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This week on the blog, we welcome Kate Cain, Peace and Justice Student Intern, as she shares what Peace and Justice Week is.

On September 21st of every year, countries all over the world recognize the International Day of Peace. It is a day dedicated to relationships across divides, ceasefires, and finding solutions to the problems that impact individuals as well as global institutions. Here at Loras College’s Fr. Ray Herman Peace and Justice Center, we are dedicated to celebrating the International Day of Peace by hosting a full week of events called Peace and Justice Week. This is a yearly tradition in which the Loras community comes together to actively engage in dialogue and activities centered around the issues we face as a society today.

This year's Peace and Justice Week features a variety of events, with something for everyone!

The keynote speaker this year is Marie Dennis of Pax Christi International’s Catholic Nonviolence Initiative. She will speak on “Choosing Nonviolence for a Just Peace,” on Monday, September 22. Her free speech is in the ACC ballrooms at 7pm. Before the keynote speech, stop in the ACC concourse between 10-1 or 4-6:30 to get your professional portrait taken, and to answer the question “When have you seen an example of peace?”

On Wednesday there are two events, the Solidari-Tea with Du-Peace and Justice in ACC 460 from 4-5pm. After Solidari-Tea, there’s a meal and conversations in the Interfaith Event: Beginning Together from 6-7:30.

And finally, Peace and Justice Week this year will come to an end on Friday with the Dubuque Service and Retreat Weekend, where Loras and UD students will serve the community with other students.

Interested in learning more? Check out our book display on the 2^nd floor of the library to see books related to peace and justice.

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National Novel Writing Month

Novels are what most people think of when they think of books today. They fill the shelves of public libraries, and even academic libraries such as ours have collections of novels. Famous novelists such as Jane Austen, the Brontës, Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell, Agatha Christie, Terry Prachett, and so many others have made the novel popular, and ensured its continuing success. Novels are written for all ages, in a variety of genres, and are published by both professional houses and by individuals. While today reading novels is a respectable pastime, in the past, novels, and novel reading, were derided as a waste of time, and seen as ruinous to people’s health (just as TV often is today). Novelists were therefore at the very least silly, and at the worst, dangerous to youth. Libraries, and librarians, even controlled who had access to novels, whereas today, many librarians actively encourage novel reading. As part of the support for novels, and those who write them, National Novel Writing Month is celebrated during November. Throughout the month, novelists and aspiring novelists are encouraged to write 1,667 words a day, so that by the end of the month, they have a draft of 50,000 words. Powering through the first draft like this is designed to help writers to just get the first draft over with, to power through what is often the hardest part of the writing process, to just get something on the page.Until 2024, National Novel Writing Month was organized by NaNoWriMo, a non-profit organization founded in 1999 to encourage writers. Even though the official NaNoWriMo organization has closed, and the website is no longer active, each November is still an opportunity to write your own novel. There are plenty of great resources out there to support you as you begin writing, so you don’t have to venture into novel writing alone. Even NaNoWriMo’s collection of pep talks, written by famous novelists for aspiring novelists, are still available here, thanks to the internet archive. Check out the National Novel Writing Month display on the 3rd floor to see some books about novel writing, and for a selection of novels from our collection. And check out the excerpts from NaNoWriMo pep talks below for some inspiration!Gail Carson Levine (author of Ella Enchanted, Fairest, The Two Princess of Bamarre, and among other books), writes, “with all the earnestness I can command, here is the only important piece of advice, which is crucial for any speed of writing, any kind of writing: Do not beat up on yourself. Do not criticize your writing as lousy, inadequate, stupid, or any of the evil epithets that you are used to heaping on yourself. Such self-bashing is never useful. If you indulge in it, your writing doesn’t stand a chance. So when your mind turns on you, turn it back, stamp it down, shut it up, and keep writing.”V.E. Schwab (author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, A Darker Shade of Magic, and other titles), writes in her pep talk, “So you’re going to write a story. Not a book. Don’t think of it as anything so formal. You’re just writing down a story. Something that you will have ample time to make better, once it’s done. And I know it’s hard—trust me, I know. Because the moment you start writing it down, you begin to see all the flaws, all the shortcomings, all the things that aren’t perfect. But you’re also writing down everything you need, your raw materials.”Kristin Cashore (author of Graceling) writes, “Learning to write 50,000 words means learning a whole pile of skills, but they’re learnable skills, and you learn them by writing.”And finally, in his pep talk, written in his characteristic style, Lemony Snicket (author of The Series of Unfortunate Events), writes, “In short, quit. Writing a novel is a tiny candle in a dark, swirling world. It brings light and warmth and hope to the lucky few who, against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, find themselves in the right place to hold it. Blow it out, so our eyes will not be drawn to its power. Extinguish it so we can get some sleep. I plan to quit writing novels myself, sometime in the next hundred years.” ...

