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#LibraryNews

04/29/2024
profile-icon Mary Anderson

A collage of children's booksThis fall the Library received a grant from the Fr. Ray Herman Peace & Justice Center to purchase juvenile literature for our PreKindergarten-12th grade collection in order to update it and better reflect the diversity of today’s students with respect to ability, ethnicity, culture, body type, religion, aging, socioeconomic status, and gender and sexuality.

Our PK12 collection is available to all members of the community but is especially used by students in EDU 280: Literature for Children & Young Adults. This course includes participation in the Reading Buddies Program, where students in the course read to pre-K through fifth grade students. The success of this program requires that the college students find books that are grade-level appropriate and interesting to their buddies.

Additionally, these books need to reflect the diversity of our communities. Representation is foundational to student development. Students from marginalized communities can find their experiences represented in books and thus know they are not alone and that they are worthy. For other students, books featuring diverse people and situations can foster empathy for those who may not have the same experiences.

This same need for representation is also crucial for Loras students. While our collection is designated as spanning kindergarten through twelfth grade, young adult literature continues to be appealing to undergraduates. Like younger young adults, our students are in a time of development and evolution, in search of identity, as they grow into full adulthood. They too must be able to see themselves in the books they read.

Unfortunately, we are in a time where there is an unprecedented number of challenges being made against young adult books, calling for their removal from school and public libraries. These challenges have focused especially on books by or about people of color or members of the LGBTQ+ community. More and more, our students may come to Loras not having exposure and access to a diverse collection of young adult literature.

With the Peace and Justice grant we were able to purchase 125 books – 75 picture, 19 middle reader, and 31 young adult – to add to our existing PK12 collection. You can find many of them on the displays on the first and third floors of the Library. Check one out today!

No Subjects
04/22/2024
profile-icon Kristen Smith

You may have read in this blog about several of Loras's talented haiku writers and scholars.

This National Poetry Month, the Loras College Library is pleased to announce that we have acquired two collections from local haiku poets and are joining them with the Roseliep Collection to form a new Haiku Collection. This collection will focus on the works of local and Loras affiliated haikuists to highlight these areas influence on this artform.

Loras College has a strong claim to consider itself an early hub of haiku in English. Father Raymond Roseliep, English professor at Loras College from 1946 to 1966 and a poet of some renown, began to write and publish in the haiku form in the 1960s. When Roseliep passed away in 1983, he left his physical collections to the Loras College Library, and the library director also acts as his literary executor. Read more about Father Raymond Roseliep.

Roseliep's influence among his friends and students at Loras College means that Dubuque is a hub of several subsequent talented haikuists. We have recently added significant haiku material from Bill Pauly's collection. Bill was a student of Roseliep's at Loras, and went on to write and publish award-winning haiku, and teach haiku at Loras to the next generation of writers. We are also making accessible a donation of material from haikuist Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg, who was a friend and accolyte of Father Raymond. We considered that together these items could be the seed of a strong foundational collection of haiku material.

The Haiku Collection is separate from but related to the Roseliep Collection and the Loras College faculty publications collection. The goal of the new collection is to highlight the important contributions that members of the Dubuque community have made to the advancement of Haiku in the US.

No Subjects
04/15/2024
profile-icon Mary Anderson

Take Back the Night LogoTake Back the Night is a global movement with the mission of ending sexual violence in all forms. Its roots may date back to 1877 when a group of women in London protested the fear and violence they encountered walking the streets at night. Others assert the first rally was in 1976 when women attending the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Belgium held a candlelight march to protest violence against women. One of the earliest marches in the United States was in Philadelphia in 1975, after the murder Susan Alexander Speeth; she was stabbed to death while walking home alone at night. Whatever the origin, this movement has grown into a symbol of solidarity and resistance against all forms of sexual assault.

The events typically consist of three main parts – a rally, a walk, and a speak-out – though some events may include music and poetry and others may replace the walk with a run, biking, or even yoga. The rally is a time to hear from survivors, experts, and activists about sexual violence and their views on Take Back the Night. The march provides an opportunity to come together against sexual violence, exchanging messages of hope and empowerment. During the speak-out survivors share their stories as a way to help them to transition from victim to survivor. This often is the heart of the event and time for vulnerability, care, and healing.

In the beginning Take Back the Night events were often deliberately women-only. This was intended to create a safe place for women. It also demonstrated that together women can unite to resist fear and violence. Today it is typical for marches to include men both as allies and as victims of sexual assault. Over half of women and almost a third men in the United States will experience sexual violence during their lifetimes.