UH Maui College Library

Ellen & friends celebrate freedom to read during Banned Book Week


Walter the Farting Dog, Ellen the Librarian, & Cap'n Underpants

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States. Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.

Hawai‘i Family Portraits

On Wednesday, September 29th from 12 to 2 PM, the UH Maui College Library will host the opening reception for a the traveling photography exhibit: Hawai‘i Family Portraits.

Hawai‘i Family Portraits will be on display in the Library for public viewing, from September 20 through October 15, during Library hours (M-Th: 8am-6pm, Friday: 10am-4pm, closed weekends).

Hawai‘i Family Portraits is a project by the Equality Hawai‘i Foundation (with support from The Gill Foundation and Hawai‘i People's Fund) that invites viewers to take a journey with some of Hawai‘i’s families ... sharing their joys, tears, tragedies and triumphs as they negotiate life in The Aloha State.

The families in these photographs are unique. Daily, they face discrimination, denial of rights, rejection and persecution because of who they are or who they love.

They are parents of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (GLBT) children. They are GLBT parents themselves, raising beautiful, vibrant children. They are GLBT couples, simply trying to build lives together. They are individuals, some abandoned or misunderstood by their biological families, finding safety and love with a chosen, extended ’ohana.

Although very different in their composition and experiences, these families are bound by a common thread ... a unifying sense of love, devotion and commitment that conquers all challenges.

Captured through the lens of professional photographer Mike Ang, these family portraits expand community’s definition of family ... an expansion that embraces, nurtures and celebrates all families in our state of Aloha.

The Hawai‘i Family Portraits display is presented at the UH Maui Library in conjunction with National Constitution Month. These portraits are being displayed alongside books and media that bring awareness to the contemporary issues surrounding constitutional rights.

For additional information about the exhibit at UH Maui College Library, please contact librarian Ellen Peterson.

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New Databases

The UHMC Library has two new databases for use by students and faculty.

PsychInfo

The PsycINFO , database, American Psychological Association’s (APA) renowned resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains approximately 3 million citations and summaries dating as far back as the 1600s with DOIs for over 1.4 million records. Journal coverage, which spans from the 1800s to present, includes international material selected from around 2,400 periodicals in dozens of languages.

Communication & Mass Media Complete

Communication & Mass Media Complete provides the most robust, quality research solution in areas related to communication and mass media. CMMC incorporates the content of CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource of unprecedented scope and depth encompassing the breadth of the communication discipline. CMMC offers cover-to-cover (“core”) indexing and abstracts for more than 550 journals, and selected (“priority”) coverage of nearly 200 more, for a combined coverage of 737 titles. Furthermore, this database includes full text for over 440 journals.