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Volume 1, Issue 2<br />

<strong>LIBRARY</strong> <strong>LEARNING</strong><br />

March 2012<br />

WOODSTOCK SCHOOL<br />

Inside This Issue:<br />

The First Novel? 2<br />

<strong>Woodstock</strong> When 2<br />

New Books 3<br />

Junior <strong>School</strong> News 4-5<br />

Dr. Seuss’ Birthday 6<br />

2012 Book Fair 6<br />

MUN Research 7<br />

To Learn More: 8<br />

SEO: Search Engine<br />

Optimization<br />

Library Staff & Hours<br />

Senior <strong>School</strong>:<br />

Sarah Colwell, Librarian,<br />

ext. 520<br />

Subashini Timothy,<br />

Circulation, ext. 517<br />

Esther Arthur, Technical<br />

Services (cataloging), ext.<br />

518<br />

Harry van Doorn, Library<br />

Assistant, ext. 517<br />

Hours: 8am-6pm, M-F<br />

Extended Study Halls<br />

(sign-up only) 6:30-8:45<br />

pm, Tues.-Thurs.<br />

Junior <strong>School</strong>:<br />

Meenu Khan, Librarian,<br />

ext. 127<br />

Rahima Thomas,<br />

Circulation, ext. 127<br />

8<br />

<br />

Libraries exist for the written<br />

word. If the preservation of<br />

recorded knowledge is our business,<br />

then symbols are our raw<br />

materials.<br />

Until recently, most archaeologists<br />

agreed that the earliest<br />

writing systems emerged during<br />

the Neolithic era, when<br />

humans began to settle down<br />

and grow sustainable staple<br />

crops. Populations expanded<br />

because of increased food supply<br />

and the need for more<br />

hands to participate in agriculture.<br />

Speech alone was not as<br />

effective in larger societies that<br />

needed shared information to<br />

live and get along.<br />

Writing began in these same<br />

regions of early settlement.<br />

Homo sapiens is the species<br />

that invents symbols in<br />

which to invest passion and<br />

authority, then forgets that<br />

symbols are inventions.<br />

Joyce Carol Oates<br />

Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian<br />

hieroglyphs and the stilldeciphered<br />

Harappan script of<br />

Indus River settlements like<br />

Mohenjo-Daro are considered<br />

Stone Age Symbolism<br />

to be the oldest forms of writing<br />

in the world.<br />

The open-angle<br />

symbol appears in<br />

42% of subject sites,<br />

from 18 regions,<br />

across 6 continents<br />

over a period of 25,000 years.<br />

Two archaeologists from the<br />

University of Victoria in Vancouver<br />

have some new ideas<br />

about communication using<br />

symbols. As they studied the<br />

Paleolithic cave paintings that<br />

have been found in almost every<br />

part of the world where humans<br />

roamed 15,000-32,000<br />

years ago, GenevieveVon Petzinger<br />

and April Nowell began<br />

to notice similar symbols in<br />

far-flung places. Some of the<br />

most common of these appear<br />

in the line of images, above.<br />

Just as Stone Age artists everywhere<br />

depicted similar subjects<br />

in their paintings, our<br />

distant ancestors seemed to<br />

use a common set of symbols to<br />

express meaning that was comprehensible<br />

at least to other<br />

members of their society.<br />

Whether these glyphs had<br />

shared significance beyond a<br />

March is Women’s History Month<br />

particular hunter-gather territory<br />

is something we may never<br />

know. Linguists have identified<br />

elements of “protofamilies”<br />

of large language<br />

groupings such as Indo-<br />

European, the family that includes<br />

both Hindi and English.<br />

By definition, however, the<br />

prehistoric “record” lacks the<br />

documentary artifacts that<br />

would “tell” us more about prehistoric<br />

people.<br />

Cave Painting, Chauvet, c.30,000 BCE<br />

Early cave art like that of<br />

Chauvet, France, expresses<br />

motion, delight and perhaps<br />

the wonder that we still experience<br />

today when observe the<br />

beauty and power of nature or<br />

human skill. The 26 symbols<br />

that began to appear around<br />

the same time are just as expressive<br />

of the ancient and<br />

universal human experience—<br />

even if we don’t know<br />

what they mean.


