Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei, co-director of open access punctum books, shares his thoughts about global information privilege. As American universities and schools, educators and administrators, support staff and families, scramble to meet students' educational needs and institutional performance indicators, our gratitude to publishers and others freeing up access must be understood within a broader context.

Viral Open Access in Times of Global Pandemic 

by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei

This post was originally published on March 19, 2020 and is available at https://punctumbooks.pubpub.org/pub/viral-open-access-global-pandemic-covid-19-corona.

In recent weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to numerous calls for scientific research concerning the virus and the disease to be made open access and freely available to the public. These calls stand in a tense relationship not only with the profit-driven approach to medical research by pharmaceutical companies,¹ but also with the business models of the for-profit academic publishing oligopoly, dominated by a few companies making excessive profit margins that are essentially subsidized by public funds.² The current pandemic makes abundantly clear that the public availability of public knowledge indeed saves lives – but it doesn’t do so only now, it always does.

Let’s recap.

The initial report of the WHO on an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, dates to December 31, 2019. The first articles in medical journals appear in mid-January, for example in the open-access International Journal for Infectious Diseases. Rather than wait for publishers to release publicly funded knowledge to the public, a massive online archiving project publicly released more than 5,000 unpaywalled articles on coronaviruses on Sci-Hub in the same month.³ On January 30, 2020 the WHO declared a global health emergency.

On January 31, a statement was published on the website of the Wellcome Trust, in which a number of publishers and journals, including publishing oligopolists Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Taylor and Francis, agreed that

all peer-reviewed research publications relevant to the outbreak are made immediately open access, or freely available at least for the duration of the outbreak

The term “COVID-19” was announced on February 11, and on March 11 the WHO declared the COVID-19 public health crisis a “pandemic.” Two days later, on March 13, chief science advisors from twelve countries released a statement, relayed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House, urging “publishers to voluntarily agree to make their COVID-19 and coronavirus-related publications, and the available data supporting them, immediately accessible in PubMed Central⁴ and other appropriate public repositories.”

In response, several of the signatories of the January 31 declaration, including the oligopolists, agreed to further make “all of their COVID-19 and coronavirus-related publications, and the available data supporting them, immediately accessible in PubMed Central (PMC) and other public repositories.”

The Wellcome Trust statement raises the fascinating question concerning what type of research is exactly “relevant” to the outbreak. As the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is not only tied to the DNA of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, its protein structures, and the way interacts with the human body, but also the field of medicine, and therefore also healthcare, and healthcare funding, and health education, and thus also much broader questions of state organization, economic structures, educational resources – in brief, all the ways in which humans have ordered the world. If we want to come to a full understanding of the outbreak, all peer-reviewed research in medical, STEM, social science, and the humanities is potentially “relevant” and should therefore be made open. But that is certainly not how Elsevier c.s. see it.

Then there is also the question of what “duration” means here. The outbreak started officially when the WHO declared it a public health concern on January 30, and for-profit publishers acted a day later. But when will that end? When is all this research that is not temporarily released to the public going back behind lock and key? If predictions that COVID-19 may become endemic to the human population and circulate on an annual basis like the flu becomes reality, its duration is indefinite, but the free access to medical research most certainly won’t be. As HIV/AIDS researchers have long known, even though a pandemic may claim millions of victims, the paywall remains shut as long as the spotlight isn’t on.

The criminal hypocrisy of the publishing industry’s current professions of minimal decency becomes clear once you check the archive of the Wellcome Trust and find similar calls for open access concerning the Ebola epidemic of 2018 and the Zika outbreak in 2016. In neither case do we find the compassionate and understanding signatures of Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, or many others. One gets the impression that only now that a disease affects the Global North, suddenly open access is something of a moral obligation, an obligation that was not so urgently felt when tens of thousands died in Africa. The position of academic for-profit publishers is therefore clear: the deaths of some are more problematic (for their bottom line and “reputation”) than others.

Pilfered from Ernesto Priego.

Opening access went properly viral when schools and universities closed down in the Global North. Suddenly, also non-medical research was made freely accessible. Cambridge University Press opened up its textbooks “until the end of May 2020”; more than 75 publishers made their publications freely accessible to any institution with a ProQuest account “through mid-June”; Harvard University Press made its Loeb Classical Library freely available to school and libraries “until June 30”; and several university presses made their books freely available on Project MUSE until May 31 or June 30, 2020.⁵ Again, only now that school children and students in the Global North are confronted with a limited access to physical learning materials – a daily problem for millions of students around the globe – it appears possible to open up those precious digital files.

