Category: Newsletters

The City Tech Library is commemorating the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a landmark piece of legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.  The act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965. The primary purpose was to eliminate state and local laws that prevented large numbers of African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote.  
The impact of the act was immediate and sharply increased the number of registered African American voters.  The political impact was so far reaching that even the Democratic and Republican parties became realigned. After the act was signed racial minorities tended to vote for liberal democratic candidates and many southern white conservatives changed their party affiliation to Republican.  The parties began to polarize with the Democratic party becoming more liberal and the Republican party becoming more conservative.
It is important recognize this act in our contemporary society, as the Supreme Court rescinded a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 in a contentious 5-4 decision.  The court struck down a requirement that if any of 9 southern states were to change their election laws, that they would first need federal approval.  The court determined that there were no longer adequate barriers to African Americans voting in those states to justify the law.  Shortly after this provision regulating local election laws was deemed unconstitutional a flurry of new laws were created and district maps redrawn.
The importance of the 1965 Voting Rights Act can not be understated.  It enfranchised millions of people and these voices changed the political landscape. Even if key provisions have been struck down, it has forever influenced our society.

Did you know that Prof. Rosemarie Reed (English) is a filmmaker? Her films are part of the library’s online film collection, Kanopy. We asked Prof. Reed to tell us more about her career as a filmmaker:
I have made six films for the Public Broadcasting System, better known as PBS.  Two of my films focus on women scientists.  One was the discoverer of nuclear fission, Lise Meitner.  Her discovery in 1938, in Nazi Germany, with Otto Hahn, made it possible for the first atomic bomb to be built.  Because she was a Jew and in exile, she was not given the credit she deserved, costing Meitner the Nobel Prize.  The Path to Nuclear Fission: The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn
Continue reading “Professor Rosemarie Reed, Filmmaker”

Our Instructional Design Intern, Winter, has been working on improving and updating our library research guides to make them more engaging and user friendly. Here are some of his reflections in response to the central question…
Can we (re)design a LibGuide that’s fun and easy to use?
I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately. I’ve been asking my colleagues this question a lot lately. Heck, I’ve even been asking my friends this question a lot lately –most aren’t aware of the existence of LibGuides. Which is actually, in my opinion, the best sort of feedback –pure, unbiased, and with a beginners mind.
Continue reading “Can we (re)design a LibGuide that’s fun and easy to use?”

Academic Works, our institutional repository, has been growing in leaps and bounds. Let’s take a look at the numbers:

What is the most popular item in Publications and Research? Scholarly Monographs on Rock Music: A Bibliographic Essay (Monica Berger) has been downloaded 528 times.
Please consider contributing to Academic Works. You’ll be read more and cited more. Better yet, you’ll be doing the right thing by sharing your scholarship with the broadest possible audience: the world!