Page 2<br />

Murasaki Shikubu at work<br />

The First Novel?<br />

Library Learning<br />

Murasaki means “purple”<br />

March is Women’s History Month and<br />

just as fitting time as any to celebrate<br />

the literary accomplishment of a woman<br />

who lived a long time ago.<br />

Though some debate whether Genji<br />

Monogatari, The Tale of Genji, can be<br />

considered the worlds’ first novel, there<br />

is no doubt that it is one of the most<br />

enduring books ever written.<br />

Murasaki Shikubu (973-1014 or 1025)<br />

was a lady-in-waiting in the Imperial<br />

Court of Japan during the Heian period,<br />

a time of significant artistic development.<br />

During this last period of classical<br />

Japanese culture (794-1185), Kyoto,<br />

the Imperial capital, was a center of<br />

great creativity in response to the influences<br />

of the Chinese scholarship, art<br />

and religion of the late Tang, Song and<br />

Yuan dynasties. The powerful Fujiwara<br />

clan ruled while the emperors presided<br />

over the rarified pleasures of<br />

court life. It was during this era that<br />

the samurai class arose to become the<br />

dominant force in Japanese political<br />

history until the country was forced to<br />

open its shores to the wider world.<br />

Hikaru (shining) Genji, the hero of the<br />

tale, is a younger son of a fictitious<br />

Japanese emperor and his favorite concubine.<br />

His story, narrated in many<br />

installments, has more to do with the<br />

young man’s romantic misadventures<br />

than any exploit of courage. Some critics<br />

consider Murasaki’s approach to be<br />

typically “feminine,” but others describe<br />

her approach as “psychological”<br />

and, at that time, unprecedented in<br />

world literature, east or<br />

west.<br />

Although Lady<br />

Murasaki was a<br />

well-educated aristocrat<br />

Heian kana<br />

who had learned Chinese, she wrote<br />

most of her lengthy tale in kana, the<br />

indigenous Japanese syllabaries. She<br />

apparently assumed that most of her<br />

readers would be women of the court,<br />

few of whom were able to read the imported<br />

kanji which, with the kana,<br />

make up the complex hybrid Japanese<br />

writing system still in use today. The<br />

aristocratic refinements of the Kyoto<br />

court are poetic, highly inflected and<br />

defy casual attempts at idiomatic<br />

translation. While most Japanese students<br />

read some portion of the original<br />

work in secondary school or university,<br />

the style of the book makes its somewhat<br />

racy content less accessible than<br />

its more modern counterparts. Much<br />

of the dialogue is written in verse.<br />

In some translations, the language of<br />

Genji seems archaic, but the intimate<br />

portrayal of the inner life rivals any<br />

modern exploration of love and disillusionment.<br />

Murasaki’s authorship is<br />

sometimes questioned because the<br />

elaborate work of many diligent years<br />

seems, to some, beyond the abilities of<br />

