Author Archives: Christopher Garron

Claire T. Carney Library celebrates Black and African American History Month

The Claire T. Carney Library celebrates Black and African American History Month. We honor a past filled with achievements and boundary-breaking while acknowledging that these boundaries were put in place by our nation’s forefathers and elected officials. We celebrate Black excellence, past, present, and future, knowing that there is more work to be done.

As a library, tangible action often takes the form of the information we choose to highlight. Below you’ll find links to a selection of library resources by Black authors and scholars.


“Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.” – Frances Wright

The Claire T. Carney library is open to faculty, staff, and students. Our print book Black History Month display is located near the library entrance and includes:

Films

Books

Access even more books with a BPL eCard or via your public library:

African American Memory and Experience

African American Memory and Experience, the current book exhibit in the library lobby, features compelling expressions of the Black Experience through memoirs, biographies and arts of modern African Americans.  Stories and images of individuals and society graphically portray suffering, grief and success in the struggle against racism.  We encourage everyone to borrow, read and share these words at the UMass Dartmouth Annual African American Read-In on February 13.

Reference Services Relocation Announcement

Research/reference help will be provided in library room 233 for the Spring 2020 semester instead of at the service desk in the first floor Learning Commons area. Students, faculty and community members can drop in for general consultations or even quick questions during business hours (M-F, 9-5). As always, during that time librarians are available by email, telephone, text and chat. We continue to offer research help by appointment with subject specialists. This will allow multiple people to be helped at once and provide more consistent availability of librarians. We’ll be a little harder to find on the second floor but hope to serve people more efficiently.

There will be flyers and signs available to point people in the right direction, which is in the hallway between computer lab 225 and the Office of Faculty Development. Please visit us with your research needs, or reach us by:

Claire T. Carney Library End of Semester Announcement

The Claire T. Carney Library will open 24/7 hours starting at 7:30 AM December 2 (Monday) up to our 9:00 PM closing time on December 13 (Friday). Please note: you will need your UMass Pass to enter the building after 10:00PM and until regular opening hours the next day. Please see our online calendar if you have any questions.

You will find a variety of study spaces to choose from including our quiet study areas in the South Reading Room and Grand Reading Room (when no events are scheduled), several group study rooms available by reservation, and many individual and group study areas throughout the building. Check our computer labs (128, 225 and 226) for extra seating during peak hours.

The Circulation Desk will be open, so laptops and other equipment will be available throughout the night.

Please be mindful that we will be close to seating capacity. If you are at a group table and not expecting additional team members, please use our Open/Taken table tents to offer seats to others.

We encourage everyone to be respectful of other students by being aware of noise levels.

If you have any questions or need assistance please contact our staff either at the Circulation/Reserve desk (x8750) or the Learning Commons desk (x8884).

We wish you all the best with your exams!

Sci Fi Book Club to discuss On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

The Science Fiction Book Club’s last comic of the summer is On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. This book has everything: space, ancient architecture, fish, teen boarding school drama, love, sports, and more. Walden started writing it as “a version of outer space that [she] would want to live in” and ended up with a 544-page epic comic.

Walden is perhaps best known for her Eisner award winning memoir Spinning. After Spinning was released, she worked on what she was calling “Space Book,” which later became On a Sunbeam. Much of it was completed while vacationing alone in Japan. She posted each chapter as she finished it online, and once she was done it was published as a print book. You can read it online here (the About page has a lot of good info about its creation!). So far, it’s been listed as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner and got an excellent review in The New Yorker.

If you’d rather read the physical book, you can find On a Sunbeam here at the Claire T. Carney Library, at your local public library, or through interlibrary loan.

We look forward to chatting with you about On a Sunbeam on Monday, August 12th at 12pm in Library 314.