iHCPL Searching #77: Images

Exercises

1. Using AllFreeClipArt, how many clicks did it take to get to a color Santa that doesn’t look like a troll?

Since “Your search - Santa not troll - did not match any documents.” I tried the directory for Christmas, and found this:


It was indexed as a mouse, but I think it looks more like a bear in a beard. I guess he’s holding a piece of cheese. I thought it was a package with polka-dot wrapping paper. It took me 9 minutes and 42,000 clicks (most of them circular, returning me back to the home page again and again) because I wasn’t able to figure out how to get a copy that wasn’t a cropped screen print. Then I remembered to right click the mouse to get the picture of the mouse-bear Santa. But he’s definitely not a troll. I could not find any information on the site that told me how to credit the picture

2. Read “10 Places to Find Free Images Online”. Blog about 2 of the sites listed.

I tried Fotogenika.net , but found it to be of little use for images. It was a directory of photography services from the location of Target Photo Centers to Houston Helicopter Rides : Aerial Photography, Rides. Wedding & Engagement Flights. I think Loren Baker’s statement that, “The site is well organized,” is misleading. It is well organized if you are looking for a photographer, but of little use if you are searching for a photograph.

Then I went to FreeDigitalPhotos. I was gratified that under the Category Animals there was a selection of Squirrel photographs. However, the terms of use required that I credit “Photograph uploaded by FreeDigitalPhotos.net Admin” and the name of the photographer, but no name for a photographer was not listed. Which was frustrating at first until I looked at the sidebar to the right, and clicked on the Acknowledgement Required, which said, ” This photo has been uploaded by FreeDigitalPhotos.net staff and only requires a general link. There is no photographer name available for this particular image.” It also included a required link back in HTML to


Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

3. Try logging in to the clip art program for HCPL use. Each branch has their own login and password you can get from your branch librarian. Find an illustration that could be used for a program at your branch and add it to your blog. Be sure to credit that piece.



I used this for my Take Me to Your Reader posting about YA Science Fiction Graphic Novels on January 8, 2010, but I had forgotten to use the credit, so I went back and fixed it. It now displays with the “@jupiterimages” credit.

Catch the Lightning

Catch the lightning / Catherine Asaro.— New York : Tor, 1997, c1996.
309 p. ; 18 cm.
(Saga of the Skolian Empire ; 2)
ISBN: 0812551028

813.54

1. Alternative histories (Fiction). 2. Cyborg – Fiction. 3. Heredity, Human – Fiction. 4. Los Angeles (Calif.) – Fiction. 5. Love stories. 6. Mayas – Fiction. 7. Mexican Americans – Fiction. 8. Science fiction. 9. Skolian Empire (Imaginary place) -- Fiction. 10. Telepathy – Fiction.

Tina Pulivok, a seventeen-year-old chicana of Maya Indian ancestry, meets the love of her life on a street corner in Los Angeles in 1987. He’s tall, dark, handsome, and projects a sense warmth and affection. He thinks she’s beautiful. He’s just out of this world. He does speak with a very strange accent, whether he’s speaking Spanish or English. And when she asks him, he claims to have been on his way to a diplomatic reception in Washington, when he got lost. And why would he be going to a reception dressed like the member of a gang? Oh this wasn’t his dress uniform; he’d left that back on his spaceship until he got his bearings. Tina figures he’s into some kind of role-playing game. In fact, Althor is not just out of this world; he’s from another universe, one in which Jamaica did not become the fifty-first state in 1981, one in which California was part of the United States of America, and one in which he is the target of a high level assassination plotted by members of his own government.

iHCPL Searching #76: Sound Effects

1) Use FindSounds to search for and post at least three animal sound effects in your blog.

i) An angry cat from “A Zillion Sounds 2.0” All of the sounds are Free for non-commercial use, and inexpensive for commercial use! This is a very educational and not at all commercial posting, by the way.

ii) A gray squirrel from NicerWeb with no indication of a © notice and darn little text to explain what the site is, but the squirrel sounds happy.

iii) Barking Dogs from an address with Public Domain in the name!

2) Using the Simply the Best Sounds site, search for sounds in the public domain. Post links to three of them in your blog.

Apes, Bats, and Bears all from Animals sound effect WAV files , and all labeled "Copyright: Public Domain."

iHCPL Searching #75: Google and Beyond

Exercises:
1) Type in at least three queries in Blindsearch, hit search, and then vote for the column which you believe best matches what you were seeking. The columns are randomized with each search. How did your favorite search engine rate in the three tries? Do you think this will affect how you search in the future?