woman of her time. But, for a thousand<br />

years, The Tale of Genji has enjoyed<br />

a unique status in world literature.<br />

Lady Murasaki created not only a<br />

memorable hero but a revolutionary<br />

depiction of her<br />

protagonist’s inner life.<br />

FIC SHI<br />

<strong>Woodstock</strong> When?<br />

<strong>Woodstock</strong> was pleased recently to have<br />

welcomed back former girl’s dorm matron,<br />

Dorothy Yoder Nyce. Dorothy<br />

worked here over 50 years ago.<br />

Here’s some of what she remembers<br />

from that time:<br />

1962 - Reflections Fifty Years Later<br />

. . . Highlights of the K-Wing dorm located<br />

on the Quad’s second floor, a<br />

dorm for 7 th and 8 th grade girls (plus a<br />

few from grade 6), include the evening<br />

devotion and snack time. The girls,<br />

dressed for bed, came up the back stairway<br />

from K-Wing, through a three-foot,<br />

square hole into our bathroom, from<br />

there into our living-dining room. We<br />

reflected on moral teaching, sacred insight,<br />

religious arts and stories that<br />

enabled the girls to be responsible people<br />

of faith. One project that the girls<br />

valued was a weekly sheet of news that I<br />

posted inside the ‘john’ doors. Each<br />

sheet included thoughtful quotes, names<br />

The Quad in 1962<br />

about living together.<br />

of pairs of girls<br />

for remembering<br />

each other<br />

during that<br />

week, special<br />

events, facts<br />

about India,<br />

or reminders<br />

In addition to hosting the study hall<br />

five evenings a week, I counted items<br />

from each girl for the dhobi, and helped<br />

Shanti the dorm ayah to enable girls to<br />

care for their growing health issues.<br />

Less regular, but events that we enjoyed<br />

included: singing Christmas carols on<br />

the Quad stairway; preparing and presenting<br />

the play “Scrooge” for younger<br />

girls or parents available; taking a<br />

group of 8 th graders to Dehra Dun on a<br />

Saturday to rent bikes to ride around<br />

the forest preserve; and hikes—often<br />

accompanied by good friend Diana<br />

Biswas. One memorable day during the<br />

monsoon season, the principal declared<br />

the day “a clear day holiday.” With<br />

lunches packed, we headed for “the<br />

haunted house,” not being long gone<br />

before our umbrellas opened overhead.<br />

During one long week-end, we hiked<br />

short distances, as into the bazaar or<br />

out Tehri Road, and then returned to<br />

read together To Kill a Mockingbird. We<br />

also enjoyed a ‘dress-up,” special meal<br />

served in the staff lounge area (usually<br />

out-of-bounds for students)....<br />

Dorothy’s Books:<br />

-Jesus’s Clear Call to Justice, Herald<br />

Press, 1990.<br />

-Multifaith Musing: Essays & Exchanges,<br />

Evangel Press: 2010.<br />

-Strength, Struggle & Solidarity: India’s<br />

Women, Pinchpeny Press, 1989.<br />

-Weaving Wisdom: Sermons by Mennonite<br />

Women, Womensage, 1983.


