News & Blog

Every October UCF celebrates Diversity Week. This year’s dates are October 16 – 20, and the theme is Transform and Inspire Inclusion. University-wide departments and groups champion the breadth and culture within the UCF community, and work to increase acceptance and inclusion for everyone at UCF and the surrounding communities.

One of the fantastic things about UCF is the wide range of cultures and ethnicities of our students, staff, and faculty. We come from all over. We’re just as proud of where we are from as we are of where we are now.

For information about the Library Diversity Week activities visit: guides.ucf.edu/diversityweek

Join the UCF Libraries as we celebrate diverse voices and subjects with the suggestions in the link below. You can also see a physical display with these books on the 2nd floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

Featured Bookshelf: UCF Celebrates Diversity

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