An Invitation to Read...

Who: Anybody
What: Faculty Book Club Read -- Honor Killing by David Stannard
When: May 10th, 3:30-4:40
Where: Library Lab (Library will provide the snacks!)

Our initial foray into faculty book club territory with Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance had a good many readers join the read.  Though a discussion meeting time that could work for everyone proved elusive, we ended up having a wonderfully engaging conversation with 6 diehards.

Many readers found the read worthwhile and intriguing, though some "hated it" and couldn't finish. Alas... We can't win 'em all, but if you hate a book, put it down! There are too many other good ones to read and life is short... #JustSaying


For our next read, we've chosen Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case by David Stannard.

In the fall of 1931, Thalia Massie, the bored, aristocratic wife of a young naval officer stationed in Honolulu, accused six nonwhite islanders of gang rape. The ensuing trial let loose a storm of racial and sexual hysteria, but the case against the suspects was scant and the trial ended in a hung jury. Outraged, Thalia’s socialite mother arranged the kidnapping and murder of one of the suspects. In the spectacularly publicized trial that followed, Clarence Darrow came to Hawai’i to defend Thalia’s mother, a sorry epitaph to a noble career.

It is one of the most sensational criminal cases in American history, Stannard has rendered more than a lurid tale. One hundred and fifty years of oppression came to a head in those sweltering courtrooms. In the face of overwhelming intimidation from a cabal of corrupt military leaders and businessmen, various people involved with the case—the judge, the defense team, the jurors, a newspaper editor, and the accused themselves—refused to be cowed. Their moral courage united the disparate elements of the non-white community and galvanized Hawai’i’s rapid transformation from an oppressive white-run oligarchy to the harmonic, multicultural American state it became.

Honor Killing is a great true crime story worthy of Dominick Dunne—both a sensational read and an important work of social history

The library currently has just one copy, but the Hawaii State Public Library System has many copies available.

We have tentatively scheduled a meet and chat session for: May 10th, 3:30-4:30 in the Library Lab.

The library will provide the snacks!

Hope to see you there!

The Faculty that Reads Together...

Isn't stupid? Is better than most? Is very rare, indeed? Must be awesome!

Hah!

We're not sure what will happen when we read together, but let's give a faculty read a shot and find out! With spring break on the horizon, we'll all have some time to slow down, catch a breath, and read.  We'd like to invite all of you to join us in a read of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

Though the book was receiving quite a bit of attention before the 2016 election, interest exploded after the election as many Americans came to realize how little they know about the experiences, thoughts, struggles, and lives of their fellow citizens.

Author, J.D. Vance, was speaking about the struggles of disaffected white working class Americans before the Presidential election as in his Ted Talk on America's Forgotten Working Class from September 2016.

Hillbilly Elegy has received both praise and criticism from a variety of sources across a broad swath of the American political spectrum, but whether loved or loathed, that the book has sparked some very interesting analysis and conversation is undeniable. Here is just a very small sampling:

• New York Times Review: In "Hillbilly Elegy," A Tough Love Analysis of the Poor Who Back Trump

• The American Conservative: Why Liberals Love "Hillbilly Elegy"

• The National Review: What "Hillbilly Elegy Reveals about Trump and America

Want to read?

Get your hands on a copy and read away over spring break.

• We have a copy in the library
• Available in multiple formats via Amazon 
• Available in multiple formats via Barnes and Noble
• There appear to be multiple copies in the Hawaii State Public Library System, but there may be a waiting list. 

Be on the lookout for an email shortly after spring break. We'll set a time, a place, and the library will supply the snacks!

If you know you want to read with us or want to pass this time out, but might consider another title in the future, please click here and let us know! - Faculty Read RSVP

A Thanksgiving Gift

I know, I know. It's not even Thanksgiving and someone's giving away Christmas gifts already. Believe me, I feel for Thanksgiving - with Christmas decor available in stores before Halloween, Turkey Day has no room to be valued as its own special holiday.

Oh well.

I'm too excited to share this gift, and I can't wait for December, so here is a little something for which we can be thankful - see? It's a Thanksgiving Gift.

The New York Public Library has a very, very, very nice digital archive, complete with an amazing collection of vintage posters. The latest collection (shared via Twitter earlier this month) can be found here: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/turn-of-the-century-posters#/?tab=navigation

Do take a look, and feel free to download! And let's be thankful there are people out there who keep trash until it's treasure.

15 Copyright Rules Every Student (and Teacher) Should Know...

Melissa Venable over at the Online Colleges blog, posted a nicely accessible list of copyright rules everybody (students AND teachers) should know.

Click on the image above to go to the full post.

Take a careful look at #5 - You can sample from DVDs, even circumventing copyright protection as this is one of the less well known fair use exemptions granted by the Librarian of Congress in 2010. Note that currently many take the wording in the Librarian of Congress' exception to mean that circumventing copyright applies only to university faculty and film and media students, but there has been discussion about extending this fair use safe harbor to K-12.

• This is a list intended for an audience of adult online learners. Please don't tell students that they can "rip DVDs with abandon..." 

You may also want to take a close look at #8 - If your project becomes commercial, you no longer have protection as a student and at #9 - If your project reaches a wider audience, you’re not protected either as these aspects of copyright and fair use that may come into play in some forms of presentations of learning or when students' online blogs or videos are published to the web.

We maintain an Image and Sound Resources page to help you and your students access copyright-friendly images, copyright-friendly sound files, and tools to make using them a bit easier. The page is linked both the Middle School and High School portals under the tab labeled Helpful Things.

Your Public Library has an App!

As we prepare ourselves for Christmas break, I'd like to share a little gift with you: the Hawaii State Public Library System has an app! It's been out for a few months, but I'm not sure if everyone knows about it (and everyone who's anyone needs to know!)

In your app store, search for HSPLS. The app is called "Hawaii Mobile", and it's by ChiliFresh.com (see? I'm citing my sources).

With this app, you can do so many things! Login with your library card number and pin, and you can see your account (books on hold, fines, etc.), renew books you currently have checked out, and use the app itself as a library card. You can also search for books in the HSPLS catalog, scope out upcoming library events, and generally have an amazing time being so smart because YOU HAVE THE LIBRARY APP!

Enjoy, and have a very wonderful Christmas.

Site Evaluation

What is a Filter Bubble and Could This be Why Your Aunty Shares Crazy Stuff on Facebook...?

As a librarian, I love Google.

Google is amazing.

I find and learn amazing stuff via Google...

Have you ever wondered, though, in a Google ubiquitous world, how it is that your Aunties and old high school classmates can end up sharing such bizarre, crazy stuff on Facebook?

It actually probably has a lot to do with the personalization of search. Did you know there is no such thing as a "standard" Google search? Beginning back in about 2009, Google began using your personal search history and approximately 57 other "click indicators" to personalize the results lists you see when you run a search. That means that when you search for "Egypt" from your house in Manoa, you probably see a very different set of results than your Aunty Lulu sees when she searches for "Egypt" from her house in rural Maine.

The web is a big place. The idea that we aren't all seeing the same parts of the web even when we search for the same terms on the same tools is the main concept behind what Eli Pariser has termed a "filter bubble."

It's not just Google either. Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo, Bing... Social media and much of search has become personalized through the use of software algorithms.

Though Eli Pariser presented this Ted Talk back in 2011, the ideas and caveats behind algorithmic filter bubbles are more relevant than ever.



Next post: How we begin to help students venture beyond their filter bubbles...