chapters cover music rights, artwork, trademarks,
Web-site permissions, academic permissions, and the
nitty-gritty on fair use. Stim writes clearly and
forcefully, and isn't afraid to acknowledge that some
aspects of his subject are still unclear. Advising caution
in these legal frontiers, he still sticks with Nolo's
empowerment theme by helping you keep up with the latest
trends from home. The book comes with a PC floppy disk
containing computer-ready forms in ASCII and rich text
formats--a marvelous aid to the wired artist. If you want to
use someone else's work legally but don't want to consult
with an attorney, sample the power of DIY with Nolo Press's
"Getting Permission."
"Effective Writing"
by Bruce Ross-Larson
Check Sale Price
Bruce Ross-Larson's "Effective Writing" wraps three of his
little books about writing--"Stunning Sentences," "Powerful
Paragraphs," and "Riveting Reports"--into one volume. With
these three little jewels, the author aims to eradicate
sloppy writing from Web pages, office memos, budget reports,
and the like. For "Stunning Sentences," Ross-Larson inspects
and categorizes well-wrought sentences of all shapes and
sizes by the likes of Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Luce, and Mary
Lee Settle. He isolates every type of sentence imaginable,
from imperatives and fragments to "cascades" (sentences
that, well, cascade), in an attempt to identify just what
effect choice of sentence structure has on the reader. What
does adding an extra conjunction to a series do to a
sentence? What does dropping a conjunction do? The book is a
terrific tool for making a writer conscious of the impact of
his or her writing at the sentence level.
Once you've got sentences down, it's time to move on to
paragraphs. Surprise: a paragraph is more than "a collection
of sentences framed by an indent and a carriage return." It
also has to be "unified, coherent, and well developed."
Ross-Larson starts with the opening paragraph, which needs
to "grab your readers' attention, rivet them to your
message, and propel them through your argument." From there,
he elucidates the many ways to organize a paragraph, and
then the many ways to link each of your well-toned
paragraphs to one another. He provides fantastic examples
from The Economist and other sources.
Finally, it's time to put it all together. The significant
word in the "Riveting Reports" section of the book is
"plan." Define your message, define your audience, define
your purpose. Then figure out, paragraph by paragraph, how
to present your message to your audience to achieve your
purpose. Use examples, Ross-Larson insists: "An ounce of
example," he says, "is worth a ton of abstract
generalization." And try taping your completed draft up on
the wall. It's an ideal way to see it all at once, and
excellent for slash-and-burn editing
"The Companion to African Literatures"
edited by Douglas Killam and Ruth Rowe
Check Sale Price
There's a whole continent's worth of literature that remains
largely unexplored. Pick up "The Companion to African
Literatures" and find out what you're missing; even if
you're a professional in the field there's sure to be plenty
here to keep you going to the library. Edited by Douglas
Killam and Ruth Rowe, this deceptively slim volume covers a
wide range of authors, works, and themes from Cape Town to
Casablanca. Read up on the lives of Nadine Gordimer, Chinua
Achebe, and Wole Soyinka; delve into the influence of
postmodern criticism, religious traditions, and oral
storytelling on the written word; explore the poetry and
drama of the colonists and the colonized. Hundreds of
entries lavish detail on sometimes obscure works or artists,
often deserving wider attention. Entries are relatively
brief but contain plenty of information for further
research--and, better still, inspire such research with
well-written analyses of the political, social, and artistic
merits of their subjects. A country-author guide is included
to aid the regional researcher, but that's the extent of the
indexing; still, the cross-referencing is detailed enough to
make this a great boon to the student or critic of African
literature.
FUN STUFF FOR REFERENCE FANS
****************************
Call us wacky, but we think every really cool library has a
skull perched somewhere on a shelf--maybe it was all those
Vincent Price movies we watched as kids. While a real skull
might be a little too much, Skullduggery has a series of
great replicas that would really make a decorating statement
in your library or on your desk. We especially like the
Neanderthal cranium replica, but there are plenty of
others--from Australopithecus africanus to an orangutan--to
keep you armchair paleontologists amused for hours.
Check Sale Price
