Reading Time: 3 minutesBook challenges of the past can seem eerily similar to book challenges today. During the John’s Committee Investigations at the University of South Florida (USF) in the mid-1960s, a number of books and readings, including some written by USF faculty, came under scrutiny for vulgarity, anti-religious sentiment, communist leanings, and pornography.
Category: Latest Dialogs
Arsenic in the Archives
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe Poison Book Project at Winterthur Library is an “ongoing investigation to explore the materiality of Victorian-era publishers’ bindings, with a focus on the identification of potentially toxic pigments used as book cloth colorants.” By using the Arsenical Books Database created by the project, USF Libraries Tampa Special Collections have identified a few books in our own archives that are likely colored with arsenic.
Pets in the Archives: Cats and Dogs and Alligators… Oh my!
Reading Time: 4 minutesFrom cats and dogs to lizards and snakes, pets enrich our lives and bring us happiness on a daily basis. Nothing is better than coming home after a long day and being met at the door by an excited pet, ready to give you snuggles. As proud pet moms, the authors of Digital Dialogs would like to celebrate National Pet Day with a look at beloved pets as seen through our USF Libraries’ Digital Collections.
2023 Virtual Undergraduate Research Conference
Reading Time: 2 minutesThis year, the 2023 Virtual Undergraduate Research Conference takes place on April 13th. It is the second year the library has worked with the Office of High Impact Practices and Undergraduate Research (HIPUR) to host the virtual event. For the 2022 Virtual …Continue Reading
Celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month with Spencer Williams
Reading Time: 5 minutesYou may not know Spencer Williams by name, but I bet you know “Everybody Loves My Baby, but My Baby Don’t Love Nobody but Me,” or maybe “Basin Street Blues.” Perhaps you can even sing a few lines of “I Ain’t Got Nobody.” Spencer Williams composed from 200-500 songs, many of which were imbued with a deep sense of nostalgia for the New Orleans he knew in the 1910s (Edwards, n.d.; Chilla, 2022). He was known for being an original, and though some might warmly critique his ideas as ‘shortwinded’ and his harmonies as ‘modest,’ they would still agree “he could write a tune that got to the subject” (“Quite a Moment,” 1965).
Annual Vote to Digitize for the Public Domain
Reading Time: < 1 minuteHelp us choose the material that will be digitized for January 2024 as part of the Libraries’ annual celebration of the public domain! We have searched our physical collections to find the rarest titles whose copyright will expire in 2024, and now we need your help to figure out which 24 to digitize. Please vote for your favorites below (choose up to 24)!
Dr. John Ogden Caribbean and Coral Reef Collection
Reading Time: 4 minutesGuest post from John Clarke, Coordinator for Florida Environmental and Natural History collections at Special Collections, USF Libraries, Tampa campus highlights the Dr. John Ogden Caribbean and Coral Reef collection as an important collection of marine science research materials.
Open Refine: A Beginners Guide
Reading Time: 4 minutesGuest post from Jason Boczar, Digital Scholarship and Publishing Librarian, USF Libraries, Tampa campus. Well-formed data is a luxury. When working with large datasets, researchers must engage in clean-up that includes fixing spelling mistakes or creating consistent numbering patterns. Without these changes, …Continue Reading
Launching EcoLiteracies for Climate Action in Florida: A Teaching and Learning Portal
Reading Time: 2 minutesUSF Libraries is excited to share that a new Open Educational Resource (OER) is launching in Spring 2023! The EcoLiteracies for Climate Action in Florida (ELCAF) portal is part of a larger collaborative effort between faculty in the USF Libraries, the College …Continue Reading