Sullivan Library Celebrates The Great Outdoors

For our June book display, we are celebrating the great outdoors! No, not the movie from the 80s starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd. Instead, we are celebrating the activities, the history and the places associated with the summertime outdoors. Here are few books that are featured in our display:

 

Borscht Belt Bungalows: Memories of Catskill Summers

Borscht Belt Bungalows Cover

During the 20th Century, dozens of Jewish families from New York City vacationed in the Catskills during the summer at bungalow resorts or colonies. Irwin Richman recounts his personal experiences at these summer resorts in this memoir and provides insights into the activities of both the renters and the owners.

 

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Wild Front Cover

This New York Times bestseller tells the true story of the author, Cheryl Strayed, and her journey hiking alone on the Pacific Crest Trail after suffering through some personal tragedies.

 

How to Fly a Kite, Catch a Fish, Grow a Flower, and Other Activities for You and Your Child

How to Fly a Kite, Catch a Fish, Grow a Flower Cover

This little blast from the past provides instructions on how to do a variety of different outdoor activities with step-by-step illustrations.

 

Check out the display and get inspired to go outside and have some fun! And yes, going outside to read a book counts.

Sullivan Library June Book Display

Sullivan Library’s Book Display for the Month of March Celebrates Women Empowerment and History

Sullivan Library’s monthly Book Display for the month of March supports gender parity in recognition of International Women’s Day, as well as National Women’s History Month!

2018 Women’s March in NYC, photographed by Sierra Sheridan

March 2-8 was designated as National Women’s History Week by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, and in his presidential message addressing Women’s History Week as a national celebration, he strongly urged “libraries, schools, and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for gender equality in America (MacGregor, NWHP).”

A parade in honor of Women’s History Week prior to it becoming a nationalized celebration: Santa Rosa, CA in March 1979. Photograph from Healdsburg Tribune.

“From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation,” stated President Jimmy Carter in his opening statement of the 1980 speech in which he designated March 2-8 as National Women’s History Week.

Photograph from the City of Boston Archives on Flickr, titled “President Jimmy Carter.”

In the seven years that followed President Carter’s speech, 14 states took the liberty of expanding their support for the cause by designating the entire month of March as a commemoration for the history of women in America.

Former President Carter mentioned Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Harriet Tubman, and Alice Paul, among others, as he recognized the profound impact that various remarkable women have had in helping to build the United States into the nation that it is today.

“Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well,” Former President Carter stated, reflecting on the lack of recognition that had been given to significant female figures in American history (during the introduction of his 1980 speech).

The Original Women’s March on Washington in 1913 (top), The Women’s March on Washington in 2017 (bottom), Photographed by Alex Ceravolo (Social Justice Activist and 2018 Graduate of Ramapo College in NJ).

Women’s History Week was a stepping stone toward the greater recognition that women receive today, which is a national recognition of Women’s History in the month of March, as well as International recognition during March 8th, which is International Women’s Day.

Photo by rawpixel.com/CC0

This year’s 2018 theme for International Women’s Day was #PressforProgress and the library acknowledged this theme by displaying books that portray women who fought, and or continue to fight, for gender parity, whether it be socially, economically, culturally, politically, and or professionally.

Some books that the library is featuring on display can be found below.

Sullivan Library’s Book Display for the Month of March

Women of Influence, Women of Vision: A Cross-Generational Study of Leaders and Social Change By Helen S

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai

 

 

 

 

Citations:

Boissoneault, Lorraine. “The Original Women’s March on Washington and the Suffragists Who Paved the Way.” Smithsonian.com, 21 Jan 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/original-womens-march-washington-and-suffragists-who-paved-way-180961869/. Accessed March 13, 2018.

 

“City of Boston Archives.” Flickr.com, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cityofbostonarchives/with/9516905991/. Accessed March 13, 2018.

 

Hillin, E.I. “The Sonoma County Roots of Women’s History Month” (February 2018).

Santa Rosa, California: The Healdsburg Tribune.

 

MacGregor, Molly Murphy. “Why March is National Women’s History Month.” National Women’s History Project, http://www.nwhp.org/womens-history-month/womens-history-month-history/. Accessed March 13, 2018

 

Pexels, https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-arrival-beard-boss-429248/. Accessed March 13, 2018.

 

July is Staff Reading Recommendations month!

Over the summer we asked the entire Sullivan Library staff to pick some of their favorite books. Staff found a great range of selections, from classics by Emily Dickinson to non-fiction books related to environmental issues. These books are now located in our display case for checkout. See our Staff picks bibliography for a full listing of the selected titles.

