Here’s a short video from Science Nation, an online magazine from the NSF, describing a video game to help anyone learn sign language. It also describes a cell phone app, “SmartSign”, that will show you a sign on your phone. Check out the related multimedia.
A great site for science news fans.
Filed under ASL
Tony Judt (1948-2010) died on August 6th at the age of 62. He was a writer and historian specializing in European history. He was best known for Postwar: a History of Europe Since 1945, his history of Europe in the second half of the 20th century. It was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the The New York Times, won the 2006 Arthur Ross Book Award as the best book published on international affairs, and was a runner up for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in General Non-Fiction. He was also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His New York Times can be found here.
Frank Kermode (1919-2010) died on August 17th at the age of 90. He was considered one of the finest literary critics of his generation. Probably best known for his writings on Shakespeare, he also published books on a wide range of other authors throughout his long career. The Library owns several of his critical works:
An Appetite for Poetry, PN1031 .K44 1989
D.H. Lawrence, PR6023 .A93 Z6374
John Donne, PR2248 .K4
Puzzles and Epiphanies: Essays and Reviews, 1958-1961, PR473 .K4
Romantic Image, PN1111 .K4 1963
The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, PN45 .K44 1967 & PN45 .K44 2000
Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne: Renaissance Essays, PR423 .K4 1971b
His New York Times obituary can be found here.
Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) died on August 17th at the age of 90. He was considered by many to be one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century. In 1999 he was named the first Glasgow poet laureate and in 2004 he became the first Scottish national poet. He won several awards over his career, including the 1983 Scottish Book of the Year Award for Poems of Thirty Years, the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2000, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2007 for A Book of Lives. He was bestowed with an Order of the British Empire in 1982. Several recordings of his poems and a biography can be found on The Poetry Archive website. The Scottish Poetry Library also maintains an online Edwin Morgan Archive.
Vance Bourjaily (1922-2010) died on August 31st at the age of 87. He was a novelist and teacher of creative writing at several universities, including the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was frequently mentioned by critics as an underappreciated novelist. His career never quite achieved the heights predicted for it by critics after the publication of his first novel, The End of My Life, published in 1947. His New York Times obituary can be found here.
Filed under Notable Deaths
This has nothing to do with libraries, books or websites, but it’s really amazing.
Filed under New technologies
Time Magazine has released its picks for this year’s best websites. The five education winners are Ted.org (online talks from “the best and brightest thinkers”), MIT OpenCourseWare (free course materials including lectures, notes, audio and video), Chegg (semester-long textbook rentals), Livemocha (tutorials and instruction in 30 languages and a community of native speakers) and Read Print, an online directory of public domain books.
Filed under Recommended websites
Henry Pfeiffer Library 