Monthly Archives: June 2020

Events, Videos, Websites

50th Anniversary: Pride Marches

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Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

June is LGBTQIA Pride month. This commemorates, in part, the June 28th, 1969 resistance by gay and trans people to a police raid on a popular bar, Stonewall, in New York City.

One year after the Stonewall resistance, a parade was held in New York City to commemorate it. Called the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, after the district where many gay bars were located, it is considered the first Pride Parade. The Library of Congress has recently released online the documentary video of this parade made by Lilli Vincenz.

This year, fifty years after that parade, we are celebrating affirmation by the Supreme Court in “Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia …”  that gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex, and queer people may not be denied employment on the basis of sex. This is an interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. One case that created precedent for this determination was brought against Ivy Tech Community College. Read about it at FindLaw: Hively v Ivy Tech And read Ivy Tech’s current statement on diversity, equity, and belonging here.

The Library of Congress has gathered resources on a Pride Month research guide.  This includes links to their collections relating to famous and significant LGBTQIA people: Walt Whitman, Aaron Copland, Margaret Mead … and so many more. It is a reminder of the important contributions that LGBTQIA people make to our society.

Your Ivy Tech library has many LGBTQIA resources. Begin by searching the broad term sexual minority in Discover or IvyCat and limit the search results by format, date, additional key words. For help with more targeted searches, contact your librarian.

Explore Resources on Faith and Sexuality, compiled by Dawn M. Burns of the Ivy Tech Warsaw Academic and Learning Resource Center

Explore the Digital Transgender Archives online: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/

“Sexual minority” is the Library of Congress Subject Heading applied to LGBTQIA resources. Read about resistance to this, and other classification issues, here: Cataloging Lab and Homosaurus

While we pause to express pride, we know there is more work to do.

#pridemonth2020 #pridemonth

Featured Materials, Library News, Updates, Websites

Welcome to Summer Semester 2020

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We welcome our new students, and welcome back continuing students to Fort Wayne and Warsaw. The librarians and library staff are available online to help you have your best semester. We are here for our Professors, too!

Librarians are available for online class instruction, 1-on-1 online meetings, and quick help via chat and email. Find out how here.

The library buildings are still closed, but we have millions of articles online and hundreds of thousands of ebooks. Plus videos, audio, images, and more. In our databases you can filter for scholarly resources and most recent content. All these are preselected to support our courses, so using them will save you time.

We have guides to the best resources for many subjects, and guides to formatting papers, charts, and citations. See them here. Professors can ask for specific resources to be included on a guide.

Our ILL service is currently processing journal articles and ebook chapters. Our databases are adding new ebooks. Both Fort Wayne library and Warsaw library have new websites, and our IvyCat catalog will be updated soon with a new interface and functionalities.

Visit us online, and let us know how we can help you!

Events, Websites

To Overcome Racism, We Must Talk About Race

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Talking, and listening to others talk, about race is difficult. But we must keep those conversations going as we work together to overcome racism, because we will only find answers to our social issues by learning from each other.

We find this resource from the National Museum of African American History and Culture helpful. It is concise, with options to go more in depth. It is for educators, parents, anyone who may need to lead a conversation about race, and individuals wondering where to start.

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Book Review, Library News

Book Review: The Facts of The Matter: Looking Past Today’s Rhetoric on the Environment and Responsible Development By David Parish

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This is a thought-provoking book from an author who worked for many years as a lobbyist for companies in the area of natural resource development.

Here he lays out a strategy for working to address today’s environmental and societal problems.

He believes that progress can be made if people are willing to listen to the “other side”. Too often, we get locked into an “us vs them” mentality.

He points out problems (and solutions) surrounding news media, politicians, and groups with agendas working on both sides of an issue. He does not hesitate to go after both sides.

But he is hopeful that our problems can be addressed. While he lobbied for big corporations, he is also a strong advocate for the environment. He argues how changes can be made that help the environment, improve people’s standard of living, and raise up entire societies.

I learned a lot from this book. I had never really thought about where “the stuff” to make electronics and power our country comes from. Zinc, copper, molybdenum, rare earth elements are vital to these industries. And with more and more demand for power and electronics, we will need more and more of these products. So we cannot do away with mining or the other industries that generate power. Mr. Parish argues that the production of natural resources is changing and can be done in an environmentally safe way.

Whether or not you agree with everything he says, it will make you think.