Friday, January 29, 2010

Online Job and Career Assistance

With the economic recession dragging on, you might be finding it quite challenging to find a job or embark on a new career. Several months ago, in a previous blog posting the Magazines & Newspapers Center highlighted some job-related magazines. You might, however, wish to revamp your resume, discover new a new career path, sharpen your job interviewing skills, and equip yourself with more online resources, thanks to the ever-growing collection of San Francisco Public Library's electronic databases.

1. Go to the SFPL Home Page and select “Articles & Databases.” You will need a San Francisco Public Library card to access the databases from outside the Library.

2. Select "Jobs and Careers," choose "Career Center | (Tutor.com)," and you should see a screen like this:



In addition to providing access to live, online academic tutors, the Tutor.com Learning Suite offers job assistance, guidance, and career counseling to prospective job seekers.

Last but not least, if you need more time to update your resume or search for jobs online, come to the Main Library, Fifth Floor Training Room to use our Computer Lab for Job Seekers, currently open on Mondays (11 a.m. - 2 p.m.) and Tuesdays (10 a.m. - 1 p.m.). And while you're at it, check our Jobs & Careers electronic databases for an ever expanding resource list to help you on your job search.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Discovering California Cities

We invite you to explore, research, or browse our collection of California destination magazines. Choose from Carmel, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco -- all part of the colorful and assorted Magazines and Newspapers Center collection on the 5th floor of the San Francisco Public Library.

CARMEL MAGAZINE
Highlights the entire Monterey Peninsula. A source for visitors, artists, poets, performers, and writers. Carmel Magazine readers can discover Central Coast spas, hotels, salons, restaurants, and rugged coastal inns. Includes breathtaking photos of the California coast.

LOS ANGELES
A guide to the hometown of entertainment media and business. Information on the best beauty and fashion secrets, discrete getaway destinations, entertainment exclusives, and travel tips. Each monthly issue provides a calendar of upcoming and notable events.

OAKLAND
Discover the various cultures found in Oakland's unique neighborhoods. Oakland Magazine explores the entire East Bay by train, plane, car, bus, ferry - and on foot. Find in these pages what to do, what to see, and where to go.

SACRAMENTO
Profiles area residents and services, businesses, events, restaurants, and the arts. Sacramento appeals to both locals and visitors alike.



SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE
A compilation of best places
, personalities, local events, travel, business profiles, and live music events. San Diego Magazine highlights the many beaches and destinations along the coast. This is a reader resource for cultural outings and navigating around town.

SAN FRANCISCO
A monthly source of city styles, area getaways, quality food and drink establishments, entertainment, special features, profiles, and up-to-the minute scene and trend reports with a notable accent on current culture. San Francisco is a guide for both visitors and residents who thrive in a mix of tradition with a twist, and stylish living in a modern mode.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

A Bomb in Every Issue


Slick, hip, challenging and smart - RAMPARTS Magazine evolved from a layman's catholic quarterly into a blockbuster monthly of humanistic ideals, subversive opinion, groundbreaking graphics, activist reporting, and premiere muckraking (1960s style). The Magazines and Newspapers Center of the San Francisco Public Library invite you to a special literary event, as author Peter Richardson presents A BOMB IN EVERY ISSUE: HOW RAMPARTS MAGAZINE CHANGED AMERICA.

Join us in the Latino/Hispanic lower level meeting rooms at 11AM on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 for a look back at one of the most explosive eras in San Francisco journalism. RAMPARTS shook the nation time and again with exclusive stories of vice in officialdom and bold coverage of racial, economic, political, environmental, and social issues ignored by the mainstream press. Find out how it happened at this free program, which will feature also a book signing and sale.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Early SF Newspapers -- Alta California Part Three


Arson and Vigilante Justice

ALTA CALIFORNIA editor Edward Gilbert was a firm (and early) editorial champion for the cause of law and order in the crime-ridden city, and he campaigned vigorously for an all-volunteer, organized peacekeeping force. The ALTA CALIFORNIA provided key support for the first Committee of Vigilance (formed in June of 1851), whose storied membership would deal punitively with crime and civil disorder--outside official channels.

Running an otherwise-anonymous editorial credited only with the name of Justice (an authorship later identified as the work of commission merchant R. S. Watson), the ALTA posed a series of "Propositions for the Public Safety" in the June 8, 1851 issue:

". . . we must be a law unto ourselves, and that there are enough good men and true who are ready to take hold . . . to establish a committee of safety . . . to appoint a committee of vigilance of twenty men, in each ward . . . to hunt out these hardened villains . . . ."

The proposal--that a self-selected few should unite in the private administration of justice--as juries, judges and executioners, outside the due process of law--was an extraordinary act which condoned in advance and rationalized the sort of mob-rule actions such as the lynching of Australian expatriate John Jenkins. Said the ALTA on June 10th, all of two days later:

"The trial and conviction of Jenkins was not the act of an inflamed and excited mob - his case was adjudged with calmness and deliberation, his guilt fully established, and the penalty of death imposed by a set of men respected and esteemed by their fellows . . . assuming a responsibility imposed on them by stern necessity, with a full perception of their accountability to their fellow men and their Maker. Who but He shall adjudge or condemn them? We dare not."

Not that Edward Gilbert's staff completely supported vigilantism without reservations; the February 23, 1851 issue had gravely warned that:

"Lynch law is a whirlwind which once set loose may sweep down all peaceable barriers before its angry blast . . . ."

Journalists themselves were not immune to the sort of intimidation, physical assault, and even assassination denounced in many an editorial in 1850s California. Edward Gilbert himself was killed in an August 1852 duel; he had dared to question (not without accuracy) the competence and integrity of Governor Bigler's administration.

Arson and carelessness continued to level and wreck the city again and again with flames, devastation, and conflagration. In the wake of the San Francisco fire of May 3-4, 1851, the ALTA survived as the only paper left standing and able to publish an edition the following day:

"San Francisco is again in ashes. The smoke and flames are ascending from several squares of our city, as if the God of Destruction had seated himself in our midst . . . . Here and there a brick building stands like a tomb among a nation of graves, yet even they in most cases have nothing but their walls standing . . . ."

By 1854, San Francisco citywide boasted a readership in support of twelve other daily newspapers, in addition to the DAILY ALTA CALIFORNIA. For much of its later run, the ALTA assumed a more moderate and increasingly sedate tone and profile in contrast to rival papers like the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE and the DAILY MORNING CALL. Bonanza king James Fair owned the ALTA in its final years, and published the very last issue on June 2, 1891. The entire run (1849-1891) of the DAILY ALTA CALIFORNIA is available for viewing on microfilm in the Fifth Floor Magazines and Newspapers Center of the Main Library. A bound collection comprising 1862-1891 can be found in the Sixth Floor San Francisco History Center. See also the California Digital Newspaper Collection for selected sample issues.