20 most popular web sites since 1996

We like to think of sites like Google, Facebook and Amazon as immutable — parts of the web as it exists now and has always existed. This is not the case, however. Sixteen years ago, only Amazon (the CEO of which owns The Post) was a popular site; it was the 16th most popular site on the web according to Media Metrix (which later was absorbed into comScore). Infoseek and Hotbot were more popular than Google (which, that December, looked like this) and Facebook (which didn’t exist).

Sites like AOL and Yahoo did exist — and were popular. But the easiest way to make that point is to share with you this graphic, which shows the 20 most popular sites in December of each year, according to comScore. More interestingly, what it shows is when certain sites became and then stopped being popular.


The 2014 Word Of The Year

A nation, a workplace, an ethnicity, a passion, an outsized personality. The people who comprise these things, who fawn or rail against them, are behind Merriam-Webster's 2014 word of the year: 

Culture


Culture is a big word at back-to-school time each year, but this year lookups extended beyond the academic calendar. The term conveys a kind of academic attention to systematic behavior and allows us to identify and isolate an idea, issue, or group: we speak of a "culture of transparency" or "consumer culture." Culture can be either very broad (as in "celebrity culture" or "winning culture") or very specific (as in "test-prep culture" or "marching band culture").
This year, the use of the word culture to define ideas in this way has moved from the classroom syllabus to the conversation at large, appearing in headlines and analyses across a wide swath of topics.

Winter break hours


The library will be closed from December 19 to January 4. Students will be able to clear fines and fees, and remove Banner blocks from January 5 to 9, 10 AM to 2 PM. UHMC Library will resume normal hours January 12.

Christmas and Winter Festival Traditions

Why do the Japanese celebrate Christmas with KFC? What is Christmas pudding? Who is Baba Chaghaloo? Why do Italians have huge Christmas parties? What do Hanukkah and Christmas have in common? The answers to these and more questions are at WhyChristmas.

Friday after Thanksgiving hours

The library will be open on the Friday after Thanksgiving. In addition to our "awesome" library and "da bomb" librarians, we will be making donut holes all day.




If anyone has a recipe for donut holes for a donut hole maker please send to me. Otherwise, I will have to improvise.

Thanksgiving Hours

The library will be closed November 27. The library will be open normal hours (10–4) November 28.

Ancient manuscripts available online for free

One of the oldest libraries on the planet is digitizing its archive of ancient manuscripts — and they’re all available to view free of charge.

The Vatican Apostolic Library is undertaking an extensive digital preservation of its 82,000 document collection. Over the course of a few years, with the assistance of Japanese company NTT DATA, the library has catalogued nearly 4,500 manuscripts online — and it hopes to reach the 15,000 mark within the next four years.

You could win an iPad

Imagine how much better college would be if A) you had an iPad, B) there was a better understanding of how to do research in the 21st Century, or C) both A and B.

Well, Credo is conducting a survey to explore today’s research skills, and your participation enters you to win an iPad! It only takes a few minutes to complete. Click here to begin:https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NQ8DYLY

The Last Chained Libraries




In the Middle Ages, books were incredibly scarce, and although many wanted to share knowledge with the masses, they didn't quite trust the public. So the chained library was born, and while most of these restrained reading collections have vanished, a rare few still exist, looking much as they did centuries ago.

Increase your brain power!

Hitting the gym can boost your memory, researchers have found. They say an intense workout of as little as 20 minutes can enhance your long-term memory by 10 percent in healthy young adults. Although the study used weight exercises, researchers said that resistance activities such as squats or knee bends would probably produce the same results.

If you are looking for a place nearby to lift weights, the campus' UH Maui Fit is the place!


UH Maui Fit Open Gym

WHEN: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays

TIME: 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM

WHERE: UH MAUI FIT—1st Floor Pilina Building

World's largest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings

The Macaulay Library is the world's largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings. Their mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history, to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings, and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts.

Medieval Book Historian Discovers 800-Year-Old Doodles

For the past few years, medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel has been poring over someof the world’s oldest books and manuscripts at Leiden University, The Netherlands, as part of his ongoing research on pen trials. Pen trials are small sketches, doodles, and practice strokes a medieval scribe would make while testing the ink flow of a pen or quill. They usually involve funny faces, letter strokes, random lines, or geometric shapes and generally appear in the back of the book where a few blank pages could be found.
Medieval Book Historian Erik Kwakkel Discovers and Catalogs 800 Year Old Doodles in Some of the Worlds Oldest Books history books

Read ebrary books offline!

Using the Bluefire app you can download and read ebrary books on your mobile devices. Then you can read them without being online. Read anywhere, any time!

Bluefire offers a full set of active reading features including bookmarking, highlighting, note taking, dictionary lookup, contextual search, sharing, and more.

To learn more, go to the libraryʻs "Research Help" page and look at the "Mobile Tools" section.

Are you fit!?

Are You UH Maui Fit?

Are You A UH/UHMC Student?

Come Down to the Library!!

Enter to Win a Fall Semester Student membership yo UH Maui Fit for the price of a drop in!

As a winner, you’ll be able to sign up for a student membership for only $5.

Be 1 of 10 winners for the Fall semester.

Deadline to enter is Friday, September 12. Winners will be drawn on September 15.

Winners will be contacted and will have until September 22nd to redeem their gift. Unredeemed prizes will be void after September 22nd.

TUEBL, the Ultimate Ebook Library

Imagine a world where authors can make money by giving digital versions of their books away to their readers, and readers could explore all sorts of books that they may have never even considered reading before. In a nutshell, this is TUEBL, the Ultimate Ebook Library.

Fall 2014 Hours

Fall 2014 hours start on August 25.

Monday to Thursday 8 AM to 6 PM
Friday 10 AM to 4 PM
Closed: Saturday, Sunday, all state holidays, day after Thanksgiving, and winter interim

Summer Session Hours

Summer session starts on May 12.

Open: Monday–Thursday 10 AM to 5 PM

closed all state holidays

A colourful book from 1692.

A beautiful book of colors from 1692. In over 700 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author, who identifies himself as A. Boogert, describes how to make watercolor paints. He explains how to mix the colors and how to change their tone by adding “one, two or three portions of water." To illustrate his point he fills each facing page with various shades of the color in question.


30 great poems

Today is Great Poetry Reading Day. Take time to read a great poem. Here is one to get you started.

I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, 
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, 
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, 
The day what belongs to the day — at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, 
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

National cheese ball day

The library has CHEESEBALLS!!! Come over and get some while they last!!