Page 3<br />

New Books<br />

How is the Internet Changing the<br />

Way You Think is a<br />

collection of essays edited<br />

by John Brockman<br />

and includes contributions<br />

from Richard<br />

Dawkins, Stephen<br />

Pinker, Brian Eno, Sam<br />

craft. The artistry of quilt-making<br />

around the world has become better<br />

known in recent decades, with heirloom<br />

pieces fetching as much as<br />

$100,000 in US auction houses. Thankfully,<br />

razai remain both beautiful and<br />

accessible.746.46 HEL<br />

Struggle for Freedom: the Role of<br />

cultural exchange that<br />

made Mongol rule as tolerant<br />

as Mongol conquest<br />

was brutal. Her influence<br />

over the greater part of the<br />

Eurasian land mass puts<br />

her in the ranks of the most<br />

powerful women in history.<br />

950.2092 WEA<br />

Harris, Ai Weiwei and many other<br />

“leading intellectuals.” This collection,<br />

like the Internet, as described by one<br />

contributor, author Judith Rich Harris,<br />

“dispenses information the way a<br />

ketchup bottle dispenses ketchup. At<br />

first there was too little; now there is<br />

too much. In between, there was a halcyon<br />

interval of just-enoughness.”<br />

004.67 BRO<br />

Copyright Clarity: How<br />

Fair Use Supports Digital<br />

Learning, by Renee Hobbs,<br />

dispels some common misconceptions<br />

about responsible<br />

use of intellectual property<br />

for educational purposes.<br />

While some of the key concepts Hobbs’<br />

discusses are hard to codify definitively—“transformative<br />

use,” for example—the<br />

book is useful and encouraging.<br />

As information and related issues<br />

of “ownership” evolve, it’s important<br />

for educators to remember that, when<br />

undertaken in good faith for instructional<br />

purposes, “fair use” refers to<br />

rights as well as to restrictions. PLC<br />

346.048<br />

There are probably very few of us who<br />

don’t have a colorful and comfortable<br />

razai on the bed at this time of year.<br />

Chandramani Singh<br />

and Krystyna Hellström’s<br />

beautifully<br />

photographed Jaipur<br />

Quilts does honor to<br />

this seemingly humble<br />

Delhi, by Reva<br />

Dhanedhar, marks the<br />

centenary year of the<br />

founding of the transfer<br />

of the Capital. The book<br />

recounts the history of<br />

the city and its role in the<br />

struggle for independence from 1857 to<br />

the Red Fort at midnight ninety years<br />

later. Dr. Dhanedhar includes detailed<br />

accounts of major satyagraha and party-based<br />

political initiatives, as well<br />

as the role of outlying villages that<br />

are now a part of the greater metropolitan<br />

area. Her archival research<br />

is extensively documented in notes<br />

and appendices. The bibliography<br />

contains lists of books, government<br />

documents and private<br />

papers that would enrich<br />

any research project on<br />

this vital period of modern<br />

Indian<br />

history. 954.035 DHA<br />

The Secret History of the<br />

Mongol Queens: How the<br />

Daughters of Genghis Khan<br />

Rescued his Empire plays on<br />

the title of the classic 13 th century<br />

epic poem about the conqueror<br />

of the largest contiguous empire ever<br />

established. Author Jack Weatherford relies<br />

heavily on the original Secret History in<br />

this review of the lives of the women of<br />

the great Mongol clans. Consider Sorkhokhtani<br />

Beki, a daughter-in-law of<br />

Genghis Khan, for instance. A Nestorian<br />

Christian, Sorkhokhtani was responsible<br />

for much of the commercial and<br />

Aung San Suu Kyi: a Biography, by Swedish<br />

journalist Jesper Bengtsson, is a relatively<br />

new account of the inspiring life of the<br />

Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel<br />

Peace Prize laureate who has spent most of<br />

the last two decades under house arrest, deprived<br />

for years at time from contact with her<br />

family and her people. B Aung 2012<br />

Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir first published<br />

The Second Sex in 1949. Constance<br />

Borde and Sheila Malovany-<br />

Chevallier’s new translation is not so<br />

much a revision as a reminder of the<br />

intellectual achievement of Beauvoir’s<br />

massive analysis of the existential role<br />

of women history, art, religion and<br />

politics. Eclipsed in part by the author’s<br />

larger-than-life personality and outmoded by<br />

its own ambitious scope, the book is still the<br />

classic work in the field of women’s studies.<br />

305.4 BEA<br />

The Hindus: an Alternative<br />

History by scholar Wendy Doniger,<br />

is an elaborate examination<br />

of Hinduism from its earliest<br />

mythic texts to its current cultural<br />

manifestations in India and the<br />

rest of the world. She provides as<br />

well a strong historical perspective from<br />

source material outside the Hindu canon.<br />

We thank Mr. & Mrs. Wunker for this generous<br />

donation. 294.5 DON<br />

Coming soon: a DVD doubleheader:<br />

Anne of the Thousand Days &<br />

Mary Queen of Scots.<br />

AV 942.05


JUNIOR SCHOOL <strong>LIBRARY</strong><br />

THE STORY STARTS HERE…………..<br />

It’s been a long cold winter but it’s nearly over. While we’re<br />

waiting for the spring colors, we’ve got lots of activities to<br />

do. First we have to celebrate a few famous authors’ birthdays...find<br />

out who all were born in March.<br />

The most widely celebrated<br />

March birthday of children's book<br />

author was that of Dr. Seuss on<br />

March 2.<br />

MARCH 5 - MEM FOX<br />

MARCH 6 - CHRIS RASCHKA<br />

MARCH 11 - EZRA JACK KEATS<br />

LKHHH<br />

MARCH 21- DAVID WISNIEWSKI<br />

Book Club:<br />

Every Thursday after school in the Quad Library<br />

with Ms. Khan<br />

If you are fascinated by books and love reading,<br />

Book Club could be one of the most enjoyable<br />

ways of indulging in your hobby.<br />

Here’s what students do in the club--- There<br />

are nine members. At present the focus is on<br />

the Caldecott Award Books. The club has a<br />

group in the Shelfari where they add all the<br />

books on the shelf and write reviews as well.<br />

They also have chance to participate in discussions<br />

about books they have read, as well<br />

as be introduced to new books.<br />

Quad Library<br />

celebrated Dr. Seuss’ Birthday<br />

by doing lots of activities :<br />

*Hat Competition<br />

*Dress up like a character<br />

from Dr.Seuss’ Books<br />

*Poster competition depicting<br />

Dr.Seuss’ life and<br />

accomplishments<br />

*Poetry Writing<br />

see following pages for more!<br />

New DVD’s!!!<br />

-Alvin and the Chipmunks<br />

-Cheaper by the Dozen<br />

-Mr. Popper’s Penguins<br />

-The Muppet movie<br />

-Devil May Hare


Read Poems by Grade 2 Students in<br />

Dr. Seuss’s Rhyming Style<br />

Anna Snader<br />

Anishka Joab<br />

Mahima Peters<br />

Next month watch out for more Library<br />

news! Till then keep reading!<br />

Thank you,<br />

Ms. Khan!<br />

JS Librarian


Dr. Seuss Postage Stamp<br />

I wish I had a hat!<br />

Page 6<br />

Jr. <strong>School</strong> Celebrates Dr. Seuss’ Birthday<br />

From the time when our<br />

mothers were first able to<br />

scrape what little fluff we had<br />

on our heads into<br />

a bad Who hairdo, Dr. Seuss<br />

has been a friend to many of<br />

us at <strong>Woodstock</strong>.<br />

Junior <strong>School</strong> students recently<br />

celebrated the long<br />

relationship between young<br />

readers and artist-poet Theodore Seuss<br />

Geisel, the author of 46 beloved books for<br />

children, on the occasion of his<br />

108th birthday.<br />

Geisel was born on 2 March<br />

1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts.<br />

By the time he began<br />

studying at Dartmouth College,<br />

he was already an aspiring<br />

humorist. He went on<br />

to study at Oxford, to apply his creative<br />

talents to commercial advertising and<br />

