Mango language program

The Library is reviewing the Mango language program as a possible purchase.  Please see http://library.tctc.edu/mango and give us your opinion on if we should subscribe to it and what languages would be most helpful to you.

What’s an Infographic and How Do I Get One?

Thanks to Credo Reference for the below information.  I found it fascinating.  Hopefully, you will also.

 By: Deirdre Costello, Content Associate
“Infographic” is short for information graphic, a visual representation of information that’s both easier to absorb and generally more appealing than a list or a spreadsheet. For obvious reasons, infographics have become a popular way to share information about everything from brightly colored pop culture timelines to interactive models of government data.
Last week I shared one of my favorite infographics, Hack College’s Get More Out of Google, which I think is a great example of how to make information easy on the eyes. Credo has put together a Pinterest board of infographics that might be of interest to librarians, academics and readers, and there are a ton of other collections out there; GE has a really neat collection of interactive data visualizations, the Game of Thrones list is a personal favorite reference (I can’t keep the houses straight, even after reading the books), and then of course there are the familiar and everyday infographics like subway maps and da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Infographics are great tools for presentations (those text-heavy Power Points can get pretty stale), flyers, posters, or really any situation where you want a lot of information to have a specific and powerful impact – here’s a list of tools I’ve played around with and found pretty easy to use so you can start making them for yourself! Everything on this list is free, or at least has a free version.

• GOOD Labs has a great tool for creating simple, bright pie charts or Venn diagrams; great for presentations, and the examples are good for a chuckle.
• Piktochart, which has both a free and a paid version, provides easily customizable templates that make your information pop. If you’ve checked out infographics before, many of these will look VERY familar!
• Infogr.am offers more familiar templates, with options to create either an infographic or a chart as well as the ability to create an archive of them. Very, very easy to use, share and embed. Check out an infographic I made on comic book movies!
• Google charts offer a wealth of options, but may require a little more know-how to manipulate into something that looks as polished as many infographics out there.
• Wordle is a tool for creating “word clouds,” where the words repeated most often ( minus articles, of course) appear the largest. You often see these on blogs, and they can be a neat tool for textual analysis. Can be a little hard to use on your own website.
• Prezi is not exactly a tool for creating infographics, but while we’re on the topic of stale, texty presentations, Prezi is a great alternative tool for creating dynamic, aesthetically pleasing presentations.

Hopefully you found something interesting in the collections above or a tool that will help you get your points across! If you create any infographics you think we’d find interesting, funny, or just plain stellar, please share them with us!

Friday the 13th

Sorry, the blog has been a bit silent this summer.  So let's start it back with a bang!  Do you suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia?  And in case you don't know what that means, it is fear of Friday the 13th.  Remember that, it could be on a crossword puzzle coming your way soon.

Other Friday the 13th facts (thanks Credo database!)

A number of theories have been proposed to explain the Friday the 13 superstition including:

• In the Christian tradition, Fridays and the number 13 are both considered unlucky. (What happened to TGIF – Thank Goodness It’s Friday?!)
• Friday is the day on which Jesus was crucified, and some theologians have suggested that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit on a Friday.
• There were thirteen people at the Last Supper (Jesus and his twelve disciples), and Judas Iscariot is said to have either been the thirteenth to arrive at the feast, or the first leave it, on his way to betray Jesus. (Too bad Jason wasn’t there…)
• Thomas W Lawson’s self-published novel Friday, the Thirteenth is said to be the primary origin of the modern fear of the date.
• Friday the 13th is also bad for business generally: the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, estimates that in the USA between 800 and 900 million dollars’ worth of business are lost on Friday the 13th because people refuse to travel or go to work.
• In Greece and the Spanish-speaking world, Tuesday the 13th is the day that brings bad luck.

Regardless, enjoy today. After all it is Friday.