How are you keeping your head in the game?

Our return to virtual education this Fall of 2020 brings several challenges.  It's all too easy to get overwhelmed; keeping calm, positive and taking one day at a time are my personal goals for this year.  To that end, I fight stress by listening to uplifting music.  

My favorite?  The album "Fight the Good Fight" by the Interrupters is a blueprint for how to live a better life:

I'm also making sure to move my body around and exercise at least once a day.  Last Spring while we were learning virtually, my CAP library assistants tried their hand at reference/research work and came up with these two fantastic websites that offer free workouts (as well as more advanced paid subscriptions):

This website is called the ACE Exercise Library. It's an amazing website that gives you free range of choosing your workouts to do at home while also keeping you motivated. On the website you click on whatever body part you would like to work on as well as the level of difficulty.

What I love most is that once you pick a part that you would like to work, on it gives you a list of workouts according to your choices. It even gives you added weight suggestions. Not only can you pick by body part but also by experience of your workout level! There are also videos you can follow with a very well trained and educated instructor. This website is laid out beautifully and is an amazing way to workout and stay active virtually!

Researched by Julia Johns

https://www.acefitness.org/education-and-resources/lifestyle/exercise-library/

This particular website is call Fitness Blender and it has countless number of workouts for any person's needs. There are many categories to choose from to create the perfect workout for you.You can adjust the duration of the workout and even the amount of calories you would like to burn. With this you can adjust the difficulty of your workout and where on your body you want the workout to focus.

The website has 12 different types of workouts ranging from strength training to yoga to agility training and many more. If you have equipment, you can choose videos that incorporate the equipment that you would like to use. You can even choose if you would like your trainer to be a male or a female. That being said, this website has a large number of options and varieties for any person's training style.

Researched by Sergio Borda

https://www.fitnessblender.com/videos

Scam artists selling prom gowns? Check out this advertisement:

Last week the Mariner Media Center received a sketchy looking advertisement from a company selling mail-order prom gowns.  You'll note that the bottom of this advertisement specified that it be forwarded to the school library.  Apparently, this company doesn't just think it can fool teenagers, but also librarians. What an excellent opportunity to assess our students' information literacy skills; as you can see, our students saw through this deceptive advertising:

Referring to a source such as Seventeen magazine might have conferred legitimacy, had this company been selling the actual dress shown in the pages of Seventeen:

 

The vocabulary choices made by the advertisers failed to impress our students, but what really turned our students off was the fact that this company required an antiquated set of money orders for payment:

This advertisement left me scratching my head; why would scammers try to reach teenagers' bank accounts through an antiquated medium like print advertising?  A quick Google search offered a possible explanation: news coverage has made it harder to perpetrate prom dress scams online:

https://www.today.com/news/teen-scammed-after-buying-prom-dress-online-urges-others-be-t90676

https://www.today.com/news/teen-scammed-after-buying-prom-dress-online-urges-others-be-t90676

While this company probably didn't intend for their advertisement to serve as a lesson, I was happy to use it as one, and very pleased that our students could spot a scam.

Free ebooks!

Free eBooks, Audiobooks and Magazines

Spring 2017

I put this list together to give you a jump start on leisure reading this summer. Please know that I'm happy to walk you through the process--just ask!

Always free and easy to access ebooks

Project Gutenberg: This ambitious website, started in 1971 (yes, the Internet is really that old) by Michael Hart, aims to have a digital copy of every book that is no longer subject to copyright laws (published before 1923).  This is a great resource for classic books in plain text, HTML, PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats; it also has a separate mobile site.

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Open Library: This library is open to anyone!  It was created by the good folks who run the Internet Archive.  Many of their books are really links to Project Gutenberg, but they have links to some books not already held by that resource.  In their own words:

At its heart, Open Library is a catalog. The project began in November 2007 and has been inhaling catalog records from some of the biggest libraries in the world ever since. We have well over 20 million edition records online, provide access to 1.7 million scanned versions of books, and link to external sources like WorldCat and Amazon when we can.

https://openlibrary.org/

Subscriptions you should be able to access with a library card

eLibraryNJ: This library of eBooks and downloadable audiobooks for adults, teens and youth is provided by the third party vendor Overdrive for a consortium of libraries in New Jersey, including the Ocean County Library.  It will take several steps to get you up and running with this resource, especially if you are using a Kindle.  Please remember that Amazon makes this tricky intentionally, in the hopes that you give up and just buy the ebook.  You can download the Overdrive app to a mobile device.

https://listennj.overdrive.com/

Monmouth County subscribes directly to Overdrive: https://monmouth.overdrive.com/

Burlington County also subscribes directly to Overdrive: https://burlington.overdrive.com/

