South College Library Blog

As the upcoming election approaches, it’s crucial to remember just how powerful our voices can be. Voting is more than just a civic duty; it’s a chance to shape the future of our communities, our country, and our world. Here at the library, we’re passionate about the power of informed participation, and we want to encourage everyone to get involved in the democratic process.

Your Vote Is Your Voice

Every election is an opportunity to have a say in the decisions that impact your life and the lives of those around you. Whether it’s local school boards, state legislation, or national policies, your vote plays a critical role in determining the direction we take as a society.

How to Get Involved

The first step to making your voice heard is ensuring that you’re registered to vote. If you’re not already registered, it’s easy to get started. Here are some resources to help you:

· Vote411: This site provides comprehensive information on how to register and stay informed about upcoming elections.

· Vote.org: An excellent resource for checking your registration status, finding out how to register, and learning about your local voting procedures.

· Rock the Vote: Focused on engaging young voters, this site offers tools and tips to make voting easy and accessible.

· USA.gov: Official government site with information on how to register and vote in all 50 states.

Stay Informed

There are plenty of resources available to help you stay informed about the election:

· Ballotpedia: A comprehensive resource for researching candidates and ballot measures. It offers detailed information on elections, including candidate profiles and policy summaries.

· Vote Smart: Provides non-partisan information on candidates, their voting records, and their positions on various issues.

· AllSides: Offers balanced news coverage by presenting different perspectives on current events, helping you get a well-rounded view of the issues.

Make Your Plan 

Don’t wait until the last minute! Make a plan to vote. Decide whether you’ll vote in person or by mail, and if you’re voting in person, find out where your polling place is located. Planning ahead ensures that you won’t be caught off guard and will make the process smooth and straightforward. 

Your Participation Matters 

Remember, every vote counts. By participating in the election, you’re contributing to a vibrant democracy where everyone’s voice has a chance to be heard. Your vote helps shape policies, elect leaders, and make decisions that affect us all. 

Did you know that the South College Library provides students, faculty, and staff access to over 100,000 eBooks? Find eBooks related to your academic studies, personal interests, and self-improvement. Do you enjoy reading fiction books? The library’s collection includes novels, collections of short stories, and poetry too.  

Haunted : On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds by Leo Braudy 

An award-winning scholar and author charts four hundred years of monsters and how they reflect the culture that created them. Leo Braudy, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, has won accolades for revealing the complex and constantly shifting history behind seemingly unchanging ideas of fame, war, and masculinity. Continuing his interest in the history of emotion, this book explores how fear has been shaped into images of monsters and monstrosity. From the Protestant Reformation to contemporary horror films and fiction, he explores four major types: the monster from nature (King Kong), the created monster (Frankenstein), the monster from within (Mr. Hyde), and the monster from the past (Dracula). Drawing upon deep historical and literary research, Braudy discusses the lasting presence of fearful imaginings in an age of scientific progress, viewing the detective genre as a rational riposte to the irrational world of the monstrous.  

The Knowledge Seeker: Embracing Indigenous Spirituality by Blair Stonechild 

Blair Stonechild shares his sixty-year journey of learning-from residential school to PhD and beyond-while trying to find a place for Indigenous spirituality in the classroom. Encouraged by an Elder who insisted sacred information be written down, Stonechild explores the underlying philosophy of his people's teachings to demonstrate that Indigenous spirituality can speak to our urgent, contemporary concerns. 

The American Sign Language Handshape Dictionary by Richard A. Tennant & Marianne Gluszak Brown 

This unique reference can help users locate a sign whose meaning they have forgotten or help them find the meaning of a new sign they have just seen for the first time. It organizes more than 1,900 ASL signs by 40 basic handshapes and includes detailed descriptions on how to form these signs to represent the different English words that they might mean. ASL students can begin to track down a sign by determining whether it is formed with one hand or two. Further distinctions of handshape, palm orientation, location, movement, and other nonmanual body signals help them pinpoint their search while also refining their grasp of ASL syntax and grammar. A complete English word index provides the option of referring to an alphabetical listing of English terms to locate an equivalent sign or choice of signs.  

Eyes to See: The Astonishing Variety of Vision in Nature by Michael Land 

Vision is the sense by which we and other animals obtain most of our information about the world around us. Darwin appreciated that at first sight it seems absurd that the human eye could have evolved by natural selection. But we now know far more about vision, the many times it has independently evolved in nature, and the astonishing variety of ways to see. The human eye, with a lens forming an image on a sensitive retina, represents just one. Scallops, shrimps, and lobsters all use mirrors in different ways. Jumping spiders scan with their front-facing eyes to check whether the object in front is an insect to eat, another spider to mate with, or a predator to avoid. Mantis shrimps can even measure the polarization of light. Animal eyes are amazing structures, often involving precision optics and impressive information processing, mainly using wet protein - not the substance an engineer would choose for such tasks. In Eyes to See, Michael Land, one of the leading world experts on vision, explores the varied ways in which sight has evolved and is used in the natural world, and describes some of the ingenious experiments that researchers have used to uncover its secrets. He also discusses human vision, including his experiments on how our eye movements help us to do everyday tasks, as well as skilled ones such as sight-reading music or driving. He ends by considering the fascinating problem of how the constantly shifting images from our eyes are converted in the brain into the steady and integrated conscious view of the world we experience. 

Performing Math by Andrew Fiss 

Performing Math tells the history of expectations for math communication—and the conversations about math hatred and math anxiety that occurred in response. Focusing on nineteenth-century American colleges, this book analyzes foundational tools and techniques of math communication: the textbooks that supported reading aloud, the burnings that mimicked pedagogical speech, the blackboards that accompanied oral presentations, the plays that proclaimed performers’ identities as math students, and the written tests that redefined “student performance.” Math communication and math anxiety went hand in hand as new rules for oral communication at the blackboard inspired student revolt and as frameworks for testing student performance inspired performance anxiety. With unusual primary sources from over a dozen educational archives, Performing Math argues for a new, performance-oriented history of American math education, one that can explain contemporary math attitudes and provide a way forward to reframing the problem of math anxiety. 

Dog Photography: How to Capture the Love, Fun, and Whimsy of Man's Best Friend by Margaret Bryant  

Award-winning photographer Margaret Bryant makes capturing dog portraits look easy—but anyone who has aspired to take portraits of a four-legged friend knows it is a skill that is hard-won. In fact, creating memorable dog portraits requires more than a good camera and a squeaky toy. Dogs need to feel comfortable before they reveal their personalities. To get them comfortable, a photographer needs to recognize when a dog is stressed and when a dog is relaxed. In this book, Bryant teaches photographers how to recognize subtle but important dog behaviors and provides tips to help them modify their own behavior to “talk” back to the dog and set the stage for great dog portraiture. After providing tips for helping a dog to relax, Bryant moves on to share techniques for posing individual dogs and groups. She includes myriad images to share inspiring ideas that help to showcase the personality of the pet. She also offers ideas for getting the dog's attention and getting reactions and desired behaviors on cue. Finally, she offers both simple and elaborate ideas for setups that might be used when photographing dogs. With the tips in this book, photographers will have the skills they need to handle and pose dogs to make great sales. 

We know that Hurricane Helene has brought immense challenges and hardship to Asheville, NC and surrounding areas. The devastation has been profound, and we understand the impact it has had on your lives. During this difficult time, it is important to know that you are not alone. 

This guide has been created to provide you with valuable resources that can offer support, information, and assistance as you navigate the recovery process. Whether you are a student, faculty, or staff member, we hope that these resources will help you find the help you need. 

Helene Relief Resources Guide (Asheville)