then to public information and film production<br />

during WWII. Illustrating his<br />

own comic stories, many written in anapestic<br />

tetrameter, a style inspired by<br />

the<br />

rhythm of<br />

ship engines,<br />

eventually<br />

his full-time<br />

He also collabo-<br />

film projects<br />

mated specials,<br />

the award-<br />

holiday<br />

How the<br />

became<br />

career.<br />

rated in<br />

and aniincludinwinning<br />

classic,<br />

Grinch Stole Christmas, memorably<br />

narrated by Boris Karloff. In 1984,<br />

Dr. Seuss was given a Pulitzer Prize<br />

for his 50-year contribution to American<br />

literature.<br />

“Fun is good.”<br />

Oh, the places you’ll<br />

go!<br />

Geisel had strong liberal convictions<br />

and used his humor to protest social injustice<br />

and political oppression.<br />

<strong>Woodstock</strong> Junior <strong>School</strong><br />

students observed Geisel’s<br />

birthday with a weeklong<br />

series of events including<br />

guest read-aloud sessions<br />

in the JS Library, art projects,<br />

Dr. Seuss trivia and general Seussstyle<br />

silliness. Students reported<br />

that, while there were<br />

no green eggs or ham on offer,<br />

there was plenty of fun for<br />

everyone who participated.<br />

Do WS Seuss fans have a favorite<br />

book? According to<br />

Library statistics, the books<br />

JS students like best are The Cat<br />

in the Hat, an entertaining tale of<br />

babysitting gone wrong, The Lorax,<br />

now a major motion picture,<br />

and The Foot Book, no explanation<br />

required.<br />

If you haven’t read a Seuss classic<br />

for awhile, you might want to remember<br />

that, according to Seuss himself,<br />

“Adults are obsolete children...you make<br />

‘em, I amuse<br />

‘em.” So don’t<br />

be a Grinch:<br />

roast some<br />

roast beast<br />

and say:<br />

Why am I here?<br />

The 2012 <strong>Woodstock</strong> Book<br />

Fair was held on Saturday,<br />

3 March, in the Quad<br />

dining hall.<br />

Vendors from<br />

Scholastic in Delhi, Natraj<br />

Publishers of Dehradun, Om<br />

Books and Cambridge<br />

Book Depot, both of Mussoorie,<br />

brought an extensive<br />

array of new titles<br />

for students and staff to<br />

purchase.<br />

Meenu Khan, JS Librarian,<br />

was responsible for organizing the<br />

event and a number of staff volunteered<br />

their time. Mrs. Long and Mrs. Mark<br />

opened the fair bright and<br />

early, as JS students were<br />

A person’s a person, no matter how small. -- Dr. Seuss<br />

2012 Book Fair Goes to the Dogs<br />

waiting en masse at the<br />

entry door. SS students<br />

were scheduled for the afternoon.<br />

In addition to<br />

choosing books for personal<br />

reading, teachers and students<br />

made suggestions to library<br />

staff regarding our collections.<br />

Some of the new titles featured in<br />

this newsletter were Book Fair acquisitions<br />

initiated by you.<br />

The highlight of the morning was a reading<br />

by India<br />

Today Deputy<br />

Editor, Dhiraj<br />

Nayyar, from<br />

his new book,<br />

Journalist Dhiraj Nayyar speaks to JS<br />

Students.<br />

How Cheeka Became a Star<br />

and Other Dog Stories. Mr.<br />

Nayyar, who is from Delhi and<br />

attended both Oxford and Cambridge,<br />

explained to students that he had edited<br />

this collection of personal accounts<br />

because he has come to love dogs<br />

only in recent years, after fearing<br />

and disliking them<br />

as a child. He<br />

told us how one<br />

particular dog convinced<br />

him to give all dogs a<br />

chance. JS students<br />

then told their own<br />

dog stories. Afterwards,<br />

much to the<br />

students’ delight, Mr.<br />

Nayyar kindly autographed<br />

each of their books.<br />

I wasn’t invited...<br />

Woof!<br />

Give dogs a<br />

chance!


7<br />

Managing Controversy: MUN & Everything Else<br />

Everything will be all right ...when people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction<br />

