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The Gleeson Library is pleased to co-sponsor with the African American Studies Program a faculty reading on Thursday, February 2nd with University of San Francisco Associate Professor James Lance Taylor, who will read from his recent work Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama (2011). Professor Taylor is also co-editor of the forthcoming book, Something’s in the Air: Race and the Legalization of Marijuana. His current research is on Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and Black America. Professor Taylor is a noted political commentator on U.S. and San Francisco politics for national and Bay Area media and has served as a policy consultant for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
The program begins at 5:00 on Thursday, February 2 in the Donohue Rare Book Room, located on the third floor of the Gleeson Library. Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase. The program is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. For further information, please call (415) 422-2036.
John Hawk
Head Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives
New to USF? Or a current student but you are a little unsure where everything is in the library? Join us for a library tour. The tours last about 30 minutes and a library staff member takes you around the building, shows you where things are located, and discusses some of the library’s services available to you.
We’re giving tours on:
Monday January 23 @ 3pm
Tuesday January 24 @ 12 noon
Wednesday January 25 @ 2 pm
Thursday January 26 @ 10 am
No need to sign up for anything–just meet us in the library’s lobby at those times. Everyone is welcome!
When I logged into WordPress to edit a blog post this morning, I encountered the following screen:
What’s up with that? Turns out WordPress, along with sites such as Twitter and most notably Wikipedia, are raising awareness of pending legislation in the House and the Senate that could cause censorship of the Internet. The original aim of the bills, abbreviated as SOPA and PIPA [click to access the text of the bills], was to stop piracy of movies and music online, but if passed in their current form, the bills could be invoked to shut down any Web site without due process.
Indeed, as librarians and informational professionals, we do not condone censorship. However, being opposed to these bills cannot be summed up as being opposed to censorship — the bills are complex pieces of legislation. We here in Gleeson Library encourage you to research the issue and scrutinize your sources. Does the source have something invested in winning or losing? Does the source have a history of slanting the news? Does the article seem sensationalist or over the top? Does it get you more mad than informed? I found the FAQ on Wikipedia explaining the black out to be very informative and nonbiased, in line with what I perceive as the mission and values of Wikipedia as an organization.
A colleague of mine, Jean Hewlett, had two other great suggestions for nonbiased facts:
[A] good explanation is by Sal Kahn of KahnAcademy:
This one sounds kind of like your high school civics teacher
explaining it at great length.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzqMoOk9NWcFor more detailed legal analysis, here’s a page of links to articles by the staff of the Berkman Center at Harvard:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/7327
The question still remains: What are you going to do while Wikipedia is blacked out today? How about using some of these real academic encyclopedias the library subscribes to? We got lots of them!
Howdy! The USF Book Club picked its next two selections:
Friday, February 17, 2012 (12-1 pm): Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
How to get the book: Request it through Link+ (it’s in high demand right now, so you might need to get creative with how you request it — large print, as a double edition, etc.), get it at SF Public, or check out our Kindle or one of our iPads to read it digitally.
Meet us in the seminar room of Gleeson Library (#209)
Friday, March 16, 2012 (12-1 pm): The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
How to get the book: Request it through Link+ or get it at SF Public. Unfortunately it is not available in e-format.
Since we like to read books of all genres, we decided to do a children’s book, and that’s why we chose Hugo Cabret, considering the recent attention the book has received due to the movie.
For this meeting, we’ll be on the third floor of the library — room 314.
Are you wondering about the Book Club? Click on over to our wiki page where most of your questions will be answered. Or, send an email to kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu to sign up for the mailing list.
A controversial bill called the “Research Works Act” has been introduced in Congress. This bill would end the current policy (that has been in effect since 2008) that requires any research funded by the NIH be made freely available to the public via Pub Med Central one year after publication in a journal.
For reactions, see this ProPublica article and New York Times op-ed piece.
For the publishing industry’s perspective, see this statement from the Association of American Publishers.
Text of the bill is available here.
