🌞 Outdoor Summer Living

Whether you like to spend your time gardening, hiking, road tripping, camping, enjoying the outdoors, BBQ with friends or just relax reading a novel, we have print and digital books for you with ideas on how to enjoy your summer!

Book cover for the outdoor kitchen with a photo of someone cooking outdoors on the front.The Outdoor Kitchen: Live-Fire Cooking from the Grill


Book cover for creative garden photography with colourful photograph of flowers on the front.Creative Garden Photography

 

Book cover take it outside with photos of outdoor spaces on the front. Take it Outside

A beautifully photographed guide to converting your outdoor space into an enviable oasis, whether you have a backyard, brownstone patio, or three-season porch. Mel Brasier, Garrett Magee, and James DeSantis do more than plant, mulch, and manicure a garden; they look at the space just as interior designers do a room, considering the aesthetics and the way people live in it. Now they show you how to apply familiar interior design principles to your outdoors.


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Book cover for train beyond the mountains with a photo of the rocky mountaineer travelling through the canadian rockies on the front.Train Beyond the Mountains: Journeys on the Rocky Mountaineer

A captivating journey blending memoir, history, and biography that takes the reader on one of the world's most famous trains and tells of carving the dramatic route it follows, while pondering other international railways through the eyes of travellers past and present. As the Rocky Mountaineer winds over trestles and through tunnels, each mile of track uncovers stories of dynamite and discovery, surveyors and schemers, explorers and visionaries, and the people who helped to build Canada against the odds of geography and politics.

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Book cover for seared with an illustration of a barbecue and flame on the front.Seared: The Ultimate Guide to Barbecuing Meat

Seared is a one-stop shop for recipes and practical advice that will help you get the most from cooking meat on your barbecue, beginning with the science of why we need to cook different cuts in different ways and the physics of how fire works. Essential information about setting up your barbecue, sourcing your fuel and lighting your fire, and setting up your grill, with troubleshooting tips throughout. 


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Book cover for best road trips canadian rockies with a photograph of emerald lake on the front.Best Road Trips: Canadian Rockies

Book cover for woodworking projects for your garden and porch with photos gardens with woodwork projects in.Woodworking Projects for your Garden and Porch

 

Book cover for wild game smoker and grill cookbook with photograph of seared meat on the front.The Wild Game Smoker and Grill Cookbook

 

Book cover for zen in the garden with butterflies on a green cover.Zen in the Garden: The Japanese Art of Peaceful Gardening

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The seasons come and go, bringing changes both welcome and unexpected. Miki Sakamoto has spent a lifetime tending her garden and reflecting on its mysteries. Why do primulas bloom in snow? Do the trees really ‘talk’ to one another? What are the black birds saying today? And is there a mindful way to deal with an aphid infestation?From rising early to walk barefoot on the grass each morning, to afternoons and evenings spent sipping tea in her gazebo or watching fireflies as she recalls her childhood in Japan, in Zen in the Garden Sakamoto shares observations from a life spent in contemplation—and cultivation—of nature.

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Book cover for drawing with a pencil drawing of a mountain landscape on the front.Drawing: Learn to Draw Outdoor Scenes Step-by-Step

 

Book cover for outdoor survival skills.Outdoor Survival Skills


 

Book cover for flavours of the southeast asian grill.Flavors of the Southeast Asian Grill

 

Updates 

🎨 Art Exhibit: Niitistapi Pi’kssíí

Come see our travelling art exhibit, with us until July 21.

Photograph of the artwork "Three Feathers" by Indigenous artist Kalum Teke Dan.

Niitsitapi Pi’kssíí (Blackfoot Fancy Beings) is an exhibition featuring artworks that depict animals, or fancy beings, significant to Blackfoot culture by two contemporary Blackfoot artists, Ryan Jason Allen Willert and Kalum Teke Dan. Blackfoot teachings about these animals are a large part of the exhibition, which would not have been possible if not for the generous support of Elder Camille (Pablo) Russell. To develop an understanding of balance and harmony in nature and the cycles of renewal that affect seasons of life, it is essential to observe the natural world and its animal cohabitants. This fact is well known in Blackfoot culture. As explained by Blackfoot author Betty Bastien, the knowledge of the Siksikaitsitapi (or, the Blackfoot Nation) is organized according to thousands of years of observation and participatory relationship with the natural world.1 This knowledge highlights a reciprocal relationship with the land and the creatures that occupy it; four-legged fur-bearing beings, birds, fish, and humans alike share a kinship with the land, the sky, and all the environments we inhabit. Niitsitapi Pi’kssíí (Blackfoot Fancy Beings) emphasizes how Blackfoot language, storytelling, and knowledge-sharing has intrinsic value when it comes to understanding the natural world.

This exhibition was curated by Ashley Slemming and Diana Frost, and it has been organized by the Alberta Society of Artists in partnership with the Indigenous social enterprise Colouring it Forward for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition program.

1 Betty Bastien, “I: Context,” in Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 39.

 

🎫 The Alberta Library Card

If you’ve finished your course at SAIT but would still like to use the library, you might want to get yourself a free TAL (The Alberta Library) card.  To get one, you need to be a member of the Calgary Public Library (also free) or one of the other Alberta libraries that participates in the TAL scheme. Just ask them for a card!

Once you have your TAL card, you can bring it, along with some photo ID, to the information desk, and we’ll set you up with an account in our library system. Access to many of our e-resources is limited to current students, but you will be able to borrow up to 5 print books at a time.

⛱ Light Summer Reading

Images of five different summer novel covers.

Whether you're going on vacation, sitting in the backyard, or just curling up on the sofa, we have an excellent selection of fun summer reads to choose from. Check out our display at the front of the library for some recent additions to our novel and graphic novel collections.

We also have fun general interest magazines for you to read over summer. You can borrow them for the same loan periods as books (4 weeks).

set of five general interest magazine covers

Enjoy your summer!

Search our Collections
a view of the moutains and stream in between

Oki, Âba wathtech, Danit'ada, Tawnshi, Hello.

SAIT is located on the traditional territories of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and the people of Treaty 7 which includes the Siksika, the Piikani, the Kainai, the Tsuut’ina and the Îyârhe Nakoda of Bearspaw, Chiniki and Goodstoney.

We are situated in an area the Blackfoot tribes traditionally called Moh’kinsstis, where the Bow River meets the Elbow River. We now call it the city of Calgary, which is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3.