Rohrbach Library to Celebrate Chinese New Year

by Jessica Reppert

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon!
The year 2012 is the Year of the Dragon, and the Rohrbach Library, along with the departments of Modern Language Studies, History, and Business Administration, invite you to come celebrate!

Chinese New Year Celebration at KU

• Thursday, February 2, 2012
• 11am-12pm
• Rohrbach Library – 2nd Floor

The event will provide a variety of activities to celebrate the Chinese New Year:

• There will be Chinese food and tea sampling, with authentic dumplings made by Joo Tan.
• CJ Roads will give a Tai Chi demonstration in traditional garb.
• Haidong Liu will be set up at a station teaching Chinese calligraphy, and those in attendance will be able to practice along with her.
• There will be a display of Chinese zodiac medallions, dry ink, postage stamps, books, videos, artwork, and other artifacts brought back from China.
• The Chinese New Year is a week-long celebration, which began on Chinese New Year’s Day — January 23, 2012.  Video highlights from this year’s festivities in China will be playing during our celebration.

Background information for Chinese New Year:

The Chinese New Year is also referred to as the Spring Festival and it is the most important celebration for Chinese communities around the world. One of the Festival’s central themes is the Chinese horoscope which gives way to the year’s animal. According to World Book’s Celebrations and Rituals Around the World: New Year’s Celebrations, unlike the daily horoscope system we are used to, the Chinese rotate through twelve animals over twelve years. Being born under a certain animal then, is said to give a person that horoscope, and thus, that type of personality. This year, 2012, is the Year of the Dragon. People that are born in the Year of the Dragon enjoy good health and are always full of energy (World Book’s 13). Other Years of the Dragon have been 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, and 2000 (World Book’s 13). History.com also provides useful information on the Chinese New Year.

For more information about the Chinese New Year: visit the Rohrbach Library; a Librarian is always happy to assist you.
For more information on the Chinese New Year Celebration on February 2nd: please call 610-683-4746.
Click Here to download a copy of the event flyer.

Event Sponsors:
This event is a collaborative effort of several departments on campus and was made possible through the special efforts of Michael Weber, Haidong Liu, Bruce Jensen, and Dr. John Stanley who are pulling together a spectacular event for the Chinese New Year Celebration!

The celebration is also sponsored by the Voices and Choices Center within the Rohrbach Library. The Voices and Choices Center, run by Bruce Jensen, works to promote different cultures, opinions, and outlooks of different people from around the world to make the student body of Kutztown University more aware of these different cultures and ways of life.

SOPA & PIPA

How are you holding up with the blackouts today dealing with SOPA? Any idea of what it is and why YOU should be concerned? Here are some resources to help you understand how it affects you and the resources you use–including libraries! (And if you hear the name “PIPA” being used and think that the sister of the future Queen of England is involved, guess again!) NPR even has one of it’s librarians stationed on its Twitter feed to help those who are suffering from Wiki withdrawal!

• When Even The Librarians Are Against SOPA…
• SOPA, PIPA: What you need to know
• Wikipedia Blackout: Media Sites Try to Fill Gap with ‘AltWiki’ Thread
• REDDIT site – information and ways to take action against SOPA and PIPA
• SOPA – the text of the Act
• PIPA - the text of the Act

The Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

The history of the United States had been presented to me as consisting of the accomplishments of white people, mostly men…

–Walter Dean Myers, Bad Boy

His memoir is available at Rohrbach Library; we have an autographed copy, too

The newly appointed US Ambassador for Young People’s Literature writes in his 2001 memoir Bad Boy of growing up in Harlem with foster parents, one of whom couldn’t read. Though the young man early
on recognized his love for, and talent with, the written word,  he says that at age fifteen, “the idea that creative writing could be anyone’s job never entered my mind.”

Dozens of popular and widely acclaimed books later—books that often explore troubling realities faced by many urban youth (when he writes about prisons, which he frequently does, they’re real ones, not Azkaban)—the revered author takes on a new job in which he’ll spend two years encouraging and  inspiring young people nationwide to read more.

If you’d like to put some of the new ambassador’s work on your reading list, Rohrbach Library has a large collection. Want to read about the man? Start here:

• Huffington Post profile of Walter Dean Myers
• Walter Dean Myers’ website
• Walter Dean Myers in Biography In Context (RL database; login required)

Show your stuff!