Native American Books

November is Native American Heritage month. One of the ways that we can celebrate Native American Heritage Month all year is by reading books by Native American authors. As books by Native American authors have become more and more popular, encouraged in part by Native-owned publishing houses, it has become easier for all of us to find books in our favorite genres that are written by Indigenous authors. Books such as Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich, We Are Still Here by Traci Sorell, Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, and There There by Tommy Orange, The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava.There are several different resources that can help you find books written by Indigenous authors. American Indians in Children’s Literature, written by Dr. Debbie Reese of Nambé Pueblo, and Dr. Jean Mendoza (Euro-American, USA) provides critical analysis of Indigenous peoples in children’s and young adult books. Their website includes lists of books that they do recommend, as well as books that they don’t recommend, and why. The website of the American Indian Library Association (AILA) provides resources for “the library-related needs of American Indians and Alaskan Natives.” It also awards the American Indian Youth Literature Awards in even years. The award was established to, “identify and honor the very best writing and illustrations by American Indians and Alaska Natives. Selected titles present American Indians in the fullness of their humanity in the present and past contexts.” Checking out the list of award winners is another good way to discover more books by Indigenous authors.If you’re looking for more adult and non-fiction recommendations, Birchbark Books is a bookstore owned by Louise Erdrich, who is a well-known Ojibwe author. Browsing through their catalog can be a great way to find books by Indigenous authors that interest you, thanks to their organization by genre. Interested in learning more about Native American history? Check out last year's Native American History Month blog post, or this blog post from 2022, which provides more information about traditional Native Lands. For a good non-fiction history book, check out An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Check out the Native American History month display on the first floor to see some books by Indigenous authors in our collection. Thank you to Hannah Eastburn, Print Materials Processing Specialist at the University of Kentucky for her recommendations of places to find Native authors. Any errors in this post are my mistakes, and do not reflect her excellent advice. ...

Five Reasons to Try a Graphic Novel

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Open Access Week - 2025

Open Access Week is celebrated every year to celebrate and champion open access resources. If you’re unfamiliar with open access resources, check out this blog post from 2023 that gives a history of Open Access Week, and defines open access.Many open access resources are text based, such as open access journals, textbooks, and books. Publishing through an open-access model gives authors more control over their work, and allows more readers to find, and engage with their materials. In academia, open access resources can be great resources for students, as there is no cost barrier to accessing the materials. (If you’re a professor at Loras and interested in using an open educational resources, check out this page. If you’re interested in creating an open educational resource, check out this page)Open-access resources cover more than just text-based materials. Images can also be open access, often through a Creative Commons license, which allows the creator to still retain some rights over their intellectual property, while also allowing others to use it freely. (Interested in learning more about creative commons licenses? Click here for general info!) Creative Commons zero, or CC0, is a license that allows free use, reuse, and remixing of items. Many of the largest museums in the world have begun the process of making items in their collection that are in the public domain available under CC0, which means you can freely make use of those items. You can alter CC0 artwork, use it in your own works of art, sell copies of it, do whatever you’d like with it. (It’s important to check that the item you’re using is in the public domain, and what the license on that item is.) This can be a great way to decorate your home inexpensively, or to add to assignments that need artwork in the public domain. Here’s some of the most prominent museums with open access collections: The Met The Smithsonian The National Gallery of Art The Art Institute of Chicago The Cleveland Museum of ArtThanks to these images being shared under CC0, there are many websites that do creative things with open access artwork. This site is a clock that uses art from the Smithsonian’s open access collections to tell the time. This website, from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum (part of the Smithsonian) has you write on the left side, as it pulls images from the Smithsonian that contain similar words and displays them on the right. The Cleveland Museum of Art lets you view many items in their collection in 3-D, such as this suit of armor for a knight and his charger, or this Hittite statue.For more information, check out our Open Access display on the fourth floor of the library....

Peace and Justice Week

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