Keep reading below to see what staff recommended and what they had to say about their picks:

June is LGBT Pride Month

The Sullivan Library recognizes June as LGBT Month. June officially commemorates Gay Pride celebrations in honor of the Stonewall Riots that took place in New York City on June 28, 1969. The riots were in response to police raids at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay hang out. The events are now considered the beginning of the gay rights movement in America.

June is also GLBT Book Month. Visit the American Library Association website for more information.

The Sullivan Library has on display selected books from our collection regarding gay rights and society. See the LGBT Bibliography of related titles in our collection. Below are some highlighted books.

New display case featuring Mental Health Awareness books

May has been recognized as Mental Health Awareness Month since 1949. Each year, millions of Americans face the reality of living with a mental health condition. One in every five adults in the United States will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime. In an effort to bring this issue to light and remove stigma, Mental Health Awareness month seeks to educate the public about mental illness and related issues, in addition to promoting wellness concepts and support.

We have compiled a Bibliography for Mental Health Awareness which features a collection of books related to mental health and wellness related topics.

April Display Case – Protect Our Environment!

 

Each April, Dominican College celebrates Earth Week to raise awareness of the environmental challenges impacting our planet.  Earth Week runs April 17^th – 23^rd, 2017.  The library has pulled together a display case featuring relevant books on sustainability, climate change, renewable energy and protecting the environment.  It is more critical than ever to get educated and involved on the environmental issues facing our planet!

Check out our Earth Week Bibliography featuring print and ebooks from our collection.

Below are some recommended environmental related library databases and online sources of note.

#truthseekers: Identify Truth in News & Media

Want to be a #truthseeker in an era of “alternative facts”? Check out the Truth Seekers series of workshops starting this week:

• “Fake News” 101 – Tuesday, February 21st – 2:15-3:00pm
• “Fake News” 101 (SophoMORE workshop)– Tuesday, February 28th—2:15-3:15pm
• The Truth is Out There – Tuesday, March 21st—2:15-3:00pm

For more information, we’ve compiled a bibliography about fact-checking, critical thinking, and misinformation in the news. See some of these books on display in the Library and read reviews of select titles below:

Virtual Unreality: The New Era of Digital Deception

By Charles Seife

 DC Call Number – 025.04 Se42v

The author explains how to tell truth from fantasy in the digital world, and why it matters. Today, the Internet allows us to spread information faster and to more people than ever before. Charles Seife takes the reader deep into the information jungle and cuts a path through the fakery that the Internet enables, providing a much-needed toolkit to help separate fact from fiction.

Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News

By A. Brad Schwartz

DC Call Number – 791.4472 Sch95d

On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the United States heard a startling report of a meteor strike in the New Jersey countryside, but the hair-raising broadcast was not a real news bulletin–it was Orson Welles’s adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic The War of the Worlds. Few listeners believed an actual attack was under way. But even so, Schwartz shows that Welles’s broadcast became a major scandal, prompting a different kind of mass panic as Americans debated the bewitching power of the radio and the country’s vulnerability in a time of crisis. The present-day popularity of “fake news” can be traced back to its source in Welles’s show and its many imitators.

Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-checking in American Journalism

By Lucas Graves

DC Call Number – 302.23 G785d

Over the past decade, American outlets such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker have shaken up the political world by holding public figures accountable for what they say. In a hyperpartisan world, facts can easily slip into fiction, and decisions about which claims to investigate and how to judge them are frequently denounced as unfair play.  Graves vividly recounts the routines of journalists at three of these organizations and what informs their approach to a story.

A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind

By David J. Helfand

DC Call Number – 500 H366s

We live in the Information Age, with billions of bytes of data just two swipes away. Yet how much of this is mis- or even disinformation? A lot of it is, and your search engine can’t tell the difference. This book provides an inoculation against the misinformation epidemic by cultivating scientific habits of mind. This survival guide supplies a set of apps for the brain while making science both accessible and entertaining.

A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age

By Daniel J. Levitin

DC Call Number – 153.42 L579f

We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process—especially in election season. This New York Times bestselling author shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports. Levitin groups his guide into two categories—statistical information and faulty arguments—ultimately showing how science is the bedrock of critical thinking. He defines infoliteracy as the understanding that there are hierarchies of source quality and bias that variously distort our information feeds.

Display case featuring African-American History related titles

February is African-American History Month!

In celebration, the Sullivan Library has selected some popular titles to be featured in our display case.  Feel free to check out any of these books OR search our online catalog for other books related to African-American History Month!  If you need assistance searching our catalog simply ask a library staff member to help!

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

By Barack Obama

DC Call Number – 973.04 Ob1d

The former President of the United States, US Senator and activist writes about his life as a black American whose father was a black African and his mother a white American. His story begins in New York, where he learns that his father has been killed in a car accident. The sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and lastly reconciles his divided inheritance.