"Cabaret" Design Showcase

The Armacost Library is proud to announce an exhibit of original set and costume designs from the Theatre Department's upcoming production of Cabaret!

Please visit the 2nd floor library lobby and the east staircase for a sneak preview of the show. The items will be on display from October 26th to November 13th.

The musical is "set in Berlin during Germany's Weimar Republic. Aside from issues of homosexuality, abortion, racism, substance abuse, and the danger of not speaking out, this classic musical offers chilling contemporary parallels about the political takeover of people's right. Directed by Chris Beach. Music Director is Patrick Doran-Sheeran and Choreographed by Kirsten Johansen."

For additional information and show times please visit Theatre Arts Current Productions. 

ALERT: 10/26/12 Hoover's Online is currently down

Currently, Armacost Library is unable to connect to Hoover's Online. The issue involves Hoover's servers. Armacost Library staff members have received word from Hoover's Online that we will know more on Monday, October 29, 2012. We expect this to mean that the outage will last over the weekend.

We apologize for the inconvenience this outage may cause.

Sincerely,

Armacost Library faculty and staff members

Homecoming 2012

Homecoming weekend is just around the corner. On October 19-21, the University of Redlands is celebrating 100 years of the Alumni Association.

Looking for a cool place to hang out during the festivities? Armacost Library is marking the occasion with a display of Homecoming activities past and present. Displays will be available for viewing starting Wednesday, October 17 and will be located at the 2nd floor lobby of the library. Armacost Library's display will provide a historical journey through time, featuring the halls of favorite campus hangouts. Through postcards and photographs, we will show many “before and after” shots all around campus.

Please visit the Homecoming 2012 page for a complete schedule of events for students, families and alumni.

Satisfying an Intellectual Hunger

From September 1 to October 31, 2012, Armacost Library is holding an Intellectual Freedom Blogathon featuring posts on topics concerning censorship, the freedom to read, view, and express, and the connection these various freedoms have to individual life experiences and the state of society. The following essay is part of the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon. 

My reading habits have always been strange. Of the many “classics” that everyone is supposed to have read, I’ve read maybe a handful. Yet I’ve read widely and, sometimes, voraciously, and the books I’ve read mean a lot to me. Books stand as landmarks in my memory, marking the places my consciousness changed, where I absorbed, contemplated, and wrestled with the expressions and experiences of people beyond my own little world. I am who I am, in part, because of what I’ve read.

As far back as I can remember, I believed I could read whatever I chose, and I never once imagined that any book could be off limits. Some of the most controversial books I ever read were class assignments, texts my teachers and professors encouraged me to explore—and for good reason, as they provided much to think and talk about. As an adult, my favorite books tend to be those that challenge young readers to stretch their imaginations and their evolving perceptions of the world. As an adult, I recognize that my own imagination still hungers, and my own perceptions must continue to evolve.

Image courtesy of pdphoto.org

Exposing ourselves to new voices makes our minds more robust and flexible, because reading widely is like kneading fresh dough in advance of baking bread. As you subject the dough to the force of your hands, pushing it one way and pulling it the other, folding it in half and repeating the process in a slightly different way, the dough becomes smooth and elastic. At once, the dough seems stronger, more complex, more balanced, and further along on its journey. Its capacity grows, and it becomes primed to transform into something magnificent, delicious, and rewarding—proving the value of the hard work that produced it.

Buying bread at the grocery store is much easier, and that’s what most of us do most of the time. Many of us read what is already comfortable, aligning with the views we already hold. Take a moment to remember a time when your world opened up, and you started to understand something new. Then consider the smell, the taste, the texture of freshly baked bread, and ask yourself: Aren’t some things, on occasion, worth the effort?

Cynthia Cohen
Armacost Library Intern, Fall 2012
Recent MLIS Graduate, San Jose State University, School of Library and Information Science

Set the Default to Open Access

The tagline for this sixth year of International Open Access Week is "Set the default to open access."

The goal of International Open Access Week is to promote Open Access as an alternative norm to research and scholarly publishing and distribution.

Open Access advocates for free, online, immediate, and unobstructed access to research and scholarly works.

Armacost Library is taking part in promoting Open Access in 2012 by speaking to University of Redlands faculty members during the October 25 Faculty Forum. Armacost Library Director Gabriela Sonntag and Outreach/Behavioral Sciences Librarian Melissa Cardenas-Dow will hold a presentation entitled Making Student Excellence Visible. The presentation proposes the use of a digital repository to provide Internet access to the research, scholarship, and intellectual work done at University of Redlands.

Open Access Week is part of the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) celebration. International Open Access Week 2012 is slated for October 22-28.

Information Illiteracy: A Form of Censorship

From September 1 to October 31, 2012, Armacost Library is holding an Intellectual Freedom Blogathon featuring posts on topics concerning censorship, the freedom to read, view, and express, and the connection these various freedoms have to individual life experiences and the state of society. The following essay is part of the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon. 

You may have heard the term Information Literacy (IL) and wondered what it meant. I’d like to relate this concept, and the theoretical framework it embodies, to the concepts discussed here in the Intellectual Freedom Blogathon.

The simple definition of IL states that an information literate student has “learned how to learn” (American Library Association, 1989). What does that mean? An information literate person can articulate when they need information and knows how to locate that information, how to evaluate it for reliability, and then use it to solve a problem or make a decision.  In other words, we all want to know how to teach ourselves something new when the need or desire arises.

Becoming information literate is not something that one picks up naturally; it is taught and practiced over time, just as learning to read and write. And because of the nature of our information world, it is a set of skills and an attitude of practice that, if not practiced, becomes rusty and ineffective.

But how does this relate to Banned Books? Does it not seem an extension of being information literate that we would want access to all available information when we begin the process of learning? Would we accept a system that chooses for us what information we can use and that which is off-limits to us? And is not the fact of being information illiterate, or rather the failure to teach us to be information literate, a form of censorship itself? If we are not taught to locate, evaluate and use information (to be information literate) is this not as much a violation of our rights as prohibiting our access to information?


American Library Association. Association of College and Research Libraries. This site has links to important issues which include information literacy. See http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential and www.infolit.org

Gabriela Sonntag
Armacost Library Director
University of Redlands