Luria 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.

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:

In the library now is a small display of books, articles, and fact sheets regarding RED HAND DAY - an international effort to raise global awareness of the plight of child soldiers through public protests, demonstrations and other activities. The Red Hand symbol, has been used all over the world by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and many civil society organizations to say no to the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

Here are some facts, from the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers:
-- The problem is most critical in Africa, where children as young as nine have been involved in armed conflicts. Children are also used as soldiers in various Asian countries and in parts of Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
--The majority of the world's child soldiers are involved in a variety of armed political groups. These include government-backed paramilitary groups, militias and self-defence units operating in many conflict zones.
--Most child soldiers are aged between 14 and 18, While many enlist "voluntarily" research shows that such adolescents see few alternatives to involvement in armed conflict. Some enlist as a means of survival in war-torn regions after family, social and economic structures collapse or after seeing family members tortured or killed by government forces or armed groups. Others join up because of poverty and lack of work or educational opportunities. Many girls have reported enlisting to escape domestic servitude, violence and sexual abuse.
-- Forcible abductions, sometimes of large numbers of children, continue to occur in some countries. Children as young as nine have been abducted and used in combat.

Find out more, in the library through February 12th.

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