Each time you visit our library, a person-counting device clicks over another notch. Last year it counted half a million people. (Okay, only 498,421, according to our annual report. And, admittedly, it wasn’t a half million different people—we get lots of repeat customers.)

Point is, Rohrbach Library is a busy place. On the order of 1,500 clicks on an average day we’re open, each click representing a person bringing curiosity and interest to this temple of knowledge.

Got knowledge you’d like to share with them? Our three display cases on the Second Floor are available to student groups, classes, faculty, KU departments, and community members who have something to show.

If you’d like to put up a display, you can use this form to find out more about the exhibit cases and to submit your idea. We’d love to hear about it!

Who doesn’t like free full text? Other than the US State Department?

A recent post here asked, “Who does not like free food and drink?” A librarian’s corollary to that might be, “Who does not like free full-text access?”

Does not like more cash

As that baby in the Jimmy Fallon commercial demonstrates, there’s an exception to most every rule. In the case of full-text access, count the US State Department as a curious outlier.

See, more than a year ago WikiLeaks published the full text of 23 State Department cables, which are much like emails. News organizations everywhere reported the juicy bits they found in these (previously) secret documents.

Since the State Department never officially released the cables, fun-loving lawyers filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the 23 documents just to see what would happen.

Amusingly, our government released eleven of these already-available-on-the-internet-for-everyone-to-see documents—going  to the trouble of editing them heavily—and suppressed the other twelve entirely. It’s kind of instructive to look at them here; mousing over the blank passages will bring up the parts you’re not supposed to see.

Today’s Valuable Lesson:
For the ambitious academic researcher, there’s a lesson in all this that has nothing to do with Area 51, nor with Building 7 nor with any other supposed coverup. It’s just this: Don’t ever be fooled by by the seeming absence of full text.

Sometimes you’ll be Googling your topic and an article from JSTOR, say, will appear in the results. Then, if you’re off campus, when you click you’ll see a price tag for the full text of the article.

A good way avoid this trap is to use our library’s authenticated Google Scholar search. You’ll need to log in with your KU credentials, but once you do it’ll work just like  the same good ol’ Google you know & love.  The difference is  that it’ll now give you direct, free links straight to the content of many of our databases.

Finals Week Goodies in the Library from the SGB!

Come to the Library on December 12th and 13th between 6-10p.m. to have a snack and a drink while you study for your finals or finish your projects. This event is sponsored by KU’s Student Government Board. For the PDF of the flyer click here

The People’s Library: Rohrbach Branch

“Das war Vorspiel nur. Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.”
“That was a mere prelude: Where men burn books they’ll end up burning people, too.”
—Heinrich Heine, Almansor (1821)

When NY police cleared Zuccotti Park of demonstrators Nov. 15, they threw more than 5,000 books–cataloged here–into trash containers.

The books were part of the People’s Library, built on copies donated by supporters and by the Occupiers themselves. The library building (a big tent) came courtesy of erudite rock icon Patti Smith, and its collection included Mayor Bloomberg’s autobiography.

Though city officials initially denied destroying the books, the truth turned out otherwise.

The Occupy movement thrives on information. The countless participants at hundreds of sites nationwide have been motivated to come out by stunning–and easily documented–facts like these:

Red: US income growth of top 1% since 1979; blue line: average overall wages; green line: worker productivity. Data source: Economic Policy Institute

♦ In 1980, American CEOs made about 40 times more than average workers – now CEOs are paid almost 200 times more than regular employees.

♦ Over the past generation, the richest One Percent almost quadrupled their incomes yet during the past decade, earnings for middle-class Americans actually fell. In fact, working Americans’ wages are now a lower percentage of our economy than they’ve ever been.

♦ Student loan debt is on pace to reach a trillion dollars by year’s end. Remember that when you get a loan you are, in effect, buying money—and that particular type of money-selling has increased by more than five hundred percent in the last dozen years.

♦ The average wealth of the One Percent is 225 times bigger than the wealth of the typical household – the highest that number has ever been.

♦ The gap between the richest and the poorest is bigger in the US than it is in nearly all of Europe and Asia, and bigger than in many African nations. It’s about the same as it is in Rwanda – a fact that does not help our economy.

