Big Changes in the Library!

First of all, welcome to all you new Saints and welcome back to all you returning Saints!

Secondly, for you returners, you’ll notice a big change on the main-floor of the library:

More space and fewer computers.

Last year, we did a study of the numbers of students using this space and found many more students were using their own devices instead of the library computers.  Additionally, those of you who answered the questionnaire during last spring's Library Snapshot day indicated you wanted more space to work together.  In response, we’re opening this area up to support more collaborative learning (there’s your fancy professional lingo)…moving from an information commons model to a learning commons model (more professional lingo).  Basically, the difference is a greater emphasis on this as a learning space rather than just one for gathering information.

Right now, the tables we have set up are temporary while we wait for furniture on back order.  If you want a sense of what this space will look like eventually, think about the tutoring area of the Center for Student Success.

The space will feature movable whiteboards, chairs, and tables so that you can make the space fit your needs!

Additionally, the computers have been updated, so they boot up quicker—we’re happy about that too!  To accommodate those who need to use computers when the ones in the learning commons are all being used or who may need a quieter space, we’ll open up the Main-Level Classroom whenever classes are not in session.

New ILL program

Image by  Dave & Margie Hill/Kleerup, from WikiMedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The O'Grady Library has switched from iLLiad to a new interlibrary loan program (ILL), one that should be cleaner and easier to use.* iLLiad will stay online through April 12 to allow users to download any PDFs still in the system and to save their search histories.

Below is a quick video with Stefanie Gorzelsky, one of the librarians, highlighting some of the advantages of the new system.

Below is a short video that shows the new ILL landing page and also shows how you can set it up to give you text alerts when items come in.

Below is a short video on request screens and email notifications, which are slightly different from iLLiad.

* For anybody interested, the new program is called Tipasa, but we will simply use "interlibrary loan" or ILL instead of referring to the product name.

Butterflies and Bibles

The lower level of the library has been claimed by butterflies and family Bibles.  Each is a theme for displays in the two  cases just outside the Special Collections and University Archives office.  

The displays are the work of part-time volunteer archivist, Pam Sowers.  In the past, special collection and archive materials were kept safely away from public to protect and preserve them, but Sowers and Library Dean, Scot Harrison, like other archivists around the world want these items to be seen by students, staff, and faculty alike and even used for research by more than just select academic scholars.

Butterflies

The butterfly display was inspired by a Wall Street Journal column on gardening that a friend sent to Sowers.  She wanted to display some of SMU’s large collection of books on flowers and gardening that have been donated over the years.  The display features dozens of butterflies cut from the pages of older used books like out-of-date atlases by student workers in the Center for Student Learning, Writing and Advising, including Luis Lara-Espinoza, Keleen Tork, Madeline Miller, and Savannah Schilperoot.  

Most of the books are non-fiction guides, but two of the books are novels.  The top row features a unique book, Kanzaka Sekka’s A Flight of Butterflies, published by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979.  The book is a fold out that stretches to thirty-one feet when fully extended.  It is actually a facsimile of the original that was published in Japan in 1964.

Family Bibles

Sowers noted that SMU actually has a modest collection of family Bibles from the area.  Some of these Bibles belonged to some of the first white settlers in the region, others are newer.  The oldest Bibles in the collection were printed in the 1700s.  Not as widely kept in the United States now, family Bibles are an old European/American tradition through which families kept their genealogy, recording births, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and deaths.  For many families even into the early twentieth century, the family Bible may have been the only book in the home.  

Sowers said she is fascinated by idiosyncratic language use in the Bibles.  For example, in one Bible, it appears that the same person recorded most of the information, using the phrase “was borned” instead of the now customary “born.”  Later, though, the same writer dropped the “was” and simply wrote “borned.”  Most of the Bibles are in English, although the university holds a French family Bible and a German one, as well.  

“Some of them are just too big for the display case,” Sowers said, but then pointed out that the smallest Bible in the case is a missionary Bible that was published in the 1870s and taken on a missionary journey to China in the 1930s.

Why a Black History Month?

Image by The U.S. Army, public domain

At the beginning of Black History Month, it’s important to think about why it’s necessary to even have a month dedicated to the history and culture of a particular segment of our population.  This is a rather complicated question, which cannot be answered in single blog post.  One possible way to think about this is identity.

Bryan Stevenson, a well-known Civil Rights attorney and author, in his 2012 TED talk, "We Need to Talk about an Injustice," observed

When we create the right kind of identity, we can say things to the world around us that they don’t actually believe makes sense.  We can get them to do things that they don’t think they can do.  