and see it as a drawing they made themselves. -Dag Hammarskjöld<br />

Pablo Picasso (1881-<br />

1973) was still at<br />

work when Dag Hammarskjöld<br />

was serving<br />

as Secretary of the United Nations.<br />

Hammarskjöld died in 1961, in a plane crash<br />

en route to a cease-fire negotiation in presentday<br />

Zambia, then part of colonial Rhodesia.<br />

Years earlier it had been Picasso’s Guernica,<br />

pictured above, that had contributed<br />

to international outrage over the fascist<br />

bombings of civilians during the<br />

Spanish Civil War (1936-39), a conflict<br />

many historians consider the precursor<br />

to World War II (1939-1945) and, consequently,<br />

the establishment<br />

of the United Nations<br />

shortly before the<br />

surrender of Nazi Germany.<br />

Anyone who has visited<br />

UN headquarters (or<br />

UN Headquarters seen Alfred Hitchcock’s<br />

North by Northwest), is<br />

likely to realize that the collaborative<br />

design of architects le Corbusier and Niemeyer<br />

is a monument to a modern humanist<br />

aspirations. So why does the<br />

mere existence of the<br />

United Nations continue<br />

to provoke controversy<br />

after nearly<br />

seventy years?<br />

Researching the facts<br />

surrounding controversial issues is a critical<br />

step to navigating any dispute, academic<br />

or otherwise. <strong>Woodstock</strong> Library<br />

subscribes to the Points of View online<br />

service through the academic information<br />

mega-vendor, EBSCOHost, a resource<br />

you’ll probably be using in your college or<br />

university before<br />

too long. POV is<br />

easily accessible via<br />

the WSWire<br />

“Subscriptions”<br />

link, and no longer If the shoe fits...<br />

requires WS students<br />

to enter a username or password.<br />

Select the POV (EBSCO) hyperlink and<br />

you’re taken directly to the database.<br />

You can choose from a list of topics or do<br />

Here it is!<br />

a keyword or advanced search<br />

to find expert point-counterpoint discussion<br />

on a number of current global<br />

issues.<br />

You also have<br />

access to a<br />

wealth of magazine<br />

and newspaper<br />

articles,<br />

scholarly research,<br />

full-text<br />

eBooks, radio<br />

& TV transcripts,<br />

primary<br />

sources such as<br />

speeches, charters,<br />

interviews,<br />

testimony, government<br />

documents,<br />

UN resolutions<br />

and bibliographies<br />

with<br />

still more links to<br />

useful, mostly ad-free resources. You<br />

can also link to legal images and serious<br />

video clips on current events.<br />

There are helpful research guides for<br />

taking notes, preparing<br />

outlines, evaluating websites<br />

and facts v. opinions.<br />

The essay-writing<br />

tool, reference guide to<br />

curriculum standards<br />

and citation tool make<br />

this site a great place to<br />

conduct and prepare your<br />

research.<br />

UN Charter on<br />

EBSCO. Hear it<br />

read in the accent<br />

of your choice:<br />

American, British<br />

or Australian!<br />

Another feature of the EBSCO services is<br />

the ability to get notification by email<br />

when your search comes up with<br />

something new. For this feature, you<br />

will need to create your own login ID and<br />

password. It’s as easy as online shopping<br />

and no credit card is required. Many<br />

years ago, when this former student participated<br />

in MUN, my team, the India<br />

delegation, eclipsed the thensuperpowers<br />

US & USSR by being more<br />

current about a news-making nuclear<br />

disarmament initiative than the Washington<br />

or Moscow delegates were themselves.<br />

And we didn’t have online services<br />

with automatic update tools.<br />

Need general background information<br />

of the country to which<br />

you’ve been assigned? Try<br />

Country Reports online service<br />

(see access instructions<br />

above). You still need to login<br />

to get the full range of services<br />

available. User<br />

ID is woodstockschool<br />

password is tigers<br />

You can all the core and<br />

current facts about your<br />

nation as well as links to<br />

other sources.<br />

When you’re looking up<br />

country or issue facts in<br />

the Library Catalog,<br />

remember to check<br />

WebPath from the same search screen.<br />

And if you need more help, just ask!


WOODSTOCK SCHOOL<br />

To Learn More:<br />

<strong>Woodstock</strong> <strong>School</strong><br />

Vera Marley Library<br />

Tehri Road, Landour<br />

Mussoorie, Uttarakhand<br />

+91-0135-6115517<br />

+91-0135-6615520<br />

+91-0135-6615000<br />

library@woodstock.ac.in<br />

Sarah Colwell<br />

Senior <strong>School</strong> Librarian<br />

SarahColwell@woodstock.ac.in<br />

Meenu Khan<br />

Junior <strong>School</strong> Librarian<br />

MeenuKhan@woodstock.ac.in<br />

-For more about Paleolithic art see: The Cave Painters: Probing the<br />

Mysteries of the World’s First Artists, by Gregory Curtis 709.01<br />

CUR 2006<br />

-Coming soon to DVD: Werner Herzog’s acclaimed Cave of Forgotten<br />

Dreams, documentary about what is possibly the oldest art<br />

work on earth at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, in France, with paintings<br />

that date from 32,000 BCE.<br />

-To see more new books added to our Library, go to<br />

V:\SupportDepartments\Libraries\HSLibrary\New Books\New<br />

Books in the <strong>Woodstock</strong> Libraries.docx<br />

-To find out what Dr. Seuss books we have in the JS Library, go to<br />

V:\SupportDepartments\Libraries\QuadLibrary\Seuss.docx<br />

-For new Hindi books, see:<br />

V:\SupportDepartments\Libraries\e-publications 2011-<br />

2012<br />

Coming in April: AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHT PAGES! If you want to submit an article or news, let us know.<br />

