USF Book Club: June & July Selections

The USF Book Club will meet to discuss the following two books in the upcoming months:

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin. Friday, June 8, 2012. Room 209 of Gleeson Library, 12 noon – 1 pm. Request this one through Link+ or get it at SFPL.

Lacey Yeager appears on New York’s art scene as a clever, funny young Sotheby’s intern. With charm, ambition, and occasionally illegal tactics, she climbs the city’s cultural ladder to success in the labyrinthine art world. Her knowledge of art and its collectors quickly grows alongside a list of men she enchants and inevitably destroys. Her rise to society’s highest tiers parallels the soaring heights – and, at times, the dark lows – of the art world and the country from the early ’90s through today. –stevemartin.com

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick. Friday, July 6, 2012. Room 209 of Gleeson Library, 12 noon – 1 pm. Request this one through Link+ or get it at SFPL.

Ozick reworks Henry James’s The Ambassadors, setting it in 1950s Paris, a seedy, impractical place for well-to-do and disaffected youth. Bea is a divorcee, long shut off from her feelings, who is bullied by her unbearable brother into traveling to Paris to bring back his errant son, Julian. While Bea begins to break through her emotional morass, her actions lead to dreadful results for her niece, her nephew, and his Jewish wife with a tragic past. While it is difficult to comprehend why everyone is so obsessed with Julian, the other characters are beautifully delineated with great sensitivity. Tandy Cronyn is the perfect reader here. Her portrayal of Bea’s emotional fog, the ennui of the Americans in Paris, and the bully Marvin is simply superb, and the pacing is excellent. –Library Journal

New Library Newsletter!

Hot off the press!

The Spring 2012 issue of the library newsletter, Global Update, is now available for download.

Global Update is a collection library blog posts, book reviews, and other features all in one attractive place. Snuggle up with the PDF and see what’s been going on in the library all semester!

You can download it directly from the link above, or you can get it from two other places:

• Global Update is linked on the library’s “Follow Us” page, which makes hooking up with us via Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr easy as well.

• All past and current issues of Global Update are housed on our Library Newsletter page.

4th Annual Poetry Reading @ Your Library

Join Gleeson Library as we celebrate National Poetry Month (April 2012) with our 4th annual Faculty, Staff, and Student poetry reading!

Thursday, April 19, 2012 @ 5 p.m.

Gleeson Library | Geschke Center

Rare Book Room, 3rd Floor

Featuring the following USF Poets reading their original work:

AVA KOOHBOR & PATRICK DUNAGAN
LISA GIARRATANO
STERLING DIESEL
KELCI M. KELCI
GUSTAVO MENA
KATIE HOGAN
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

This year we’ve got 4 students, 3 staff people, and 1 faculty. Personally I am super excited to hear my coworkers Ava and Patrick read Ava’s original poetry in Farsi, with the English translations they worked on together. However things go down, we are all in for a treat: a wonderful evening of poetry from our diverse poetic community. Please join us!

USF Book Club: April and May Selections

Book Club is breaking out of our habit of reading books about boys/kids who have lost their fathers!

April 13, 2012 (Fri), 12-1 pm: A Private Life by Jane Smiley. Room 209 of Gleeson Library.

Gleeson library doesn’t have a paper copy of this one (yet?), so you’ll have to request it through Link+ (comes fast–in about 4 business days!), or read it on one of our iPads or Kindle. If all else fails, the public library has it in many formats.

[This] Pulitzer Prize–winning author offers a cold-eyed view of the compromises required by marriage while also providing an intimate portrait of life in the Midwest and West during the years 1883–1942. By the time she reaches the age of 27, Margaret Mayfield has known a lot of tragedy in her life. She has lost two brothers, one to an accident, the other to illness, as well as her father, who committed suicide. Her strong-minded mother, Lavinia, knows that her daughter’s prospects for marriage are dim and takes every opportunity to encourage Margaret’s friendship with eccentric scientist Andrew Early. When the two marry and move to a naval base in San Francisco, Margaret becomes more than Andrew’s helpmeet—she is also his cook, driver, and typist as well as the captive audience for his rants against Einstein and his own quirky theories about the universe. As Smiley covers in absorbing detail both private and world events—a lovely Missouri wedding, the chaos of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the wrenching death of a baby—she keeps at the center of the narrative Margaret’s growing realization that she has married a madman and her subsequent attempts to deal with her marriage by becoming adept at “the neutral smile, the moment of patient silence,” before giving in to bitterness. Smiley casts a gimlet eye on the institution of marriage even as she offers a fascinating glimpse of a distant era. –Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