Hoopla: This easy to use library of ebooks, ecomics and downloadable audiobooks for adults and teens is a third party vendor subscribed to by the Ocean County Library.  You can download the Hoopla app for your mobile device.  Please note, Hoopla won’t work if you have an older Apple device which Apple stopped updating at iOS 9.3.5.  If you've been using Hoopla on an older device and it works just fine, it will keep working as long as you don't update the Hoopla app.

https://www.hoopladigital.com/

Cloud Library: The Ocean County Library purchases adult, teen and children’s ebooks directly from the third party vendor 3M (yes, the same company that makes all sorts of useful products), instead of subscribing to a pool of books.  This means that you can access and download the ebooks directly from the Ocean County Library’s catalog (http://pac.theoceancountylibrary.org/polaris/), HOWEVER, it is much easier to download the Cloud Library app to your mobile device and then browse for books within that app.

Magazines

Zinio for Libraries: Read your favorite magazines right on your mobile device or computer:

Ocean County: https://www.rbdigital.com/oceancountynj/service/zinio/landing?

Monmouth County: https://www.rbdigital.com/monmouthcountynj/service/zinio

Just for children

Tumblebooks: This third party vendor provides interactive children’s books to

Ocean County Library subscribers: http://asp.tumblebooks.com/LoginbyID.aspx?U=oceancolib&P=libra

Monmouth County Library subscribers:

http://asp.tumblebooks.com/LoginbyLCID.aspx?UserID=bVc%2f3ptNzzA5zdzoyZ20wQ%3d%3d

Some frequently asked questions:

1. If these books are electronic, why aren’t there unlimited copies available?

Three words: Digital Rights Management; the idea of libraries loaning electronic copies of books is very threatening to publishers’ business model.  Capping the number of books available for loan ensures that the publishers can still make money.

2.  I can find free electronic textbooks, right?

No.  Up to date textbooks are very expensive and public libraries generally don’t carry either print or electronic textbooks.  You can ask your college library if you can borrow print textbook from their collection or via interlibrary loan.

New non-fiction books, non-fiction comic books and DVDs!

The Mariner Media Center is supporting the Common Core standards requiring students to engage with more informational texts by adding a wide variety of non-fiction titles.  While you can't judge a book by its cover, hopefully the covers (and spine labels) of these new titles spark your interest.

Nutrition, opposing viewpoints and cookbooks!

How's your guitar playing?

Just a few of several new biographies

Fashion through the ages, as well as science

Disney's Imagineers reveal some secrets

Comic books!  Perfect for reluctant readers.

And here are some of our DVDs, both old and new:

Music History

Health

Science

More Science

Research and Writing

Bill of Rights 225th Anniversary Kiosk from the National Archives

National Archives Bill of Rights 225th Anniversary Kiosk

What's even more American than apple pie?  Freedom; the freedom to speak our minds, practice our own religion and peaceably assemble are just a few of the individual liberties enumerated in our Bill of Rights.  These rights, which make up the first 10 amendments of our Nation's constitution, are 225 years old. 

Stop on in to the Mariner Media Center to check out the Bill of Rights kiosk developed by the National Archives to highlight this important anniversary.  Many thanks to Kim General for applying to the New Jersey Council for the Humanities for this informative display.

How to access and utilize our subscription databases

Mr. Raylman using a template to drill holes for a plaque.

Last Friday our multi-talented Assistant Principal Kevin Raylman put a piece of history into the Mariner Media Center--the 1969 dedication plaque from the original High School North media center, before it was relocated into the new F wing in 2002.

Who was Frank W. Sutton Jr., and why would a school library be dedicated to him?  I'd never heard of him, so I emailed the Reference Department of the Ocean County Library (question@theoceancountylibrary.org) to see if they had any information on file for him in their Wheeler Historical Room.  Within days, they scanned and sent me several articles as well as the program booklet for the 1969 Toms River High School North Library Dedication Ceremony.

Frank W. Sutton was the President of First National bank for 34 years and a pillar of the community; his many accomplishments include the organization of the Toms River Student Loan fund, his service on the Ocean County Planning Board, his service as a trustee of Paul Kimball Hospital and his time as a director of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.  These achievements are all the more remarkable in light of the fact that Mr. Sutton did not even possess a high school diploma; at the behest of his father, Mr. Sutton dropped out of school in 1904 to begin working as a clerk at First National Bank.

Here's an excerpt from the August 12th, 1969 library dedication:

Many thanks to Mr. Raylman for getting this dedication plaque up in the Mariner Media Center as well as to the top notch Reference Department of the Ocean County Library for all of the files they have on record for Mr. Frank W. Sutton Jr.