Interested in tribal libraries?

If you're interested in tribal libraries, archives and museums, this upcoming semester is a great time for you! LIS 640: Tribal Libraries, Archives and Museums (TLAM) will be offered in Spring 2011 to interested students. This dynamic course will allow SLIS students to learn about indigenous information issues and work with Wisconsin's American Indian communities. If you are interested in the course and associated projects, feel free to attend a public information session, Friday, November 12, 2010 in the SLIS Commons. Eat (free!) pizza, meet your fellow students, and learn about upcoming opportunities regarding TLAM!

Announcing...library workshops online!

The SLIS Library puts a lot of time into presenting workshops for students, but it can be nearly impossible to schedule them for a time when everyone who's interested can attend. We've taken a step towards solving that problem with the introduction of video workshops to the LIS Support forum of Learn@UW. Take a look at SLIS Library Workshops under the Content module, make some popcorn, and hit play.

So far the only workshop available is on social cataloging and LibraryThing for Libraries, but we plan to add more as the year progresses. Keep an eye out!

Race and Storytelling: A Go Big Read book discussion

Can't get enough of this year's Go Big Read selection, Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks? Whether you missed the SLIS discussion group in September or just want a different perspective on the book, next Wednesday is your big chance. Drop in on "Race and Storytelling," a discussion co-facilitated by our own Professor Ethelene Whitmire, from 5:30 to 7 in the Commons. Also leading the group will be Professor of Afro-American Studies Sandra Adell.

Some Friday Fun!

Interested in grant writing?

Not everything that one should know about librarianship can be covered in two years.  One way to help fill the gap is to go to workshops and what not offered by other departments!  We came across one particularly interesting upcoming event, sponsored by ComETS: "Identifying Grants for Professional Development using the UW Libraries' Grants Information Center."  This workshop is scheduled for November 18th from 2PM to 3 PM in Memorial Library Room 231.

This workshop, led by Nancy McClements, head of Memorial Library's Reference department and acting Grants Librarian, will show students how to navigate the UW Libraries Grants Information Collection.  It will be a combination of presentation and hands-on experience, as participants will have the opportunity to dive into some of the grants databases available on campus.

For more information, visit the website for the event:

http://comets.wisc.edu/event/identifying-grants-professional-development-using-uw-libraries’-grants-information-center

Why Do Straight Women Read and Create Boys’ Love Stories?

If you are free this coming Thursday, October 28, from 12-1PM, there will be a presentation in the SLIS Commons that may interest you!  The Print Culture Colloquium is offering a lecture on why straight women read and create boys' love stories, presented by Chi-Shiou Lin,Assistant Professor, Department of Library & Information Science at National Taiwan University. 

From the press release:

 In recent years, Boys’ Love (BL) stories have become a popular genre of pleasure reading among women readers in the Asian countries especially in Japan, China, and Taiwan.  BL stories are love stories of two or more male characters created predominantly by women for women; most of them identified themselves as heterosexual.  This blooming genre of texts, images, and other forms of creation is also known as Danmei (“indulgence in beauty”) in the Chinese and Japanese speaking regions. It is also known as YAOI or “slash fiction” in the Western world.  The genre names of Danmei and YAOI which originated from the Chinese/Japanese languages express a sense that its women readers see love between males as beautiful and romantic.  Interestingly, many BL readers see this genre as different from gay literatures.  For them, BL stories are purely fantasies created by and for women, which is different from literary works that describe and reflect on the real-world homosexual relationships.

Why do the women readers find BL stories beautiful – so beautiful that many are deeply addicted to the genre?  What pleasure do women get from reading and creating BL stories?  Informal theories have been speculated by BL readers themselves or by outsiders who tend to pathologize the phenomenon of BL reading.  But systematic investigation of the BL readership is rarely seen.  This exploratory study thus employs interpretive qualitative methodologies to empirically analyze the reading experiences, motivations, and types of pleasures of 26 adult female readers in Taiwan, aged between 18 years old and 40s.  Their occupations ranged from university students, office workers, teachers and college professors.  Some are married women with children.  Most of them are also engaged in some forms of BL story creation.  In this presentation, I will report initial findings on the motivations and types of pleasures experienced by the interviewees from reading Boys’ Love.

Chi-Shiou Lin is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Library & Information Science in the National Taiwan University.  He got his Ph.D. from SLIS, UW-Madison in 2007.  His research interests are diverse.  His current research areas include social informatics, government information, and the practices of pleasure reading and genre reading.

Supported by the Center for the History of Print Culture, the School of Library and Information Studies, Wisconsin Historical Society, UW-Madison Libraries, and the Wisconsin Print Culture Society.

Rebecca Skloot is visiting UW!

This Monday, October 25, 2010, Rebecca Skloot, author of the Go Big Read pick for this year, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, will be visiting the Kohl Center here on campus to give a lecture about her experiences writing the book, as well as to answer questions submitted by Madison's "Big Read"-ers.  The show starts at 7:00PM, doesn't require tickets, and should be a great experience for anyone who has read the book or has interest in medical ethics surrounding the HeLa cells.  Try to make it out! 

If you can't manage it, but still want to be involved with other Go Big Read activities, visit the events website to check out other opportunities in the next few months!