Luria Library

American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month

2009-11-05T21:26:53Z

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

Green books -- online and in-person

2009-10-19T18:12:25Z

Santa Barbara is renowned for the wide variety of plants which can be grown here. On display now in the library are just a few of our books on gardening, landscape design, and environmental horticulture. These beautiful books might inspire you to find out a bit more about our Environmental Horticulture program at SBCC. Check our catalog for more books on topics you might want to explore and enjoy on your own. The library also discovered some free eBooks on some other "green" subject matter: 101 Ways To Living Greener Beginners Guide To Organic Gardening Beginners Guide To Worm Farming Hypermiling: Make Your Car Go Further with Less Gas "Check them out" today!

New Book Additions - September

2009-10-05T23:19:09Z

With the new semester, new titles have arrived in the library and are ready for checkout. Here are a few highlights from our New Books Shelf: See the complete list on LibraryThing, an offsite service providing a visual representation of our titles. If you'd like to checkout any of the titles, please come by the library or search our catalog to check availability.

Take a look at "Burn this Book"

2009-10-01T14:00:00Z

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.]]> Burn This Book includes a sterling list of award-winning writers and is sure to ignite spirited dialogue on the issues of censorship and freedom of speech. Provided through the generous support of HarperCollins Publishers, Burn this Book will be available to Luria Library patrons October 1-31. If you have already established a NetLibrary account through the Luria Library, visit www.netLibrary.org and log in. If you do not have a NetLibrary account, you can create an account from any library computer. For more information about NetLibrary or other services available through our library, please contact your librarian.

Winning Ideas Sought

2009-09-22T18:38:14Z

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 ]]> “The Big Read” program of the Santa Barbara Public Library. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read addresses this issue by bringing communities together to read, discuss, and celebrate books and writers from American and world literature.

Textbooks, Course Handouts, and Textbooks

2009-08-27T23:09:49Z

Image by Amin Tabrizi via Flickr

It seems that each semester that the demand for our Reserve collection increases. Our staff works diligently to provide these materials. The library is grateful to the Campus Bookstore who provides most of the funds to provide textbooks for students. In addition to textbooks, library Reserves also includes many handouts from faculty. This year we are happy to offer a new service in the Reserve collection. Most handouts and articles that are on reserve are now available electronically. Students may access the eReserve collection through the library web site from on- and off-campus. Just open the library catalog and search for professor's name. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Library Closed Until August 24

2009-07-24T22:45:12Z

Image by Reinante aka Benquerencia via Flickr

Thank you for visiting our library during the Summer Session. We now transition into a quiet time in the library and will remain closed until the fall semester begins on August 24. In the case you need to reach us, please call 805-730-4435. Please enjoy the break.

New Summer Arrivals

2009-07-21T17:24:42Z

Many of our late spring book orders have arrived in the library and are ready for checkout. Here are a few highlights from our New Books Shelf: See the complete list on LibraryThing, an offsite service providing a visual representation of our titles. If you'd like to checkout any of the titles, please come by the library.

Knit a Square, Warm a Child

2009-06-18T20:36:38Z

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

Summer Session!

2009-06-15T16:54:29Z

Welcome back to campus, students and faculty! The library is open for summer session: Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 8:00 am to 4:30 pm Wednesday 8:00 am to 7:30 pm and Friday 8:00 am to 1:30 pm The Buzz Shack inside the library will be open every morning. Hope to see you soon.

The Arrival of Summer

2009-05-22T23:21:45Z

Image by Today is a good day via Flickr

Happy summer to you. The library will continue to be open to students, faculty, and staff throughout the summer months but at a reduced schedule. The initial schedule is as follows: May 26 - June 12 9:00 am - 2:00 pm Monday - Thursday The main floor of the library is open for administrative tasks, studying, and computer access only. The Summer Term hours will be posted in mid-June.

Extended Hours for Finals

2009-04-29T17:23:01Z

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.

When a Parent is in Prison

2009-04-27T21:31:11Z

When a Parent is in Prison is a documentary project of Mennonite Central Committee's Office on Justice & Peacebuilding and Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. The photo exhibit provides a glimpse into the lives of the two million, four hundred thousand children who have a parent in prison. As Nell Bernstein, author of "All Alone in the World" has stated "These children have committed no crime, but the price they are forced to pay is steep. They forfeit too much of what matters to them: their homes, their safety, their public status and private self-image, their primary source of comfort and affection. Their lives are profoundly affected." This photo documentary will be in the Luria Library for ONE WEEK ONLY. Come by and see these powerful images. Leading the initiative are Howard Zehr, Professor of Restorative Justice at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, director of Mennonite Central Committee's office on crime and justice.

Ethics in the Library

2009-04-21T18:09:43Z

The library is honored to host the esteemed faculty from the philosophy and political science departments for a discussion on ethics. The panel discussion is in conjunction with the Santa Barbara Reads, UCSB Reads and the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Thursday, April 23 4:00 – 5:00 Luria Library Panelists

Marc Bobro, Philosphy
Jim Chesher, Philosophy
Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar, Political Science
Joe White, Philosophy

Moderated by Elizabeth Bowman, Librarian

Mathematics and Climate

2009-04-14T19:10:25Z

One of the most important challenges of our time is modeling global climate--how we actually measure, understand and discuss climate change. Some of the fundamental questions researchers are currently addressing are: * How long will the summer Arctic sea ice pack survive? * Are hurricanes and other severe weather events getting stronger? * How much will sea level rise as ice sheets melt? * How do human activities affect climate change? * How is global climate monitored? How does this happen? Through mathematics! The American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics has made climate and the theme for Mathematics Awareness Month. The library is honoring this month with a display of books this week. You can find out more about SBCC's Mathematics program and SBCC's Center for Sustainability online.