Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys Film Series: Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football

Armacost Library, Campus Diversity & Inclusion, Redlands Peace Academy, and A.K. Smiley Public Library have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association to host events that highlight Islam and the cultures, histories, and stories of Muslims in the United States and around the world.

The second film screening for our Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys Film Series will be a showing of Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football. The documentary film is directed and produced by Rashid Ghazi, who graduated from University of Redlands in 1989 with a B.A. in Business and Sociology. The film follows a predominantly Arab-American high school football team in suburban Detroit, Michigan as they train for a big game during the last ten days of Ramadan. Dr. Bill Maury-Holmes, Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies and Assistant Chaplain at University of Redlands, will introduce the film and facilitate a question-and-answer session following the screening. This event will be held on Thursday, February 6, 2014 at Gregory Hall, Room 161, from 7 to 9 p.m.

For more detailed information and online pre-registration, please visit the project website: http://library.redlands.edu/muslimjourneys.

For inquiries, questions, and suggestions, please contact Melissa Cardenas-Dow, in person at Armacost Library, at Melissa_Cardenasdow@redlands.edu or x8089.

Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys, a reading and discussion series, has been made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in cooperation with the American Library Association.

Super Bowl Fever @ the Armacost Library

What will you be doing on Sunday, February 2, 2014? For the second year in a row, I'll be stricken with Super Bowl Fever. Although I'd always thought this could never happen to me, Super Bowl Fever, or simply a love of football could strike you or your loved ones at any time. Do you have the fever? Symptoms can include a rapid heartbeat, restlessness, sudden outbursts, increased appetite, feelings of impending doom and feelings of exhilaration.



Did you know that this country also held a kind of disinterest in the sport at one time? Michael MacCambridge talks about how America grew into their love of the sport in his book America's Game. According to MacCambridge, good management and marketing, along with the rise of television, played a role in football's rise in popularity among Americans. In The Man Who Built the National Football League, Chris Willis attributes much of football's success to one of the NFL's founding fathers, Joe F. Carr. Carr established the foundations of professional football as a big-city sport during his reign as NFL President in the 20's and 30's. Andy Piascik also covers this time period, but his book Gridiron Gauntlet gives voice to 12 African-American men who played football amid the backdrop of segregation.

In Football and Philosophy, editor Michael W. Austin asks readers to take a step back from the game and turn their gaze within. Austin challenges his readers to consider why we're drawn to the sport in the first place, and what that might reveal about who we are and what we value. For those of us with more of a statistical or gambing bent, read Mathletics by Wayne L. Winston. You'll be interested in Part 3, which includes chapters "What makes NFL teams win?" "If passing is better than running, why don't teams always pass?" "Should we go for a one- point or two-point conversion?" "Why is the NFL's overtime system fatally flawed?" And "How valuable are high draft picks in the NFL?"

If you're prefer to read articles on your favorite teams or players, visit the OmniFile Full Text Mega database. With subject headings for teams, players, coaches, and other topics related to football, you'll be able to target your searches and retrieve more relevant results than if you'd conducted keyword (default) searches. For example, a search for the words "peyton" and "manning" returns 233 results (see above), yet a subject search for "manning, peyton, 1976-" returns 115 results (see below).

If you're wondering how I knew the precise subject heading for Manning, let me explain that I didn't know what it was; I had to look for it. I started first with a keyword search which resulted in 233 search results, and looked under the "Refine Results" column (see above) for any subjects related to Manning and saw the image below.

Want to learn another trick? Below "Subject" is a list of publications included in your list of results. I noticed that the New York Times and Sports Illustrated published most of the articles included in my search results. If I wanted to look at either title directly, I could visit the library's home page, click on the "Journals & Magazines" tab and check for full-text access by running two searches--once for online access, once for physical or print access. 

Now that you've got your football and library gear ready, I'll see you at kickoff!

Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys: Broken Verses

Armacost Library, Campus Diversity & Inclusion, Redlands Peace Academy, and A.K. Smiley Public Library have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association to host events to highlight Islam and the cultures, histories, and stories of Muslims in the United States and around the world.

At A.K. Smiley Public Library, we will be hosting the fourth book discussion of the Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys series, focusing on the novel Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie. The discussion of Broken Verses will be on Saturday, January 25, 2014, 2-4 p.m.

All book-based discussions are led by Dr. Patrick Wing, Assistant Professor of History. Copies of all the Muslim Journeys books to be discussed are available for borrowing from Armacost Library and A.K. Smiley Public Library. Due to limited space, pre-registration for the book-based discussions is strongly encouraged, but not required. This can be done through the project website (link provided below, through the Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys Book Discussions tab), by contacting Melissa Cardenas-Dow at the Armacost Library, or registering in person at A.K. Smiley Public Library.

We will also be hosting several film screenings on campus. All events are free and open to the public.

For more detailed information and online pre-registration, please visit toe project website: http://library.redlands.edu/muslimjourneys.

For inquires, questions, and suggestions, please contact Melissa Cardenas-Dow at Melissa_Cardenasdow@redlands.edu or x8089.

Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys Film Series: My Name Is Khan

Armacost Library, Campus Diversity & Inclusion, Redlands Peace Academy, and A.K. Smiley Public Library have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association to host events that highlight Islam and the cultures, histories, and stories of Muslims in the United States and around the world.

