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Sámi Pathfinder Visits St. Mary’s

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Yvonne-Marie Miniggio

Yvonne-Marie Miniggio, Sámi Pathfinder

This Thursday, April 16 at 4:45pm in DPC, you have a truly unique opportunity to learn more about the Sámi people through a talk given by Sámi Pathfinder, Yvonne-Marie Miniggio.

Formerly known as Lapps, the Sámi people are the only European group categorized as indigenous peoples by the UN. The people of this distinct ethnic group live in the extreme north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia’s Kola Peninsula. They have recently gained standing in Norway’s government through the formation of the Sámi parliament.

Come learn more about the fascinating Sámi culture and language from Yvonne-Marie Miniggio, one of four young people selected by the Norwegian government to promote Sámi history and culture, and raise awareness of modern Sámi society.

Her visit is a joint effort of the Center for the Study of Democracy and librarian Kent Randell.

Presidential Libraries: What presidents do to keep us from knowing what presidents do

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Truman Presidential Museum and Library

Truman Presidential Museum and Library

In his upcoming book, The Last Campaign, Anthony Clark, former speechwriter and legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives, argues that presidential libraries, which began as impartial archives of history, have become extravagant, politicized, legacy-building showplaces where the goals of former presidents, their families, financial donors and the national parties trump accuracy and the (often inconvenient) facts.

Clark will be at St. Mary’s on Wednesday, March 25th to speak at 4:45pm in the Daugherty Palmer Commons (DPC) about these uniquely American shrines and the past 10 years he spent researching and traveling to presidential libraries across the United States.

You can learn more about Clark and The Last Campaign by visiting his website. Join us for what promises to be a fascinating talk!

Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation

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Flappers Cover ArtContinuing with our collection features on Women’s History, the library brings you Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell. This collective biography focuses on the lives of the following women in the 1920s:

Read Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell for a well-researched, addictive 1920s history fix.

Makers: Women Who Make America

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1970 Protest March

from the Makers website, a 1970 protest march in downtown St. Louis (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis / AP Images)

Looking for something to watch to kick off Women’s History Month? Try the first season of the excellent PBS documentary series, Makers: Women Who Make America. The focus of this three-episode series is on the birth, struggles, and advances of the modern Women’s Movement, from the 1950s to the present time.

You can learn more about this documentary series by visiting the PBS Makers website, which has more information about the film’s creators, as well as discussion guides for teachers and others.

Watch Makers: Women Who Make America, located in our DVD collection on the first floor of the library, call number HQ 1391.U5 M35 2013.

Everyday Life & Women in America

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The Queen of Fashion

The Queen of fashion [serial]., Volume – 22, Issue – 7
© Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University Libraries
Available via Everyday Life and Women in America

Everyday Life and Women in America is a collection of pamphlets, rare books, periodicals, and broadsides from the 19th and very early 20th century in the United States. It’s a fantastic collection of primary source materials and digitized history for anyone interested in the history of American women, domestic life, gender relations, marriage and sexuality. It’s a rare glimpse into the very personal lives of women, men, and children at a time when the world was changing rapidly.

I spent the morning browsing through this collection, which I’ll admit to not having looked at until today, and was blown away by some of the amazing things I found like

  • Etiquette lessons
  • Suggestions for promoting “beautiful feet and hands”
  • Marriage advice
  • Career opportunities for the 19th century woman (including library work!)
  • Fashion plates (and advertisements for “healthful” corsets)

If you have even a passing interest in the lives of your great-great-grandmothers, or what a daily routine might be for a 19th century woman, take a moment to browse this excellent collection.

 

Celebrate Women’s History Month

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Penn[sylvania] on the picket line-- 1917.

Penn[sylvania] on the picket line– 1917. From the Records of the National Woman’s Party at the Library of Congress

Happy Women’s History Month! This March 2015 marks the 35th anniversary of Women’s History Month, and this year’s theme is Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives, a nod to the power of narrative and storytelling in American history and importance of the stories of individual women.

To celebrate this month, the St. Mary’s Library will be featuring different women’s history resources on the In the Collection portion of the Library’s website. We’ll also have a series of posts about research materials related to women’s history, as well as amazing information you can access online through various archival collections.

Suggest a Kindle Ebook

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What do you want to read on our Kindles?

The library has a fleet of Kindles loaded with popular fiction, bestsellers, and all the current young adult novel crazes.

