News & Blog

Now in its thirteenth year, Open Access Week is a global event that celebrates the Open Access (OA) movement. It aims to bring awareness to OA and explore the benefits it brings to all. In addition, it is a time for institutions to highlight Open Access efforts and activities locally at their institution. At UCF Libraries, we will be exploring a variety of OA topics during this year’s Open Access Week through blog posts and social media posts to help you learn more about Open Access and what it means for universities, libraries, society, and your own published works.

We have a new series called Research Tips Thursdays. Each Thursday we will be posting quick videos that focus on building specific research skills to make the research process faster and easier for students. Students can sign up to be notified when new content posts!  

The current week’s videos will be highlighted here https://guides.ucf.edu/rtt, as well as on our Facebook and Twitter pages. You can find past episodes in our archives.  

Topics coming up:   

October:  

• Synthesizing Ideas from Multiple Sources  
• Is it Trustworthy? Election Edition  
• Using Advanced Search Options  

November:  

• Why We Cite  
• Following the Research Conversation  
• Identifying Research Gaps  

Wednesday, October 7, 2020
3:00 pm- 4:30 pm

Register to attend at Zoom – Supporting Hispanic/Latinx Communities through Florida Libraries 

Please join us next week for the UCF Libraries’ inaugural event to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, “Supporting Hispanic/LatinX Communities through Florida Libraries.” Sandy Avila, Science Librarian and UCF’s Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) Engagement Librarian will moderate an informative panel highlighting the role Florida library staff play in supporting their diverse Hispanic/LatinX communities in the Panhandle, around Central Florida, and in South Florida.

Come join our fantastic speakers from the Bay County Public Library, Orange County Library System, and Broward College as we share insights into our Hispanic communities and how we are serving their needs.

Heather Ogilvie
Bay County Public Library

Heather Ogilvie is the Outreach Librarian for Bay County Public Library in Panama City, Florida. She specializes in nontraditional library services, using community partnerships to create innovative solutions for underserved populations. Ms. Ogilvie was the recipient of the 2020 American Library Association’s Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity for her work in Florida Panhandle after the aftermath of Hurricane Michael a Category 5 storm. Despite adversity, Ms. Ogilvie was able to serve outreach sites by helping to rebuild personal libraries destroyed in the storm and other materials to assist in community recovery.

Brigitte Martinez
Orange County Library System

Brigitte Martinez is the Assistant Manager for Marketing and Public Relations at the Orange County Library System. She studied Biology at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, in Santurce Puerto Rico.
Ms. Martinez’s job is to inform and educate Central Florida’s multicultural community by holding events, opportunities and programs that the Orange County Library offers. These services help improve lives.

Cristy Moran
Broward College

Cristy Moran is a faculty librarian at Broward College, an institution which serves a predominantly minority population, including a 38% Latinx student body. She is a critical librarian, a lifelong South Floridian, and Hispanic-American of Cuban heritage.

Streaming videos are a great way to add engaging content to online courses in a broad range of fields beyond film studies. Everyone from Sociology and LGTBQIA+ Studies to Environmental Studies and Mental Health Counseling can benefit.

Swank Digital Campus offers many popular films and current releases as well as HBO documentaries and TV series for use in online courses. UCF currently has 364 Swank films licensed for use including recent releases like Just Mercy (2019), Bombshell (2019), and The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) to classics such as Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Greed (1924). Links for these films can be sent the same business day as the request.

If none of those great films fits your course, you can search the full Swank catalog for specific films or browse by discipline. If you see anything you like, submit a request through the form on our guide.

And to help with your searching the list of currently licensed films is now sortable by title, year, or expiration date. Primary category will be added to the sorting options soon.

UCF Libraries is building a digital time capsule, based on this year’s Diversity Week theme, Stronger Together: Unified! Connected! Family!

In this unprecedented year marked by COVID-19 and the continued fight for racial equity, we ask you to tell your story, share your voice, and be heard. Chronicle your connection to this year’s theme by contributing photographs you have taken, illustrations you have created, or text you have penned. You can influence how the present will be remembered. Share your message.

Submission information:

• Open to UCF students, faculty, staff, and UCF Alumni. 
• One submission per person. 
• Submissions will be digitized and housed in STARS. STARS is UCF’s digital repository to publicize, disseminate, and preserve works by, for, and about UCF.
• Submissions must be sized 8 ½” X 11” in a landscape orientation.
• Submissions formats are pdf, jpg, png, or docx.
• All submissions must be original work(s).
• Participants must submit a consent form granting permission for their content to be digitized and placed into STARS as part of the Qualtrics form.
• Submissions will be accepted August 1, 2020 – October 25, 2020.
• Sexually explicit content will not be accepted, and UCF Libraries reserves the right to omit any submission.
• All works will be placed into the digital time capsule as received; no editing services will be provided.

Submit at the Knights Stronger Together Digital Time Capsule Qualtrics form.