LibraryRunner

We're not supposed to go anywhere unless we really have to, so even if we're still going to a workplace, we're at home more than usual.  Are you looking for things to do at home besides watch TV or play video games all day long?  Already ate all your quarantine snacks?  Are the kids climbing the walls?  Here are some resources:

The Butte College Library has tons of online resources for you to do your work remotely; take a look at our guide on "Using the Library Remotely" for all kinds of helps.  But you can also use the Library remotely for fun and learning!  Try these:

You can't do this right now, but you can still explore lots of things!

Image by iqbal nuril anwar from Pixabay

Apart from the college library, there are tons of online resources being offered for free right now -- more than you could ever explore.  Here is just a sampling:

• Explore twelve world-class museums with virtual tours.
• Practice your geography with the online game GeoGuessr.
• Bluprint, an online maker center, is offering free unlimited access to classes until April 9th.

Try some new forms of exercise:

• Gold's Gym is offering its app for free through May, with hundreds of workouts and videos.
• Try yoga!  Down Dog is offering all their workout apps for free until April 1st, and here are several free video workouts from Core Power Yoga.
• Peloton is offering its workout app for free for 90 days.
• Work out with Chris Hemsworth for six weeks!

Read a free book on your device. 

• The Butte County Public Library may be closed in meatspace, but online it offers lots of books, movies, and subscriptions.
• Project Gutenberg is a massive collection of free online books.
• Poke around the Internet Archive to find free books and videos, or entertain yourself by using the Wayback Machine to look at webpages from ten years ago.
• You don't need a Kindle to read Amazon books on your device; there's a Kindle app.  Look at the daily deals for low-cost reads, or read one of the many books that are out of copyright and free to download.

Miss your live sports?  Watch some classic games for free!

• The NBA is offering a free preview
• Watch NFL games for free until May
• You can watch hockey games too!

Listen to music!  Many popular stars are offering content on their social media platforms.  You can also try these offerings:

• The Metropolitan Opera has a free show every night!
• The Seattle Symphony also has a nightly performance.
• Wigmore Hall, one of the world's great concert halls, is offering past livestreams on demand.
• Playbill has a list of musicals available on streaming.

Learn stuff!

• Free guitar lessons from Fender
• Practice your math skills and learn new material at Khan Academy!  Science videos too.
• HistoryExtra, the BBC's history magazine, is offering two weeks of unlimited access.  Read all about historical plagues, from the Black Death to the sweating sickness!
• A free stop motion animation course, why not?
• Scholastic is offering its online courses for free right now, for K-9+.  Practice your skills -- or have your kids practice theirs!
• Take an Ivy League class online for free.  Here's a list of 450 courses you can start now.
• Learn all sorts of interesting things at How Stuff Works.
• Learn to write a play from a playwright!    Or, take a free writing course!
• Got any embroidery thread lying around?  Learn to do some fun decorative stitches that go on anything.  (One of us has a teenage niece who is decorating her little sister's jeans)

Discerning accurate information from inaccurate or completely made-up "facts" is an important skill -- not just for college research, but for life.  We are continually bombarded by false information, and the coronavirus epidemic is no exception.  Take a look at the viral email we found, and see if you can spot the errors!

With so many people worried about the coronavirus COVID-19, social media is inundated with advice on how to clean surfaces and check for illness, or descriptions of how the virus works.  The trouble is, a lot of the "information" isn't information at all; it's misleading, only partially correct, or just plain wrong.  We just saw this email making the rounds -- click on the link to see a pdf copy.  It's a document that claims to be "Stanford Notes on Coronavirus" and has a link at the top: https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-care-now/2020/novel-coronavirus.html   That is a legitimate link that really is full of good information from Stanford, but the body text that follows is completely different. 

We did a little research, and found that this document is in fact two viral posts that have been slightly edited, put together into one, and then labeled with the "Stanford" name.  Some fact-checkers have already debunked the information:

• First half examined at The Bipartisan Press
• Second half examined at Fullfact
• Mother Jones got the same thing we did!

We encourage you to read those articles for a detailed analysis, but let's do a short look at some hints that this document is not reliable and not from Stanford doctors.

• The text is not professionally written.  Punctuation is missing, the language is odd, and it contains grammatical errors:
  • "serious excellent advice by Japanese doctors"
  • "can't emphasis enough"
  • "wash your hands...with bacterial soap"
• The text contains phrases that medical doctors would not say in a public health notice.
  • "May the world recover from this Coronavirus soon."
  • "It hates the Sun."
• Some of the advice/information makes no sense, even if you don't have any scientific or medical knowledge.
  • "This new virus is not heat resistant and will be killed by a temperature of ...about 77 degrees F.  [Then it couldn't survive in the human body, or on a warm day.]
  • "Try not to drink liquids with ice."  [What?]

The medical advice contained in this document is not accurate.  It claims:

• That if you are sick, your lungs will have "fibrosis."  Fibrosis is scar tissue; the danger with COVID-19 is pneumonia.
• That being able to take a deep breath and hold it for ten seconds is an indication that all is well.  Not at all correct.
• That drinking water constantly will wash the virus into your stomach, where acid will kill it.  Nope.
• That it is a dry cough.  Maybe -- maybe not.
• That the virus can only stay alive on your hands for 5-10 minutes.  No.
• And plenty of other claims!

Don't fall for these tactics; check into the information you see circulating around.

Find more information about evaluating social media and fake news at our LibGuide!

Did you know that the library offers more than just academic books? We also have a large collection of fantasy books you can check out. To discover more, check out our online book display to see a sample of what you can discover in the library. If you have questions or recommendations for purchases you can contact ReferenceLi@butte.edu or use our book recommendation form. 

Open Education Week celebrates the global open education movement. What is open education? According to openeducationweek.org, open education "encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide." 

Did you know that many classes at Butte College use Open Educational Resources (OER)? Typically, these classes have a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) associated with them. Find these classes by looking for the ZTC logo on the class schedule.

You can even limit your search for classes by clicking the "Only Show Low Cost Classes" box on the search for classes page. 

For more information stop by the library to see our Open Education Week Display!