The holiday season is a time for gathering and celebrating with friends and family, gift-giving, reflection and thanks. To commemorate this time of year, the U.S. Census Bureau presents the following holiday-related facts and figures from its data collection.

Some of the facts include:

— 20 billion - # of pieces of mail the US Postal Service expected to deliver between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year

— $30.5 billion - retail sales by the nation’s department stores (including leased departments) in December 2007

— $493.3 million - sales by US Christmas tree farmers in 2007

— $593.8 million - value of US imports of Christmas tree ornaments from China between January and August 2008

— More than 305 million - nation’s projected population as we ring in the New Year

For more, go read the rest: Fact for Features: The 2008 Holiday Season.

An Eccentric Bibliographer

The Honnold Library possesses two examples of the writings of Gabriel Peignot, one of the more eccentric bibliophiles. One of these works has a title which may be roughly translated, “A Dictionary of Bibliology” (1802), and the other, “Universal Register of Bibliographies” (1812). Both are now out of date, but both gave a great impetus to the study of bibliography and to book collecting, as did the author’s other works.

Peignot was born in France in 1765. Throughout his life he held responsible positions; he was first a lawyer, later a librarian and school official. He began his career in the city of Vesoul, but spent the latter part of his life in Dijon. He must have been afflicted with the dread disease of bibliography at an early age, for when he was still in his twenties he was charged by the city of Vesoul with gathering together a municipal library. The French revolution had just occurred and it was an ideal time to found a library. The suppression of the convents and monasteries and the sale of the confiscated goods of the emigré nobles had flooded the market with books and manuscripts; valuable items were to be had for a pittance, or for nothing, and Peignot reveled in his job. In 1803, still the city’s librarian, he became, as well, the principal of its college. He later moved to Dijon and such time as he could spare from making a living, he devoted to reading, book collecting, and writing. He was one of those people who cannot resist reading everything that comes to their notice. Peignot was not only a compulsive reader, but a compulsive note-taker. If a worthless pamphlet were printed on pink paper, Peignot would make a note of the color. If he found an annotated book auction catalogue of a sale long past, he made notes of the prices paid for the items. Thus as he read, he accumulated thousands of pamphlets and books, and thousands of notes.

The mass of notes eventually resulted in 94 books and pamphlets by Peignot himself. These were as odd and as varied as the notes he had taken. He published, for example, a bibliography of books printed on colored paper, and a list of all books which had sold at auction for more than a thousand francs. He wrote an essay on the superstitions of great men, a bibliography of books printed in small editions, a list of books in which the text was engraved, and a chronological essay on severe winters since the year 396 B.C.

One of Peignot’s efforts, his list of books which had been suppressed or had been ordered to be burned, had a most astonishing effect. One morning in 1821, Peignot was aghast to learn that the King of the Two Sicilies had ordered his officials to compile a list of books to be burned in his kingdom, using as the basis for their list Peignot’s publication and the Catholic Index.

As Peignot grew older, the disease of bibliophily grew worse. He bought books when he should have been buying groceries, to the great distress of Mme. Peignot. The good people of Dijon had sympathy for her, but also great respect for her husband, a distinguished member of the Academy of Dijon, and at one time its president. The booksellers agreed that Mme. Peignot could return to them any books which her husband bought. As the good man busily and happily took notes on his purchases and piled the books in his study, Mme. Peignot quietly extracted them and returned them to the booksellers.

A curious result of Peignot’s activities was that after his death, his odd publications, issued in very limited editions, became themselves collectors’ items. A new and more complete bibliography of the items was compiled for collectors and the prices skyrocketed. Thus, posthumously, Peignot continued to advance and stimulate book collecting and bibliophily, and certainly nothing would have pleased him more.

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

What is the Honnold Library Record?
The Honnold Library Record, published from 1958 until 1975, was the publication of the Honnold Library Society, the friends of the library group, founded in 1954. All the issues of the Honnold Library Record are available online in the CCDL in the Honnold Library Record Collection.

In the fall of 1621, the religious separatist Pilgrims held a three-day feast to celebrate a bountiful harvest, an event many regard as the nation’s first Thanksgiving. It eventually became a national holiday in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving. Later, President Franklin Roosevelt clarified that Thanksgiving should always be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month to encourage earlier holiday shopping, never on the occasional fifth Thursday.

Some of the facts include:

— 271 million - # (estimated) of turkeys raised in the United States in 2008

— 689 million pounds - forecast for U.S. cranberry production in 2008

— $9.2 million - value of US imports of live turkeys from January through July of 2008

— 116 million - # of households across the nation

For more, go read the rest: Facts for Features: Thanksgiving Day.

And Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Google explains:

Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?

We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and found that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.

Predicting the spread of the flu with Google. It’s probably not too surprising that our search patterns tell us quite a bit about ourselves on a societal level, but to actually use it to predict the spread of disease takes that to a whole new level.

For more, you can visit Google Flu Trends where they even allow you to download the data.

The words “Last picture taken” before his or her death conjure up many emotions, whether in front of the camera or behind it. This list consists of 10 last time stamps in history taken of and by some fascinating individuals. If anyone has new or conflicting information concerning the photos or information in this list I hope you will share it in your comments.

The list includes Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and Anne Frank. For more, go see the whole list, the pictures, and the explanations: 10 Fascinating Last Pictures Taken.