Make sure you speed through it and start this next one early because it’s quite long:

May 11, 2012 (Fri), 12-1 pm: Storyteller : The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock. Probably in room 139 of Gleeson Library, or if the weather is nice, the USF Community Garden… stay tuned for updates.

Gleeson does have a copy of this, but it’s checked out. You can request it through Link+ and the public library has a few copies available. Of course you can also read it on one of our iPads or Kindle.

The first authorized biography of Roald Dahl [author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, most famously], Storyteller is a masterful, witty and incisive look at one of the greatest authors and eccentric characters of the modern age…

Granted unprecedented access to the Dahl estate’s extraordinary archives—personal correspondence, journals and interviews with family members and famous friends—Donald Sturrock draws on a wealth of previously unpublished materials that informed Dahl’s writing and his life. It was a life filled with incident, drama and adventure: from his harrowing experiences as an RAF fighter pilot and his work in wartime intelligence, to his many romances and turbulent marriage to the actress Patricia Neal, to the mental anguish caused by the death of his young daughter Olivia. Tracing a brilliant yet tempestuous ascent toward notoriety, Sturrock sheds new light on Dahl’s need for controversy, his abrasive manner and his fascination for the gruesome and the macabre. –Amazon.com

The USF Book Club is run by Kelci Baughman McDowell, Reference Library Assistant in Gleeson. For information or to sign up for the mailing list, email kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu. You can visit our wiki for more info, as well. (Please note, you do not have to join the wiki to view it.) No rsvp for the meeting is necessary–just drop by if you’ve read the book or if you’re interested in it. Lastly, feel free to bring your lunch. See you in April!

Calling All Student Poets!

Do you write poetry? Are you a USF Student? Want to perform your original work in celebration of National Poetry Month? Then keep reading!

The Gleeson Library Poetry Committee is gearing up for our 4th annual faculty, staff, and student reading. Lily Iona MacKenzie and Kelci M. Kelci (yours truly) will headline, and we want some student poets to open up the show.

The reading will take place on Thursday, April 19, 2012 in the library’s Rare Book Room from 5-6:30 p.m.

If you are a student poet and are interested in participating, please email the selection committee (gleesonpoetry@gmail.com) the following information:

• Your name
• Your contact info
• A writing sample of 3-5 poems (max.10 pages) that represents what type of work you intend to read
• A little bit about yourself and what you study at USF
• A list of 5-30 books or authors that are essential to your life as a poet

The deadline to apply is Friday, March 16, 2012.

If you apply, please make sure you will be available to read on Thursday, April 19, 2012 from 5-6:30 p.m.

Please understand the number of readers on the program will be limited and the selection committee is seeking a diverse representation of USF students to complement the established readers. We anticipate not being able to accept all applicants. Decisions of the selection committee are final.

Thank you! We look forward to reading your work.

Sincerely,

The Gleeson Library Poetry Selection Committee
gleesonpoetry@gmail.com

Colette Hayes – Evening / Weekend Circulation / Reserves Coordinator
Patrick Dunagan – Periodicals & Bindery Specialist
Matthew Collins – Senior Assistant Head of Access Services
Kelci Baughman McDowell – Reference Library Assistant

USF Book Club: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Hello! USF Book Club continues its procession of books about kids who have lost their fathers with The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.

We will meet on March 16, 2012 from 12-1 pm in room 314 of Gleeson Library (note the different room — up on the third floor).

How to get the book: Request it through Link+ or get it at SF Public. Unfortunately it is not available in e-format.

Interested in Book Club? Check out our wiki page or email kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu to sign up for the mailing list.

