Library Blogs

In 2021, at least partially due to the reckonings of the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings, the United States recognized Juneteenth as a national holiday. While this holiday may be new to some people, many Black Americans have been celebrating this day commemorating emancipation for centuries, and there is a wealth of writing on its history and significance. With this in mind, though Juneteenth may have passed on Monday, it’s always the right time to educate ourselves on the history of race and racism in this country.

One of the main activities the Deep Blue Repository & Research Data Services team conducts is data curation(1)--that is, actions that provide meaningful and enduring access to data. The accessibility of research data has been an under-discussed phenomenon in the field of research data management, but we are excited to announce the release of a new resource intended to help curators as well as researchers approach the release of research data with the goal of maximizing accessibility--in particular for those with disabilities, neurodivergence, and/or who use assistive technologies.

Celebrating Pride feels more important than ever, as we’ve seen a significant rise in cultural and political attacks on queer and particularly trans people over the past year. Those attacks have included a surge in attempts to ban books with LGBTQ+ content in schools -- check out some of these banned titles online or in Shapiro now!

Welcome to the University of Michigan Library’s Book Arts Studio, a place for students, faculty, and the community to learn and practice the craft of letterpress printing, offering the opportunity to engage in other related activities, such as bookbinding and the book arts.

We are no longer able to accept unsolicited game donations in the CVGA. Prior to sending or bringing us games please contact us first at video.games@umich.edu with an itemized list of the games and equipment that you would like to donate, so that we can check against our collection records to see what we need.

Guest post by Brian Bocking, Heid Fellow, on his research in the Harry Alverson Franck Papers. Brian is Professor Emeritus of the Study of Religions at University College Cork (Cork, Ireland).

University of Michigan Press is exploring different ways of communicating the “impact” of the open access program, Fund to Mission, with impact defined as “provable benefits on the real world.” As part of this exploration, the Press worked with Zhenkun Lin, a doctoral student from the U-M College of Engineering, under the auspices of the Rackham Doctoral Internship initiative. The charge for Zhenkun’s project was very broad: Please explore the data we have gathered and see if it suggests any interesting patterns or opportunities for visualizing the program’s impact.

Chicana poet and cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldúa says: “Making anthologies is also activism. In the process of creating the composition, the work of art, you’re creating the culture. You’re rewriting the culture, which is very much an activist kind of thing.”

Similarly, I have curated this presentation as an anthology - from the composers and artists that I have commissioned and programmed, to the interviews, images, the words of Latina scholars, and parts of my own story. As a person of color, as a Latina, a chicana. I have learned that telling our stories is a form of activism. This is why in many ways, silencing us is also an act of violence.

I am curating this collaboration of new music by Latina composers to facilitate a public platform and to open a dialogue about Latina culture, identity, and experiences in higher education, specifically in the field of western classical music. This project enriches the art form by contributing a diverse collection of new works to the repertoire, addressing societal issues and promoting Latina artists in classical music.

I am a 2022-2023 recipient of a University of Michigan Library Student Mini Grant. I am using the grant to support my mixed-methods dissertation, which aims to learn how we can improve rural student college access and connect rural high schoolers with postsecondary opportunities that align with their goals. Through a randomized controlled trial (RCT), I am testing how an informational intervention—providing rural seniors with information about a statewide free tuition program—affects their college-going behavior. I will contextualize these results with findings from focus groups with rural high school seniors about their knowledge of the program and their perspectives on the programs’ affordances and limitations.

Dance Hall of the Dead is the second book in Tony Hillerman's best-selling mystery series featuring Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn. (It can easily be read without having read the first.) Leaphorn investigates the disappearance of two boys, one Zuñi and one Navajo. The strength of Hillerman's writing is in his descriptions of the locations in New Mexico and Arizona, and of the religion, mythology, and ceremonies of the Navajo and Zuñi. A beautifully-written book!