As with the temporary opening of access to COVID-19-related articles, the academic presses offering “discretionary” unpaywalling – to a random subset of their catalogs with unknown or poorly argued relevance for the catastrophe that has hit our education systems – are doing nothing but engaging in last-minute, haphazard PR, hoping that the realization that publicly funded knowledge is inaccessible to most of us will not dawn too soon on the anxious tax payer, confronted with their restless child at home or scrambling to assemble an impromptu online “learning experience.”

It is not only in times of crisis that publicly available knowledge can save lives. It always has this potential, and it’s our choice.

---

Endnotes

1. The attempts of the Trump government to buy the exclusive rights to a potential German vaccine are a case in point.
2. Enough for RELX, the parent company of Elsevier to buy back 1 billion GBP in stock during 2019 and 2020. Its CEO, Erik Engstrom, earned £80.3 million in the last decade.
3. This is a good example of “pirate care.”
4. PubMed Central is a freely accessible database for medical papers managed by the NIH.
5. So apparently publishers think that this is all going to be over (in the Global North) by June or July.

You may cite the original work as

van Gerven Oei, V. W. J. (2020). Viral Open Access in Times of Global Pandemic. Punctum Books. Retrieved from https://punctumbooks.pubpub.org/pub/viral-open-access-global-pandemic-covid-19-corona

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)

Use Stuff from the Smithsonian

Doing a presentation? Creating art? Writing a blog post? Need an image?

On February 25, the Smithsonian launched Smithsonian Open Access. From the Smithsonian Magazine:

For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million high-resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons to peruse and download free of charge. Featuring data and material from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo, the new digital depot encourages the public to not just view its contents, but use, reuse and transform them into just about anything they choose—be it a postcard, a beer koozie or a pair of bootie shorts.

And this gargantuan data dump is just the beginning. Throughout the rest of 2020, the Smithsonian will be rolling out another 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Institution continues to digitize its collection of 155 million items and counting.

This means that anyone with an internet connection can (legally) download this content and use it (e.g., post it to social media, add it to that scholarly article you're writing, add it to an open educational resource, and more) without needing to ask for permission--which was a requirement in the past. Got questions? Check out their FAQ.

What will you create?

Staying home? Keep on exploring with Armacost Library!

Armacost Library wishes you and your family the best as you cope with rapidly changing developments related to the coronavirus outbreak, including updates from the University of Redlands and from Armacost Library.

It looks like we will all be spending more time at home in the weeks to come. There are many great resources for art, entertainment and learning in the Armacost Library collection and beyond that can help you find inspiration and take needed mental health breaks from planning and preparing. Here are some ideas:

• Check out Armacost Library's electronic collections. We have electronic books, streaming films and documentaries, and streaming classical music and jazz databases available 24/7 with your MyRedlands login. 
• Take a virtual tour of a place you've never visited before.  
• The MCN has compiled a list of museums and archives offering free online exhibits.
• Yosemite National Park has an amazing virtual tour. 
• Tap into the public domain.
• Project Gutenberg is a volunteer-run digital library of over 60,000 free ebooks in Kindle and PDF format.
• Librivox offers free public domain audiobooks read by an army of volunteers.
• The Internet Archive has a great list of things to do if you can't leave the house (including classic cinema, old-time radio and vintage computer games!)
• Enjoy an online concert. 
• The School of Music is streaming the senior recitals of our talented students to a virtual (rather than physical) audience (here's a list of upcoming events). 
• Armacost Library's medici.tv subscription brings you concerts, recitals and master classes from around the world. 
• Music librarians have compiled a list of upcoming live-streamed, free concerts around the world.    
• Learn something new. 
•  Southern California PBS stations are joining forces to offer at home learning for kids ages Pre-K to 12th grade. PBS also has a library of educational media aligned to curricular standards. 
• Armacost Library has many of the Great Courses videos as part of our Kanopy streaming video database. 
• The Smithsonian Museum has an online Learning Lab filled with open access resources (more on these in a future blog post!) 
• Step back in time. 
• The Digital Public Library of America offers many digitized special and archival collctions documenting American and local history.
• The Library of Congress offers many historical collections in its American Memory series.
• Your local library is online, too.
• If you're already a cardholder at your local public library, don't forget to check their audiobook collection. For example, Redlands' A.K. Smiley Public Library offers a database of ebooks and audiobooks through Overdrive.   

COVID-19 Updates @ Armacost Library

As we respond to the rapidly evolving situation, please find updates to library hours, services, spaces, staffing, and business functions at library.redlands.edu/covid19.

image credit: https://updates.usask.ca/resources.php 

Unlock Research Now!

Imagine a world where research on COVID-19 were only available to an exclusive club.

Imagine a world where all medical research and breakthroughs were only available to the rich.

Imagine a world where you lost access to most of the globe's research the moment you graduate from the University of Redlands.

