News & Blog

Welcome to May which is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

As you can imagine, Asian Pacific American as a topic covers vast oceans of identity and information. In fact, an Asian Pacific American is an American (whether born, naturalized, or other) who was born on or has heritage from anywhere on the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island). These areas cover a wide array of languages, cultures, religions, and ethnicities that have brought countless skills, hopes and dreams to the United States.

UCF Libraries faculty and staff have suggested these books and movies within the library’s collection by or about Asian Pacific Americans. Click the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links.

Featured Bookshelf: Asian Pacific American Heritage

With the Libraries still on remote access, we do not have our usual extended physical display, but have created a reading list full of additional ebooks and streaming videos for you to enjoy: Asian Pacific American Heritage ereading.

Welcome to National Poetry Month!

The Academy of American Poets, inspired by the success of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, created National Poetry Month in 1996. It is the largest literary celebration in the world and UCF Libraries are proud to do their part.

UCF Libraries have gathered suggestions to feature 12 books of poetry that are currently in the UCF collection. These works represent the wide range of favorite poetry books of our faculty and staff.

Since we are in strange times and realize that access to the physical books chosen by the Libraries is extremely limited at the moment, we have also crafted a list of digital poetry works that can be read from the comfort of your home: Poetry reading digital edition.

Featured Bookshelf: National Poetry Month

Women’s History Month began as a week-long celebration in Sonoma, California in 1978 which was centered around International Women’s Day on March 8. A year later during a women’s history conference at Sarah Lawrence College, participants learned how successful the week was and decided to initiate similar in their own areas. President Carter issued the first proclamation for a national Women’s History Week in 1980. In 1987, Congress (after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project) passed Pub. L. 100-9 designating March as Women’s History Month. U.S. Presidents have issued proclamations on Women’s History Month since 1988.

The University of Central Florida community joins together to celebrate Women’s History Month across multiple campuses with a wide variety of activities including the Women in STEM @ UCF panel discussion, a special screening of the student-produced film, Filthy Dreamers, and WomanFest 2020. You can also view the Women First at UCF Project on the display wall at the John C. Hitt Library. The project was a collaboration between UCF Libraries Special Collections and University Archives, Dr. M.C. Santana from the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and Dr. Robert Cassanello from the Department of History. Full details about the project, exhibit reception information and the UCF Celebrates the Arts Panel can be found on the Libraries blog.

Here at the UCF Libraries, we have created a list of books about women, both history and fiction, suggested by staff. Please click on the read more link below to see the full book list with descriptions and catalog links.

Featured Bookshelf: Women’s History Month

And don’t forget to stop by the John C. Hitt Library to browse the featured bookshelf on the 2^nd (main) floor near the bank of two elevators for additional Women’s History Month books and DVDs.

The national celebration of African American History was started by Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and first celebrated as a weeklong event in February of 1926. After a half century of overwhelming popularity, the event was expanded to a full month in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.

Here at UCF Libraries we believe that knowledge empowers everyone in our community and that recognizing past inequities is the only way to prevent their continuation. This is why our featured bookshelf suggestions range from celebrating outstanding African Americans to having difficult conversations about racism in American history. We are proud to present our top 20 staff suggested books in honor of Black History Month.

Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the Black History Month titles suggested by UCF Library employees. These 20 books plus many, many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

Featured Bookshelf: Black History Month

For the month of January, UCF Libraries’ featured bookshelf presents books from our Knight Reads section. Located on the 2^nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library, this featured display is just a small sample of our abundant collection of popular fiction and nonfiction reading. There are Knight Reads collections in both the John C. Hitt Library and the Rosen Library.

To see a full list of the featured titles with descriptions, click on the link below.

January Featured Bookshelf: Knight Reads

These books typically get checked out pretty quickly so if you notice that a book you want is checked out, you can always complete an ILL request so you can borrow it from another library. Check out the link below. More often than not, we also carry another copy of a Knight Reads book in our general collection so feel free to scope out the catalog as well.

How to place an ILL Request, or an Interlibrary Loan

Happy reading!