holidays

holidays

Native American Heritage Month

Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month – an opportunity to pay tribute to the traditions and ancestry of the tribes and people groups who originally occupied this continent.  It is an opportunity to learn and to foster dialogue. Library resources are among the most vetted and authoritative available. One of the best databases is American Indian History Online, which features primary sources, maps, documentary videos, and other media.  It is searchable by region, tribe, person, event, or topic.  Of special note are sections on influential court cases and legislative history.  Another database is Early Encounters in North America, which covers material from the 1500s to the 1800s that document the relationships among the inhabitants of what are now the United … Continued
A Month of Pride

A Month of Pride

June is the 50th anniversary of National LGBTQ Pride Month, originally organized by the ‘Mother of Pride’ Brenda Howard, who first scheduled it in 1970 to commemorate the Stonewall demonstrations the previous year.  While it is painful this year to have so many public celebrations of LGBTQ identity curtailed or cancelled for health reasons, a movement so dedicated to the incredible diversity in how people come together and love each other cannot truly be kept apart. The library offers many digital resources to inform and educate us all about sexual identity, from videos to books to databases and other educational materials.  Our Libguide is a great place to start, and databases like Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and … Continued
Women and Online Connectivity

Women and Online Connectivity

This March, with IU East (as well as almost every other college in the country) switching to online-only classes, the celebration of Women’s History Month has been curtailed, with many events and activities cancelled.  But the very act of e-learning offers an avenue to honor a particular way that women’s innovation and accomplishment have improved our world, in the form of the computer technology that is now so vital to maintaining any semblance of higher education in this country today. Women have always been instrumental to the development of computing technology.  The world recently lost mathematician and innovative computer programmer Katherine Johnson, whose life and contributions to early computer development are well known thanks to having been recently dramatized in … Continued
Awareness and Celebration of LGBTQ+ Community

Awareness and Celebration of LGBTQ+ Community

International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) is March 31st, 2020. It is a day to celebrate transgender people, their contributions to society, as well as raise awareness of the discrimination they face worldwide. The Indiana University East Campus Library is a dedicated Safe Space and our librarians and staff participate in regular training and professional development, such as Safe Zone, to better serve those members of the community who identify as LGBTQ+. This past month, IU East librarians Beth South and KT Lowe had the opportunity to attend the National Association of Social Workers 3rd Annual Conference on Serving Sexual & Gender Minority (GSM) populations. This conference was hosted by NASW’s Indiana Chapter Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.  … Continued
A Day of Thanksgiving and Learning

A Day of Thanksgiving and Learning

Campus is closed for the Thanksgiving break on November 28-29.  If you’ve watched the 1973 film ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving’ and want to learn about the holiday beyond Linus’ speech, the library has plenty of resources to use. To start, databases like American History Online offer plenty of primary sources, including the December 12, 1621 letter by Edward Winslow (a Pilgrim who attended the first feast) and George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving proclamation, along with articles, news, and more.  A free tool on the internet, the Library of Congress’s American Memory includes many other Thanksgiving resources, including more primary documents, artwork, and teachers’ tools. AVON’s American History in Video collection and the Government Publishing Office offer many videos that relate to the … Continued