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.

Sarah Norris, UCF Scholarly Communications Librarian, and Rich Gause, UCF Government Information Librarian, will provide a session on Copyright, Fair Use, and Online Teaching During Emergency Circumstances. This session will be held via Zoom on Thursday, May 7^th at 3 p.m. All UCF faculty are welcome to attend. The session will provide a bit of information on fair use (exploring the four fair use factors in depth) and other components that will be helpful as you consider the materials you need when teaching online. 

Specific copyright and fair use questions can be directed to Sarah Norris and Rich Gause ahead of time or during the session. 

Zoom Link for the online session

See also our online guide “Academic Resources during COVID-19 Situation: Copyright Clarifications”

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. Luckily, UCF Libraries has many options for you. Today we are featuring Swank Digital Campus.

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 143 Swank films licensed for use including recent releases like 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. New film requests generally have a 24-48 hour turn around time. Please note that some films and TV shows are listed as needing “additional fees & time.” These requests need special permissions for the extra cost and have a turn around time of 4-6 weeks.  

If you see anything you like, submit a request through the form on our guide.

Today is the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day.  For many of us, when we think of Earth Day it involves getting together with a group of like minded individuals and celebrating not only the life giving beauty of our planet, but also the ways in which we can protect and nurture our environment for generations to come.  Don’t let COVID-19 put a damper on your celebrations, instead here are some creative ways you can celebrate Earth and nature today…and every day.

Be Inspired by Great Nature Writers

Nature writing can transport us to new place, inform us of the world around us and open our eyes to the magic and beauty right in front of us.  Here are some ebooks currently available through the UCF Libraries to get you started.

The Essential Naturalist edited by Michael H. Graham, Joan Parker and Paul K. Dayton.

“The Essential Naturalist offers … a wide-ranging, eclectic collection of writings from more than eight centuries of observations of the natural world, from Leeuwenhoek to E. O. Wilson, from von Humboldt to Rachel Carson. Featuring commentaries by practicing scientists that offer personal accounts of the importance of the long tradition of natural history writing to their current research, the volume serves simultaneously as an overview of the field’s long history and as an inspirational starting point for new explorations, for trained scientists and amateur enthusiasts alike.”

Are you transitioning your quantitative methods or data analytics modules to a 100% remote environment, and looking for ways to incorporate some real-world data?  You may wish to consider the data and teaching resources available through IPUMS: these video tutorials, introductory webinars, and hands-on exercises are great for use with R, SAS, Stata and SPSS statistical software (as well as Excel).

Additionally, instructors who have registered with IPUMS can also create a classroom account that makes their students’ registration process far more streamlined. 

ABOUT IPUMS:

IPUMS provides government census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space. Their data encompasses a broad variety of fields (global health, demographics, education, GIS, environment, time use, etc.) describing over 1.4 billion individuals.

IPUMS is a part of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation at the University of Minnesota