Actually you don't need to imagine this because that's the world we currently live in. If we weren't facing a potential pandemic, research on COVID-19 would be locked behind paywalls. You know, paywalls, those pesky things that tell you to pay around $35 to access an article or chapter.

If you think everyone should be able to freely-access research, let OSTP know.

Our federal Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is considering making federally-funded research freely available and needs to hear from you by April 6! (The original deadline was extended.) They basically want to know three things. They're listed below with a few suggestions to consider in your responses.

1. When doing research, what barriers do you face, and what can be done about it? 

• How does this affect you, your learning and research? What's your story?
• What do you think about the government spending $billions of taxpayer money on research that gets locked behind paywalls?
• Are you okay with the fact that once you graduate, you lose all the access to research that you had as a student?

2. What can federal agencies do to make taxpayer-funded research freely and publicly available?

• Currently there's a one-year delay before making such research available. How would it help you to remove this delay?
• Increasingly authors and publishers are using open licenses to communicate to users of information, what can and can't be done with that information. Including an open license can enable others to do text mining.

3. How would America benefit, lead, and compete scientifically by making research freely and publicly available?

• Other countries (in Latin America, Europe, Africa) are opening up their research to boost the visibility of their research and engage in economic competition.
• Open access would help small businesses and start-ups who have fewer resources, compete in existing markets.
• Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum; opening up access to research helps potential partners find each other.

When responding, be sure to thank the OSTP and follow their directions: "Submission must not exceed 5 pages in 12 point or larger font, with a page number provided on each page. Responses should include the name of the person(s) or organization(s) filing the comment."

Thank you!
Paige Mann (on behalf of Armacost Library)
STEM Librarian | Scholarly Communications Librarian

Celebrating Women in the Archives

Did you know that it was only one hundred years ago this year—13 years after the founding of our University—that women in the United States were first allowed to vote? On Election Day in November 1920 over 8 million women went to the polls for the first time. They had been working toward equal rights for almost 100 years before that day, of which the right to vote was—and is--but one. As we observe Women’s History Month in March, we remember this great struggle in securing the 19^th Amendment, as well as the  accomplishments of women at the University of Redlands. (For more information on women’s suffrage, check out the program listed below.*)

Nellie's scrapbook photo

One of the first women  to attend the University of Redlands was Nellie Hill Lolmaugh, a 1914 graduate. A pioneer of sorts, she was among the first students to visit the school in 1910 and decide that even though there were only four buildings standing, two of which were not even completed, that “the happy atmosphere and the quality of students gave me hope, and before long I could see [myself] as a music student . . .  registering in the fall term of [the school’s] second year.” 

Nellie recorded these and other thoughts of her time here in a scrapbook, and today the University Archives of Armacost Library holds her scrapbook as a valued artifact. Besides closely documenting the important formative years of the young college, Nellie also wrote, as an alumna over 60 years later, the memoir, “Way Back When . . . My Memories and Impressions of the First Five Years of the University of Redlands,” also housed in the Archives.

Whether she knew it or not, while she saved this-and-that and made note of her thoughts and feelings, Nellie provided future generations her first-hand accounts, and gave them, and us, our history. And in reflecting back in her memoir, she gave it all perspective. Essentially, Nellie became one of the first historians of the University.

Then there are the women whose enthusiasm keeps the rest of us going. Florence Gray Listvan was one of those as a student here. She took part in so many activities during her time on campus that her name consistently dotted the pages of the 1937-1940 La Letra yearbooks. According to some footage we have here in the Archives, her enthusiasm continued well into her nineties when she was still able to recite the “Och Tamale!”

The Cosmopolitan Club

Florence was a member of the service organization, Spurs, which recruited freshmen with excellent “scholastic standing, pep, and enthusiasm for school functions to serve during their sophomore year.” She participated in “A Capella” chorus and Women’s Glee Club as well as being a Kappa Pi Zeta sorority sister. She also joined the Women’s Athletic Association, promoting sportsmanship and fun in intra-class games and tournaments. And as a volleyball team manager, she kept up enthusiasm during the hot summers by scheduling competitive games. As a junior she also found time to serve as a La Letra sports editor. Florence ultimately earned a place in the women’s “R” Club which was among the highest athletic honors a U of R woman could earn.

In addition, Florence invested her time in the Cosmopolitan Club which sought to promote “international goodwill through personal friendship;” she was one of its treasurers in her junior year. In 1939 the Club had a membership of over 75 students from multiple racial and ethnic identities, and was one of the most active organizations on campus. As a world war loomed on the horizon, these students met monthly and discussed topics such as “Race Prejudice” and “Peace,” attempting to find solutions to the world’s problems.