About The Invention of Hugo Cabret:

Here is a true masterpiece—an artful blending of narrative, illustration and cinematic technique, for a story as tantalizing as it is touching.Twelve-year-old orphan Hugo lives in the walls of a Paris train station at the turn of the 20th century, where he tends to the clocks and filches what he needs to survive. Hugo’s recently deceased father, a clockmaker, worked in a museum where he discovered an automaton: a human-like figure seated at a desk, pen in hand, as if ready to deliver a message. After his father showed Hugo the robot, the boy became just as obsessed with getting the automaton to function as his father had been, and the man gave his son one of the notebooks he used to record the automaton’s inner workings. The plot grows as intricate as the robot’s gears and mechanisms [...] To Selznick’s credit, the coincidences all feel carefully orchestrated; epiphany after epiphany occurs before the book comes to its sumptuous, glorious end. Selznick hints at the toymaker’s hidden identity [...] through impressive use of meticulous charcoal drawings that grow or shrink against black backdrops, in pages-long sequences. They display the same item in increasingly tight focus or pan across scenes the way a camera might. The plot ultimately has much to do with the history of the movies, and Selznick’s genius lies in his expert use of such a visual style to spotlight the role of this highly visual media. A standout achievement.

-Publisher’s Weekly

New! Text A Librarian

Quick, save this number in your phone or scan this QR code!

Start your text with the word: gleeson

Example:
gleeson  What are the library hours on saturday?
(after your first message to us, you don’t have to use the word gleeson any more).

Give it a shot and send us a text—we would love to hear from you!

More info, including other ways to contact us, can be found on the Ask A Librarian Web page.

What’s up with the Wikipedia black out?

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=tzqMoOk9NWc

For 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!

USF Book Club: February and March Selections

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.

USF Book Club: The History of Love

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!

Global Update, the Library Newsletter

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.

USF Book Club: Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

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!

– Edna St Vincent Millay

Win a NOOK at Game Night Tournament

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.

USF Book Club: Nov/Dec Selections

Howdy bookclubbers! Today we discussed Packing for Mars under a bright blue sky in the USF Garden and we choose our next two selections. We’ll meet in the seminar room of Gleeson Library (#209) for both of these meetings.

12-1 pm, November 11, 2011 (Friday): A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (novel)

Gleeson has a copy of A Gate at the Stairs 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.

Just months after 9/11, college student Tassie Keltjin, the brilliant daughter of a Midwestern farmer, becomes a part-time nanny for an older white couple who have adopted an African American baby. Enjoying her delightful young charge and reveling in her love affair with her Brazilian boyfriend, Tassie has a growing suspicion that her employers are somehow off. When their identities, as well as her boyfriend’s, are blown, Tassie heads home, only to be hit with another, more devastating shock. Verdict: Moore uses the same kind of poetic precision of language found in her dazzling short story collections (e.g., Birds of America) to draw the reader into her long-awaited third novel (after Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?). The challenge for readers is to reconcile the beautiful sharpness of her language with two wildly improbable plot threads. — Library Journal

One of the librarians here at Gleeson got an advanced copy of A Gate at the Stairs two summers ago. I swooped it up from the pile in the staff room and read it on my vacation to New Orleans. Moore–of whom I was a big fan already, having read a handful of her books in undergrad–didn’t disappoint with this one. If I have the time, I will re-read it before book club.

12-1 pm, December 9, 2011 (Friday) in room 139 (the electronic classroom of Gleeson Library): Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Millford (biography)

**PLEASE NOTE date and location change**

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 (1892-1950) was a Jazz Age phenomenon, causing a sensation wherever she went; lines from her brief poem, “First Fig” (“I burn my candle at both ends/ It will not last the night… “) would become the rallying cry of a generation. She was notorious for her sexual unconventionality and (as Edmund Wilson put it) “her intoxicating effect on people… of all ages and both sexes.” How a lyric poet could have achieved such celebrity is the conundrum at the heart of Savage Beauty. Millay, as Milford depicts her, was a troubled genius who used her prodigious gift to propel herself out of rural poverty and into the center of her age. She carefully cultivated the reporters and patrons who took the “fragile girl-child” under their wing. But her delicate image masked a force of nature whose incendiary wit and insatiable ambition took the public by storm. Milford deftly links the lyric intensity of Millay’s work with her ravenous appetite for life. Whether tracing her ghoulishly close relationship to her mother and sisters, her years at the center of cosmopolitan life or her morphine addiction and untimely death, this account offers its readers a haunting drama of artistic fame. A true paradigm of literary biography, this finely crafted book is not to be missed. — Publisher’s Weekly

