Luria Library

Join Santa Barbara City College Intercultural Communications Club as they sponsor Pangea Days on our campus. According to the organizers, "Pangea Day seeks to overcome that — to help people see themselves in others — through the power of film."

Beginning on July 1, 2008, the Luria Library will use EBSCOhost as our lead online article vendor. After nearly a decade of using ProQuest, we will begin to use the world’s most comprehensive scholarly full-text database, providing twenty unique databases for our students, faculty, and staff. With over 12,000 publications indexed and over 8,000 full text publications, students will have easy access to the highest ranked journals in many disciplines. According to a Library Journal survey, EBSCOhost is the “overwhelmingly” most used for-fee online research tool in the universities in the United States. EBSCOhost databases include:

Continue reading "Luria Library announces move to EBSCOhost" »

What does mathematics have to do with voting? You can learn more during Math Awareness Month which the library is supporting in conjunction with the SBCC Mathematics Department. The 2008 theme for this national event is What Makes Your Vote Matter?: Let Mathematics and Statistics show you to "illustrates the power and elegance of the mathematical sciences in addressing a problem of fundamental societal importance." The mathematical societies and associations sponsoring this month are hoping to prompt students and faculty to ask themselves:

Continue reading "Mathematics and Voting" »

Let’s Celebrate! April is National Poetry Month. So, mark your calendars for Monday, April 21 at noon. Bring along a poem to share, published or personal, one that considers the various bridges, real or metaphorical, that we cross over throughout life.

The event will be in the Luria Library Cafe and there will be a prize drawing for those who read a poem.

O little Icarus,
you chewed on a cloud, you bit the sun
and came tumbling down, head first,
not into the sea, but hard
on the hard packed gravel.
You fell on your eye. You fell on your chin.
What a shiner! What a faint you had
and then crawled home,
a knocked-out humpty dumpty
in my arms. . . .
(Sexton)

On display now in the library is a wealth of books on marine diving, as well as actual equipment used in SBCC Marine Diving Technologies program. Come see images of diving technologies over the years, including photographs of SBCC students in the program thirty years ago.

Santa Barbara City College's Marine Diving Technologies Program is recognized worldwide for its vocational excellence. It is the only community college degree program in the nation which is accredited by the Association of Commercial Diving Educators (ACDE), the International Diving Schools Association (IDSA) and the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI).

This week's display has particular timeliness because Don Barthelmess, Professor of Marine Technology has been selected by his peers to present the SBCC 29th Annual Faculty Lecture on Wednesday, April 9, at 2:30 pm at the Garvin Theatre. Delivering the lecture is considered the highest honor bestowed on a faculty member each year.

Continue reading "Marine Diving in the Library" »

It has been a great pleasure to serve our community since the Fall of 2005. In that time, the library has experienced some dramatics shifts and I would like to honor those across campus - students, faculty, administrators, staff - who have supported us and have been an advocate for our services. In particular, the faculty who bring their classes to the library and/or send students our direction. It is an exciting time and it is my opinion that the current library staff is of the highest caliber and in the Fall we will welcome another new librarian.

So, a big THANK YOU goes out to all those supporters and advocates.

Continue reading "Shifting Library" »

We are constantly adding new materials to our collection. To give you an idea of the types of materials we're adding, you can browse through a list of images. Use the continue reading... link below to see the book titles. If you'd like to find the book on the shelf or see if it is available, search our catalog.

Continue reading "New Books in the Library" »

Part of what we try and do in the library is engage our students with ideas and engage them in the learning of new ideas. Looking for inspiration isn't that difficult and the following video illustrates inspiration, learning, and talks about who we are as humans.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

According to the US Census, the number of U.S. resident who claim Irish ancestry is almost nine times the population of Ireland itself, and the nation's second most frequently reported ancestry. No surprise then that St. Patrick's Day, originally a religious holiday to celebrate the saint who introduced Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century, has evolved into a celebration for all things Irish.

Come check out the books on Irish history, politics, culture, art and literature on display now. Or peruse our catalog for a wealth of Irish fiction

No time to come to the library? "Check out" an electronic book on Ireland

SBCC will be making some history in Ireland this summer; the SBCC Concert Choir will make an 11-day performance tour in June, traveling to ... Read more about it at their blog.

Image Source

The Luria Library! It's also the title of a novel by E. M. Forster, a Great Books author.

"Borders." Consider the various borders that we erect among ourselves, our cultures, even from the natural world itself. Robert Frost's famous poem, "Mending Wall," considers the unnaturalness of constructing a stone wall between two neighbors: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

Come and meet other Great Books authors Tuesday noon, March 18, at the
Luria Library Cafe for our Borders Read Aloud. Share with fellow students your favorite "GB" poem or passage, and tell us what makes it great! Learn about City College's own Great Books program. We'll meet informally near the Cafe from 12:00 to 1:00, light refreshments to be served. RSVP on Facebook.

