John Tyler Community College Library Blog

Looking for nearby (tame) adventure? The High Bridge Trail, part of the Virginia State Park system, runs 31 miles between Pamplin City to Burkeville and through the town of Farmville. Once a railroad bed, the trail is open to hikers, bicyclists and horseback riders. With little elevation change and no traffic it is the perfect spot for bicyclists wanting to enjoy the Virginia countryside. Make a stop in Farmville for a tasty lunch and you have the ingredients for a perfect day.

As of early April all 31 miles are now open including the bridge crossing the Appomattox River.

For more information about bicycling and bicycle care try these books from the JTCC Library:

• Bicycling, a reintroduction:  a visual guide to choosing, repairing, maintaining & operating a bicycle / Karen Ruth

• The bicycling guide to complete bicycle maintenance & repair:  for road & mountain bikes / Todd Downs

Farmville Train Station

The JTCC libraries will operate on different hours between May 9-19th.  The following are the scheduled hours of operation for both campuses, unless otherwise noted:

If a vacation to exotic locales is not in the budget for this summer—not to worry. Going to the VMFA can be your ticket to India. For a mere $15 ($12 for students) you can travel halfway around the world and back in time to India in the 18^th to the mid-20^th century.

According to the VMFA website the more than 200 objects selected for this exhibit bear witness to the “changing role of the maharajas (“great kings”) within a social and historical context.”  Known for their patronage of the arts the ruling class commissioned “splendid and beautiful objects symbolic of royal status, power and identity.”

You can see this collection assembled by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London from May 21, 2012 – Aug 19, 2012. It will also travel to Toronto, Munich and San Francisco.

Renovations at Chester continue to progress on schedule. In October we posted pictures of the demolition, now just look at how far we’ve come! With lots of windows, plenty of study rooms, and cool lighting expect the library to reopen for the fall semester.

Hopefully, Pak Jun Do (phonetically, John Doe) is not the North Korean everyman. From his start in a North Korean orphanage selecting which orphans get food to his stint in the tunnels beneath the DMZ fighting in the dark to kidnapping Japanese citizens to mining uranium in Prison 33 Jun Do manages to survive the brutal, dystopian regime. Evoking George Orwell’s 1984, author Adam Johnson illuminates the struggle ordinary citizens endure to stay alive.  Moving quickly from one harrowing episode to another, the hero seems destined to outlast even the Dear Leader (Kim Jong-Il) until he meets and falls in love with Sun Moon, the only movie star in the isolated nation. Assuming the identity of her dead husband, Jun Do becomes enmeshed in Kim’s plot to humiliate the United States while secretly planning to save Sun Moon and her children. Beautifully written, briskly paced and filled with detail, The Orphan Master’s Son illustrates resilience, cultural misunderstanding and power of friendship.

“The way you dig into a boot for old sticky toes is the way you spring a trapdoor in a DMZ tunnel or pull a stranger off a beach in Japan: you just take that breath and go.”

With graduation fast approaching you may be thinking about the next phase. If your plans are to find work, the library has resources to help you with your search. From identifying work strengths to polishing your resume to perfecting your interviewing skills, we have a book for you.

Here are just a few of the many items found under the category “Job Hunting:”

• Cracking the hidden job market:  how to find opportunity in any economy
• Dig this gig:  find your dream job – or invent it
• 100% job search success
• Best resumes for college students and new grads:  jump-start your career!

For more advice on job searching using the web try:

• LifeHacker’s Top Ten Ways to Get a Better Job
• The Workbuzz : Resumes 101
• Monster.com: Dress for Interview Success

So get out there and good luck!

Join the fun on Saturday, April 21, as John Tyler celebrates with Fool for Art. John Tyler’s Midlothian campus will be hosting educational sessions, hands-on activities, and 50+ vendors in an outdoor craft fair.

In the Art of Learning tent the library has gathered materials—chenille stems, buttons, beads and glue. You can use your imagination to create a book buddy to read with or carry in your pocket.  The library will also play host to The Story Lady at 11:00am and author Michael Sullivan will sign copies of his book There’s an Eyeball in my Garden at 1:00pm.

Bring the whole family; activities are free and open to the community, and many are geared to the young (and young at heart!) Celebrate community, art, and learning at Fool for Art.

Tina Fey is bossy and full of advice on all matters:

• Practical tips on how to make it in a male-dominated workplace:
  “No pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly . . . don’t eat diet foods in meetings.”
• Beauty:
  “By nineteen, I had discovered that Retin-A was a great way to have large chunks of your skin peel off and waft to the floor during class.”
• The Rules of Improvisation That Will Change Your Life and Reduce Belly Fat:
  “. . . there are no mistakes, only opportunities.”

So to improve your life, sleep better, raise good children, laugh out loud (and reduce belly fat!) get to the library ASAP and check out Bossypants.

After a 72-year embargo the US Census department released the 1940 census data April 2, 2012. Hosted by Archives.com  and the "first-ever on-line release” the site promptly crashed shortly after going live, unable to handle the 37 million hits in the first hours. Bolstered by new servers, the curious can now search records for favorite family members. Want to know if Great-grandpa was really a World War I veteran or Grandma’s family really came from Russia? As of this writing the data has not been indexed by name, but if you know where your family lived you can find their census forms.

The Census bureau website is more than a tool for genealogists though. Full of facts, figures, maps and more researchers can find economic data, historical perspectives and population trends. Try the interactive map to find the counties with the most convenience stores or the most day care centers. For students writing papers this is a useful and reliable source.

Why the 72-year gap? Congress enacted Public Law 95-416 in October, 1978 to protect privacy which means you can expect to see the 1950 census made public in 2022 and the 2010 census in 2082!

The streaming video subscription service newly added to the John Tyler roster of databases

Films on Demand, recently included more than 200 of the popular TEDTalks with more to come. TED, according to the website, is “a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.” Begun in 1984 TED stands for the intersection of Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The 1100+ TEDTalks range from funny to inspirational and from persuasive to informative. Films on Demand can be found on the library database page and may be access with your MyTyler login. Do you need any more reasons to check out this fabulous resource?