Gleeson Library/Geschke Learning Resource Center’s
Hours for Christmas Break, Intersession, and Spring Semester 2012
are now posted on the library’s website here:
http://www.usfca.edu/Library/Hours/
Merry Christmas, and we’ll see you in the New Year!!
Photo by Shawn Calhoun
This year, Gleeson Library’s “Book” Christmas Tree reached 9ft 9in tall. We used close to 700 National Union Catalog books to build the tree, and estimate that this royal tannenbaum weighs over 3000 pounds. We decorated the tree with apples, popcorn (which we strung ourselves), cinnamon sticks, candy canes,
and old card catalog cards.
Do you read? Do you like discussing what you read in a casual environment? Then come to a USF Book Club monthly meeting!
The next book we will discuss is The History of Love by Nicole Krauss and we’ll meet on January 13th (Friday the 13th!) from 12 noon – 1 pm in the Seminar Room (#209) of Gleeson Library. We welcome people from the entire USF Community — students, staff, and faculty.
To get the book, request it through Link+ (arrives in about 4 business days), get it at SF Public, or check out an iPad or Kindle over the break, both of which have the e-book loaded on them. Request your copy soon — many libraries close over the holidays, so don’t wait.
The last words of this haunting novel resonate like a pealing bell. “He fell in love. It was his life.” This is the unofficial obituary of octogenarian Leo Gursky, a character whose mordant wit, gallows humor and searching heart create an unforgettable portrait. Born in Poland and a WWII refugee in New York, Leo has become invisible to the world. When he leaves his tiny apartment, he deliberately draws attention to himself to be sure he exists. What’s really missing in his life is the woman he has always loved, the son who doesn’t know that Leo is his father, and his lost novel, called The History of Love, which, unbeknownst to Leo, was published years ago in Chile under a different man’s name. Another family in New York has also been truncated by loss. Teenager Alma Singer, who was named after the heroine of The History of Love, is trying to ease the loneliness of her widowed mother, Charlotte. When a stranger asks Charlotte to translate The History of Love from Spanish for an exorbitant sum, the mysteries deepen. Krauss (Man Walks into a Room) ties these and other plot strands together with surprising twists and turns, chronicling the survival of the human spirit against all odds. Writing with tenderness about eccentric characters, she uses earthy humor to mask pain and to question the universe. Her distinctive voice is both plangent and wry, and her imagination encompasses many worlds.
–Publishers Weekly
Author Nicole Krauss will be at the JCCSF on Sunday February 26 to deliver a keynote for Book Fest. Get your tickets quick because it will probably sell out.
One of the book club members sent me this glossary that she said can be very helpful when reading The History of Love… she’s Jewish and even she was enlightened by some of the entries.
Still craving more Krauss? They have a page dedicated to her on NPR!
Also for next time, the book club would like you to bring a list of children’s books you adore, or books that greatly influenced you when growing up. We just might break another taboo and do a children’s book for February!
Have a great holiday season and we’ll see you all in the new year!
If you’re reading this, you’re acquainted with Gleeson Library’s blog, Gleeson Gleanings, which is an excellent way to keep up to date with the library haps. But, did you know the library also publishes a newsletter twice a year, called Global Update?
We just published the Fall 2011 issue of Global Update and I invite you to take a look! Whether you’ve missed the blog posts over the past few months or if you just want a succinct run down of library news, Global Update will quench your desire for library information and hopefully surprise you in some way too!
Click the image below to open the new issue (PDF).
Or you can go to this page and browse the archive of past newsletters.
Effective immediately, log-in to Library resources (off-campus access to databases; view your library record, etc.) is now using USFconnect username and password for those with a USFconnect account. This replaces the Name / USF ID# log-in that the library has used for several years.
There is an alternate log-in screen for those without a USFconnect account (Fromm Students, Special Access patrons, etc.).
We hope the inconvenience will be minimal and will be outweighed by the benefits.
Benefits include having one less set of credentials to remember, and increased security: it is much easier to change the USFconnect password than it is to change the USF ID.