Jackie Yates

Many other U of R women continued to make their imprints on the University by excelling in their talents and in pursuing their goals, some in the area of sports. A 1958 graduate, Jacqueline (Jackie) Puamohala Yates Holt was a highly accomplished golfer who, as a sophomore here, won the 1955 National Intercollegiate Golf Tournament in Chicago, going on to compete in the U. S. Women’s Open. She became her home state of Hawaii’s first collegiate champion. Jackie held the title of youngest champion until 2001.

Another accomplished athlete, tennis player Caroline Brigham Vassalo, ’62, was beginning college just as Jackie was graduating. When she arrived on campus there was a men’s tennis team, but not a women’s team. So, the freshman promptly approached the men’s tennis coach, Jim Verdieck, about her desire to be a part of a women’s team; he liked her idea, and just like that Caroline became a pioneer in the world of U of R tennis, and Coach Verdieck, her trusted accomplice! Caroline recently said that “what mattered most was that Coach brought us into his fold. We were accepted, as athletes and contenders, and Coach trusted us with our sport.” Her team went on to defeat UCLA for the Southern California Women’s Collegiate Championship.

Our archives show evidence of multiple accomplishments by women here at Redlands: instigating a women’s sports team where there once was none, attempting to create peace through friendship, and documenting personal experiences that give future generations an understanding of past lived experiences. Join the voices of Nellie, Florence, Jackie, Caroline, and Jim. Like theirs, your voice is invaluable in moving us all forward; share it with the world!

Teresa Letizia, University Archives

*U of R history professor, Dr. Kathleen Feeley, will present “100 Years of Women’s Suffrage: Struggle, Sacrifice, and Success” at A. K. Smiley Public Library in Redlands on Saturday, March 7, at 1:00 pm in the Library’s Assembly Room. The program is FREE and open to the public. Smiley Library is located at 125 W. Vine St.

All About the Armacost Library Undergraduate Research Award (ALURA)

How to WIN MONEY for your RESEARCH from the Armacost Library.

1. GATHER all materials needed.
2. EDIT all materials needed.
3. SUBMIT all materials needed.
4. WAIT for the results to be announced.

It’s THAT simple.

Okay, maybe not THAT simple.

The Armacost Library Undergraduate Research Award (ALURA) is a research award offered by the Armacost Library for current students at the University of Redlands. This award is given to two winners; one from each of the categories. Students working on capstones and other research projects are encouraged to apply for a chance to fund their projects.

As noted on the website each submission must include a Research Reflection Essay or responses to the STEM Reflection Questions along with the research product. Along with a bibliography or a list of credible sources consulted, a letter of support from the student’s faculty advisor or course professor is required. Once all materials have been prepared, gathered, and finalized, each applicant must submit these items to InSPIRe by the deadline. 

With two categories, this award gives each winner $500 each for their research submissions. If any student is unsure about how they want to approach their project, what part to submit, or the format of how to submit, it is best to ask a Librarian and this can be requested at the Circulation Desk in the Armacost Library. Or by talking to the Librarian of your department or school.

It's important for the Armacost Library to support the community it serves. Without the students, faculty, and the members of the public, the Library would become obsolete. Offering access to information that is highly sought gives the Armacost Library more value and weight in the information community. From the many online databases to the general collection in the library, the Armacost Library wants to promote educational gain and growth for everyone.

The Marvelous, Misfit Universe of Paul Zindel

This week the Theatre department premieres The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel.

Zindel grew up in post-World War II New York City. He and his older sister were raised by their mother after their parents separated when Zindel was a child. Zindel’s mother kept the family together by moving them from apartment to apartment, pursuing various schemes and odd jobs, and renting out rooms to boarders with terminal illnesses. The frequent moves and his mother’s distrustful nature effectively isolated Zindel from others his own age. “I was a misfit growing up,” he recalled. “I had no father at a time that was considered freakish. I couldn’t catch a baseball … I desperately wanted friends and to be liked...” [1]. To make matters worse, Zindel caught tuberculosis when he was fifteen and spent much of the next two years living in a sanitarium, the youngest patient in a hospital full of adults.

By the time Zindel was released and returned to high school, he was fascinated with science and reading plays. “What a great love I had of microcosms,” he recalled, “of peering at other worlds framed and separate from me.” [1] He tried writing a play for a student government fundraiser and successfully provoked a reaction with his “strange sense of humor – macabre, I believe, was the term they used.” [3]

Zindel studied chemistry at Wagner College, but also signed up for a creative writing class taught by playwright Edward Albee and attended professionally produced plays such as Lilian Hellman’s family drama Toys in the Attic. Under Albee’s mentorship, Zindel wrote a play with autobiographical elements, Dimensions of Peacocks, dealing with dementia and mother-child relationships.