Quiry 1 “Doctor Who” I voted for search engine on the left, which turned out to be Yahoo. Because it started with the BBC site in the UK, which is where the program is produced and then went to the Wikipedia site for a broad overview of the show. The other two went to a particular page on the site which was about a particular recent broadcast. It all had to do with the final “/”.

Quiry 2 “Harris County Public Library” but they all produced pretty much the same results, so I’d call it a tie.

So, I tried Quiry 2a “Sharon Shinn” an author whose book I had just finished reading. But it was another tie. The same results with slight variations in the display of the results.

So, I tried a geekier term for Quiry 2b “Bildungsromans”

The first site was the same, Wikipedia; #2 in all cases was a dictionary definition, but after that the left and center columns gave links to bibliographic databases that had lists of examples. Left column linked to World Cat with about 6,514 examples; the center column linked to LibraryThing with a more manageable list of a thousand or so. Once again, I voted for the left column, which turned out to be Bing.

For Quiry 3 I decided to try a Reader Advisory topic “Science Fiction Love Stories,” a subject that I’m investigating for a Topical Blog posting.

The center and right columns both lead me to a very informative thread on Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine's online Forum with a lot of author and title suggestions. I got so excited I registered on the site and added a title I’d just read. I voted for the right column, which turned out to be Google, because it’s second listed site was an interview with the editors of Quantum Kiss: The Journal of Speculative Romance, and from there to their online publication.

2) What search engine was #1 on Hitwise the week that you searched?

Google

How did it compare to its closest competitor?

72.25% for Google to 14.83% for seach.yahoo for volume of searches for the 4 weeks ending 01/02/2010

Do the usage statistics match your own personal choice of a favorite?

Yes, Google is my default search. If I’m worried about not getting enough results, I will use Agent 55 USA to do a meta seach, or if my brain is fuzzy I will use Quintura for a visual display of results, or if I’m looking for a scientific formula or calculation I will search Wolfram Alpha. But I would say, I consulted these sites less than a half-dozen times during all of 2009.

My conclusion: Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated. We will all be assimilated by Google and turned into Soylent Green.

3) Marketing of search engines requires that they continually add new features that they hope will appeal to you. Explore the features of one of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, or Bing). What new things did you discover that you would find useful?

I discovered "knols" in Google, but did not find them useful. It appears to be an attempt to construct an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, but currently has very little content.

I then tried Google translate.

I tried it on a German libretto for the first scene of Richard Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold.




Not bad, except for the “hinauftragt” in the last sentence of the stage directions that didn’t make it over to English. Another site Reverso translates the infinitive form of the verb “hinauftragen as hinauf+tragen vt sep irreg to carry or take up.” My guess based on my High School German is that it means something like “brought up” in English.

I decided to compare it to translation services offered by the other search engines. Here’s Yahoo’s Babel Fish version:

Well, “up-carry” gives me the same direction of motion as my choice of brought up. Bable Fish did fail on schroffe and Schlüfte . Reverso gave precipitous or steep as translations for schroffe. But it also was unable to comprehend Schlüfte. Google translates it as “gorges” It’s an infrequently used irregular plural form of the feminine noun Schlucht ; the more common plural form is Schluchten.

Next I tried the Bing Translator. I appreciated the caution statement that appeared in the translation block even before any text was present: “Automatic translation can help you understand the gist of the translated text but is no substitute for a professional human translator.”

Bing had the most untranslated words including the ones Google and Yahoo failed to translate. In addition to Schlüfte and hinauftragt, it also missed: VORSPIEL, Rheines , wogendem, dahinfliesst, Wolkenzügen, Felsenriffe, zerspalten, dichtester, dämmernde, Wasserflut, and Rheintöchter.

Interestingly, on the next to last line Bing Translator recognized the geographical name of the Rhine in Rheintöchter while it left the river’s name in its German form in the first stage direction. Also, a “Rhine subsidiary” doesn’t carry quite the glamour of a Rhine Maiden. Other unintended chuckles come from the translation of “Auf dem Grunde des Rheines.”A word for word translation would be “on the ground of the Rhine,” in other words, on its riverbed. Google gives the best rendering in English with “At the bottom of the Rhine.” Unfortunately, Yahoo and Bing don’t make the connection between ground and river, so they use the other meaning for the German word Grunde and come up with “On the reason of the Rhine” and “On the basis of the Rhine.”

