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.

Or at least for us to buy titles that help students doing research papers.

You’ll notice this month we added a lot of titles in H (Social Sciences, etc.), many of which come from series like Opposing Viewpoints or Contemporary Controversies and make excellent sources for research papers. Be sure to keep these in mind for your students come the Fall!

As the budget year ends in June, May and June are big buying months for us here at the Library. Expect a literary explosion for the next month or two before we enter into the between-budget Dead Zone.

Here you’ll find notes about events upcoming in the library, as well as information about our collection development month-by-month. We encourage you to follow us on Facebook, as well.

Have questions? Feel free to email us at DowntownCampusLibrary@fscj.edu

Want to explore the catalog more completely? Go here.