The beginning of October marked the end of Banned Books Week, and we’d like to thank everyone who went on a date with a banned book and let us take their photos for our very own READstricted poster. We’re pretty happy with how it turned out:

But now that that’s out of the way…it’s time for:

In addition to our month-long online celebration of all things scary, we’ll also be hosting a ghost hunt. Patrons who visit the Library between October 19th and October 31st and use the catalog to locate a book with the word GHOST in the title and then bring it to the desk will get a treat (no tricks!).

We hope to see you for our ghost hunt. While you’re here, be sure to ask us about the spooky things we’re reading this month.

Next month we’ll be kicking off the return of Dinovember, but until then we’ll see you in the stacks!

In September we celebrate Banned Books Week, which runs this year from September 27th-October 3rd. Throughout the month we offer you the chance to go on a date with a banned book by picking one of the wrapped titles off our Banned Books display. Only the complaint lodged made against the book when it was banned or challenged appears on the wrapping, so you can either be surprised by the title at check-out or peek and see just how random and strange some of the objections made to classic books have been.

Stop by the front desk to have your photo taken with our READstricted mask and your favorite banned book and we’ll include you in our home-made Banned Books Week Poster!

As we look toward October, we’ll be prepping for Horroween, and then after that it will be time for the return of Dinovember. That’s all in the future, though. So for now, remember: don’t let other people make decisions about what you can read, and we’ll see you in the stacks!

August in the Library is pretty much the calm before the storm that is Fall Term. Though it may look quiet in here, we’re hard at work making sure we’re ready to knock your socks off beginning August 24th.

Part of that prep work was completed at this beginning of this month as we concluded our annual inventory process. Once a year we physically scan every item in the collection to make sure our records are as accurate as possible and that we haven’t accidentally acquired items that belong to the other campuses. This year we finished in a record two days, and (since we have to do part of it while we’re open) we’d like to thank the handful of students who cheerfully put up with all the beeping noises we made scanning the books.

Another part of the process is our soft roll-out of the Accudemia check-in system, which will allow us to understand better the needs of students and staff accordingly. Be sure to have your student ID handy to swipe in and (just as importantly!) swipe out when you use the Library and Learning Commons.

September is coming up fast, and with it Banned Books week. If you or your class would be interested in participating in our reading of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, please contact Library Manager Jennifer Grey and let her know.

That’s it for now. Until next month, see you in the stacks!

So far July has gone swimmingly as the Library celebrates Shark Week by showcasing our collection of sharks’ teeth and a display of books and movies related to those oh-so-awesome denizens of the deep. Shark Week ends this Saturday, but you can check out the display through the end of the month.

July also marks the long-awaited arrival of Harper Lee’s “new” book, Go Set a Watchman. While we likely won’t be able to purchase a copy of the novel until August, we’re still celebrating the publication all month on our Facebook page with a selection of trivia and facts about Harper Lee and her work.

At the tail end of this month, the Library will be performing our annual inventory. So if you start hearing beeping around the 31st, it’s not your ears, it’s just us. We do a complete check of our collection once a year to ensure our records are as up to date as possible so that we’re better able to serve you.

We don’t currently have anything planned for August (other than preparing for Fall!), but keep an eye on our Facebook page just in case we decide to squeeze in something.

Until next month, see you in the stacks!

June is all about new things for us. Mostly that means new books and DVDs, but in this case it also means new events – in particular our The Fedora is a Lie: What the Indiana Jones Movies Got Right (and Wrong) About the Study of Archaeology, which is coming up next week!

UNF’s Dr. Keith Ashley will join us at 6:00pm on Tuesday, June 16th in A1058 for a presentation on the finer points of how not to be an archaeologist (as demonstrated by the unforgettable Dr. Jones), followed by a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Seating will start at 5:30pm, so be sure to arrive early and get your seat. If you can’t make it, don’t worry – we’ll be hosting the best in archaeological facts and trivia all month long on our Facebook page.

If excavating isn’t your thing, then we suggest you hang on until July, when the Library will celebrate Shark Week and the publication of Go Tell a Watchman, the sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

See you on the 16th – and, as always – in the stacks!

As expected, May in the Library is a bit on the quiet side…at least on the surface. We’re busily spending the last of our budget, which means May is a great time for those of you who like to peruse our New Arrivals shelves. We’ve also added a bunch of new DVDs who like their summer with a side of cinema.

In addition, we’ve got a lot of plans for the not-too-distant future. We’ll keep you spoiler-free on most of them for now, but we are happy to announce our June event, hosted in conjunction with Student Activities: The Fedora is a Lie: What the Indiana Jones Movies Got Right (and Wrong) About the Study of Archaeology.

UNF’s Dr. Keith Ashley will join us at 6:00pm on Tuesday, June 16th in A1058 for a presentation on the finer points of how not to be an archaeologist (as demonstrated by the unforgettable Dr. Jones), followed by a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Seating will start at 5:30pm, so be sure to arrive early and get your seat.

In support of this event, we’ll be hosting Indiana Junes on our Facebook page, and featuring daily posts about history and archaeology that are guaranteed to make you want to slap on a fedora.

We hope you’ll join us on the 16th. Until next month, see you in the stacks!

For us, April is all about the Poetry.

