Check It Out: Student Edition

No cap, fam, we are Ms. Binns & Mr. Thompson, frfr no delulu straight facts gucci oof say more.

We are your beloved West Orange High School Library Media Specialists, intrepid surveyors of canons & headcanons, media mavericks, titans of tech.

We are stalwart defenders of your freedom to read, locked, loaded, and ready to throw hands if the forces of intellectual imposition come a-knockin'.

We understand the assignment and are more than happy to help you understand it too.

We never leave our students on read.

We serve lewks and sling books.

We are it, chief.

And this is Check It Out, the only nonsubscription newsletter that loves you more than you love it.

Each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15 by celebrating the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Likewise, each October, we recognize Native American and Italian American contributions to the American experience.

In the LMC, we mark these occasions as we do all such festivities: with a cornucopia of content! Visit our resource pages, peruse the volumes in our reading rooms, and avail yourself of all the marvelous materials your library offers!

During lunch, the Mountaineer Makerspace strives to stoke student creativity! Everybody knows we offer a different Makerspace activity each week, and everybody knows our comprehensive calendar documents each week's activities.

Instead of pumping up our scheduled events, we're finna lowkey talk 3D printing. Go off, STEAM.

Most consumer-level 3D printers rely on Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), a popular 3D printing technique conceived in the late 1980s that creates objects one layer at a time. A 3D printer’s extruder melts plastic filament before passing it through a heated nozzle. The nozzle moves back and forth, depositing the melted material in precise patterns to build a design from the bottom up. As each layer cools, it solidifies, forming a strong structure. FDM is a popular solution for tasks ranging from prototyping to creating custom parts because it’s relatively easy to use and cost-effective.

Your LMC has three 3D printer models: the Bambu Carbon X1, the MakerBot 5th Gen, and the Makerbot Replicator+. Each printer has unique features that make it suitable for different projects. Our 3D Printing Guide breaks it all down.

Our Makerbot Replicators, stolid CEOs of FDM IYKWIM, will always hold a place in our hearts, but the new kid in town kinda sorta turns heads and steals hearts.

The latest addition to our 3D printer lineup is the Bambu X-1 Carbon, and it's exactly what it looks like: snatched, sleek, expensive (but not in a manner that would imply misappropriation of funds).

This thicc boi is looksmaxxing with mullticolor prints, swerving with 20000 mm/s² acceleration, and knocking out bomb-bottom models with 7 μm lidar resolution.

Smitten? Come steal a glance the next time your soft life crashes on the rocky shore of the LMC.

It’s the West Orange High School Library Media Center’s great pleasure to announce the formal relaunch of our Volunteer Program! This program offers students the opportunity to assist their learning community through the LMC; earn hours to satisfy volunteer requirements; serve as leaders among their peers; regularly visit and make use of countless library resources; and foster a love of active citizenship and lifelong learning in themselves and others.

Volunteer opportunities are now open to students enrolled for the 2024-2025 school year. The packet linked below contains everything you need to know about volunteering.

Do you love reading? Are you interested in books? Perhaps you enjoy the occasional snack?

Whether you read like a porcupine playing leapfrog (slowly and carefully) or regard literature as you would a balding porcupine (struggling to see the point), the Mountaineer Book Club welcomes you to its October meetings!

The team's assembling in the LMC Computer Lab on October 9th and October 23rd—quill you join them? Literacy preferred but not mandatory; see Ms. Binns for more details!

As you would the word "buckles."

BCCLS is a consortium of 77 public libraries in northern New Jersey. By county, there are 62 in Bergen, 10 in Essex, 4 in Hudson, and 1 in Passaic.

The West Orange Public Library is one of the ten in Essex County.

In this instance, a consortium is a group of libraries that share resources. It's a means of reducing costs while simultaneously increasing offerings.

Long story short, if you're a member of one library in the consortium, you can borrow materials (both online and in-person) from every other library. Those libraries will also ship items you're after to your home library in West Orange.

For West Orange High School students, not a dime!

Ordinarily, signing up for a public library card requires a bit of legwork. Specifically, students must "bring a copy of their birth certificate, school ID card, or report card in addition to their parent or guardian's valid photo ID and proof of residency" to the West Orange Public Library, as "library cards are issued on site by our staff."

Awww, we know, baby birds. You have it so rough, so we're gonna make it a little bit easier.

Ms. Binns and Mr. Thompson, indefatigable in our quest to bring high-quality information resources to all sentient beings, have negotiated a pretty slick deal for any Mountaineer who desires a truly seamless sign-up experience.

All you need to do is complete the one-page form linked below (and available as a hard copy in the LMC), have your caretaker sign it, and drop it off the next time you visit your favorite librarians. A library card opening every door in the BBCLS system will be waiting for you within a few weeks!

EBSCO's Points of View Reference Source is a social issues database that presents varied perspectives on complicated, hotly contested questions that make adults with poor impulse control yell at each other. Think of it like cable news, but with proper nuance, sufficient context, and knowledgeable presenters.

Points of View Reference Source covers hundreds of topics, each with an Overview (objective background/description), Point (argument) and Counterpoint (opposing argument). Each topic also features a Guide to Critical Analysis which helps you evaluate the controversy and enhances your ability to read critically, develop your own perspective on the issues, and write or debate an effective argument on the topic.

Want to give it a whirl while learning more about a contentious and topical issue? Keep things real simple by delving into election interference!

Sample Topic: Election Interference

• Topic Overview: Election Interference
• Point: The US Is Already Combating Foreign Interference in Elections
• Counterpoint: The US Government Must Do More to Protect Elections from Foreign Interference
• Guide to Critical Analysis: Election Interference

Eighteen-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on.

But the case is dredged up from the past when the Price family agrees to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.

Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And—could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .

From world-renowned author Holly Jackson comes a mind-blowing masterpiece about one girl’s search for the truth, and the terror in finding out who your family really is.

How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?

Guided by Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists, discover the glittering paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century United States and the artist who really invented the “readymade.” Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of postwar artists in Latin America, and the women defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many artforms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it’s never been told before.