Blog Posts by Subject: Bibliography

Visit NYPL's BiblioCommons for these lists and many more. You can also create your own and share them with us in the comments! See below for some interesting staff picks from the past month, on topics both timely and timeless:

[Note: The following is an imaginative work of fiction. For some decidedly non-fiction resources for your own fantastic feats, see below.]

The opening article in the 1836 edition of the Magician's Yearly Trust, published then by a British organization of the same name, entitled "On performing magic in the most frozen parts of the world" caught my eye. It was the word "frozen" in the title that made me wonder what the article really was about. So I began reading the article and learned that there was a small group of professional magicians based in London, about 18 to 24 in all (members were unsure just how many of them there were since 

The cuisine of North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia) was influenced by the many peoples who settled there: African, Islamic, Arab, Berber, Ottoman, French, Italian and Spanish. It has its roots in the beginning of civilization itself.

Visit NYPL's BiblioCommons for these lists and many more. You can also create your own and share them with us in the comments! See below for some interesting staff picks from the past month, on topics both timely and timeless:

Sometimes naked
Sometimes mad
Now the scholar
Now the fool
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men.
— Hindu verse from Avadhoota Gita

Terence McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000), America's most beloved psychonaut, bard, ethnobotanist, folk hero, and freewheeling philosopher, rose to fame in the early 1990s with the publication of several influential books: The Archaic Revival (1992), Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge — A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (1992), Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, 

Most people have experienced brushes with the Otherworld, that liminal place where dimensions overlap and reality shimmers, shivers, and breaks apart: seeing ghosts, dreaming "true" dreams, meeting that strange and uncannily helpful "person" at just the right moment... These situations are more common than we collectively admit — but attitudes are shifting. According to the Institute of Noetic Sciences, "The paranormal is no longer a fringe subject. Need proof? Only 32 percent of Americans report no paranormal beliefs, and half of the population reports belief in two or more paranormal phenomena." About.com reports that 71 percent of 

Ancient Egypt has long held a fascination for the West. The idea of Egypt was transmitted to Roman culture through Greek accounts, and after Late Antiquity, existed in the European imagination as an exotic and ancient location in the Bible's Old Testament account of the 6th century BCE Hebrew diaspora.

In the late 1800s Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida purchased 160 acres in the rolling California hills for a housing subdivision. They called it Hollywood. In 1911 the first filmmakers arrived from New Jersey; in Hollywood they could shoot outdoors without electrical lighting for over 100 days each year. Others from the east coast soon followed, coming not only for the sunny climate but to escape the clutches of the Motion Pictures Patents Company, or the Edison Trust, which licensed Thomas Edison's patents and often violently enforced their monopoly on cameras, projection equipment, and film distribution. By the time the Trust was successfully prosecuted and dissolved 

"And she proceeded to burn perfume..." [Gulnare of the sea].
Picture Collection, NYPL. Digital ID: 1704102.From ghost-hunting reality-TV shows to feature films like The Hereafter, the paranormal has gone mainstream. Book publishing, too, has jumped on the paranormal bandwagon.

Are you looking for a healthy, flavorful, whole foods approach to cooking? Wherever you are on the vegan to meat-eating spectrum, Indian food offers a wide variety of tastes, colors, and textures guaranteed to appeal to every palate.

The dust has finally settled over New York City, there are no more time outs left to use, the clock has unfortunately hit zero, and the final score was 24-19. The season is over and with it the dream of a city is placed on hold for yet another season. The National Football League's New York Jets nearly pulled off what they as an organization have not been able to do since the 1969-1969 season with Broadway Joe Namath. They came close to beating three of the NFL's best quarterbacks and their teams, as they nearly made it to one of the biggest sporting events in the United States, the Super Bowl. This year's New York Jets caught the attention and imagination of not only the New York 

Pull out your black turtleneck and a beret! The Musuem of Modern Art presents through April 25, 2011 the exhibit Abstract Expressionist New York. Whether or not you think a painting by Jackson Pollock is a work of genius, or something your kid brother could easily do, this exhibit is a treat for the eyes. Suitable for the whole family, consider a visit sometime during or after the Holiday season.

Whether you’re in the midst of researching or writing your project, the free bibliographic management tool Zotero could save you A LOT of time. Join me for an introductory workshop on this free Firefox plug-in that helps you gather, manage, analyze, and share your resources. Learn the basic functionality of the program as well as how to integrate your Zotero library with word-processing software for footnotes and bibliographies -- Yes, you can change the citation style of your book or dissertation from Chicago to APA with the click of a button!

 "What ails you, Polyphemos? Why do you cry so sore/in the starry night? You will not let us sleep./Sure no man's driving off your flock? No man/has tricked you, ruined you?/
Out of the cave/the mammoth Polyphemos roared in answer:/
'Nobody, Nobody's tricked me, Nobody's ruined me!'"

—The Odyssey, Book IX

Knowledge is power, and in hard times, finding the best information can be even more important. These books, websites, and electronic resources, available through your local library, can save you both time and money! 

In Chapter 18 of Candide, our hero and his valet Cacambo arrive in the utopian kingdom of El Dorado, where the streets glitter with precious stones. The people of El Dorado speak Cacambo's mother tongue, a Peruvian dialect indecipherable to Candide, and Cacambo becomes the sole communicator and interpreter. Candide relies on his valet to communicate with the natives of this strange and beguiling country.

Early morning New York City—it’s 27 degrees out there. Brrrrr. And though the thermometer is inching up, prospects for above-freezing temperatures over the next five days don’t look good. Water in the parking lot behind my apartment building has pooled and frozen, creating a scarily shimmering scene—an ice skater’s delight but a treacherous trap for the rest of us.

Recently I heard a physical therapist speak on the topic of preventing falls, and he gave some serious food for thought. For instance, falls account for 87% of all fractures for adults 65 years and older. Hip fractures, 90% of which are caused by falls, cause the most deaths and lead to the 

Bloc-notes. Officially, that’s French for blog. But like those other tech nouns that have also become verbs (to google, to xerox…), I’m not sure how “to blog” translates en Français.

I still have people asking for the book Comment Parler Des Livres Que L'on N'a Pas Lus? Actually they ask for the English version. Like many of the books I enthusiastically recommend, I have yet to read it. It is part of an ever-growing list. That list is called The Ever-Growing List of Soon-To-Be-Read Books. The fact that I haven’t read a book certainly doesn’t stop me from talking about it, recommending it, or 

My father moved into my Brooklyn home about 10 years ago when my mother died, and thus began my career as his personal librarian. When he first moved to Brooklyn, I showed him how to use the bus system so he could travel to and from the Brooklyn Central Library. I gave him a simplified explanation of the Dewey system; telling him what I tell everyone who comes to the reference desk, “think of the number as the address where the subject or book lives on the shelf.” I knew my father’s reading preferences very well and it was with assurance that I sent him to the 940’s to find exactly what he would like. For the most part he took care of his reading material