I thought I would write a post about library etiquette because this semester it seems many friends and fellow students complain to me while at work about the noise level. The first thing to remembered is that Feinberg is a university library. There are people reading, writing, and doing math (and whatever lies in between) in order to obtain a degree.
There are a few things you should do when you enter Feinberg. One is turn off your cell phone and if you need to use your cell phone go into the lobby and keep your voice down. Your neighbor is not interested about you love life, the latest girl gossip, drunk fights and any other personal things. Many people do not realize that in the library many people can hear every word you are saying.
Other things to keep in mind is how loud your study group is. A couple of days ago several students complained about people listening to music without headphones on their laptop. (I cannot believe I have to say do not do this.) Lucky for their neighbors one person finally asked them to turn it off. When listening to music please use headphones.
The library is a great place to study. I know finding a completely quiet place to study is at most times impossible, even though there are quiet areas. But we can all do are part just to make sure we do not disrupt our neighbors by keeping the level down a bit. Talking isn’t forbidden but loudly discussing your Saturday night drunk episode, like falling down a flight of stairs (though may be entertaining and the people around you may laugh at you) it can disrupt someone trying to study for an important test. You may not have a test or paper due tomorrow but a week later you might hope for the same courtesy. Remember you can always nicely ask someone to keep it down or ask someone in the library staff to do it.
Just remember to be courteous! Hope the semester is going well for all of you. Read anything good lately?
Gordon Roger Alexander Buchannan Parks (Nov. 30, 1812- Mar. 7, 2006) was a famous photographer, musician, poet, journalist, activist and director. He had a rough beginning living in segregated Fort Scott, Kansas. When he was fifteen his mother passed away and was sent up to Minneapolis Minnesota to live with his sister. He was kicked out of her house by her husband and was homeless on and off until he was twenty-five. He also dropped out of high school. During this time Parks was a piano player in a bordello, a busboy and worked on the railroad. He became interested in photography while working on the railroad and took his first pictures in Seattle in 1937. Parks, one of fifteen grew up poor and became one of the best fashion photographers in the 1940s. He worked for many magazines including Glamour and Vogue.
He was the first African American to work as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration. He documented the conditions of African Americans. In 1948 he became the first African American photographer for Life magazine. He photographed Harlem gang warfare, American poets and civil rights movements. He also photographed Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers.
Parks directed eight films. Shaft (1971) is his most famous. He became in the first African American director for a major Hollywood studio in 1969. Warner Brothers released The Learning Tree. He also was director for Flavio (1964), The World of Piri Thomas (1968), The Learning Tree (1969), Shaft’s Big Score! (1972), The Super Cops (1974), Leadbelly (1976), and Solomon Northup’s Odyssey (1984). These movies range from documentaries, drama to comedy. He also composed classical, blues and popular music. (www.imdb.com Gordon Parks)
He has written several novels, memories and has also written poetry. Our library has several of his books. He was the co-founder of the magazine Essence which is a llifestyle magazine for African-American women. Founded in 1969 with Edward Lewis and Clarence O. Smith. (http://www.essence.com/) Throughout this post are pictures of books that Feinberg has. We also have Life from 1939-1952 if you are interested in checking out some of his work. His life story was told in a TV documentary called Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks(2000) Which was produced by Denzel Washington.
If you read Voices in the mirror : an Autobiography or any other of Gordon Parks books let me know what you thought!
One of the books I chose for the focus display was a biography of Bert Williams called Introducing Bert Williams: Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America’s First Black Star by Camille F. Forbes. I have not read this book (not yet at least).
Egbert Austin Williams (Nov 12-1875to March 04-1922) in Sweets, Antigua and moved to the United States in 1885. In 1893 in San Francisco he and George Walker became a comedy team and were very successful. He was the first African American to take lead role in a Broadway production called The Gold Bug (1896). In 1909 he started in Mr. Load of Koal which was the last black musical on Broadway for over ten years. In Dahomey (1903) a musical comedy was the first full-length musical written and played by blacks to be performed at a major Broadway house. He was the best selling black recording artist before 1920 and was prominent in the development of African American music. In 1901 he and George Walker were the first African American performers to record with a major recording company (Victor Company) He made about 80 recordings from 1920-21. He was the first African American performer in the Ziegfeld Follies from 1910 to 1920. He also preformed in A Senegambian Carnival, A Lucky Coon, The Policy Players, Sons of Ham, Abyssinia (1906), Bandanna Land (1909) and Under the Bamboo Tree (1921) He also made film performances, however most have been lost. The best film available of him is A Natural Born Gambler. In 1940, Duke Ellington composed and recoreded “A Portrait of Bert Williams” in his honor. (Library of Congress- Biography of Bert Williams)
What have you read so far this break? I have read After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter and I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse edited by Ellen Bass and Louise Thorton. It included excerpts from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday. I really liked I Never Told Anyone and recommend reading it. I have not read as much as I had wanted to. But I also have been doing research and practicing a language I have been learning.
In honor of our new president Barak Obama and memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. I created a new focus display on African American leaders in various fields. There about seventy autobiographies and biographies of famous, or should be more famous African Americans. They can be seen as just important as political leaders and activist. Many tried to push open doors that were shut to them. Many others tried to rid of stereotypes by getting degrees, becoming doctors, writers, sport players, actors and musicians. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll introduce some of the books and people that are in this display. Let me know if you read of any of them and what you think.
