Books by Librarians

You know lots of librarians turn to writing, right? That Jorge Luis Borges was a librarian is pretty well-known but this list of the Top 10 Books Written By Librarians from online bookseller AbeBooks might surprise you. I didn’t know Madeleine L’Engle was a librarian. But another of my very favorite children’s book authors, Beverly Cleary, was a librarian for many years. Do you have other fave librarian-authors?

Bonus: at the bottom of the list is a link to songs about libraries and librarians. They left out my favorite library song though.

 

Emergency Access Initiative

In response to the earthquake in Haiti, the Emergency Access Initiative (EAI) is providing free online access to full text articles from major biomedicine journals and reference books. This service is available to healthcare professionals, librarians, and members of the public in the United States who have been affected by the disaster. If you know anyone who is working on relief efforts in Haiti, please let them know about this valuable resource.

The EAI is a partnership of the National Library of Medicine, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, and the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.

For more information about the EAI, see their FAQ.

For more information about Gleeson Library’s government information collection, please visit our homepage or contact Carol Spector.

 

Tours of the Library

New to USF? Or just curious to learn more about the library? Join us for a tour of the Gleeson Library Geschke Center. A library staff person will show you around the library and tell you about our services.

The tours last about 30 minutes and meet inside the lobby, in front of the fountain across from the Circulation Desk.

No need to sign up. Just come and join us!

The tours meet:
Monday, January 25th at 2pm
Tuesday, January 26th at 11am
Wednesday, January 27th at 10am
Thursday, January 28th at 2pm
Friday, January 29th at 3pm

 

Remembering Fauno Cordes

The Donohue Rare Book Room and the Gleeson Library lost a good friend with the recent passing of Fauno Cordes on Christmas day. Fauno was a book collector, bibliographer, Rare Book Room benefactor and member of the Gleeson Library Associates. She presented to the Rare Book Room her world-renown collection of Antarctic fiction and continued to make gifts to the collection over the years. At the 1995 Winter Meeting of the Gleeson Library Associates held in conjunction with a Library exhibition of her collection, Fauno spoke on “The Lure of Antarctic Fiction.”

Fauno was a native San Franciscan who spent her career in the field of science, retiring as a nuclear medicine technologist from Mt. Zion Hospital. Her interests were diverse and included astronomy, model rocketry, geography and of course, books—to which her dedication and interest brought her to the Gleeson Library and to the University of California, San Francisco where she was a faithful volunteer in their medical library. I admired Fauno very much and will miss her visits to the Rare Book Room. I will always remember her as stopping for quick visits (frequently on her way to the Farmer’s Market) to make gifts to the collection. It was always a joy to see what treasure she would unwrap from within her tote bag. She was a kind, generous and purpose-driven person. The Donohue Rare Book Room and the Gleeson Library are blessed to have counted her as a friend.

John Hawk
Head Librarian, Donohue Rare Book Room

 

Gleeson Library Fine Payments to be Donated to the People of Haiti

“To the people of Haiti, we say clearly, and with conviction, you will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten. In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you. The world stands with you. We know that you are a strong and resilient people. You have endured a history of slavery and struggle, of natural disaster and recovery. And through it all, your spirit has been unbroken and your faith has been unwavering. So today, you must know that help is arriving — much, much more help is on the way.”

– President Barack Obama, January 2010

If you pay a library fine online or in person through Friday, February 12th, Gleeson Library will donate 100% of your payment to the people of Haiti (via Jesuit Refugee Service:  http://www.jrsusa.org/).

If you don’t have  library fines to pay, but would still like to contribute,  monetary donations for the JRS’s work in Haiti will also be accepted at the Library’s Access Services desk.

 

USF Book Club: The Year of the Flood

Hey everyone!

The next book club selection is The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. We will meet on Wednesday February 10, 2010 from 12 noon – 1 pm in Gleeson Library Room 209 to discuss it. Bring your lunch and bring your friends! The book club is open to the entire USF Community.

TO GET THE BOOK, you can request it through Link+ by clicking here, but you may not get the book until after the New Year. Alternatively, you can put a hold on it through the San Francisco Public Library. Either way you have over a month to read it!

Hope to see you there!

“In her 2002 speculative novel, Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood depicted a dystopic planet tumbling toward apocalypse… In her profoundly imagined new book, The Year of the Flood, she revisits that same world and its catastrophe. Like Oryx and Crake, Year of the Flood begins just after the catastrophe and then tracks back in time over the corrupt and degenerate world that preceded it. But while the first novel focused on the privileged elite in the compounds and the morally bankrupt corporations, The Year of the Flood depicts more of the world of the pleebs, an edgy no-man’s land inhabited by criminals, sex workers, dropouts and the few individuals who are trying to resist the grip of the corporations. The novel centers on the lives of Ren and Toby, female members of a fundamentalist sect of Christian environmentalists, the God’s Gardeners.” -Publishers Weekly

 

Magazines in Google Books

Google books has begun adding full text magazines. They have digitized almost 100 magazines, from cover to cover, showing us the ads, pictures, articles. Each magazine seems to vary how far back in time they go.

They wrote about adding magazines to google books on their blog a year ago.

They are really interesting and fun to look through, plus they are great historic documents. By digitizing every page, it is almost like going to the Periodicals stacks on the second floor of Gleeson and flipping through them on the shelves.