Lit: a memoir

Lit : a memoir / Mary Karr.— New York : Harper, 2009.
386 p. ; 24 cm.
Sequel to Cherry
ISBN: 9780060596989

1. Karr, Mary – Biography. 2. Poets, American – 20th century – Biography. 3. Recovering Alcoholics – United States – Biography. 4. Women college teachers – United States – Biography.

811.54

In the prologue to her memoir Cherry, Karr describes herself leaving her childhood home, an oil refinery town on the East Texas Gulf Coast and striking out for the dream of California surf. When it quickly proves to be an impoverished and frightening nightmare, she heads for college and desperately tries to fit in. Unsuccessful at this, she tries drinking and running off. Fortunately she finds poetry and a mentor, and throws herself, reluctantly at first, into the literary life. A decade later however, marriage to another poet from a wealthy family, publication, academic success, and motherhood fail to bring her the escape she’s seeking. So she finds herself living for the anesthetic comfort of the bottle, but the bottle let her down.

“At the end of my drinking, the kingdom I longed for, slaved for, and a the end of each day lunged at was a rickety slab of unreal estate about four foot square—a back stair landing off my colonial outside Cambridge, Mass. I’d sit hunched against the door guzzling whisky and smoking Marlboros while wires from a tinny walkman piped blues into my head. Through hours there were frequently spent howling inwardly about the melting ice floe of my marriage, this spate of hours was the highlight of my day.” (Page 7)

Recovering alcoholics often say that there are only three possible outcomes of their addiction: You either end up locked-up, covered-up, or sober-up. Fortunately for American letters and herself, Karr sobered up.

Primary Inversion

Primary inversion / Catherine Asaro.— New York : Tor, 1996, c1995.
369 p. ; 18 cm.
(Saga of the Skolian Empire ; 1)
ISBN: 0812550234

1. Adventure stories 2. Imaginary wars and battles. 3. Love stories. 4. Science fiction.

813.54

A soldier walks into a bar on a neutral planet, and a cute boy in an enemy uniform tries to pick her up. Is this the start of true love? She doesn’t think so, but it kindles a desperate desire to learn more about him. Her interest is not romantic; it’s strategic. He just doesn’t come across to her as one of the sadistic aristocrats of the Eube Concord, and Sauscony Valdoria, commander of an elite Jagernaut squadron, wants to know why. There’s also a personal reason for her interest in the enemies of the Skolian Imperilate, she’s one of the heir to the empire, and she’s will to put her considerable cybernetic and telepathic military training into finding out more.

Marcelo in the real world

Marcelo in the real world / Francisco X. Stork; read by Lincoln Hoppe.— New York : Listening Library, p2009.
8 sound discs (10 hr., 8 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Unabridged.
Compact discs.
ISBN: 9780739379899

1. Asperger's syndrome -- Fiction. 2. Autism -- Fiction. 3. Boston (Mass.) – Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations – Fiction. 5. Legal ethics – Fiction. 6. Love stories. 7. Young adult fiction.

813.6

Marcelo Sandoval is not happy. He has been looking forward to his summer job, working in the barn with the ponies at his school. But his father, a partner and principal in a prestigious Boston law firm, wants him to work at the firm for the summer so that he can get experience working in the real world. His father doesn’t think a job in a barn at a school for students with special needs qualifies as the real world. He thinks the school is a protected environment, and Marcelo, at seventeen, a young man on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, needs a more challenging workplace.

The mail room at the law firm is more challenging. Marcelo’s new boss, a young woman named Jasmine, wanted to hire someone else for the job. Wendell, the other partner’s son, wants to befriend Marcelo, but only because he wants to influence the attractive Jasmine to go out on his boat with him. And while organizing the files for the firm’s biggest corporate customer, Marcelo uncovers a very disturbing photograph.

Here's a review by librarian Tasha Saecker.

Jenna Starborn

Jenna Starborn / Sharon Shinn.-- New York : Ace Books, 2002.
381 p. ; 23 cm.
“A brilliant new twist on the classic story of Jane Eyre” – front cover
ISBN: 044100900X (pbk.) :

1. Bildungsromans. 2. Love stories. 3. Science fiction. 4. Young women – Fiction. I. Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855. Jane Eyre.