Whatever your favorite Kindle device might be, we want to make sure that we’re buying the books YOU want to read. Our only restriction: It has to be fiction or popular non-fiction. No academic titles, please; we’re trying to keep our Kindles, light and focused on reading for pleasure, not work. So take a minute and…

Leave a comment with a book you’d like us to add to our Kindle collection!

Not sure what books we already have on our Kindles? Take a look! Also take a minute to learn more about our Kindles from this awesome video created by SMCM student Eden Anbinder:

Fair Use Week (and Every Day)

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Fair Use is like a muscle; unused, it atrophies, while exercise makes it grow.

—Patricia Aufderheide &  Peter Jaszi in Reclaiming Fair Use

February 27th marks the end of Fair Use Week, which makes this post a little late to the party. Despite my tardiness, I still think this event merits mention. Like so many other issues, copyright is likely something we’re all vaguely aware of hanging around in the distance alongside “the cloud,” “big data,” and other buzzwords we hear on a regular basis but will never admit we don’t fully understand. Somewhere way beyond this mythical Realm of Copyright is Fair Use. It’s likely in a shed, out in the middle of nowhere, where only teachers and college professors venture to visit from time to time.

Before I get totally lost in my painful mixed metaphors, let’s take a minute to learn a little more about Fair Use.

Thanks to the Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center at the NCSU Libraries, we have a good, plain-language definition of this elusive concept:

“Fair use is an exception to copyright that permits unauthorized use in cases where where the value of the use to society is greater than the harm done to the rightholder…fair use is about what you are doing, what you are using, how much you are using, and if your use undermines the value of the original.”

You may have read about the 4 Factors of Fair Use, those murky, checklist-but-not-really-a-checklist items that are meant to help you determine when you’re taking advantage of Fair Use and when you’re really just taking advantage. These 4 Factors are (again from NCSU Libraries):

  1. the purpose and character of your use,
  2. the nature of the work,
  3. the amount and substantiality of your use
  4. the effect of your use on the market for the original.

Fair Use is rarely clear-cut, and many artists, educators, writers, and filmmakers refrain from using any copyrighted materials in their work or classrooms for fear of copyright infringement. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is but one of many organizations that are trying to change that. This year, between Feb. 23 and the 27th, ARL is sponsoring (or sponsored, depending on when you read this) Fair Use Week, an annual celebration of the Doctrine of Fair Use.

On the Fair Use Week website you’ll find an events calendar filled with lectures (both in person and online) and a collection of resources on copyright and Fair Use including videos, blog posts, best practices, essays and a fantastic infographic, which has been made free for reuse and copied below. According to ARL, “every week is fair use week,” so take some time to learn about Fair Use…then maybe move on to attempting to understand “big data.”

Fair Use Fundamentals Infographic 1

Fair Use Fundamentals Infographic 2

Black History Month Research Resources

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Photograph of several Tuskegee airmen attending a briefing in Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945 - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Photograph of several Tuskegee airmen attending a briefing in Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945 – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

As we near the end of Black History Month it’s important to keep in mind that there are a wealth of free research materials on African American history. So whether you’re researching for a scholarly publication, a class assignment, or just personal interest, keep in mind some of the resources available to you through the St. Mary’s Library and through various digital archives and libraries across the country.

Our Patron Services Librarian, Conrad Helms has an excellent blog post about the new Rosa Parks archival collection at the Library of Congress. We’re also featuring just a few of the many St. Mary’s Library resources on Africa & African Diaspora Studies in our In The Collection feature this week.

Also going on this week is a fantastic BSU-sponsored, student-designed Exhibit in the Boyden Gallery called Expressions of Blackness.

If you’re interested in learning more about Black History Month, take a look at the Library of Congress and all of the amazing documents, photos, and resources available to help bolster your knowledge and understanding of African American History.

Black in Latin America

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HT-66-resized

For the last in our series of “In the Collection” features related to Black History Month, the Library brings you Black in Latin America, a 2-disc, 4-episode series on DVD that explores the intersections of race, identity, and Latin American history. Narrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this series examines the legacy of slavery and colonialism in Latin America by specifically looking at Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. I first caught Black in Latin America on PBS a few years ago and was hooked. It’s a fascinating glimpse of racial politics and identity in the larger “America.”

You’ll find this engaging series in our open DVD collection on the first floor of the library, call number F1419.N4 B533 2011. There is also a book to accompany the DVD, which is located on the 2nd floor of our library in the stacks (call number: F1419.N4 G38 2011) You can find out more about Black in Latin America by checking out the accompanying PBS website and the preview video below.

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