News & Blog

Pride Month has arrived! While every day is a time to be proud of your identity and orientation, June is that extra special time for boldly celebrating with and for 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” which is a week-long series of events to commemorate the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in 2016.

Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the 20 titles by or about people in the LGBTQIA community suggested by UCF Library employees. These, and additional titles, are also on the Featured Bookshelf display on the second (main) floor next to the bank of two elevators.

Featured Bookshelf: LGBTQIA Pride Month

*LGBTQIA represents lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and asexual. The acronym is continually evolving, and the term queer is frequently used to be all inclusive and welcoming.

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

As you can imagine, Asian Pacific American covers a fair amount of area. 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

Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the 20 titles by or about Asian Pacific Americans suggested by UCF Library employees. These, and additional titles, are also on the Featured Bookshelf display on the second (main) floor next to the bank of two elevators.

Featured Bookshelf: Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month

“If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!”

-Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

(more…)

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 events 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 the multiple campuses with a wide variety of activities including workshops, film screenings, and WomanFest. Visit the Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s #neverthelessshepersisted page to learn more about the scheduled events, and stop by the library to view the display wall which includes bras decorated at our Honor, Remember & Support workshop.

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

Featured Bookshelf: Women’s History Month

And don’t forget to peruse these and additional titles on the Featured Bookshelf display on the second (main) floor next to the bank of two elevators.

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 the library we are passionate about celebrating African American culture and history. We are proud to present our top 20 favorite books by, and/or about, African Americans.

Click the link below for full descriptions and catalog links for the 2018 Black History Month Featured Bookshelf.

Featured Bookshelf: Black History Month