 

Dead Man Walking

Want to get informed about the death penalty debate? Check out the library’s latest display of books, videos, and government documents on this controversial issue in the lobby.

Our display coincides with the USF College Players’ performance of Dead Man Walking this weekend, Friday, December 11 and Saturday, December 12, at 8pm in Studio Theater (Lone Mountain). Admission is free. This production is part of the Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project. Since 2003, over 170 high schools and colleges in the U.S. have produced the play and led campus-wide discussions and events to call attention to the debate.

Additional resources on the death penalty are available on the School Theatre Project site as well as information about how to take action.

The library owns Dead Man Walking, the Pulitzer Prize nominated book by Sister Helen Prejean, and the DVD of the feature film.

 

Obituaries and history

Last week, on World AIDS Day, the GLBT Historical Society and the Bay Area Reporter, the local glbt newspaper, released a database of obituaries of persons who died of AIDS. Looking through it is like looking at a time capsule.

I moved to San Francisco in 1983 and like so many gay men of my generation, I remember throughout the 80’s and 90’s reading the BAR’s obituaries each week, sometimes seeing someone I knew, sometimes just reading about all of these lives intertwined here in San Francisco.

I’m sure many people here at USF will look up people they knew. Two people connected to the USF library I thought of were Brooks Liston, who worked in the Law Library, and Steve Corey, who was the Rare Books Librarian here at Gleeson.

Looking through these obituaries, the database really captures a moment in time and helps us remember so many people whose lives touched ours.

 

Library Hours for Intersession and Spring 2010

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.
-  Proverb from Guinea

Click Here to view Gleeson Library/Geschke Center Hours for Intersession and Spring 2010

 

The Geography of a Thanksgiving Meal

Where does your Thanksgiving dinner come from?

Linda Zellmer, Government Information and Data Services Librarian at Western Illinois University, has used data from the 1997, 2002, and 2007 Census of Agriculture to develop a set of maps showing where the foods consumed at the traditional Thanksgiving dinner (e.g., turkey, cranberries, squash, and green beans) are grown. Amaze your Thanksgiving guests with answers to such questions as which state produces the most cranberries or which state has the fewest turkeys.

Or perhaps you want to have a locally grown Thanksgiving? For information about local foods, see Gleeson Library’s Sustainable Food guides.

Find out more about Gleeson Library’s government information collection by visiting our homepage or contacting Carol Spector (the Government Information Librarian) at csspector@usfca.edu.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Take our survey! Study Zones @ Gleeson Library

Greetings!

We want your feedback regarding the study zones that we launched at the beginning of the semester. As you probably know, different areas of the library are “zoned” as either conversation, quiet, or silent.

How do you think these zones are working? Do you think they’re clearly defined? Take our survey and let us know!

(Click the image to enter the survey)

We’ll run the survey until the end of the semester. Over winter break we will analyze the results and make changes to the zones if necessary. Your feedback is valuable to us, so let us know what you think!

 

USF Book Club: Love Life by Ray Kluun

Greetings! The next book club selection is Love Life by Ray Kluun, translated from the Dutch by Shaun Whiteside.

We will meet on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 from 12 noon – 1 pm in Kalmanovitz Hall, Room 265. Bring your lunch and tell your friends — the book club is open to the whole USF Community.

To get a copy of the book, request it through Link+. Gleeson Library is purchasing a copy but we haven’t received it yet.

From what I understand, this novel, set in Amsterdam, is dark and gritty — it tells the story of a man coping with his wife’s terminal breast cancer, so at times he is despicable but the story is told with probing honesty. I hear it’s beautifully written and is a page turner — the book club member who suggested it read it in 3 days!

To read full reviews, check out the book’s Amazon page.

Check it out and join us for a lively discussion. You don’t need a background in literary criticism to join us. You just have to like books

UPDATE: The Gleeson copy has arrived! If you want it, click “request” on its record in the catalog.

 

The World at our Doorstep– with a photo contest

Here at the library we’re proud to co-sponsor USF’s celebration of International Education Week 2009. Now in the lobby we’re featuring film, recent fiction and poetry by international newcomers to the Bay Area and across the U.S., in honor of IEW and our international students.

You might have already spotted photos from the IEW photo contest around campus or on Facebook. You can view them online here and on the monitor in the library lobby as well. The campus community is invited to vote for the three that best depict international education and cultural exchange. Cast your vote online or in Parina Lounge when it’s transformed into the USF World Village next Tuesday, Nov. 17 from noon to 2 p.m. Voting will be open through Tuesday at 2. The photo contest winners will be announced at the fabulous Culturescape. Don’t miss it!

Photo by Rob Guillen

 

Darwin’s Originality and Its Consequences

A display to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species.”

We have selected for display a number of books that demonstrate the pervasive influence of Darwin’s theory of natural selection on a broad range of disciplines.  No single researcher has matched his impact on the natural and social sciences; on politics, religion and philosophy; on art and cultural relations.

We have recently ordered a number of newer books on the topic and they will be continually added to the display until it is removed.

The display will up be up until the end of November.   Please visit the display (near the Gleeson front desk and the entrance to the Thacher Art Gallery), browse and/or checkout the books and and say hello to Charles.