The Great Books include the classical works from the western Canon and World Culture. Plato, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Confucius, Freud, Cervantes: Each a Great Books author.

Continue reading "What's a room with a view?" »

March is Women's History Month and there are many resources available to learn about, and celebrate, women making history.

The theme from the National Women's History Month Project is Women’s Art: Women’s Vision to honor the originality, beauty, imagination, and multiple dimensions of women’s lives.

Check out just some of the many books we have about women's history in our catalog or on the display in the library now, which features books about women from around the world. A great webcast can be found on the International Women's Day website which links to websites from 45 countries.

At the Library of Congress website you can look at photographs and paintings, read significant documents, and listen to speeches, music and oral histories such as these from women veterans who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Update: Womens Festival on West Campus, March 7-9

Students, faculty and staff of SBCC are invited to join in the popular annual Black History Month Poetry Reading. Bring a favorite poem by an African American poet and share it with a receptive, enthusiastic audience. This will take place in the Library Cafe on Thursday at noon.

RSVP on Facebook

We're probably asking for it with this poll, but it should be fun anyway. Remember, this is unscientific.

February is Black History Month, established in 1976, expanded from the Negro History Week established in 1926. This is a time to honor and recognize those of African heritage, remember our history of racial prejudice, and help cultivate our black community. Check out the amazing online exhibit called Let Your Motto Be Resistance bringing together portraits of African Americans or the new Amistad Digital Resource from Columbia University.

A little closer to home, I encourage you to browse our library books on the topic, take a look at the World Book Encyclopedia's African American Journey, or CQ Researcher's report on Race in America.

Today is Super Tuesday and it is your opportunity to vote. Here are some resources:

• CNN Election Center
  
• BBC News: America
  
• League of Women Voters
  
• Washington Post: Politics
  
• Project Vote Smart
  
• Find you polling location
  

We also have some books on the topic:

• Elections - United States
  
• Voting - United States
  

Free books to Kick-Off UCSB/SB/SBCC Reads

Join the community of Santa Barbara and students at UCSB in reading The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. This unusual book by author Pietra Rivoli “tells a great story” about the complicated journey of a simple garment. A series of conversations will take place in February, including one with SBCC Professor Peter Haslund at the Carpinteria Public Library on February 19th. See the complete list of conversations. The headline event will be on March 5 at Campbell Hall when Pietra Rivoli will give a free lecture. For more information, please visit UCSB Reads.

The Luria Library will give away copies of the book to the first 45 students who are planning to transfer to UCSB this year. Stop by the library and ask for your free book.

A new semester has begun, the sun is shining and the campus is beautiful. The library staff welcome you back to campus and to the library. The cafe is open, so drop by and have a latte and a snack in the Buzz Shack. If you would like to keep up with our happenings this semester and you use a web feed (RSS), subscribe to the Luria Library feed. We also have a feed for our new books. You can also browse the new titles on the tables next to the Cyber Center and see our display of children's books and collectibles.

We will be open for administrative tasks and computer access during the winter break. The book collection on the lower level will not be accessible. Beginning after today, our hours will be Monday through Thursday from 9:00am to 2:00pm. Closed December 21 - January 1 and January 21. Regular hours (and blogging) will resume on January 28, 2008. Enjoy the break!

The Friends of the Luria Library proudly announce the recipients of the 2007-2008 Book Scholarship Award. This year we will distribute a total of $6,400 to the following seventeen students:

• Milochka Tshibingu
• Cyndi Burns
• Feleesha Chavez
• Suzie Sebastian
• Yolanda Vasquez
• Ryan Shapiro
• Daisy Sanchez
• John Swartwood
• Neal Erickson
• Jesse Moline
• Sebastien Delta
• Rush Mckenzie
• Benjamin Stevens
• Mayra A. Santana
• Ashlee Clark
• Araceli A. Reynoso
• Kaiya Batsel-Alfreso

The Friends of the Luria Library is a supporting organization comprised of community members interested in supporting the SBCC Luria Library. Through membership in the Friends, private gifts help build endowment and provide for special and reference collections, periodicals, and other services to our community not funded in the state budget.

Normally I'd post a list here of all the titles we've added to the collection in the past month. Unfortunately, I am unable to get the report to work correctly. So we have something similar that allows you to browse our new titles by looking at the covers (sorry, it isn't in subject order).

Review our recent additions.

You can also get an RSS feed for when we add titles.