News & Blog

Join us for a lunch break Open Heart Open Mic on Thursday, September 28 from 12-1:15PM in John C. Hitt Library room 223. The UCF Libraries is partnering with the Women’s & Gender Studies Program to present an ongoing open mic event series.

You are welcome to bring a story, poem, song, or any other vocal presentation to share – on any topic.

For more information, check our event page.

Any original work presented at an Open Heart Open Mic event will be eligible to be listed in STARS KnightVerse. STARS is UCF’s digital repository designed to disseminate, publicize, and share works by, for, and about UCF. KnightVerse is the area within STARS for library related student work. After presenting, see the Open Heart Open Mic host for information about submitting your original work.

Hispanic Heritage Month, established in 1988, runs from September 15 through October 15. It recognizes and celebrates the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans have made to the United States. Florida in particular has a strong Hispanic background including the oldest inhabited city in the U.S., St. Augustine, which was founded in 1565 by the Spanish.

Join the UCF Libraries as we celebrate our favorite Hispanic authors and subjects with these 20 suggestions. Click on the link below to see the full list of books along with their descriptions and catalog links.

Featured Bookshelf: Hispanic Heritage

PS. The free museum day hosted by the Smithsonian is on Saturday, September 23 this year, and includes admission to the Tampa Bay History Center which is currently featuring Gateways to the Caribbean: Mapping the Florida-Cuba Connection. Get a free ticket to visit here.

For a full list of participating Florida Museums, click here.

It’s August already and the summer is almost over. I can’t believe how time has flown. I’m not sure where June and July went. It feels like just last week that spring classes were ending and summer classes beginning.

School will be starting up again in a few short weeks. We’ll have a full cohort of students back on campus. The lines for coffee will be never-ending and parking will be nowhere to be found. Life will definitely get more exciting.

Here are the suggestions from UCF Libraries faculty and staff to help you get back in the mindset for learning. They range from academic subjects to serious fiction to a favorite comic. Welcome to the 2017-18 academic year!

Click on the link below to see the full list of books along with their descriptions and catalog links.

Featured Bookshelf: Back-to-School

American history is a broad and varied topic. It ranges from the native inhabitants who formed communities here thousands of years ago to the creation of a new nation of states to the dreamers who immigrate to these shores today. It is a vast tract of information to cover, but it is important that we all learn about our past. As Edmund Burke said in Reflections on the Revolution in France, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

The founders of the United States, beyond their faults and foibles, began this nation with a grand and noble sentiment of “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

Never forget “We the people” is us.

Click on the  link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the 20 titles on American History suggested by UCF Library employees.

Featured Bookshelf: American History

It’s Pride Month! Time for shouting out the celebration of the LGBTQIA community (yes, there are more than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender in the queer community). June was chosen to honor the Stonewall Riots which happened in 1969. Like other celebratory months, LGBT Pride Month started as a weeklong series of events and expanded into a full month of festivities.

In honor of Pride Month, UCF Library faculty and staff suggested books, movies and music from the UCF collection that represent a wide array of queer authors and characters. Additional events at UCF in June include “UCF Remembers…6.12.16” which commemorate the shooting at the Pulse nightclub last year. These four events scheduled for June 8 (to avoid a conflict with other Pulse memorial events) include a blood drive at Memory Mall, an art gallery exhibit, “Reflections on Pulse” tribute event, and a “UCF Remembers” ceremony.

Click the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the 20 titles by or about LGBTQIA people suggested by UCF Library employees.

Featured Bookshelf: LGBTQIA Pride Month