The thought of a science fiction version of Charlotte Brontë’s classic, may strike many potential readers as about as appealing as listening to a Bach fugue played on an electronic synthesizer accompanied by an Electro-Theremin. Others may be intrigued by the novelty (pun intended) of the task, and may give it a try. They will be rewarded. It’s audacious task to attempt a rewrite of Jane Eyre. But Shinn has attempted and succeeded. Keeping close to the plot and characters of the original, she’s produced a novel that retains the emotional power and much of the style of Brontë’s original. At the same time she’s incorporated elements of science fiction that fans of the genre will enjoy, interstellar travel, social criticism, and integrated it into key elements of the plot, so that it is not just background scenery. Part of the fun is seeing what Shinn has kept and changed and how skillfully and wittily she’s integrated the changes into the story. It’s not unlike watching a Shakespeare play done in modern dress, where Hamlet wields a handgun instead of a sword. For example when the eponymous heroine of Jenna Starborn (the stand-in for Brontë’s Jane Eyre) arrives at Thorastone Park (Thornfield), her job is as a generator technician, not as a governess, a position that is already occupied by a character named Janet Ayerson. Brontë’s Jane, often addresses the book’s reader directly, as in the concluding chapter, “Reader, I married him.” Shinn’s Jenna owns “an 865 Reeder Recorder/Player,” into which she records her diary. So Jenna’s climactic line is, “Reeder, I married him.”

In the heart of the sea

In the heart of the sea : the tragedy of the whaleship Essex / Nathaniel Philbrick.-- New York : Viking, 2000.
xvi, 302 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Bibliography: p. 279-289
Includes index
ISBN: 0670891576

1.Essex (Whaleship) 2. Shipwrecks -- Pacific Ocean.

910.9164

On November 20, 1820 the Essex was sunk by a furious eighty-ton sperm whale a thousand miles west of Galapagos. This was the beginning of a harrowing sea voyage of 4,500 nautical miles. The crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided on a longer eastern course, back to South America. In doing so, they became the cannibals they wanted to avoid.

Three months later two of the saviors were picked up by another Nantucket whaleship the Dauphin off the West Coast of South America. The two men, sunburned and covered with sores were crouching in a twenty-five foot whaleboat rigged with a makeshift sale. Oddly enough, they resisted rescue at first. They feared the crew of the Dauphin might deprive them of their most precious possessions, the gnawed bones of their shipmates from which they were sucking the marrow.

Drawing on the accounts of the survivors, modern cetology, oceanography, psychology, physiology, navigation, and the history of Nantucket Philbrick has written an extremely readable and fascinating story of survival.

Leviathan

Leviathan : the history of whaling in America / Eric Jay Dolin.— New York : Norton, c2007.
479 p., [32] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Includes index
Bibliography: p. 453-459
ISBN: 9780393060577

1. Whaling -- United States -- History.

639.280973

Following the example of the native inhabitants, the first European settlers in eastern North America began harvesting whales that washed up or were beached on their shores. They were not interested in them as a source of food. You might dine on the liver or turn the brains into “dainty cakes,” but the flesh at best, was something like a course beef, or as Meriwether Lewis described it in his expedition’s journal in 1805, “it resembled the beaver or dog in flavor.” It was the blubber they wanted, the fat that could be turned into oil, a superior source of illumination and lubrication.

Soon, not wanting to await the whims of fate, whaleboats, manned by both Americans natives and English colonists were setting out to attack those whales swimming close to their shores. Prominent among these shore whalers were those with an abundance of shore, the inhabitants of the coastal islands of Martha’s Vineyard, Long Island and especially Nantucket. It was from Nantucket that Captain Christopher Hussey and his crew set out in 1712. Blown far offshore, they encountered and killed the first sperm whales. In the sperm whales’ heads they found an oily substance called spermaceti. It produced even brighter illumination than the oil rendered from blubber. Thereafter large ships that carried the smaller whale boats set out to hunt the whale and not return until their holds were filled with casks of oil, first in the North Atlantic, then the South Atlantic, then around Cape Horn to the Pacific, and by the middle of the next century, the Arctic Ocean.

At its high point in the two decades before the Civil War “American whale oil lit the world.” But, the industry, in some ways foreshadowing the petrochemical industry that would replace it, was subject to boom and bust cycles. Wars: the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War were disasters to an industry dependent on international trade and a sea free of privateers and hostile navies. There was also the danger of drowning because most seamen of the period could not swim, so storms or toppling from the rigging into the sea could be fatal. Then there were the whales themselves, some of the largest animal ever to inhabit the planet, who were known to play role reversal with their hunters. The stove boat, as illustrated by the cover of Dolin’s book was an every present fear of the whale boat crew. And on at least two notable occasions the ship from which the boats issued was the focus of the whale’s fury.

