Monday, October 21, 2013

(More!) New Leisure Books


Just a quick note to tell you about the newest additions to our current and popular leisure reading collection. Some big names in this batch, from all over the spectrum. We’ve got Bill Bryson’s new pop-history book about the summer of 1927, Malcolm Gladwell’s new pop-sociology book about underdogs, the much-talked-about new biography of JD Salinger, “Robert Galbraith’s” debut crime novel (which was actually written by JK Rowling, shhhh), a self-help book by Ron Swanson’s real-life counterpart, a WWII survival story by Laura Hillenbrand (she of Seabiscuit fame), and the new novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Jhumpa Lahiri…among many others.
 


 If you'd like to peruse the new titles from the comfort of your office chair, they’ve already been added to our Goodreads page, which you can access by clicking the image above.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget: we love requests!

Friday, September 20, 2013

New Additions to the Leisure Reading Collection!

Happy Friday, Students & Faculty!

You are hereby encouraged to swing by the Arrendale Library when you get a chance to check out the newest batch of current and popular leisure reading books. This order consisted mostly of buzzworthy summer titles, and seeing as how there are only 36 hours of summer left, you better act fast! We've got new books by Stephen King, Carl Hiaasen, Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris, Dan Brown, and Nathaniel Philbrick, among others. You'll also find some new graphic novels and a stack of recent bestsellers, including Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, Transatlantic by Colum McCann, Red Moon by Benjamin Percy, The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls, and Waiting to Be Heard by Amanda Knox. As always, there should be something for everyone.

 
Piedmont College Libraries @ Goodreads


If you'd like to peruse the new titles from the comfort of your chair, they have already been added to our Goodreads page, which you can access by clicking the image above.

Have a great weekend!

Monday, September 9, 2013

About College Access and Student Aid


Piedmont College is a member of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), which has more than 1,000 members nationwide.

These include "traditional liberal arts colleges, major research universities, church- and faith-related institutions, historically black colleges and universities, women's colleges, performing and visual arts institutions, two-year colleges, and schools of law, medicine, engineering, business, and other professions."

NAICU's Special Initiatives page features ten different resources useful to students, parents, instructors, and administrators, including college-cost calculators, student-aid advice, and profiles of recent legislation.

The site also offers a variety of higher-education links on topics ranging from academic integrity to work colleges.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The Moral Dimension of Info Literacy

In a new Library Journal post, Barbara Fister discusses the tension between digital resources and the values important to librarians:

"When we fall into the trap of spending 50 minutes helping students learn how to find sources, as if acquiring and displaying them is the point of research, we imply that knowledge is other people’s property, procured and exchanged but not influenced by the student’s own life experience, thoughts, or beliefs. [Paulo] Freire believed that education should instead be 'the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.' . . .

"Our teaching practices should present libraries as more than the Bank of Sources, from which usable phrases can be withdrawn as needed. They should be workshops, labs, studios, or hacker spaces, where students engage with ideas and invent their own, through conversation with others interested in the same things. They should be places where students develop their own identities as they learn the critical habits that civil society requires."

Check out the full article for several complementary publications that inform her thinking.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Lydia Davis wins 2013 Man Booker International Prize for Fiction


"I was recently denied a writing prize because they said I was lazy." runs one of Lydia Davis's two-sentence short stories. Well not any more. Davis has just been awarded the fifth Man Booker International Prize at an award ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
 
 
The Man Booker International Prize recognises one writer for his or her achievement in fiction. Worth £60,000, the prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. The winner is chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel and there are no submissions from publishers.
The Man Booker International Prize is significantly different from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction. In seeking out literary excellence, the judges consider a writer's body of work rather than a single novel.

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Come check out The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis at the Arrendale Library in Demorest. If contemporary short fiction is something you'd like to explore further, we have several wonderful titles in our Current & Popular leisure reading collection. Browse them here.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Introducing the new Graphic Novel Collection!

The graphic novel began its literary life in the 70s and 80s as an artistic underdog. In spite of landmark works by well-respected illustrators such as Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman -- and the support of literary icons like John Updike -- graphic novelists struggled to be taken seriously, to elevate their form beyond sensational superhero comics and fluffy fairy tales. Thankfully, we've come a long way in a very short time. These days, even superhero comics and fairy tales are taken seriously -- sometimes very seriously -- and graphic novels comprise one of the fastest-growing and most artistically engaging genres in the literary landscape.


Piedmont College Libraries is proud to announce the creation of a dedicated Graphic Novel Collection (to be shelved alongside our Current & Popular leisure reading section on the 3rd floor of the Arrendale Library). You'll find a wide variety of titles covering the entire scope of the graphic novel genre -- from The Avengers and The Walking Dead to award-winning memoirs by Harvey Pekar and Alison Bechdel. There are titles you've probably heard before -- The Watchmen, Sandman, Persepolis, American Splendor, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Ghost World, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret -- and some future classics you may not be familiar with, such as Saga, Asterios Polyp, Fables, My Friend Dahmer, and Y: The Last Man.

Graphic novels are available for two-week check-outs with up to two renewals. You may borrow a maximum of five at a time. To view the entire collection, click here.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Our Goodreads account has been updated!



Please feel free to browse our Current & Popular leisure reading collection, now fully cataloged on our Goodreads page. Using the links to the various "shelves," you can limit your browsing to books held at either the Athens campus or at the Arrendale Library in Demorest. (But remember, if you're in Demorest and want to read a book from Athens -- or vice-versa -- we can get it for you in a day or two.)

You can also use the shelves to find out what books we have in various genres (or on various subjects) -- sci-fi/fantasy, memoir, music, graphic novels, you name it.

And speaking of graphic novels, stay tuned! We're expecting a substantial delivery in the next couple of months. :)

If you don't already have a Goodreads account, we encourage you to start one! It's a great way to keep track of what you've read and what you want to read -- it's also a fun way to connect with other readers who share your interests! If you do create an account -- or indeed, if you already have one --please consider connecting with us!