After graduating from college, Zindel took day jobs first as a technical writer and then as a high school science teacher while continuing to write plays. His second and third plays closed after a couple of performances, but his fourth play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, changed the course of his career. It was his first play to be produced outside of New York, premiered in 1965 by Houston’s Alley Theatre. Critics grumbled that it had “one of the most discouraging titles yet devised by man,” yet they appreciated Zindel’s command of theme and characterization and likened Gamma Rays to Tennessee Williams’ breakthrough play The Glass Menagerie. [2] No doubt Zindel, who “never missed an opening night of a Tennessee Williams play” in college, appreciated the comparison. [2] The head of the Alley Theatre invited Zindel to become a playwright-in-residence and optioned his next play, allowing Zindel to quit teaching and pursue a career as a playwright. More plays and adaptations of Gamma Rays for television and film soon followed, and Zindel was honored with the 1971 ALA Notable Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

By this time, Zindel’s career path had undergone another mutation. When an editor suggested he try writing for children, Zindel talked with teens and “realized fairly quickly that there weren’t many books around that showed teenage protagonists in a modern reality concerned with realistic problems – so I gave it a shot.” [1] Zindel went on to become one of the twentieth century’s most renowned YA authors, never forgetting his own experiences as an awkward misfit striving to find his home in the world. “I know it’s a continuous battle to get through the years between twelve and twenty – an abrasive time,” he explained. “And so I write always from their own point of view.” [1]

Ruth Strickland writes that “Zindel sees himself as a born playwright, and he believes ‘that the seeds of theater are born inside of us.’ While he feels that few playwrights are writing honest plays, he also believes that ‘no one can kill Theater.’ He sees it as a ‘device for survival’ that may experience a drought, but can never be starved out of existence; it will always reemerge.” [2]

Buy tickets for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds on the University of Redlands website.

Works Cited

[1] Zindel, Paul, and Teri Lesesne. “Humor, Bathos, and Fear: An Interview with Paul Zindel.” Teacher Librarian, vol. 27, no. 2, Dec. 1999, pp. 60–62. Gale Literature Resource Center.

[2] Strickland, Ruth L. “Paul Zindel.” Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, edited by John MacNicholas, Gale, 1981. Gale Literature Resource Center, Gale, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1200002318/LitRC?u=redl79824&sid=zotero&xid=4007a843.

[3] Paul Zindel: Biography by Paul. http://www.paulzindel.com/finalpages/BIO/biobypz.htm. Accessed 9 Feb. 2020.

Voting Rights Act of 1965: Then & Now

Okamoto, Yoichi R., “Johnson signs Voting Rights Act,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/0a3041caaac9d5210e8c241326f2c6c0.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

"An Act to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes…Section 2. No voting qualifications or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."

Section 5 of the Act barred states from imposing tests or unfair devices as a means of determining eligibility to vote. 

As soon as enacted, challenges followed suit. But it was the 2013 decision of the Supreme Court on Shelby County v Holder that significantly altered ("defanged federal enforcement of the Act") the Voting Rights Act. This decision removed the "pre-clearance" requirements for states and jurisdictions that have had a history of discrimination in voting practices. Since this decision, states have begun purging voter rolls, enacting voter ID requirements, and redrawing voting districts (racial gerrymandering); all methods of suppressing voter turnout. 

Timeline of the Voting Rights Act

Black Americans continue to lead the fight to maintain and restore voting rights to those under constant threat of disenfranchisement. Representative John Lewis (Georgia) led the fight to reinstate federal oversight of state election law in the House of Representatives in 2019 (although unlikely to see a vote in the Senate). Stacey Abrams's Fair Fight PAC is mobilizing in Georgia and across the U.S. to restore voting rights where voter suppression and election mismanagement is occurring. 

Learn more, available in the Library: 

Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act (2017) 

Fannie Lou Hamer: Voting Rights Activist (2016) [film]

The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act (2016) [ebook]

Latinos and the Voting Rights Act: The Search for Racial Purpose (2015)

Native Votes: American Indians, Voting Rights Act, and the Right to Vote (2007) 

   

OA & the Coronavirus

Screenshot taken from Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Global Cases (by JHU CSSE)

"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." -- Peter Suber

For students OA means being able to access online, scholarly literature without having to pay fees for a single article or pay a higher tuition that affords access to scholarly literature using your myRedlands username and password.

For alumni OA means not losing access to online, scholarly literature once you've graduated.

For authors OA means opting to remove barriers that inhibit scholarly communication, and wrestling with costs and uncertainties that come with using newer business models.

For the world OA means speedy and barrier-free access to information, research collaborations, and lives saved. Here's a rough timeline so far.

• December 31, 2019: The World Health Organization (WHO) learns of Wuhan's string of pneumonia-like cases.
• January 10, 2020: Researchers in China release the genomic sequence of the Wuhan coronavirus to GenBank, an OA repository and database from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
• January 11, 2020: Andrew Mesecar, biology professor at Purdue, redirects his lab to analyze the DNA sequence; scientists from NIH's Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana takes steps to study the sequence in their labs.
• January 22, 2020: NIH scientists publish a preprint of their analysis in bioRxiv, a preprint OA repository. About twelve hours later, scientists in China confirm that analysis.