Howdy everyone! The Book Club will read and discuss Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay for December. We will meet on December 9, 2011 in Room 139 of Gleeson Library from 12-1 pm.
Gleeson has a copy of Savage Beauty that you can request, but it will probably go fast so your alternatives are requesting it through Link+, getting it from the SF Public Library, or reading it on one of our iPads or our Kindle.
Millay is one of my personal role models… she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and in her day, she achieved the level of celebrity now reserved for movie stars and reality show idiot savants. She was an anti-war activist and led a unconventional love life. I can only imagine how much better the U.S. would be if we celebritized our poets the way we do those in the entertainment industry.
One thing that boosted her to this level of celebrity was her spellbinding performances. She did a lot of radio broadcasts and reading tours in support of her work, and her thick, lustrous voice and classic early 20th century North East accent bewitched all those who tuned in.
Appropriate for the spirit of Christmas we are approaching, here is an old radio recording of Millay reading her poem “Ballad of the Harpweaver” in the Christmas edition of Anthology.
And my personal favorite… a classic
(Poem #34) First Fig
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-- It gives a lovely light!
Gleeson Library is proud to cosponsor International Education Week at USF (Nov. 14-18), and this year we’re inviting you to make yourself at home in the world by visiting the library lobby, where international newspapers, magazines and books await your perusal.
This year’s schedule for IEW looks great. The lineup includes Trivia Night, the USF World Cup, “Language and culture tables” in the Market Cafe, panels on USF internationalization and international education, folk tales from around the world, and much more.
Now’s the time (til Nov. 17) to vote in the IEW@USF photo contest. And tickets are on sale for Culturescape, the festival of performance and food that showcases the talents, culture and cuisine of USF students. I love Culturescape. It’s super fun and delicious and brought to us by USF students. Click here to see video and menus from years past.
Student Maddie Vanden Branden makes herself at home in the library with international news and literature.
As reported previously, Gleeson is hosting a Game Night at the library on 11-11-11 from 4-8 pm.
Part of the night includes a Super Smash Brothers Tournament and the grand prize is a NOOK Color! So spread the word. The stakes are high, and the potential for fun is even higher.
On exhibition in the Donohue Rare Book Room through December 16 are over eighty volumes from the Rare Book Room’s Dr. M. Wallace Freidman Collection of L. Frank Baum and Oziana. L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) wrote over thirty-eight children’s books, the most famous of which The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and later was made into a motion picture by MGM in 1939. Baum went on to write fourteen books in the series. Following his death, the series was continued by Ruth Plumbly Thompson. Baum also wrote several non-Oz titles, including Mother Goose in Prose (1897), The Master Key (1901), Phoebe Daring (1912), The Sea Fairies (1911) and Sky Island (1912) among others. The exhibition brings together a selection of Baum’s work, showing the breadth of his life’s work and a range of illustration by such figures as Maxfield Parish, W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill.
The Gleeson Library is pleased to exhibit these materials to coincide with the exhibition Monster in the Bookshelf: The Artwork of Studio 5 in the Thacher Gallery. The books on exhibition are all from the permanent collections of the Donohue Rare Book Room and are available to students and researchers who wish to use them.
John Hawk
Head Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives
The Gleeson Library is pleased to sponsor a faculty reading on Tuesday, November 15 when it welcomes David Vann, University of San Francisco Associate Professor in the MFA in Writing Program, who will read from his recent works Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter (University of Georgia Press, 2011) and Caribou Island (Harper, 2011). Vann is also the author of Legend of a Suicide (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008) which won 10 prizes, including the Prix Medicis in France and the Premi Llibreter in Spain. Legend of a Suicide was on 42 “Best Books of the Year” lists including The New Yorker Book Club and The Times Book Club. David Vann is a current Guggenheim Fellow and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.
The program begins at 5:00 on Tuesday, November 15 in the Donohue Rare Book Room, located on the third floor of the Gleeson Library. Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase. The program is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. For further information, please call (415) 422-2036.
John Hawk
Head Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives
