Just ordered: When a billion Chinese jump

Spurred by today's interview between NPR's Steve Inskeep and author Jonathan Watts, journalist for The Guardian, I've just requested purchase of his book "When a billion Chinese jump: how China will save the world - or destroy it."  The interview provided a glimmer of hope for solving China's enormous environmental problems, as well as the challenge of balancing economic progress and environmental responsibility. "I think China is moving very, very quickly on renewable energy and clean tech," Watts says, "precisely because its environment is so bad that they have to take extreme actions."  Until Oberlin's copy is here and ready to be borrowed, request a copy from another OhioLINK library.  Read an excerpt from the book at NPR's Morning Edition.

Mountain Top Removal Road Show & Deepening Our Connections

I am posting these event announcements on behalf of Oberlin Earth First! and Students for Carbon Neutrality.

Tonight 7:30pm Oberlin College Wilder Hall [room location TBA]

The Mountaintop Removal Road Show includes a stunning 20-minute slide show about the impacts of mountaintop removal on coalfield residents, communities and the environment, and features traditional Appalachian mountain music and shocking aerial photos of decapitated Appalachian mountains.

Tuesday 4pm OC Wilder Hall Room 112

Deepening Our Connections is a workshop linking the fields of deep ecology, ecofeminism, social ecology, environmental justice, and mysticism and showing how they can work together to fight oppression and move towards the collective liberation of all living beings. Integral theory is used in the workshop to show the importance of bringing different perspectives together. The workshop is very participatory, no prior knowledge of any of the subjects is required.Sponsored by Oberlin Earth First! and Students for Carbon Neutrality.

Call Your Legislator - ask for LSTA Funding!

A message from the American Library Association

Fund LSTA at $300 Million!

Please call your Congressional representatives and tell them to fund the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) at $300 million for FY 2011. LSTA funding is distributed to states by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through population-based grants. LSTA the only source of federal funding for public libraries, and with more and more public libraries facing state and local budget cuts, it is critically important that libraries receive this money.
Take Action! 

Travel with a good book

Heading off for Thanksgiving break?  Take along some good reading!

Info @ Google books

Fragile web : what next for nature? / edited by Jonathan Silvertown, will give you a renewed interest in the biodiversity of whatever region you are visiting in the next few days.

From the publisher's summary:   [Fragile Web] "discusses the importance of the world's ecosystems and how directly or indirectly humans are responsible for the fate of nature. Crucially, it also examines what can be done to protect the natural world and why it matters. Although we cannot undo all that we have done, ignoring the current crisis facing biodiversity could fundamentally change the lives of future generations."

We have at least 50,000 other great books close at hand, so stop in before you leave campus.  Have a good break!

And, for those staying in Oberlin, the library will be open Friday afternoon as well as normal hours on Saturday and Sunday.  See our HOURS.

Paleobotany text a hefty addition to new book shelf

Paleobotany: the biology and evolution of fossil plants, 2nd ed., by Thomas N. Taylor, Edith L. Taylor and Michael Krings (Academic Press, an imprint of Elsevier, 2009) is by far the heaviest book on the new book shelf, and may have on average the most images per page, so it caught my attention in our most recent shipment of new books.  What a treasure of authoritative text, illustrations, photographs and other visually presented data!  Far more than a simple compendium of fossil data, the authors provide historical context of the interpretation of systematics and classification, and photographs too numerous to count of cited authors.  The photographs and other illustrations of researchers easily span 180 years, and give a human face to the history and ongoing story of paleobotany.  This is a delightful feature in such a comprehensive tome, and will be appreciated by anyone interested in the history of science.

Understanding climates of the past is essential for understanding current climate change, and paleobotany is an vital tool for the study of ancient climates.  The Encyclopedia of paleoclimatology and ancient environments is an excellent resource for more on this subject [view at OhioLINK EBC or Springerlink.com].

Entropy and Rust [Letter], D. F. Styer

New publication from Daniel F. Styer, J&M Schiffer Professor of Phyics, as indexed in ISI Web of Knowledge.

Styer, D. F. 2010. Entropy and Rust [Letter].  American Journal of Physics 78: 1077-1077.