resources

  (Image from Flickr user Dia under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.) Bird-Watching Apps Audubon Society The Audubon Bird Guide App (for Android and iPhone)“The Audubon Bird Guide is a free and complete field guide to over 800 species of North American birds, right in your pocket. Built for all experience levels, it will help…

Above: Cherry blossoms in a WCC parking lot (photo by Heather Williams) What is Hanami? Cultural Studies: Holidays Around the World in the library’s Credo Reference database has this to say about Hanami: “The word hana means ‘flower’ in Japanese, and hanami means ‘flower viewing.’ However, appreciation of the cherry blossom in Japan is almost…

What is Pi? According to The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide, pi is the “Ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi is an irrational number: it cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers, and its expression as a decimal never terminates and never starts recurring. The…

Pictured: Joy Harjo, Muscogee (Creek), former Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022. November is Native American Heritage Month. It was declared on August 3, 1990 by former President George H. W. Bush under the name “National American Indian Heritage Month,” but is commonly known by its other name. “This landmark bill honouring America’s…

Born November 12, 1815, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an important figure in the women’s rights movement, including the right to vote. The library’s Credo Reference topic page about her describes her this way: “Stanton, who rarely shied from controversy, considered the political, social, and religious aspects when discussing or writing about the oppression of women.…

The Learning Commons will be closed for Veterans Day on Tuesday, November 11. History of Veterans Day According to Credo Reference’s Veterans Day topic page, the holiday began in 1926 as Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of World War I on November 11, 1918. In 1954, it was renamed Veterans Day to honor veterans…

Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead, sometimes called Día de los Muertos in English-speaking cultures), is a Mexican cultural holiday observed from October 31 through November 2. It is a celebration of remembrance for loved ones who have died. For an overview of the holiday and its history, see Credo Reference’s Day of the…

Where did Halloween come from? The answer is… it’s complicated. According to the Halloween topic page in the library’s Credo Reference database, the name of the holiday is a contraction of “All Hallows’ Even,” or the day before All Hallows’ Day, also known as All Saints’ Day. The traditions associated with the holiday, however, probably…

Pablo Picasso Picasso, born October 25, 1881, was a “Spanish artist, chiefly active in France. Picasso was one of the most inventive and prolific talents in 20th-century art. His Blue Period 1901–04 and Rose Period 1904–06 preceded the revolutionary Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907; Museum of Modern Art, New York), which paved the way for cubism.…

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) jointly developed National Cybersecurity Awareness Month in 2004. It is a “collaborative effort between government and industry to enhance cybersecurity awareness, encourage actions by the public to reduce online risk and generate discussion on cyber threats on a national and global scale.” (Cybersecurity…