For anyone who has ever served time in a gray cubicle (or known someone who has), here is the book that deserves a prime place in your in-box.
THEN WE CAME TO THE END, by Joshua Ferris, was nominated for a National Book Award in 2007 and was chosen as the May/June pick for the San Francisco Public Library book club. It has been described as “wickedly funny” and deals with subject matter to which many of us can relate: cube farms, the 9-5, and office tomfoolery in the age of the dot-com bust.
You can get it through Link+ and have it delivered to Gleeson Library in about 4 business days by clicking here. Then, come join us on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 to discuss it and share some laughs. We meet from 12 noon – 1 pm in the seminar room (2nd Fl) of Gleeson Library. Bring your lunch and tell your colleagues!
The Book Club is Co-Sponsored by USF Well Life Department and the Gleeson Library. It is for faculty and staff only.
© Greenpeace / Beltrá, Daniel
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For more research relating to environmental issues, you might also want to try databases such as AGRICOLA, GreenFile, Biological Sciences or TOXLINE.
This semester, Gleeson Library has been broadcasting the 2008 presidential debates on our information screen in the Access Services area lobby. I work just adjacent to this lobby and have watched as patrons take short study breaks to quietly, and earnestly, watch the candidates answer a question. Some patrons pull up a chair and stay awhile. Many stay for the duration of the debate. Other patrons, weighed down with loads of newly checked-out books, stop on their way out the door and listen intently for just one more minute. Last week, I looked up and saw a patron watching from the second floor balcony. I waved. He smiled and waved back. Soon, though, the look on his face returned to one of concern and concentration as he watched on. In a long and turbulent election year — one that has, rightfully so, required us to learn about and address many complicated issues — this is a rather simple, and for me, sustaining scene. Author Raymond Carver might have called it “a small, good thing”:
We’ll have the third and last debate of 2008 on at Gleeson Library, this Wednesday, 10/15, at 6pm. Hope to see you here. Thanks to Debbie Malone for taking the photos for this post.
Yesterday the library saw the installation of an exhibit put up by David Silver’s Intro to Media Studies classes. It is called Election Exhibit: Students Teaching Students. The point of the assignment is to encourage and educate the USF Community to vote. It is also part of The September Project.
Many of the pieces are interactive — they encourage you to cast your ballot in a box right there, to mark where you get your news coverage, or to indicate what country or region you represent. They span a wide range of topics and are very compelling.
Come check it out in the library! The exhibit begins on the counter in the foyer and continues in the very back of the North Wing. Or, if you can’t make it, check out David Silver’s blog post about it, or his Flickr photostream.
If you checked it out, what’s your favorite part of the exhibit? Did you learn anything you didn’t know? Did it challenge you to reconsider your preferred candidate?
Mail-in voter registration forms are available at Gleeson Library for voting in San Francisco County.
(update: thanks to David Silver’s media studies classes’ fabulous installation in the library we have registration forms for any county in California – mail or take to your county elections office.)
College students may legally register either at their college residence (on or off campus) or permanent home address, but not at both.
To register for voting in San Francisco, just fill out a form and put it in the mail. They’re already postage-paid so you don’t even need a stamp!
California’s registration deadline for the November 4 election is October 20, 2008. Some other states have earlier deadlines.
Get info for other states and register online at RocktheVote.com or JustVote.org.
It’s easy to make sure you’re registered (and register if you’re not) at IvoteYouvote.com.
To help figure out the issues and candidates, our Government Information Librarian Carol Spector has prepared a helpful guide to the 2008 election, including links to non-partisan voter education websites and the official sites of six political parties on the California ballot — find it on the library website.
Date Change: The USF Book Club will be meeting on October 23, 2008. Same time (12 noon – 1 pm) same place (2nd fl Seminar Room). Click here for more details.
If you’ve been thinking about coming but haven’t, please know that we discuss our selections from a light hearted perspective and rarely delve into the realm of critical theory. Sometimes we haven’t all finished the book yet! The objective is for books to bring us together.
In conjunction with the dedication and opening of Kalmanovitz Hall, a sixteenth-century book from the Donohue Rare Book Room is featured in an exhibit showing the Jesuit history and presence at USF over the years. The title of the book is:
A Particular Declaration or Testimony of the Undutifull and Traiterous Affection Borne Against her Maiestie by Edmond Campion Jesuite, and Other Condemned Priestes, Witnessed by Their Owne Confessions: in Reproofe of those Slaunderous Bookes & Libels Delivered Out to the Contrary by Such as are Malitiously Affected Towards her Maiestie and the State (London: Christopher Barker, 1582).
Edmond Campion
The page opening on display shows an engraved image of Edmund Campion (1540-1581) the martyred English Jesuit for whom the building was previously named. The volume was printed the year after Campion’s death, at a time when anti-Roman Catholic books were common in England and books which supported the Church were banned and part of an underground trade. Of particular note with this copy is that the text has been set into a larger textblock, in order to accommodate a pro-Catholic image of Edmund Campion. The book is part of the Rare Book Room’s collection of recusant literature and is available to students and researchers.
