2010 marks Earth Day's 40th year of people working together to make our environment cleaner and healthier.

At serve.gov, find Earth Day volunteer opportunities you can participate in.

You can also get involved at the Earth Day Network.

UMUC students can also join our online student club ENMT 900: Environmental Management, where you'll meet students, faculty, and visiting experts who are passionate about sustainability. Information on ENMT 900 and other UMUC online student clubs is here. Towards the bottom of that Web page are instructions on joining a club.

Dorothy Height, whose tremendous contributions to the civil rights movement are sometimes overlooked, died today at the age of 98. For 80 years she worked tirelessly for civil rights and for women's rights. She is widely seen as the first person to show how the two causes--civil and women's rights--are inextricably linked.

You can read about her amazing life in this New York Times obituary.

Ms. Height's autobiography, Open Wide the Freedom Gates, is available through our library catalog. Here is information on borrowing books through the UMUC library. 

The photo shows Ms. Height in 2003. It is from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/us/21height.html

This week is a big one for those of us working in libraries, it's National Library Week!  "National Library Week," according to the American Library Association, "is an annual celebration of the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians."  And is the week we are reminded how much libraries contribute to their communities every day.

 

This year's theme is "Communities thrive @ your library."  And this year's Honorary Chair is the 2009 Newberry Award Winner Neil Gaiman.  Mr. Gaiman has long been a supporter of libraries and will participate in various National Library Week events.  To find out more about ALA's National Library Week, check out their fact sheet.

So to honor your local, beloved library stop by or log on.  Make use of the resources they provide, check out a book, find an article, and let them know the work they do is appreciated.

 

The UMUC library is available to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through email, IM, chat, and more!  Check us out at http://www.umuc.edu/library and visit us often for all your information needs.

The Library of Congress's redesigned Prints & Photographs Online Catalog offers easy access to 1.25 million digital images. You can read about the revamped Web site in this press release.

From World War I posters to Wright Brothers negatives to historic baseball cards, the Library of Congress image database makes for interesting browsing and provides useful visual artifacts for your research projects.



Image source: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/