Updates on library material now a click away

Have you ever thought how nice it would be to know about new books and DVDs that are being added to the shelves at the Delaware County Dis­trict Library each month? Library staff is select­ing and order­ing thou­sands of dol­lars of new mate­r­ial every month, and it may be some­what dif­fi­cult to keep up with all of those new titles. In July alone, the library added 1,159 adult books, 879 juve­nile books, 697 news­pa­pers, 419 mag­a­zines, 301 DVDs, 136 books on CD, 116 dona­tions, 30 juve­nile audio kits, 14 MP3s, and two Play­aways to the Delaware, Pow­ell, Ostran­der and Orange facilities.

To help make it eas­ier for you to learn about new books that you want to read or new movies you want to watch, the library is rein­tro­duc­ing our Newslet­ter Sign-Up ser­vice. The elec­tronic newslet­ters pro­vide a list and descrip­tion of new titles and are deliv­ered each month to your email account; you can reserve any of the titles right from the newsletter.

To sign up for any or all of the seven newslet­ters cur­rently avail­able, includ­ing New Fic­tion, New Non Fic­tion, New Children’s, Books, New DVD’s , and New Audio Books, log on to our web­site at www.delawarelibrary.org, click on “Con­nect” and select “Email Newslet­ters.” Choose the newslet­ters that inter­est you, pro­vide your email, and you’re all set. A reminder: We value your con­fi­den­tial­ity and your email address will never be shared with any one for any reason.

By the way, you can also click on the title of the newslet­ter to see the list of new mate­r­ial at any time, whether or not you are signed up for email delivery.

It’s never been eas­ier to stay con­nected to the Delaware County Dis­trict Library, and I hope you’ll take advan­tage of this service.

Who is Dr. Gur­don Buck?

Accord­ing to Ency­clo­pe­dia of World Biog­ra­phy, Dr. Gur­don Buck is con­sid­ered the father of mod­ern plas­tic surgery. Dur­ing the Civil War, he and other Union sur­geons com­pleted 32 rev­o­lu­tion­ary “plas­tic oper­a­tions” on dis­fig­ured sol­diers. Buck was the first to pho­to­graph the progress of his repairs and the first to make grad­ual changes over sev­eral oper­a­tions, includ­ing pio­neer­ing the use of tiny sutures to min­i­mize scarring.

Is uncooked rice thrown at a wed­ding fatal to birds?

Throw­ing rice at a newly mar­ried cou­ple has been a tra­di­tion for thou­sands of years, pos­si­bly going back as far as the ancient Assyr­i­ans and Egyp­tians. The idea is to give the new­ly­weds good luck, fer­til­ity, and abun­dance using this sym­bol of a good crop. Recently, a the­ory that throw­ing rice can kill birds that swoop down and eat it has been sug­gested. The rice grains sup­pos­edly absorb water inside the birds and cause them to vio­lently burst. The real­ity, as described in Myth­busters: The Explo­sive Truth Behind 30 of the Most Per­plex­ing Urban Leg­ends is that rice poses no harm to them. Wild birds eat uncooked rice all the time with no ill effects. Many types of water­fowl, shore­birds, and migra­tory birds depend on flooded rice fields to main­tain fat in the win­ter. Any uncooked rice birds con­sume is bro­ken down well enough by their giz­zards so that the pieces should not cause any prob­lems as they expand.

My dad made a joke about Rula Lenska but I’ve never hear of her. Who is she?

I am old enough to remem­ber Rula Lenska in tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials. Accord­ing to The Adver­tis­ing Age Ency­clo­pe­dia of Adver­tis­ing, Lenska is an Eng­lish actress of Pol­ish descent best known for her work in the United King­dom. She is remem­bered in the United States for a tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial for Alberto VO5 that pre­sented her as a celebrity, even though she was not widely known in the US at the time. What made Lenska an even­tual punch line was the cap­tion that appeared as she intro­duced her­self — it said sim­ply “famous actress.” In a “Tonight Show” mono­logue, Johnny Car­son asked “Who the hell is Rula Lenska?” and began using Lenska’s name as a run­ning joke on his show. Jane Curtin played Lenska in a sketch on “Sat­ur­day Night Live.” Soon Lenska became famous because of the mere assump­tion that she was famous. Now liv­ing in the United King­dom, Lenska is a gen­uine Pol­ish count­ess and her father was the head of Radio Free Europe in Poland.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Aug 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.