Think we're just a small college library buried in the sticks of Whittier?? Think again! Here you can see - continent by continent - our visitors from around the world, courtesy of ClustrMaps. The larger the dots, the greater number of visitors. The interesting question is, if these people have found our library - have you?

The Women's Bureau of the US Department of Labor has some interesting statistics on their web site about occupations that will grow the fastest by 2014:

• Total job growth for all occupations from 2004 to 2014 is projected to be 13%.
• The fastest growing occupations are projected to show growth between 30% to 56%.
• 16 of the 30 fastest growing occupations are health related, 6 are computer specialist occupations, 3 are environmental related, and 2 are in teaching.
• Health related: home health aides; medical assistants; physician assistants, physical therapist assistants; dental hygienists; dental assistants; personal and home care aides.
• Computer related: network systems and data communications analysts; software engineers; and network and computer systems administrator.
• Environment related: hydrologist; hazardous materials removal workers; and environmental engineers.
• Rapid growth in health-related occupations reflects an aging population that requires more health care, a wealthier population that can afford better health care, and advances in medical technology that permit more health problems to be treated more aggressively.

For more statistics, see the factsheet Employment Status of Women and Men in 2005 at http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-ESWM05.htm

History in the Un-Making!

From the interior of the Putnam Center, circa 1970, to its demise.

When the dust settles, we look forward to the new Library Resource Center, rising like a Phoenix from the ashes!

Behold the campus as it was taking shape in the early 60's. See the little round building on the right of the picture?

As of today, it will be NO MORE. Putnam Center is the site of the new LRC building and while being iconic and dear to many hearts here at the college, it had to go.

We look forward to the new building going up. Groundbreaking is slated for November 16th.

See photos from the on-going construction at the library web site: http://library.riohondo.edu/photogallery/LibPhotosIndex.htm

Even though gas prices have gone down again, it's still worth thinking about alternative fuels.

The California Fuel Cell Partnership is a group of companies and government agencies that are promoting the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell cars.

The Partnership's web site is http://www.cafcp.org/index.html and has a range of helpful information on it -- from information on hydrogen fuel and the environment to the location of hydrogen fuel cell fueling stations in California.

Worth a look - especially if you will be buying a new vehicle in the next few years. SOMEONE has got to get more alternative fuel cars on the road!

Google Search Tip #1 (the first in an occasional series of searching tips)

If you insist on starting out a search for authoritative web sites using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo Search:

• Use the Advanced search instead of the basic search. You can fine tune searches to eliminate thousands of irrelevant pages.
• Limit the search to a specified DOMAIN, such as .edu (universities and colleges), or .org (organizations, advocacy groups, etc.)
• Try searching just for .pdf documents or PPT (Powerpoint) presentations.
• Think about the date range for a moment. If you are only interested in information that can be found on recently added documents or web pages, you can set your search for the past 7 days, for example, or a range of dates.
  

Note that these strategies will not automatically assure that authoritative, timely, substantive web sites will come up, but they increase the odds a bit.