Herbivore? Omnivore? Locavore?

There's a lot of emphasis these days on how we eat. First, we were concerned about fat content and nutrients. Then we started worrying about how things were grown and started looking for organic foods. And now the buzz is all about "local eating," and its proponents call themselves locavores. Locavores argue that eating foods produced locally instead of those shipped from thousands of miles away (like most supermarket foods) will cut down on the risk of contamination (remember all the recent salmonella outbreaks?) and on the millions of gallons of fuel used weekly to ship those products to us. A number of recently published books tackle the issue of local eating. Here are a few that the MTSU library carries.

Animal, vegetable, miracle : a year of food life / Barbara Kingsolver
The omnivore’s dilemma : a natural history of four meals / Michael Pollan.
(also on audiobook)
Farewell, my Subaru : an epic adventure in local living [sound recording] / by Doug Fine
From the farm to the table : what all Americans need to know about agriculture / Gary Holthaus.

Feel free to recommend additional books, whether we have them or not, in the comments.

A soon-to-be released book called Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly by James E. McWilliams takes local eating proponents to task for some of their claims.

If you're interested in buying food locally from farmers markets or directly from farms, find listings at http://picktnproducts.org/ or find a CSA to join at http://www.localharvest.org/csa/.

And don't forget the MTSU Farmer's Market, open each Friday through the summer.

Fatally Flaky (featured new book)

Fatally Flaky

Latest murder mystery about Colorado caterer, Goldy Schultz, who's catering a wedding reception for bridezilla.

Look for other recent mysteries by Nevada Barr, Carol Higgins Clark, and Lisa Scottoline on the Popular Reading Shelves.

The library also has new non-fiction books from the best-seller lists, such as

The Skinny, on losing weight without being hungry, Always Looking Up, by Michael J. Fox, Mommywood, by Tori Spelling, and Healing and Preventing Autism by Jenny McCarthy.

Now You Can Listen to that Scholarly Article!

Well, as long as it's available in HTML full-text from Wilson OmniFile or another Wilson database.

Most Wilson databases now offer ReadSpeaker "text to speech converter," which provides downloadable or streaming audio (in English) of any HTML full-text article in the database. Click on the HTML full-text link for an article, and then click on the "Listen" icon. You can see a short animated demo on Wilson's Web Site.

Now this begs the question, which is less sleep-inducing, reading or listening to 15 pages on "Forecasting U.S. Recessions with Probit Stepwise Regression Models"?

Hip to the Trip (featured new book)

Hip to the trip?.....or are you planning a "staycation" this summer, looking for adventure from the front porch swing. Look no further. The new book shelves have several new books about faraway places and some not so far.

Read about the "Mother Road," so named by Jack Kerouac, in Hip to the trip: a cultural history of Route 66, a book about the history and cultural meaning of this landmark highway.

View The Great Wall of China.

Visit the Daughters of India

Learn about Planet India

Go back in time to explore and survive the frozen north in Race to the Polar Sea

Find out the best city for you in Who's your city?

Or, laugh your way through Rhode Island in Rhode Island Curiosities. Here's the history of Moonstone Beach in rhyme.

Once a beach with a naturalist flair.

Moonstone's no longer nude, so beware.

The pro-wildlife herds

Made it safe for the birds .

But they don't very much care for bare.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook

Because we want to make it as convenient as possible for you to get library news (such as new resources and service, special hours, and notification that the AC is off and it's like a sauna in here), we have created Facebook and Twitter accounts. If you are a user of these services, you know why that is a good thing. If you're not, don't worry. We'll keep giving you all the good stuff here, too.

Use Library Databases Off-Campus

Don't you love May classes with their compressed deadlines?

If you have to burn the midnight oil to find articles for that research assignment, at least you can do it from the comfort of your own home (or other favorite Internet access point). Currently enrolled students (and employees) can access most* of the library's research databases off-campus by supplying their PipelineMT user name and password when prompted.

If this doesn't seem to be working for you, contact the library reference desk at 904-8539 or the ITD help desk at 898-5345.

*A few resources aren't available from off-campus. If you have questions about which ones, please contact the reference desk.

Library privileges for alumni

Congratulations, new graduates! We know you're thrilled to be getting your diploma, but here is something else to be happy about. Did you know that you can continue checking out books and using our library resources? MTSU alumni can check out up to 4 books at a time. Just like when you were a student, you can keep them for 4 weeks and renew them once. You can also continue coming in to use the article databases and other resources, though you'll no longer be able to access them off-campus.* So if you're planning to stay in the area for a little while or for a long while, keep coming back. We'll miss you if you don't.

Keep your MTSU ID and bring it with you the next time you visit the library. A staff member at the Circulation desk will change your status to alumni. If you no longer have your MTSU ID, come by Circulation, and we'll fix you up some other way.


*Although you can't use our databases, there is a wealth of quality resources for all Tennessee residents in the Tennessee Electronic Library. Call your local library (or us) for the password.

Any interest in downloadable audiobooks?

These would be the type you can load onto your mp3 player, or you could listen on your computer.

Summer Interim Hours

Exams are (almost) over, you may be walking in graduation on Saturday (congratulations), and thoughts of the beach are filling our heads, but we're still here (at least some of the time)!

Here's the library schedule for the summer break.

Thurs May 7: open 7.30 am - 10.00 pm
Fri May 8: open 8.00 am - 4.30 pm
Sat May 9: closed
Sun May 10: closed (Happy Mother's Day!)

Summer hours begin on Monday, May 11.

Confused? Check the library hours page.

Who the hell is Pansy O'Hara? (featured new book)

Can you guess which favorite children’s book has its origin during the opening stages of World War 1 at a train stop in Ontario, Canada? The story behind this book starts with Lieutenant Colebourn, a regiment vet, stepping from the train and immediately noticing a man on the platform with a female black bear cub. Find the answer in Who the hell is Pansy O’Hara? a book about the fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best loved books. It’s shelved on the popular reading shelves in Periodicals.

Popular Reading Collection

As new books come in, we will be pulling the ones that look especially interesting and temporarily housing them on a set of bookshelves in the periodicals reading area. Please feel free to browse these books, and check one out if it strikes your fancy. We will periodically highlight new books from this collection on the blog.

In the library catalog, these books will show a location of New Book Shelf.

Summer Check Out Privileges

If you would like to check out materials over the summer, you may do so if you are enrolled in at least one session during the summer. As of now, all books are due on May 9th. If you need to check out books past this date, please let the Circulation staff know when you check out.

You do not need to bring in your schedule. The folks at the circulation desk can look up your schedule in Banner.

Another option for those not enrolled in summer classes is that Tennessee residents may change to community status over the summer. This will limit you to two (2) books at a time, but at least you could still have something to read. The check out period remains 28 days and allows one renewal.

SciFinder Scholar is moving online!

SciFinder Scholar is moving to the web! The client version will be phased out over the next few months. A portion of our seven simultaneous users is now allocated to the web version.

Please register here: SciFinder Scholar registration page.

You may then access the SciFinder Scholar Web .

Tutorials on the web version are available on the SciFinder Support & Training - Web Version page.

Happy hunting!