Rohrbach Library, with the blessing of  Zuccotti Park librarians, has opened a local ‘branch’ of the OWS People’s Library in our lobby. It includes books, videos, and audio recordings that take a critical view of policies and practices that facilitate the abuses noted above. Thinkers such as Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Parenti are represented from our own stacks, and the table is also building a collection of donated books. If you have something you think everyone ought to read, drop it off at the main Information Commons desk and say it’s for the People’s Library.

Our little branch also offers an array of information about OWS and about the nascent Occupy Kutztown movement.

Occupy Kutztown participants have brought to the attention of KU administrators the problem with Chik-Fil-A doing business on our campus while pouring millions of dollars into anti-gay causes; the OK group has also stood publicly against Wells Fargo’s rapacious ways and urged University administration to look for a new bank; in addition, it has brought to the table the prospect of KU Dining Services supporting the local community by buying some fresh food from Berks and Lehigh County farmers.

Browsing available for EBSCO’s ebooks

Thanks to the work of librarian Bob Flatley, patrons now have a nice preview and browse page for EBSCO’s ebooks. Click on the image below to try it out and locate some fantastic books. The page includes the covers of some featured books on the right side and categories on the left. Clicking on a title takes you to the record for that specific book. (See the link on the left side of the record to get into the full text for the book.) Clicking on a category takes you to a search results screen for books in that category.

Like the ebooks in our ebrary database, EBSCO’s ebooks database allows patrons to make notes, create a bookshelf of titles, and search within the titles. Try it out!

For more information on our ebooks or other electronic resources, contact Professor Flatley at 610-683-4168 or flatley@kutztown.edu.

(Note: the featured titles change each time you visit.)

RACE TO NOWHERE – at KU on Dec. 5th

The Rohrbach Library and the Department of Secondary Education invite you to join in a national movement that looks at this country’s schools as we host a screening of the movie Race to Nowhere on Monday, Dec. 5 at 6pm.

The Film:
Race to Nowhere is a call to action for families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America
to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens. Click Here to see reviews for the film.

The Event:
• Doors open at 5 PM
• Basket auction starting at 5:30 PM
• Film at 6 PM with discussion afterward

Price: We are asking for a $3.00 donation to view film. All proceeds will benefit the Northwest Middle School in the Reading School District and the South Mountain Middle School in the Allentown School District.

Our e-postcard is available at: http://www.racetonowhere.com/epostcard/5534

For more information, please contact Regina Iannello, Graduate Assistant, Department of Secondary Education.

Philly Sound on display upstairs

As a teenager and young adult in the Juniata Park section of Philadelphia in the 1960s and ’70s, Richard Pugliese was in the midst of music history in the making.

It was the era when talented locals like Chubby Checker, Teddy Pendergrass and many others were becoming household names across the USA.   Richard went to music shows in local halls, listened to the now-legendary “boss jocks” of Philadelphia radio, and bought lots of records.

Maybe you’ve heard of these ‘records’? Slabs of vinyl with grooves cut in them. Spin ‘em at 45 RPM, or 33-1/3, or 78, let a little needle ride in the grooves, and you’ve got music. Connoisseurs like Richard, who works in Rohrbach Library’s Acquisitions department, will tell you that no digital file can match the richness of sound you hear when a record is playing.

You can see a lot of Richard’s records highlighting Philly artists and labels, and even listen to some of the music that’s on them, in a display on the library’s Second Floor (foyer of the Quiet Area, outside Room 207). There’s an array of memorabilia related to the city’s famous music scene, along with some books, an ancient record player, an an iPod loaded with the sounds of Philadelphia.

Check it out—and if you want to know more, here are some resources:

A House On Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul by John A. Jackson (Oxford University Press, 2004)  This book in the library’s ebrary collection tells the story, year by year, of a pivotal epoch in Philly’s history. (KU login required to access ebrary.)

Gamble-Huff Music  The site of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the genius producers whose amazing work made Philadelphia the center of soul.

Audio: Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff, interviewed by Terry Gross in Nov. 2008

Audio: American Routes: Philadelphia Sounds  A two-hour exploration of the great city’s musical culture from the O’Jays to Mummers to The Roots, with a special appearance by former club DJ Michael Nutter.

thatphillysound.com  Multimedia tribute to artists and deejays who defined the Philly sound in years past.

Soul of America  Travel site with a section devoted to landmarks of Philadelphia soul.