The ElseWhere Chronicles

According to its website The ElseWhere Chronicles were "first published by Dupuis in French under the title Les Enfants d’ailleurs, and was the winner of Best Comic Book for Young Readers at the Lyon Comics Festival and both a 2008 and 2009 Nominee for the Essential Youth Prize of the Angoulême International Comics Festival."

The shadow door / art, Bannister ; story, Nykko ; colors, Jaffré ; [translation by Carol Klio Burrell]. – Minneapolis : Graphic Universe, c2009.
46 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 27 cm.
1st American ed.
(ElseWhere Chronicles ; 1)
ISBN: 9780761339632 (pbk.)

1. Comic books, strips, etc. -- France. -- Translations into English. 2. Fantasy comic books, strips, etc. 3. Graphic novels. 4. Graphic novels -- France -- Translations into English.

741.5944

What’s so scary about Old Man Gabe’s house? Maybe it’s the shadows or all the strange stuff in it: so many old books, the huge movie projector, his journal filled with scary stories, or all the unusual toys? Maybe it’s because Noah, Theo, Max, and Rebecca visit it for the first time right after his burial? Maybe it’s because the stray dog barks and cowers before its gate, or is it the strange voice that shouts out, “DANGER! LIGHT! TURN ON THE LIGHT, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!”

The Shadow Spies / art, Bannister ; story, Nykko ; colors, Jaffré ; [translation by Carol Klio Burrell]. -- Minneapolis, MN : Graphic Universe, c2009. c2009.
46 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 27 cm.
1st American ed.
(ElseWhere Chronicles ; 2)
ISBN: 9780761339649 (pbk.)

1. Comic books, strips, etc. -- France. -- Translations into English. 2. Fantasy comic books, strips, etc. 3. Graphic novels. 4. Graphic novels -- France -- Translations into English.

741.5944

Theo and Noah turn on the projector, and Noah goes through to the other world to rescue Max and Rebecca. Back on Earth Theo trips and stumbles after Noah. Now all four friends are stranded in the other world. Fortunately they meet an inhabitant that can speak their language, and with a guide they set out to find Max and Rebecca and, hopefully, a way home. But they are pursued and attacked by the flying, snakelike Shadow Spies.

The Master of Shadows / art, Bannister ; story, Nykko ; colors, Jaffré ; [translation by Carol Klio Burrell]. -- Minneapolis, MN : Graphic Universe, c2009.
46 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 27 cm.
1st American ed.
(ElseWhere Chronicles ; 3)
ISBN: 9780761347446 (pbk.)

741.5944

1. Comic books, strips, etc. -- France. -- Translations into English. 2. Fantasy comic books, strips, etc. 3. Graphic novels. 4. Graphic novels -- France -- Translations into English.

Still pursued by the deadly Shadow Spies and the dark and mysterious Master of Shadows, the four friends outwit a monster and discover a secret cave containing a projector, but Max does not want to return home.

Under the Jolly Roger

Under the Jolly Roger
: being an account of the further nautical adventures of Jacky Faber / L.A. Meyer ; read by Katherine Kellgren. – Roseland : Listen & Live Audio, Inc., p2008.
12 sound discs (15 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Subtitle on container insert cover.
Unabridged
Compact disc
Directed by Charles de Montebello
Sequel to: The Curse of the Blue Tattoo
(Bloody Jack adventure; 3)
ISBN: 9781593161415

1. Friendship – Fiction. 2. Great Britain. Navy – Fiction. 3. Orphans – Fiction. 4. Pirates – Fiction. 5. Privateers – Fiction. 6. Seafaring life – Fiction. 7. Sex role – Fiction.

Arriving back in London, decked out as a fine lady Jacky goes to call on her sweetheart Jaimy. She receives a rude welcome from his mother, who’s read about her in a book written by Amy Trevelyne, her friend from Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston. It’s titled Bloody Jack. Hearing that Jamie is to attend a race, Jacky disguises herself as a jockey to get into the track. Unfortunately, being disguised as a man, she’s taken by a press gang, and soon finds herself back in the Royal Navy and on blockade duty off the coast of France. Worse than that, the Wolverine is a hell ship governed by a vicious and dishonest captain, who has dishonorable designs on Midshipman Faber.