You’re @ the Top: Search Engine Optimization<br />

Last month we talked about Wikipedia, the free<br />

do-it-yourself online encyclopedia that is almost<br />

impossible to avoid. Have you<br />

ever wondered why Google<br />

ranks Wikipedia articles near the<br />

top of almost every search you<br />

execute? Is it some kind of conspiracy?<br />

Not exactly. Neither<br />

Wikipedia nor Google profit directly by getting<br />

you to read Wikipedia first. The secret to the<br />

search-engine success is SEO: search engine<br />

optimization.<br />

Most of us would probably have to admit that,<br />

when looking for basic information on most<br />

topics, we rarely move beyond the first 3-5 pages<br />

of sites that our search engine pulls up. Some<br />

students have told me that they rarely look past<br />

the first page of search results. If we use the<br />

Google default display of 10 articles per page,<br />

that means we’re going to scan, at most, the first<br />

50 hits of the vast numbers that may meet our<br />

search criteria. SEO is a process that increases<br />

website exposure by maximizing apparent relevance.<br />

To understand SEO, it helps to have some idea<br />

of how Internet search engines rank the relevance,<br />

or the “aboutness” of a specific URL’s.<br />

Data retrieval once required human researchers<br />

to master complex search syntax, and enter<br />

search terms according to the dictates of mathematical<br />

logic. Skilled indexers, usually librarians<br />

with special subject expertise, assigned<br />

metadata, such as subject headings and summaries<br />

called abstracts, to the records content providers<br />

considered important enough to publish.<br />

Today, online information is no longer limited<br />

to data that is “important.” Anyone with a computer<br />

and an opinion can become an information<br />

“provider.” As a result, online research is mostly<br />

free, allows the use of “natural language”<br />

and, consequently, is sometimes highly imprecise.<br />

What’s really going on behind the<br />

scenes?<br />

In addition to “crawling” the Web to match<br />

our search terms to retrieve “relevant” information,<br />

the more popular search engines index,<br />

or categorize data using algorithms based on<br />

logic and probability. What used to be a task of<br />

human beings now happens automatically, on<br />

the fly, as the search engines scan vast amounts<br />

of data to find the terms you entered. But, as<br />

fast and powerful as they are, search<br />

engines aren’t necessarily clever<br />

when it comes to the sort of content<br />

recognition we call meaning. It would<br />

seem that “aboutness” is sometimes more<br />

a matter of method than discernment.<br />

Not again!<br />

One method of raising a website profile<br />

is to increase keyword density and placement.<br />

The “spiders” that crawl through<br />

billions of bits of data look for terms that<br />

are repeated throughout a URL and that<br />

have placement in key segments of the<br />

record. One recurring principle of SEO is recursion.<br />

It’s an easier concept to illustrate or joke<br />

about than it is to describe. For example, when I<br />

ran the term “recursion” through Google, I got<br />

the response: Did you mean: recursion --an<br />

old jest originated by mathematicians, recursive<br />

to computer programmers. The product labels<br />

for Droste Cocoa and Quetzelteca Especial are<br />

examples of a famous and not-so-famous use of<br />

recursive patterns. The repetition of self-similar<br />

images within the larger image is a model for a<br />

well-designed website, the kind that is more<br />

likely to create the appearance of keyword density<br />

and thus rank higher in query results list.<br />

Spammers and other “black hats” can use these<br />

methods in disingenuous ways to attract<br />

search engine spiders.<br />

Because Internet data is linked in what<br />

we call the Web, the relationships within<br />

and between URL’s create a new kind of<br />

metadata. Search engine algorithms like PageRank,<br />

Google’s proprietary formula, assign<br />

great importance to a URL’s incoming and outgoing<br />

links. The more links, and the better they<br />

are, the higher the ranking. But search engines<br />

are wary of too many links suddenly changing a<br />

website’s ranking. BMW and JC Penny’s<br />

attempts at SEO were considered fraudulent<br />

because they created too many bogus links<br />

to and from abandoned or irrelevant<br />

URL’s. Google cited JC Penny and, for<br />

a time, punished BMW by removing the<br />

company from all it’s search results.<br />

The HTML nofollow operator instructs<br />

search engines to ignore dubious<br />

“organic” links that have developed<br />

by chance. One data<br />

provider that doesn’t use<br />

nofollow is the English<br />

version of Wikipedia.<br />

That accounts<br />

in part for its high<br />

rankings in your<br />

search results. It’s<br />

something to<br />

think about.<br />

I’m just in the way, as the<br />

French would say, “de<br />

trop” - Cole Porter<br />

I’m the King<br />

of the World!

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