The first film screening for our Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys Film Series will be a showing of My Name Is Khan. The film tells the story of the journey of a Muslim Indian man to regain the love and trust of his wife after a family tragedy. Please be advised that My Name Is Khan runs for 161 minutes. Dr. Priya Jha, Associate Professor of English at University of Redlands, will facilitate a question-and-answer session following the screening, time permitting. This event will be held on Thursday, January 23, 2014 at Gregory Hall, Room 161, from 6 to 9 p.m.

For more detailed information and online pre-registration, please visit the project website: http://library.redlands.edu/muslimjourneys.

For inquiries, questions, and suggestions, please contact Melissa Cardenas-Dow at
Melissa_Cardenasdow@redlands.edu or x8089.

Let's Talk About It: Muslim Journeys, a reading and discussion series, has been made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in cooperation with the American Library Association.

Lois Lowry is visiting Redlands

The Charlotte S. Huck Children’s Literature Festival will take place this week on the 24^th and 25^th. Headlining the stellar list of authors (which includes David Wiesner and Candace Fleming, among many others) as the official Charlotte Huck speaker is Lois Lowry. She will speak this Friday night at 6:15 in Orton Hall. And, students can attend the two day conference for a special price!

Many of you are familiar with Lois Lowry for her Newberry Medal winning book, The Giver, which is a classic of children’s science fiction that involves what appears to be, at first, a utopian society that has ended human suffering in exchange for a life absent of deep emotions.

In celebration of Lowry’s visit to the University, the Theatre Arts Department will stage Eric Coble’s dramatization of The Giver at the intimate Frederick Loewe Theatre from January 23^rd-26^th. If you’re interested in a sneak peak, the Armacost Library is currently displaying costume designs by one of our students, Monique Thompson.

If all this excitement isn’t enough for you, we have every book in The Giver quartet available in the library (First-come, first-served! By the way, you can put holds on books that are currently checked out in order to be next in line). 

Enjoy,

Lua Gregory

First Year Experiences and Humanities Librarian

University of Redlands

"Learning the Ropes:" High School to College Transitions

In December 2013 Project Information Literacy published its second report in their "The Passage Studies" series. This one focused on students' information transitions from high school to college, "Learning the Ropes: How Freshmen Conduct Course Research Once They Enter College." 

The report discusses eight major findings:

• Freshmen discovered their college/university library was much larger and more complex than their high school libraries.
• Searching for academic literature online was difficult--struggling to identify keywords and effective search queries.
• Freshmen had difficulty navigating the print and online collections of the library, and once they had collected literature they had trouble reading it and making connections between their various sources.
• Most Freshmen realized that high school research had not prepared them for college-level research assignments.
• Some Freshmen were transitioning from a reliance on Google to using library databases while others continued their "ingrained habit" of using Google and Wikipedia searches.
• The most common adaptive strategy for transitioning to college-level research amongst the Freshmen interviewed was learning to read academic journal articles and abstracts.
• Freshmen reported that campus librarians (29%) and their English composition instructors (29%) were the most helpful in guiding them through the research process.
• And by the end of their first year in college, Freshmen had begun using the same information sources as their Sophomore, Junior, and Senior counterparts.

For those who work with first year students most of these findings will not come as a surprise.  Nonetheless some observations and recommendations from the report struck a chord with me.  

The researchers identified five recurring misconceptions they heard from the students interviewed, and which they called the "Freshman Myths." 

I think both librarians and disciplinary faculty may, at times, be at fault for perpetuating these myths. Sometimes we emphasize a particular scholarly database, for instance JSTOR, to the exclusion of teaching students about more appropriate scholarly databases for their subject area/discipline.  And almost daily I hear administrators, faculty, and students proclaim that "everything is online." This proclamation is often intertwined with the misconception that these "digital natives," our current undergraduate students, are adept at searching online systems. 

The final recommendation of the report is to "reframe [our] expectations...It is incorrect to assume that because most of today’s freshmen grew up with a thriving Internet at their fingertips, they are naturals at college-level research.  The cognitive skills needed for scholarly inquiry are very different than finding ready-made answers using a Google search."  How do we transform the skills students do bring with them into the skills necessary for navigating the complex information landscape available to them in college?  

Interested in joining the conversation?  Join us at the Armacost Library's Information Literacy Faculty Showcase featuring the History Department this year.  And look for report outs on the Armacost Library's action research project studying the impact of information literacy instruction on student achievement.

More reactions to "Learning the Ropes":

Barbara Fister, "Excited and Overwhelmed: First Year Students in the Library"

K. G. Schneider, "Project Info Lit and the “Ginormous” Problem"

Happy New Year!

Armacost Library wishes the entire community a Happy New Year! This is always a good time to reflect on the accomplishments of the past year. Some highlights of 2013 include Armacost Library’s involvement in such programs as World Book Night and Read Across America. A series of book discussions, invited speakers and film showings were provided as part of the program Muslim Journeys, which will continue into the 2014 Spring Semester.

Armacost Library also had the pleasure of displaying student art in the entryway of the library, including sculpture and two-dimensional design pieces. High quality undergraduate student work was celebrated at the 5^th annual Armacost Library Undergraduate Research Award reception and faculty work was also given praise at the Information Literacy Faculty Showcase.

The Library launched its mobile version of its website, which allows the community to browse library resources on their handheld devices. Also, the 2013 Fall semester marks the beginning of an extensive research project, titled Assessment in Action, on how information literacy instruction impacts student achievement. The Assessment in Action team will continue this research project over the next three years – stay tuned for the results!

All in all, 2013 was a busy and fulfilling year. We welcome you back in 2014 and look forward to seeing you in the library!

Posted for Travis Upshaw, Night Supervisor at Armacost Library