Happy reading!
Welcome to 2009 everyone! I just returned home from Massachusetts and now I am working at the library again. There are people using the library. Most people who are working on class homework. If you are around you can stop in even if you are not taking a class. Are you bored in Plattsburgh? Come by the library to read a book, watch a movie or listen to an album.
Check out our focus collection. I just finished reading a book from there called After the Quake by Haruki Murakami. It was a collection of short stories on the after affects of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. If you cannot choice what you want to read I suggest reading it.
What are you reading this break?
Today was the second day of finals, and the third day of finals week. The library has been CRAZY! I always like to see the new faces. Some people walk in to Feinberg for the first time and have no idea how to use it. Which is fine, that is why we are here. We get a lot of questions ranging from how to find a book to people who have been searching for an article for hours. My favorite questions are the citing questions. Especially from the history majors. (Yeah I know I am a little biased.) But they usually have the hardest sources to cite and history majors have to use the ever exciting Chicago style. (I actually like it.) You know you are in trouble when you have to reach for the orange Chicago Bible.
I hope everyone’s finals week is going well. I am curious about what everyone has been doing in the library thus far. Any interesting events? Troublesome times? Funny moments? Share with me your finals week stories.
I’ll start… I have been writing several papers and one is for my History of East Asian Women course. I am doing a paper on women writers in late imperial China and I have one book that is 1000 pages. I always like to photocopy books so I do not have to carry around the book. But alas! I need way to many pages to copy. It is a great book btw. It is called The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China. I have basically been at the library, or blueroom since Thursday! Great times!
Good luck all!
Jennie
One more day of classes and then it is time for a little break. Most of us will be feasting. After break we have one more week and then finals!
When we return from break the library will be in extended hours. Most nights the library is open until 1:30 am. The extended hours and further information on library hours is provided on the link below.
I hope you all have a good break and stay warm!
http://www.plattsburgh.edu/library/libraryhours.php
This morning I realized there are three weeks of classes left. The semester when by so fast! With so little time left people start coming to the library. With more people studying and writing papers the library very busy and gets a lot of questions. At the reference desk we get a lot of “I am just starting my twenty page term paper and it is due tomorrow, help!”
The library staff will gladly help anyone with research questions. The reference desk is a perfect place to go to help get you started. There are librarians at the reference desk most the hours the library is open. However you should be warn they won’t do the work for you. They are not here to do the research themselves. But they are here to assist when stuck. If you need more lengthy help or just direct attention you can sign up to meet with a librarian one on one.
Start now! We get a lot of people who cannot get the articles or books they need because they need to be sent from another school. Do not get stuck with information that is not as useful for you because you didn’t start soon enough. Just doing the research a couple of weeks before it is due will the very helpful!
Books have been banned and burned all throughout history. Basically since language has been written down someone has wanted to censor them. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China during the 200s B.C. would burn Confucian books. In 1536 William Tyndale was strangled and then burned at the stake for trying to translate the Bible into English so that the common person could read it. In 1982 Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was banned because of sexually offensive passages. In 1982 the book The Satanic Verses by Iranian author Salman Rushdie sparked violent Muslim protests that forced him into hiding. Also a Japanese man who translated the book was murdered. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies was banned in Oregon in 1993 because it encourages and condones homosexuality. The book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou has been banned several times because of her description of being raped. The Koran has been banned several times throughout history. For example students of history could not read it in the USSR. In 1790 the Spanish finally lifted their ban.
In August 2007 Geert Wilders from the Netherlands of the PVV Party called for the holy book to be banned because he sees it as “‘Fascist’, ‘wretched’ and encourages violence.” He compared the book to Mein Kampf.
One reason I decided to write because a supervisor at Feinberg Library brought to my attention one current case I found interesting. The book Jewel of Medina was banned by Random House because of fear of the reaction from the Muslim community. Three men and one woman have been arrested in attempting to burn down the house of one publisher who decided to print the book because he thinks regardless of reactions people should be able to speak freely in an open society. The book is a historical novel about the Prophet Mohammed and his wife. The author has said that her book “has been inappropriately and inaccurately characterized as a soft-porn book, which is the most inflammatory rhetoric anyone can use when talking about the subject matter, given the sensitivity of any religious group toward their sacred figures.” The book is due out on October 30th in thirty countries. Do you think this book should be banned?
What other cases do you know or find interesting? Do you think banned books resemble the thinking in that society?
[4] Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, “Random House Banned Book because of Fear of Muslim Ire.” Arutz Sheva, September 29, 2008. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127807 (accessed October 9, 2008).
There is always something new at Feinberg that can be found to keep us informed on issues and help us discover new ideas, books or resources that will help in our studies or broaden our interests. Recently a new focus display was designed featuring books that have been banned throughout history by schools and various groups throughout history. Books you expect can be found such as the Harry Potter series, Sinclair’s The Jungle, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Hurston’s There Eyes Were Watching God and Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. There are several to be expected. I did not know that some books had been banned but was not surprised they were. Books like Joyce’s Ulysses and Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. Some of my favorite books I have found on the list. These include Richard Wright’s Native Son and Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. What books do you love that are in this collection? What books in the collection do you think should be banned? What other banned books would you have liked to have seen in the collection? What are your thoughts about the books that have been banned? Are there books you think should be banned that have not?