"Rapid access to sequence data from public databases such as GenBank plays a vital role in helping countries develop specific diagnostic kits for disease outbreaks like this one." -- NCBI Insights

"This is one of the first times we’re getting to see an outbreak of a new virus and have the scientific community sharing their data almost in real time, rather than have to go through classic route of going through the journals.” -- Michael Letko, Postdoctoral Fellow, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health.

“The pace is unmatched... [OA is still] really new.” -- Karla Satchell, Professor of Microbiology-Immunology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.

Open sharing of research offers many public benefits, yet much work remains to make it the default way of doing, publishing, and sharing research. To learn more, talk with a librarian about current efforts to promote more open practices with textbooks and research.

 ----------------

Sources include:
France, Presse (Jan 22, 2020) "Coronavirus timeline: from Wuhan to Washington state," The Guardian, Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/23/coronavirus-timeline-from-wuhan-to-washington-state

Johnson, Carolyn Y. (Jan 24, 2020) "Scientists are unraveling the Chinese coronavirus with unprecedented speed and openness", The Washington Post, Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/01/24/scientists-are-unraveling-chinese-coronavirus-with-unprecedented-speed-openness/

More About The Lunar New Year

Most commonly known as Chinese New Year, the Lunar New Year is on January 25 this year. In accordance to the Chinese Zodiac, each year is a special year for each of the Zodiac creatures. 2019 was the Year of the Pig. And 2020 is the Year of the Rat!

Like for all major events that has global significance, the Lunar New Year celebrates the annual waking and feeding of the 'Nian' (translated to English it means 'Year'). It wakes from winter to feed on crops and villagers, mostly children. And thus inspired the Chinese Dragon Dance, where dangers use beautiful and colorful cloth to create a lion who eats red envelopes and cabbage hung high, which would bring everyone good luck for the year.

According to legends, some believe that loud sounds can scare away the evil spirits and intimidate the Nian. In recent years, people have substituted the loud crashes of bowls and plates with fire crackers. Sweeping and cleaning plaques are thought of as warding away evil spirits or bad vibes that surround a home and people. And there are some foods that are thought of as bringing the family together like eating nian-gao, hot pot, dumplings, mochi, and tangyuan.

Literature has long since tied many of the customs to this epic day of celebration! Take a look as some of the picks that can be found in the Armacost Library below!

"Gung Hay Fat Choy" by June Behrens can be found under the call number GT4905 B45 in Jasper's Corner. Published by the Childrens Press in Chicago, this hard covered book covers many different celebration aspects about the celebration of the Lunar New Year. Noted as the "grandest birthday party of all", there are the hanging red signs, different foods and activities, including the giving of red envelopes from adults to children. This book focuses on the Cantonese culture of celebrations, specific words, and phrases. However, the overall message of celebration is clear and family involvement and parades are a widespread tradition. Photos depicting such events brings the event to life better than illustrations can.

Another great book is "The Year of the Rat" by Grace Lin. In the Juvenile collection under the call number PS3562 I51 Y437 2008. In this series, Lin's writings feature a girl named Pacy who celebrates the Lunar New Year with her family and another Taiwanese family of friends. They tell stories about legends and how traditions came to be with them. From why the Rat comes first in the Zodiac and where food, animal, design, and activities from the celebration comes from, Pacy's insight as an Asian american brings forward different perspectives she develops on her own. There are moments where Pacy realizes and thinks in ways that readers of any age can connect to and this makes her more relate-able. But the highlights and stories come from her interactions with her parents. The stories they tell and the ideas they give her truly help her grow and understand more about her heritage.

A good source of information in our General Collection is "Narcissus: Chinese New Year Flower legends & Folklore" by William C. Hu. Introduced as the flower that best represents Chinese New Year, this book is filled with stories of different Chinese folklore and legends, passed down through telling it from one generation to the other. These stories form the traditional Chinese thoughts and ways of life, and all of them focus on morals and teachings that benefit and teach lessons for those who hear them.

It's customary, especially in Asian countries, to start the celebration for the Lunar New Year on the day and then, for two weeks, continue the celebration, family time, eating, and end it with the Lantern Festival. This is the time of the year where businesses and shops close for the year and spend time with their family and friends. Red is a color of good luck and happiness. So be sure to explore this special holiday with all your senses and enjoy them with your friends and family!