The subject of Stevenson's talk is the disproportionate numbers of people of color, specifically African Americans, in America's prisons but his thought about the role of identity and social action is quite important.

One of the functions of Black History Month is to help reshape the identity of African Americans on a social level.  Social identity is a new concept to some, but it plays a crucial role in social interactions.  This concept of identity comes from social psychology and shows how “people’s conception of who they are (their self-concept) is associated with their membership of social groups and categories” and how these memberships influence how people conceptualize the world and behave in it, as well as how they are conceptualized and interacted with by other people.(1)  An influential way of thinking about this concept is in terms of what Pamela Hays called the ADRESSING model; people’s social identities are tied up with their age, disability, religious culture, ethnicity, social class culture, sexual orientation, Indigenous heritage, national origin, and gender.(2)  Race, in this model, is considered an aspect of ethnicity and, as SMU’s Dr. Leticia Nieto points out, is a “historical attempt to limit the definition of ‘human being’ to some people and to define other people as not quite human.”(3)

A well-known photograph from Charles Moore taken in 1963, Birmingham, AL, image from http://www.dadychery.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Birmingham_1963e_CharlesMoore.jpg

Historically speaking, African Americans have unfortunately not been fully classified as “human being”—consider the 3/5 Compromise in the U.S. Constitution and the arguments for slaves as being property and slavery as a divinely ordained institution.  On the level of visual culture, consider the persistent pattern of African Americans being presented as apes through the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras.  Consider the violence directed at African Americans and their white allies during the Civil Rights struggle.  This dehumanization also occurs on the level of language and was even applied to Former First Lady, Michelle Obama.  Many other examples could be cited, but hopefully these will suffice.

Dr. Carter Woodson, image from the National Park Service, public domain

Black History Month is a result of the work of Dr. Carter Woodson, one of the first African Americans to receive a graduate degree from Harvard University and a founding member of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, one of the first academic associations to study the lives of African Americans.  Starting as Negro History Week in 1926, the month was created to “increase awareness of and interest in black history among both blacks and whites”(4) and actively seeks to combat the dehumanization that African Americans have been subject to for centuries, to help create a more positive social identity for African Americans and to acknowledge their many roles and contributions in the development of America.  For an introduction to this history, watch the PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many rivers to cross which is available for streaming through Alexander Street Press and can be accessed via the library’s website.  The idea behind these efforts is that when the social identity of African Americans and all people of color is improved, the lives and opportunities of individual persons will be improved and the promise of "all men [and women] are created equal" can be realized.

Image by Wonder woman0731 from Flickr, CC BY

The O’Grady Library is pleased to participate in Black History Month by presenting displays of books on important topics of African-American history and culture and by co-hosting with the Office of Service Learning and Diversity Initiatives a panel on race on February 22 in the Benedictine Reading Room, from 3:00-4:00.  Through these efforts, we hope to help improve the social identity of African Americans and all people of color and to inspire others to work for a more equitable society.

Footnotes

1. Hogg, M.A.  (2018).  Social identity theory.  In Jackson II, R.L. & Hogg, M.A. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of identity, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412979306.n241 

2.  Discussed in Nieto, L., Boyer, M.F., Goodwin, L., Johnson, G.R., & Smith, L.C. (2010).  Beyond inclusion, beyond empowerment: A developmental strategy to liberate everyone.  Olympia, WA: Cuetzpalin.  p. 45.

3. Nieto. p. 51


4.  Goggin, J.  (2006).  Black History Month/Negro History Week.  In Palmer, C.A. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history.  Detrot: Macmillian Reference.  Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3444700144/GVRL?u=olym77009&sid=GVRL&xid=ec10756e 

Sign up for library cards with Timberland Regional Library!

Librarians from Timberland Regional library set up in Harned Hall

On Thursday, February 1^st from 10am-1:30pm, librarians from Timberland Regional Library in Lacey will be in Harned Hall.  Stop by and sign up for your library card!  

Located just across the disc golf fields at the corner of Abbey Way and College, Timberland has a books and materials for  your recreation, and also has a few really great resources for students:

If you are getting ready to take placement tests, the Learning Express Library has many study materials and practice tests in different areas.  Taking the NES tests for education?  They've got resources! Check out their study guides while you are getting ready for the next stage of your student or professional career.

Using your library card, you can access Lynda.com for a wealth of video courses taught by experts in their fields.  Find classes on Photoshop, Excel, etc. with Lynda.com videos, or look for new subjects to learn about on your own.

Need help learning a new language?  Timberland has a subscription to Mango Languages, a language learning platform.  Use it to supplement your Saint Martin's classes, or pick something up on your own to get ready for study abroad.