Trout Library Blog

February is American Heart Month, a time set aside for focusing on cardiovascular health and educating people about how to lead healthy lifestyles that will minimize their risk of heart attacks and strokes. The CDC recommends the following seven strategies for living a heart-healthy lifestyle:

• Learn your health history
• Eat a healthy diet
• Move more, sit less
• Take medicines as directed
• Rethink your drink
• Monitor your blood pressure at home

I have created over 25 topic library guides that you can access by clicking on Library Guides in the Quick Links box on the Library's homepage. Among the health topic guides, find ones on Heart Disease and Nutrition. Each guide contains a large selection of website suggestions, open access journals, database suggestions, books in the collection, eBooks, videos and podcasts, open access resources, and useful articles on the topic.

Under the Websites & Journals tab of the Heart Disease guide, I have provided links to toolkits from the CDC and NIH that you can use to further your knowledge of heart health. In addition, find several links to heart heath tips from different organizations as well as a heart risk calculator that you can use to assess your 10-year risk of developing heart disease or stroke. As stress is a major contributor to the development of heart disease, note this article from the Mayo Clinic that provides tips on preventing stress from damaging your heart. In the Nutrition guide, find some useful nutrition apps to consider. Under the Useful Articles tab of the Heart Disease guide, also find an article listing some relevant apps.

The following book is new to the print collection:

The New Science of Fighting Silent Heart Disease: Causes, Diagnoses, Prevention, and Treatment by Harold L. Karpman

Call Number: 616.123 .K18 2020

Offers practical advice and provides insight into silent heart disease, covering its risk factors, how to prevent it, and how to treat it. Written by a celebrated cardiologist who has successfully treated thousands of patients during his 50-year career.

 

 

 

Remember that if you have questions about these resources or any others, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library during the hours posted on the Library's homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, use our chat service, or call us at 610-526-6085.

February is Black History Month, a time when we bring to light the central role that African Americans have played in our history and highlight the achievements of the Black community as well as prominent figures within the community. Trout Library has many resources to help you learn about Black history.

We have created a Black History Month Library Guide. This guide contains links to many useful websites, including some to African American history museums, one to the 1619 project from the New York Times, one to the Rosa Parks Collection from the Library of Congress, and more. The guide also features many relevant videos from the Kanopy database. In addition to the films listed in the guide, Kanopy has curated a special collection for Black History Month. To use Kanopy, you must first create an account.

Trout Library also has an Anti-Racism Resources Library Guide. In this guide, find many useful websites, Kanopy videos, and TED talks on the topic, as well as books in the collection, eBooks, and articles. A special tab contains links to articles that will help you teach anti-racism. Links to these guides and others can be found on our Library Guides page.

On the slatwall just inside the Library entrance, we have displayed 18 books in the print collection, both old and new, that are relevant to Black history. We encourage everyone to peruse this display, as you might find something rewarding to read! The following books are new to the collection: 

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi (Editor); Keisha N. Blain (Editor)

Call Number: 973.0496073 .K33 2021

A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present. A #1 New York Times Best Seller.

 

 

 

 

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

Call Number: 973.0496073 .S644 2021

Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, the author leads readers on a tour of monuments and landmarks that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history. One of the New York Times Best Books of 2021.

 

 

 

We also have a database from NewsBank called Black Life in America, which provides full-text articles about the Black experience that can be found in news sources from as far back as the 18th century. A PDF is provided for many of the older articles. The database allows you to do a general keyword search, or you may perform a more refined search using menus. The first menu allows you to select a time frame, including the following: Arrival in America (Beginning to 1783), Antebellum (1784-1860), Civil War (1861-1865), Reconstruction (1866-1877), Jim Crow (1878-1922), Great Migration (1923-1944), Civil Rights Movement (1945-1975), Late 20th Century (1976-2000), and Early 21st Century (2001-present). Within each time period, you can narrow your search further by selecting categories such as Notable People and Laws and Legislation, which are located in the second menu.

 

 

Find a link to the Black Life in America database in the A-Z Databases list as well as under the Databases tab of some of our library guides. Off-campus access to Black Life in America requires a username and password that can be found in the Library Database Password List under Quicklinks in Harcum Hatch.

 

Remember that if you have questions about these resources or any others, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library during the hours posted on the Library's homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, use our chat service, or call us at 610-526-6085.