This month we celebrate National Poetry Month, which means that each day we’ll be featuring a new poem both on our Facebook page and on a whiteboard immediately outside the front door of A2102 (for all of your drive-by poetry needs). In addition, we’ll be sharing interesting tidbits about poetry, including features on poems, poets, and the unexpected places poetry makes itself known.

We’re also collecting submissions from students, faculty, and staff of their favorite poems. If you submit, not only will we illustrate and feature your poem, we’ll enter you to win a $25 Amazon.com gift card! Submissions are due by 4/23.

As part of our submission process, we’ve visited a few classrooms and recorded students reading their favorite poems (or song lyrics, which count, too). You can check those out on our Facebook page, or by visiting our SoundCloud.

In other news, our FSCJ Urban Garden Club event with Donald Justice went fabulously. Also, you’ve still got a couple of days to get in your submissions for National Library Week (see below post in March for details).

We expect May to be a little bit of a slow month here in the Library, but we’ve got some plans for June and July that we think you’ll really love.

Until then, hope to see you in the stacks!

March is another big month in the Library.

Last week we hosted our Women in Comics event with Professor Katie Monnin from UNF, which concluded with a fantastic Q&A session lead by the students. We’ll be continuing to featuring topics related to women’s history. comics, and women in comics throughout the month on our Facebook page, so be sure to follow us there.

In support of FSCJ’s collegewide Hero of the Underground learning community activities, the Library is hosting a Hero Wall until March 24th. Students and faculty are encourage to stop by the Library and pin the name of their Hero to the wall before it moves to Kent and South to be at Jason Peters’s presentations.

At the end of the month, we’re hosting the Urban Garden Club’s Spring Event, featuring Donald Justice of Sustainable Springfield and Chef Shane Cheshire of Barn Yard Farms. Mr. Justice will speak on urban gardening and Chef Cheshire will talk about his entrepreneurial work in hydroponics. The event will take place at 3pm on March 31st in A2102Q.

If that’s not enough, we’re also collecting your stories about why you love our Library (or any library). Stop by the Library before April 11th and fill out your Library Love Letter (really, it’s a form, but love letter sounds nicer) and give it to one of the Library staff. We’ll pick our favorite to win a $20 Amazon gift card, and share the rest on our Facebook page during National Library Week April 12th-18th.

And finally, keep in mind that April is almost upon us and we’ll be celebrating National Poetry Month. Start thinking about what poems you want to share with us, and stay tuned for details about how doing so could win you prizes.

Until then, hope to see you in the stacks!

We’re celebrating several different things this month.

First, check out our Facebook, where we’ll be celebrating African-American History Month by sharing daily posts by Eunique Jones’s Because of Them We Can campaign, which aims to connect a new generation to heroes, past and present, who paved the way. The photos they’re doing are amazing, and we encourage you to share them with your friends online.

Next is our Bitter Ball, which is basically us declaring our saccharine allergy and opting out of Valentine’s Day. Students and faculty who stop by the Library between February 9th and February 14th and tell us about their favorite failed fictional romances will be awarded a handmade bookmark (while supplies last). You can also check out our display featuring famous, less-than-healthy relationships. Yes, we’re looking at you, The Giving Tree.

Finally, celebrate Chinese New Year by visiting us February 24th and 25th to pull your fortune from a fortune cookie for a chance at prizes.

Since our next newsletter likely won’t be out before this event, we also want to mention how excited we are to have Professor Katie Monnin of UNF joining us on March 4th for a special event. Here’s the description:

Women’s History in Comics: Or, Why We Still Don’t Have a Wonder Woman Movie – Ever wonder just why we’ve seen eight Batman, five Superman, and at least one too many Spiderman movies but never a single Wonder Woman film? We’ve been motivated by the overlap of Women’s History Month with the 75^th Will Eisner Read a Graphic Novel Week to find out.  Join Professor Katie Monnin for a discussion of the history of comics and graphic novels and the role women have played both on and off the pages. Professor Monnin is an Associate Professor of Literacy at the University of North Florida and the author of several books on using graphic novels in teaching. She also writes a monthly column for Diamond Comic Book Distributors, and served as an Eisner Award Judge at ComicCon in San Diego in 2013. Her talk will be followed by a roundtable discussion with local cosplayers about the issues and challenges they face as women at conventions. 

Until next month. Hope to see you in the stacks!

This month we begin a new feature in the Library Newsletter.  We thought we would use the newsletter as a way to introduce faculty to many of the electronic databases subscribed to by the college. Did you know the college libraries currently subscribe to over 200 databases?  The databases cover arts & humanities, biography, business, computers & technology, education, health and medicine, literature, news & current events, sciences, and social sciences.  You will find magazine, journal, and newspaper articles, eBooks, pamphlets, video, images, and other reference sources.

Unsure how to access the databases?  If you are faculty or staff, log into the employee portal and select College from the top menu bar and scroll down to Library/Learning Commons.  You will see two access points located at the top of the library web page:  Databases A – Z and Databases by Subject.  Searching for a specific magazine or journal?   Use the A-Z Journal Listing Tab found on the top right of  the library web page to locate a specific magazine or journal title.

Please stop by the Reference Desk if you have any questions regarding any of the databases.  Contact Sheri Brown (sheri.a.brown@fscj.edu or 633-8414) if you would like to schedule a library orientation to introduce your students to quality research materials.