Humans and Night

Due to the tilt of the Earth's axis, the Northern Hemisphere is leaning away from the sun on Saturday, December 21st, causing the longest night of the year. Night is when we can see stars. If we are in a location with little light pollution, we can see more stars as well as the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which stretches across the sky like a blurry (milky) band and is made up of stars, gas, and dust.

Our relationship with night is often spent sleeping and dreaming, as dictated by our circadian rhythms. Though, millions of workers labor during evening and "graveyard" shifts, some of which contribute to running the world's nightlife.

This blog post shares an eclectic mix of Armacost Library resources on night, sleep, and dreaming.

Histories of Night

At day's close: Night in times past; Book in General Collection: HN8 .E48 2006

Evening's empire: A history of the night in early modern Europe; Book in General Collection: GT3408 .K67 2011

The Stars 

The Stars we know: Crow Indian astronomy and lifeways; Book in General Collection: E99.C92 M25 2012

Stars above, earth below: A guide to astronomy in the national parks; Book in General Collection QB44.3 .N67 2010

Sleep

   

Dreaming

Dreams and nightmares: The new theory on the origin and meaning of dreams; Book in General Collection BF1091 .H365 1998

Dreams & visions in the world of Islam: A history of Muslim dreaming and foreknowing; Book in General Collection BP190.5.D73 S587 2015

The new science of dreaming; Book in General Collection BF1078 .N454 2007 v.1-3

Night work

Night labor: A factory worker prepares for the day; Documentary streaming on Kanopy

Nightshift NYC; An online book

Working the night shift: Women in India's call center industry; Book in General Collection HD6189 .P375 2010

Finals Week - Extended Hours

Visit the Library for extended hours during Finals Week. Plenty of quiet spaces for studying, open late, during the following hours:

Sunday, December 8: 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 a.m.
Monday, December 9 - Thursday, December 12: 8:00 a.m. - 2:00 a.m.
Friday, December 13: 8:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 14: 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Good luck!

Qui Nguyen on Fantasy, Fighting and Family

image credit: Arizona State University

This month the Theatre department will perform "She Kills Monsters," a play inspired by comic books, superhero movies and Dungeons & Dragons. Appropriately enough for one drawn to heroic narratives, playwright Qui Nguyen has a powerful origin story of his own. Nguyen's parents were Vietnamese immigrants who settled in El Dorado, Arkansas. Nguyen was always aware of how his family stood out in the mostly white community, but his parents taught him that while he was an outlier in his hometown, he actually looked like the majority of the rest of the world. They fed him a steady diet of kung fu movies so he would be accustomed to seeing Asians as protagonists and people of strength. [2] In 1988, when Nguyen was twelve, he saw this heroism firsthand in his own family.

That year, 110 refugees from Communist North Vietnam crowded into a tiny motorboat they hoped would take them to freedom, including Nguyen's uncle and two cousins who hoped to join Nguyen's family in the United States. They carried enough supplies for a week, but when the boat's motor failed, their journey dragged on for over a month as they drifted through the South China Sea. At one point the refugees made contact with a US Navy vessel, which refused to take them onboard or provide sufficient supplies. The passengers fell ill and resorted to murder and cannibalism in their desperation. When Filipino fishermen rescued them only 52 people were left alive, including the younger of Nguyen's two cousins, who was sent not to America, but rather to a refugee camp in the Philippines. It was up to Nguyen's mother to lobby journalists and American officials to get him released. She was told it would take no less than two years to navigate the bureaucratic impasse, but owing to her tenacity, she got it done in two months and had Nguyen's cousin home in Arkansas by Thanksgiving. Nguyen recalls how his cousin - two years younger than him - was changed by the ordeal. "I think my soul is dead," he confided one day. [4]

The story stayed with Nguyen, and he got an opportunity to tell it in drama school. "I had never written a play before, so I had no voice as a writer; all I could do was imitate scribes that I liked," said Nguyen. [1] The resulting play, "Trial by Water," draws on the work of pioneering Asian-American playwright David Henry Hwang and saw its premiere by the Ma-Yi Theatre Company in March 2006. Reviewers praised the set design, the use of puppets to represent the refugees, and especially the fight scenes, staged by Nguyen himself. However, critics found the characters too one-dimensional, the dialogue too predictable, and the play's overall tone to be melodramatic rather than tragic. [4] Nguyen recalls that when his family finally saw the play, he was eager to hear his mother's reaction:

She responded bluntly, "It doesn't sound like you." I was shocked. "What do you mean it doesn't sound like me? You've never read anything I've ever written." I thought she was referring to my voice as a writer. What she meant was, literally, it didn't sound like her son. She told me, "You're mischievous and you're funny and you like to goof around, and this play doesn't show any of that." My response to her was a very mature, "Screw you, mom. If you really want me to be all those things, I'll write those things, and I'll show you how much you won't like it." [1]

