This season is full of great pop culture events. New York Comic Con was last month, San Diego Comic Con will be in-person next week, and Chicago’s own C2E2 will be in-person in December. So many awesome shows!
Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones attending this year, or maybe you feel the time isn’t right. Either way, the library has graphic novels, cosplay resources, artists, and more to connect you with the pop culture community!
Check out some of the resources below in our Comic Convention Companion, and visit the library in the near future to see some of our staff’s best graphic novel and manga recommendations for your holiday break! Click the image below to view the collection:
This year’s One Book One College selection is All We Can Save, a collections of essays by women leading the fight against climate change. Thinking about climate change and the environment can be really stressful, but getting out into and enjoying nature can have some really positive benefits.
You might have heard of “Forest Bathing“, the concept of immersing yourself in a natural environment as a form of stress relief. While participants do not actually bathe or even enter into water, sounds, smells, textures, and even tastes of nature are explored and enjoyed.
To find the After Class book collection, turn right after you enter the library
If you’d like to get out in nature and learn about it at the same time, check out some of the Library’s upcoming public events. We have a couple opportunities for members of the MVCC community to learn more about the natural areas on campus! Register for events on our Events page. Events are always FREE!
MVCC Prairie Tour (Weds 9/29 and Thurs 9/30) Join earth science faculty member, Jana Svec, for a tour of MVCC’s own prairie. Learn about the geography, plants and animals that are in our own backyard, right on campus.
Native Plants: Foundation of Our Ecosystem (Online Event 10/6) We will discuss how native plants, insects and birds interconnect to maintain our food supply, water, air quality, climate etc. The significant decline in birds and insects is largely due to habitat loss and lack of native plants. We will show what the individual can do to reverse this trend. This discussion will be presented by Catheryn Bryla, Sag Moraine
Prairie Seed Collection Event (Tues 10/12 and Thurs 10/14) Help us protect MVCC’s prairie! Join us and Jana Svac, earth science faculty member, in collecting seeds from native plants to ensure that our prairie remains healthy for the future. This is a chance to get outside and make a difference.
Finally, if you want to dig deeper into the native plants and wildlife of Illinois, check out this librarian-curated list of websites, field guides, and books! Click on the image below to browse!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a student in possession of a summer break, must be in want of a reading challenge.
Okay, maybe not, but if you are looking for a month-long reading challenge and you enjoy a little early 19th century English literature, look no further than Jane Austen July!
Late last night, Naperville residents had about 3 minutes between hearing their local emergency sirens and the formation of a huge tornado with winds possibly over 100 mph. Residents in Naperville, Woodridge, and Darien suffered damage to their homes and communities. A few individuals ended up in the hospital and many lost their homes. Trees damaged power lines and many lost power. Tornadoes don’t leave a lot of time for you to react, so the best way to deal with them is to prepare ahead of time.
While this event didn’t impact the MVCC campus directly, tornadoes can affect any community. Here are some resources that will help you be ready in case the next disaster is in your area:
Winter may have been cold and snowy this year, but that just means its a good time to curl up with a good movie… or 4! MVCC Library has new Binge Bags to help you out! Each bag has 3 or 4 movies centered around a theme that you can take home for 3 weeks. All you need is your MVCC ID to check out a bag! You can find them right inside the library entrance, so if you’re on campus, stop by and pick one up!
Check out our current bags in the slideshow below:
The Celebrating Diversity Task Group’s LGBTQ+ Subcommittee is hosting the annual Rainbow Reception virtually this year! On Monday, February 1st you can learn about the different resources on campus available to LGBTQIA+ students. Join via WebEx. You can also show your pride by ordering a t-shirt!
After the reception, check out some of the resources available at the library with this selection of books, audiobooks, and graphic novels. Click on the image to view the collection:
2020 is the year of “new”. New rules, new regulations, new tech, new ideas about health and safety. How about new food traditions? Why not try something different this year? MVCC has a variety of cookbooks, and plenty available digitally, so you don’t have to make a trip to the library. Here’s a small selection of cookbooks that might spice up your table this season. Check out our book catalog for more!
Don’t forget that you can always contact a librarian for help finding more resources like these!
When research, either good or bad, is funny and thought provoking it can earn an Ig Nobel Prize. Organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, ten prizes in different fields have been awarded in September every year since 1991.
Here are some highlights from the 2020 award winners:
Psychology Prize: for devising a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows
Peace Prize: For the governments of India and Pakistan, for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other’s doorbells in the middle of the night, and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door
Economics Prize: for trying to quantify the relationship between different countries’ national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing
Medicine Prize: for diagnosing a long-unrecognized medical condition: Misophonia, the distress at hearing other people make chewing sounds
Materials Science Prize: for showing that knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work well
That last one is my personal favorite. Where would we be without this VITAL research?!?!
Here are a few of my all time favorite winners:
Medical Prize (2018): for the medical report “Colonoscopy in the Sitting Position: Lessons Learned From Self-Colonoscopy.”
Economics Prize (2017): for experiments to see how contact with a live crocodile affects a person’s willingness to gamble
Psychology Prize (2016): for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers
Literature Prize (2012): The US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.
Archeology Prize (2008): for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
Literature Prize (2006): for the report “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.”
Peace Prize (2005): for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie “Star Wars.”
Psychology Prize (2004): for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it’s all too easy to overlook anything else — even a woman in a gorilla suit.
Think these are fake? They sound like clickbait, but you can check out the full list and read the original research articles yourself!
Maybe you were scrolling through a news feed today and saw some headlines about aliens on Venus, or at least this weird gas that maybe means aliens. Maybe you’re not sure what to make of that or even if it’s true.
So we’ve got this library full of reliable news sources and books just waiting to be explored. Let’s do a little SCIENCE RESEARCH!
Oh, come on, don’t you want to know about the alleged aliens? Let’s check out some different databases and see what we can find!
If we’re looking for science news, a great place to start is Science Magazine Online, where we can find a news article describing the research that lead to the discovery.
If we are looking for more news, maybe we should try a news database, like the New York Times. If we search “life on Venus” under news, we find another article about the research that looks at this specific gas found in the Venusian atmosphere that we know is produced on Earth by tiny microbes. The production of that gas could mean there are living microbes, like bacteria, in the Venusian clouds! ALIEN BACTERIA!
Maybe now you’ve been bit by the knowledge bug and you want know more about Venus or the other planets. Follow me down the rabbit hole of astronomy information! We’ve got some great books in our collection that you can find through our Catalog! You might find a few books that look interesting…
As for life on Venus, we may not have the answer yet, but with a little bit of research we can discover what the headlines really mean. It wasn’t that bad, was it?
Librarians are always ready to help you dig into the databases to find what you need. All you have to do is ask us!
Using the library can be an adventure, especially with so many recent changes. Follow the steps in this guide to find the information you need to be successful this semester. Choose a “character” to get started on your library adventure!
Students can find all sorts of help at the library, including research and citation guidance, technology to borrow, and of course books! What will you do next?
Staff and Faculty are the backbone of education! The library wants to support you in your work by providing several services. Which one will you choose?
The library is excited to welcome visitors back into the building, but there are some new things to know about using the space. What would you like to know?