McGregor explains:

We didn’t advertise it anywhere other than a few space blogs and space forums. I really didn’t think anybody else would care too much. Then, very interestingly, it started popping up on blogs everywhere, and people started mentioning it and saying, oh, “how cool is this?” Then Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter, mentioned on his feed that he was going to follow it, because he wanted to see how the landing would go, and then Wired picked up on it, and so by the time we landed, we had about 3,000 people following it. It was more than I expected.

For more, go read the rest of the interview: Interview @MarsPhoenix. You can also check out the McGregor’s Mars Phoenix guest blogging at Gizmodo. Of course, there is also the NASA mission page and the Phoenix Mars Mission home.

via Library Stuff

Veterans Day originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation in 1954 to change the name to Veterans Day as a way to honor those who served in all American wars. The day has evolved into also honoring living military veterans with parades and speeches across the nation. A national ceremony takes place at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Some of the facts include:

— 23.6 million - # of military veterans in the United States in 2007

— 2.4 million - # of black veterans in 2007
— 1.1 million - # of Hispanic veterans in 2007
— 278,000 - # of Asian veterans in 2007
— 165,000 - # of American Indian or Alaska Native veterans in 2007
— 27,000 - # of Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander veterans in 2007
— 18.7 million - # of non-Hispanic white veterans in 2007

— $36,053 - annual median income of veterans

— 5.7% - percent of veterans living in poverty, as of 2007

— 5.7% - percent of veterans living in poverty, as of 2007 (The corresponding rate for nonveterans was 12 percent.)

For more, go read the rest: Facts for Features: Veterans Day 2008: Nov. 11.

The Waldemar Westergaard Collection

One of the finest gifts the Library has received recently is the library of Dr. Waldemar Westergaard, at one time on the faculty of Pomona College and for many years and until his retirement, professor of history at UCLA. Dr. Westergaard is an expert on the history of northern Europe and has written a great deal on that area. Through a lifetime of study and writing, Dr. Westergaard gathered together an excellent working library of 6000 volumes. Many of these are general historical works such as the Cambridge histories, the American Historical Review, and the publications of the Royal Historical Society. At least 4,000 books in the collection are valuable monographs and periodical sets dealing specifically with the Baltic and Scandinavian countries. The books range over all periods in the history of these countries, ancient, medieval, and modern. A particularly important section contains valuable materials on Courland, Livonia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, the German Hansa cities, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and even Iceland.

This gift, together with the books on the Netherlands already in the library, is a remarkable resource for anyone studying the history of northern Europe. The Westergaard Collection is a wonderful gift and one which will be more and more appreciated as scholars in the colleges become acquainted with it and direct their students to it.

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

What is the Honnold Library Record?
The Honnold Library Record, published from 1958 until 1975, was the publication of the Honnold Library Society, the friends of the library group, founded in 1954. All the issues of the Honnold Library Record are available online in the CCDL in the Honnold Library Record Collection.

The first American Indian Day was celebrated in May 1916 in New York. Red Fox James, a Blackfeet Indian, rode horseback from state to state, getting endorsements from 24 state governments, to have a day to honor American Indians. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed a joint congressional resolution designating November 1990 as “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Similar proclamations have been issued every year since 1994. This Facts for Features presents data for American Indians and Alaska Natives, as this is one of the six major race categories.

Some of the facts include:

— 4.5 million - estimated population of American Indians and Alaska Natives as of July 1, 2007

— 56% - percent of American Indian and Alaska Native households who owned their own home in 2007

— 27% - percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives 5 and older who spoke a language other than English at home

— $26.9 billion - receipts for American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned businesses in 2002

— 201,387 - # American Indian- and Alaska Native-owned businesses in 2002

For more, go read the rest: Facts for Features: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2008.

Google is 10 years old this month, and to celebrate, they have brought back their search index from 2001 and with links to the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine, you can flash back to the Internet circa 2001, when there was no Flash and Google only searched a measly 1,326,920,000 pages.

You can also check out the Google Timeline where you can find out such useful facts as when Klingon became one of the languages supported by Google, what the definition of Google Dance is, and when Google Scholar was launched.

To see what the world was like ten years ago, go search Google 2001.

was the beginning of a rich history of unique scientific and technological achievements in human space flight, aeronautics, space science, and space applications. Formed as a result of the Sputnik crisis of confidence, NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space flight.

For more, read the rest: NASA History in Brief .

The car that put the world on wheels, the Ford Model T, is celebrating its 100^th anniversary in 2008 and Ford is planning a year-long series of celebrations to honor the iconic vehicle.

The US Census Bureau is celebrating the anniversary with a Special Edition of the Facts for Features: Model T Centennial. The Bureau explains:

On Oct. 1, 1908, Ford Motor Co. introduced the Model T, generally regarded as the first affordable automobile and the car that industry experts say “put America on wheels.” The first Model T, produced for the 1909 model year, was assembled by hand and sold for $850. The demand for the cars was so high that Ford started producing them on an assembly line, enabling it to turn out a Model T every 10 seconds. Many consider the Model T to be the most influential car of the 20th century.

Some of the facts include:
— 79,000 - # of registered vehicles in 1905 (before production of the Model T started)

— 181,000 - # of passenger cars manufactured in 1910

— 1.9 million - # of passenger cars manufactured in 1920

— 244.2 million - # of motor vehicles registered in the US in 2006

— ~134 million - # of cars registered in the US in 2006

For the more, go read the rest: Facts for Features: Model T Centennial.

Also you can check out Ford’s page on the centennial of the Model T: Ford Model T Turns 100: Centennial Celebrations Underway For The Historic Icon.