And so Nguyen's theatre company, Vampire Cowboys, was born. Vampire Cowboys quickly earned a reputation for creating "pop-culture infused action-adventure stories with heroes who were female, people of color, and/or LGBTQ." [1] Nguyen drew on his loves for martial arts movies and comic books, as well as his experience as a fight choreographer, which allowed him to write and direct elaborate combat scenes in each of his plays. "I have a unique perspective as a playwright because I am also the fight director," he explains. "I get to actually go inside the space and play around and move the actors around. I always like spaces that I can do new tricks in, like bounce off walls." [5] Nguyen's work with Vampire Cowboys has allowed him to find his voice as a playwright and realize his vision for a pop-culture informed theatricality. "My ultimate dream for Vampire Cowboys," writes Nguyen, "is to create characters as memorable and iconic as a Superman or Wonder Woman but representing the world I live in with the diversity it has and the faces I'm used to. I would like to have an Asian-American Superman, African-American Batman or a Latino Captain America and have people embrace them not as token characters, but characters they love..." [5]

Nguyen's partnerships with Vampire Cowboys led to a string of genre-bending plays and numerous award nominations in the 2000s and 2010s. When he was finally ready to return to telling family stories, the result was "Vietgone," which blended tales from the fall of Saigon with classical Greek tragedy. Nguyen credits his success at pushing through boundaries and growing as an artist to the support he receives from trusted artistic collaborators:

I think of myself as a really shy introvert. When it comes to actually being vulnerable, it's hard for me ... And so when I'm writing something ... where we're going to dive into my fears and skeletons in my family's closet, I want to know that my team is filled with people that will go to the wall with me. If you look at my production history, you'll notice that I work with a select group of people over and over again, because I know that when I get into that rehearsal room, I'm gonna bare my soul. So when I meet people that I care about and trust implicitly, I hang onto them. This is my "family." The advantage is that when you're in a room with people you know have your back, you're fearless - you can push the envelope way farther because you're willing to experiment in ways you can't when you don't know each other very well and still trying to be polite. [1]

In "She Kills Monsters," Nguyen's heroic vision centers on Dungeons & Dragons, which affords a young woman the ability to gain unexpected insight into her dead sister. The role playing game is not merely there to evoke nostalgia for a popular pastime shared by playwright and audience members alike. Rather, the dungeon master serves as an effective vehicle for Nguyen's meditations on fate and tragedy. "Looming over the action is another fate-shaper, one whose edicts are permanent. Bumping into the wrong orc in the wrong cave can mean a premature death, and so can dying in a car crash at the age of fifteen," wrote one critic. "When someone gets his heart torn out in 'She Kills Monsters,' it comes complete with grisly sound effect. No less impressive, however, are the play's depictions of the more conventional wounds of adolescence, the ones that come from loving and not being loved in return. The whole enterprise is kind of dopey and kind of invigorating and kind of remarkable. It will slash and shapeshift its way into your heart." [3]

Buy tickets for "She Kills Monsters" on the University of Redlands website. 

Works Cited

[1] Adrales, May. "All in the Family." American Theatre 34, no. 2, 2017: 46. Ebsco.

[2] Criscuolo, Michael. "Qui Nguyen." American Theatre 27, no. 8, 2010: 42. Ebsco.

[3] Grode, Eric. "The Pains of Evisceration and Unrequited Love." New York Times, November 19, 2011, C3. ProQuest.

[4] Stevens, Andrea. "A Savage Journey Prompts Questions of Our Humanity." New York Times, March 28, 2006: E5. ProQuest.

[5] Wellman, Mac. "Running Your Own Show." Dramatist 11, no. 4, 2009: 7. Ebsco.

Trisha R. Thomas: The Nappily Series

Trisha R. Thomas, author of the Nappily Series, will speak about her work on Tuesday, November 5, 7-8pm in Hall of Letters #100.

A screening of the recently released Nappily Ever After, the romcom based on Thomas's novel, will take place on Monday, November 4, 7-8pm in Hall of Letters #100.

Two nights of romantic comedy! (Move over Hallmark Channel.)

Thomas combines romantic comedy with the empowerment of a Black woman claiming her beauty in a culture that has centered Western European (eurocentric) beauty ideals. When first published Nappily Ever After caused controversy for the use of the term nappy: "I remember when Nappy Hair came out and the controversy and the anger that was felt, and it was frightening." 

For your interest, books from our collection on Black beauty in the context of the United States:

Shange, Ntozake. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow Is Enuf : a Choreopoem . New York: MacMillan, 1977.

Craig, Maxine Leeds. Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? : Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race. Oxford ;: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Banks, Ingrid. Hair Matters : Beauty, Power, and Black Women’s Consciousness . New York: New York University Press, 2000.

Hobson, Janell. Venus in the Dark : Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 2005.