Cinda, a librarian at my old work, gave me this biography when I was 22. At first I was surprised to remember I had told her I was interested in it; then I filled with dread: another book to read. My my my! This book has probably influenced my pursuit of living the poet’s life more than any other… or well, until I read Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles when I was 26. Savage Beauty was such an influence I took it to the salon and instructed my stylist to cut off my long ponytail and give me an Edna St. Vincent Millay 1930s bob. I will definitely re-read this one for book club and I am sure I will shed a few tears along the way.

To sign up for the book club mailing list, email kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu.

You can also check us out on our WIKI PAGE.

Welcome New Permanent Librarians

Gleeson Library | Geschke Center is pleased to welcome two new librarians, Claire Sharifi, who is the liaison to the School of Nursing, and Amy Gilgan, who is the liaison to the School of Education. Claire and Amy both began here at Gleeson in January as temporary part time librarians. Late this past summer, the library posted two full time librarian positions on the USF jobs site. Claire and Amy applied to the respective openings, went through the rigorous interview process, and both got the job! We are excited to welcome them into our “library family”–or perhaps more precisely, we’re happy they’re not leaving our family!–and look forward to all the great work they’ll do with the students and their respective faculty.

Introducing… Claire & Amy!

Claire Sharifi has been building her career to the point of being a Health Sciences Librarian. After graduating from San Francisco State University with a B.S. in Health Education, she took a case worker position at Project Open Hand and also held the position of research assistant at UCSF. Although she felt nudged to get a Masters in Public Health during this time, she relished the research aspect of her job at UCSF and instead pursued a career as a reference librarian, getting her Masters in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University. Since then she has worked at Barnett Briggs Medical Library at SF General Hospital and as a librarian at Life Chiropractic College West Library in Hayward, CA. She is excited about the evidence-based practice movement in the health sciences because it provides a natural opportunity for practitioners and librarians to collaborate. Her favorite fruit is the strawberry.

Her personal take on USF:
I have very much enjoyed my first few months here at USF. While I am impressed by the dedication to learning and education I see in both the students and faculty, I am particularly struck by the social consciousness of many of the students. Students come to the reference desk with research questions that demonstrate their awareness and
involvement in important current issues, and throughout campus I see evidence of students’ investment in their community, from posters encouraging students to volunteer at service organizations, to composting and recycling bins in the dining centers, to the movement to save the Upward Bound program. It is great to work among individuals who are committed to education, the environment and social justice.

Amy Gilgan comes to USF from the Art Institute of California-San Francisco where she managed library instruction for over 3 years. During her temporary appointment here at USF, she also worked at City College of San Francisco. She enjoys doing library instruction at USF, and loves the amazing collection of religious books at the Gleeson Library. In her spare time, she trains in Aikido, Muay Thai and Western Boxing.

Her personal take on USF and libraries in general:
One of the many things that attracted me to USF was the university’s commitment to social justice. At USF, I have the pleasure of working with students and faculty in a variety of disciplines who are interrogating a myriad of topics through a lens of social justice.
With the Googlization of information, many students are under the impression that everything can be accessed electronically. As an instructor, I strive to meet students where they are and use the tools they are familiar with, like Google, as a jumping off point for learning how to search effectively. Once students see the strengths and weaknesses of broad keyword searching, I love empowering them to do more in-depth searches with indexed subject terms. My experience working as an archivist at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library taught me that due to the high cost of digitization, the histories of marginalized communities are often underrepresented in electronic resources. Whether I am teaching students to search the open Web or proprietary databases, I encourage them to critically interrogate the search results and ask whose voices are not represented.

This info taken from last semester’s edition of Global Update, the Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Newsletter.