Luria Library

As we enter the 8th week of the Zaca Fire, I am certain most tire of this long fire. Since the SBCC community is so large, there may be students or employees who live very close to the fire and are living a distracted life. The web has a wealth of resources for this type of incident and I encourage you to explore what is available. A good place to start is the Zaca Fire Information and Resource Page at the Ojai Post. If you are interested in newspaper and magazine reporting, try a search in ProQuest for zaca fire or review some of the books we have in our collection on wildfires. Feel free to use the comment link below to make other suggestions or to share your experience.

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• The Independent
• Daily Kos Day 1 | Day 2
• Ed Hat
• The Daily Sound
• CBS TV
• Montecito Fire Protection District
• Road Closures

Feel free to use this comment area below to talk about the fire. How is the traffic? Do you need help with anything?

Update: Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District has information on air quality or download the Wildfire Smoke PDF document.

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.

The Garner Tullis Print Collection is comprised of thirty-three works on paper donated to Santa Barbara City College in 1990 by artist and printmaker Garner Tullis. He operated the Garner Tullis Workshop here in Santa Barbara that was internationally known for its preeminence in working with artists to make monotypes, a one of a kind print. These prints are typically found in the Luria Library and, from February 27– March 27, 2009, selected pieces will be part of Gifted at the Atkinson Gallery.

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