Chanukah: The Festival of Lights

A Chanukah Menorah, or Chanukia (CC0 image via Wikipedia)

Chanukah, also known as the Festival of Rededication, or the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day holiday that generally falls sometime in December (in the Hebrew calendar, the 25th of Kislev). This year it starts on Sunday evening, December 2 and ends in the evening of December 10th. It celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple after the successful revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire. To rededicate the Temple, oil was needed to relight the menorah inside, and there was very little left – only enough to burn for one day.  However, the oil that was used burned for eight days, and to celebrate this, a festival was created – Chanukah.

Bringing Scholars to the Limelight: Preliminary Results of a Study on Touro Scholar

A glimpse of Touro Scholar

You may have seen earlier blog posts hinting at a new library service called Touro Scholar. OK, so we’ve mentioned it a little. But what is it? It’s Touro’s new institutional repository, launched in April 2016, which showcases the full breadth of the scholarship of the Touro College and University System (TCUS), including New York Medical College (NYMC). Unlike the Faculty Publications Database, Touro Scholar will have full text articles, data sets, and even video.

Touro College of Dental Medicine Welcomes Its Inaugural Class

(CC0 image via pixabay<\a>)

Touro College recently opened the doors to a brand-new dental school, located on the NYMC campus in Valhalla, New York. Over 100 eager soon-to-be dentists had their orientation last week, and I was invited to come up to let them know about the many library resources that are available to them. Even if you’re not a dental student, most of the following applies to you too! Here’s a summary:

Touro Research Day 2016

On May 3rd, Touro College held its 5^th annual Research Day at the College of Osteopathic Medicine in Harlem.  Touro College Research Day is an opportunity to share, through poster presentations, the wide scope of exciting research projects accomplished by our faculty and students in the undergraduate and graduate divisions as well as the professional schools. It is also an opportunity to network and to get to know other students and faculty from different Touro campuses, which in turn may bring some future research collaborations. So it is indeed a grand day in the land of Touro.

Research Day 2015

On Tuesday, April 28^th, 2015, Touro College held its Fourth Annual Research Day at the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine/Touro College of Pharmacy campus in Harlem.  This was a great opportunity for faculty and students to showcase their recent research and share it with the Touro community.  Many people came to take part in this special event, including deans from graduate and undergraduate divisions and members of senior administration.

Kristallnacht: Reflection and Remembrance

Synagogue Eisenach burning, November 1938 (CC0 image via Wikimedia Commons)

Kristallnacht means the “Night of Crystal” or “Night of Broken Glass” ¹). It refers to the anti-Jewish attack instigated by the Nazis that took place throughout Germany and Austria from November 9^th-10^th, 1938. The name comes from the broken glass that resulted from smashed-in windows in Jewish-owned shops, buildings, homes, and synagogues ².

Taking an online course this semester? Prepare to tackle it with these five tips!

All set to learn! (CC0 image via Unsplash)

Online classes definitely have some advantages: you can attend class anywhere, there’s no commute to school, and you can often write papers or take tests at times convenient to you.  Studying for online classes can be tricky, however, since the normal pattern of in-classroom learning is nonexistent.

The Great Saunter

At the very beginning of the walk. (photo by Carrie Levinson)

May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, so what better way to kick it off than with a nice long walk?

Spotlight on Anatomy Databases

The human body can be confusing to learn about.  So many different parts!   Why do all these structures look the same? What on earth is the difference between a tendon and a ligament?