Luria Library

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The Friends of Luria Library announce the Spring 2009 Book Scholarship Awards. This award is given each year in December. All students are eligible for the $400 or $200 book scholarship award - several in each category will be awarded. The deadline to complete the application is November 30, 2008.

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. Contributions from individuals provide an extra measure of qualitative excellence which can be seen in every area of Library operation. If you are interested in joining the Friends of Luria Library, please complete our contact form.

The Library will have extended hours this weekend:

Good luck with the finals.

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The Friends of the Luria Library proudly announce the recipients of the 2008-2009 Textbook Scholarship Award. This year we will distribute a total of $8,400 to the following students ($200-$400 each):

* Noe Gonzalez
* Alexandra Leigh Stephens
* Jennifer Baron
* Patricia Dugan
* Mary Katherine Cooney
* Alan Dowdall
* Honey Scarcia-Irish
* Ashley M. Robles
* Kevin Embertson
* Victoria Zermeno
* Karen D. Cortes
* Lina Koppel
* Kathleen Glowen
* Nathalie Gaudefroy
* Darius Guerrero
* Perla Navarro
* Kimberly Summer Mead
* Chris Steinwender
* Marisa Heighes
* Janice Thomason
* Janelle Lopez
* Marissa Dail

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.

The college is on break between the fall and spring semesters from December 12 to January 26.

During this period, the library will be open Monday through Thursday from 9-2 on the main floor only. The book stack area will remain closed.

The library will be completely closed from December 24 through January 5 and then again on January 19. Enjoy the break and we'll see you in 2009.

The library will continue to offer extended hours in preparation for finals. Here are the additional hours for the spring 2009 semester:

Friday, May 15 Open 7:30am - 7:00pm

Saturday, May 16
Open 10:00am - 6:00pm

Sunday, May 17
Open 10:00am - 10:00pm

This brings an additional 13.5 hours to students. Regular hours are posted here.

In the last few weeks of the spring 2009 semester, the library hosted a charity opportunity as part of the Knit-A-Square program. This program was designed to encourage knitters and crocheters around the world to take a little extra time to make a 8 inch by 8 inch square and mail it to South Africa. The squares would be assembled there, by a local charity called the Soweto Comfort Club, to provide comfort and warmth to some of the many AIDS orphans. This charity has taken off in ways the planners hadn’t anticipated and has gained world wide attention. Their goal for 2009 is to create 10,000 blankets (40 squares make one blanket).
The library staff considered this an appealing, comforting community project, especially as spring semester finals drew near and budget concerns loomed, making folks anxious. After announcing the charity, we mounted a display wall so that we could show library visitors how the blanket was developing, as the squares came in, and this drew a lot of interest and conversation. What followed next went beyond our fondest expectations; in just a few weeks, staff, faculty and students brought to us one at a time, or a few at a time, or bags at a time, ultimately One Hundred and Twenty-Eight Squares. One staff member learned to knit, in order to contribute. Several staff member’s elderly parents contributed to the project. Students asked us to continue the project in the future.

Thanks to all who participated!
photo credit: Valerie Campos

Image by Reinante aka Benquerencia via Flickr

Please enjoy the break.

Fifty-six years ago, Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 and it has remained a best-selling book and is considered a literary classic ever since.

The National Endowment for the Arts notes this “gripping story at once disturbing and poetic, Bradbury takes the materials of pulp fiction and transforms them into a visionary parable of a society gone awry, in which firemen burn books and the state suppresses learning. Meanwhile, the citizenry sits by in a drug-induced and media-saturated indifference.”

What do YOU think? Write and submit a paper on the relevance of the book Fahrenheit 451 in 2009 for a Student Symposium and win a prize and publication of your work.

The Symposium will be held in the library on Friday, October 23, 2009 from 11am-noon

In coordination with Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, Luria Library is pleased to announce that Burn This Bookwill be available as the October eBook of the Month - free to all readers.

Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Burn This Book explores the meaning of censorship, and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves. Contributors including Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, David Grossman, Nadine Gordimer and other literary heavyweights, discuss the importance of writing from various views, both political and social. They illustrate the need for freedom of speech and human rights, and they emphasize the target writers become in a tyranny.

November is National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month

Among many celebrations, events, speeches, activities across the country, there are also excellent links to information, speeches, art and film. Follow this link to watch the winners of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian first-ever “Answering the Call: Veterans Day Short Film Contest.”

Check out some outstanding books on Native American culture in our library, such as Sister nations: Native American women writers on community

Many internet sources are available, as well, such as this extensive list of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and an extensive collection of Native American Resources

photo [Chumash hut] uploaded from Flickr: October 12, 2008 by KnaPix