FDR Presidential Library – New Digital Speech Collections by Sabrina I. Pacifici   Mary E. Stuckey  “The FDR Library, with support from AT&T, Marist College and the Roosevelt Institute launches online one of its most in-demand archival collections--FDR’s Master Speech File--over 46,000 pages of drafts, reading copies, and transcripts created throughout FDR’s political career.  Presented alongside the Speech File is the Library’s complete digital collection of Recorded Speeches of FDR.”  http://www.bespacific.com/fdr-presidential-library-new-digital-speech-collections/

An elision is the removal of an unstressed syllable, consonants, or letters from a word or phrase to decrease the number of letters or syllables in order to mix words together.  The missing letter is replaced by an apostrophe.  Generally, the middle or end letter or syllable is eliminated or two words are blended together and an apostrophe is inserted.  By merely looking at contraction and elision examples, one would think the two are similar.  However, there is a slight difference between them.  Contraction is a more general term.  Contraction is the combination of two words to form a shorter word.  For instance, “can’t” is a contraction of can + not, which is a combination of two words.  On the other hand, elision is a specific term. It is the omission of sounds, syllables, or phrases and replacing it with an apostrophe.  For instance, “ne’er” is elided form of “never” and similarly, “gonna” is an elision of the phrase “going to.”  Usually used deliberately, elisions are often found in prose and poetry with the objective to continue a regular meter or to create flow in iambic pentameter.  Since a specific meter is required, elision is employed to achieve the set number of syllables necessary to create flow in a piece.  Several other languages use elision to cut down the number of words or to improve the flow of speech.  Find examples from literature at http://literarydevices.net/elision/

An Introduction to Animal Communication by Erin Gillam   Animals use visual, acoustic, tactile, electric, and chemical signals for communication.  Find a glossary, references and recommended reading and see graphics at  http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/an-introduction-to-animal-communication-23648715

plaud-, plaus-, plod-, plos- (Latin:  to clap, to strike, to beat; to clap the hands in approbation [recognition as good], to approve)   Find three pages of words using plaud and plaus  (applaud, plausibility, plaudits, unplausive) and plod and plos (complose, displose, explosion, implode) in forming English words at http://wordinfo.info/unit/1690/page:1

Oprah's Head, Ann-Margaret's Body:  A Brief History of Pre-Photoshop Fakery by Megan Garber   In 1989, TV Guide put television's celebrity-du-jour, Oprah Winfrey, on its cover, perching her upon a pile of money.  The picture was exactly the kind of thing that tends to sell magazines on newsstands and in supermarket check-out lines:  It was friendly, it was saucy, it was sparkly.  The only problem was that it wasn't, actually, Oprah.  TV Guide had taken a picture of the talk show host's face . . .  and grafted it onto the body of '60s star Ann-Margaret.  The magazine had asked the permission of neither woman before it published its odd bit of Frankensteinery.  The photo-forensics firm Fourandsix--led by noted computer scientists Kevin Connor and Hany Farid--has been keeping track of manipulated photos as they've emerged throughout history.   http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/oprahs-head-ann-margarets-body-a-brief-history-of-pre-photoshop-fakery/258369/    See the full Fourandsix collection at http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/  (See page 3 for well-publicized fakery on magazine covers from June 1994 and December 1997.)

Calculate Duration Between Two Dates   http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html

Calculate Duration Between Two Dates With Time   http://www.timeanddate.com/date/timeduration.html

The Seven-Day Week   The Babylonians marked time with lunar months.  This seven-day period was later regularized and disassociated from the lunar month to become our seven-day week.  The Greeks named the days week after the sun, the moon and the five known planets, which were in turn named after the gods Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Cronus.  The Greeks called the days of the week the Theon hemerai "days of the Gods".  The Romans substituted their equivalent gods for the Greek gods, Mars, Mercury, Jove (Jupiter), Venus, and Saturn.  The Germanic peoples generally substituted roughly similar gods for the Roman gods, Tiu (Twia), Woden, Thor, Freya (Fria), but did not substitute Saturn.  Read more at http://www.crowl.org/lawrence/time/days.html

There is a leap year every year whose number is perfectly divisible by four--except for years which are both divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400.  The century years 1600 and 2000 are leap years, but the century years 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not.  This means that three times out of every four hundred years there are eight years between leap years.  The leap year was introduced in the Julian calendar in 46 BC.  However, around 10 BC, it was found that the priests in charge of computing the calendar had been adding leap years every three years instead of the four decreed by Caesar.  As a result of this error, no more leap years were added until 8 AD.   Leap years were therefore 45 BC, 42 BC, 39 BC, 36 BC, 33 BC, 30 BC, 27 BC, 24 BC, 21 BC, 18 BC, 15 BC, 12 BC, 9 BC, 8 AD, 12 AD, and every fourth year thereafter until Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar in 1582 (resulting in skipping three out of every four centuries).  http://www.wwu.edu/skywise/leapyear.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1412  January 21, 2016  On this date in 1789, the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, was printed in Boston.  On this date in 1899, Opel manufactured its first automobile.  Word of the Day for January 21:  scanno  noun  A typographical error introduced by optical character recognition (OCR) software, which may mistake a letter or set of letters for a letter or set of letters of similar shape, as *tum for turn, or *Dosition for Position.