Library resources: celebrating autumn in words and pictures

We’ve brought together a few of our fantastic library resources as part of our celebrating autumn week to showcase some of the online collections you have available to you via the online library:

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Keats’ ‘To Autumn’, is a celebration of everything fecund and abundant at this time of the year. If you’d like to read the full poem, or you're looking for a particular collection of poems, plays or books by authors from bygone centuries, then take a look at Project Gutenburg.  Project Gutenburg is a database containing over 13,000 freely available ebooks to download or read online.  You will find some of the world’s great literature fully digitised in this collection, especially older works for which copyright has expired.

[[[image-1 medium left]]]This fabulous picture called "Trees in autumn" taken in Bodnant, Wales can be accessed from the Artstor Digital Library, a searchable collection of 1.8 million digital images in the arts, architecture and humanities.  It features a wide range of images from some of the world's leading museums, photo archives, scholars, and artists.  Topics include Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Fashion & Costume, Literature, Religion, theatre, World History, and much more. You can search and browse Artstor by keyword, or refine your search by date or date range, geography, classification, and/or collection.  Download, print or link to your chosen image is copyright free for educational purposes but you will need to register for a personal account.  Artstor only supports Version 11 of Internet Explorer or use an alternative browser.

[[[image-2 medium right]]]The Autumnal Equinox takes place on 22nd September this year but do you know where the word equinox comes from or what it means?

Equinox comes from the Latin equi or "equal" and nox meaning "night".   An equinox occurs twice a year and is a point in the sky where the celestial equator crosses the centre of the sun.  The vernal equinox heralds the start of Spring in most cultures (around 20th March) while the autumnal equinox (around 23rd September) marks the beginning of Autumn.  On an equinox, the duration of day and night are approximately equal all over the planet.
If you want to brush up on your basic astronomy, then take a look in this handy ebook.

We welcome your feedback on any of these or other resources on the library website.