Tag: bibliodiversity
Celebrating more than 150 years of World Languages at Berkeley
New banners celebrate 150+ years of Berkeley’s prominence in teaching world languages
At least 60 languages — from Mongolian and Old Norse to Polish, Catalan, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic and Biblical Hebrew — are taught at UC Berkeley, one of the nation’s top institutions for the breadth and depth of its world languages program. A growing emphasis also is being placed at Berkeley on revitalizing and preserving endangered languages, most of them spoken by Indigenous peoples.
To help honor more than 150 years of global languages at Berkeley, 63 colorful banners will begin flying throughout campus today, and for the next 18 months, that feature facts about the campus’s language programs, as well as 21 bilingual and multilingual faculty members, students and alumni.
Among the messages on the banners:
- Collectively, undergraduates at UC Berkeley speak more than 220 different first languages.
- More than 500 language learning classes are taught at Berkeley annually.
- More than 6,000 Berkeley students enroll in those classes each year.
- In 1872, the first endowed chair in the UC system was created — for the study of East Asian languages at Berkeley.
- Students at all UC campuses can take online African language classes at Berkeley, which is well-known for Amharic, Igbo and Swahili instruction.
Reposted from Berkeley Letters & Science 10/25/23
See also: https://artshumanities.berkeley.edu/celebration-world-languages-uc-berkeley
Celebrate print and more this Bibliodiversity Day!
Bibliodiversity Day was created in 2010 by Latin American publisher members of the International Alliance of Independent Publishers, a professional collective that brings together more than 800 independent publishing houses from over 55 countries around the world.
Since then, the event has taken place every year, especially in Latin America where the term “bibliodiversidad” was first coined. On September 21, the first day of spring for the southern hemisphere, publishers, booksellers, book professionals and readers are invited to celebrate independent publishing and bibliodiversity.
Bibliodiversity is the response to the huge imbalance in the publishing market, where commercial logic vastly prevails over intellectual adventurousness, characteristic of small, independent, or unconventional publishers. For academic libraries, the imbalance between commercial and independent publishers is further exacerbated by institutional preferences for digital over print. Faced with the continued prevalence of print publishing in most regions of the world (including Europe), the spectrum of viewpoints collected and preserved by academic libraries risks becoming impoverished without the conscious intervention of librarians and book dealers in charge of such curatorial decisions.
With that here are a few recent acquisitions to showcase from the Romance languages collection on this day of bibliodiversity:
Atzeni, Paola. Corpi, gesti, stili : saper fare e saper vivere di donne eccellenti nella Sardegna rurale. Nuoro: Illisso, 2022.
Ayroles, François. En terrasse. Paris: L’Association, 2019.
Bekri, Tahar. Chants pour la Tunisie. Neuilly-sur-Seine: Al Manar, 2023.
Cruanyes Plana, Toni. La Vall de la Llum. Barcelona: Destino, 2022.
Dumas, Catherine. Salette Tavares, Obra Poética 1957-1992. Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 2022.
Hernando, Almudena. La corriente de la historia : (y la contradicción de lo que somos). Primera edición. Madrid: Traficantes de sueños, 2022.
Junyent, M. Carme. El futur del català depèn de tu. Barcelona: La Campana, 2022.
Kanapé Fontaine, Natasha. Nauetakuan. [New edition]. La Roche-sur-Yon: Dépaysage, 2023.
Sánchez Soler, Mariano. Una hojarasca de cadáveres : crónica criminal de la España posfranquista. Primera edición. Barcelona: Alrevés, 2023.
Lugassy, Maurice. Les Justes en Occitanie : cette page de lumière dans la nuit de la Shoah. Toulouse: Privat, 2023.
Mak-Bouchard, Olivier. La ballade du feu. Paris: Le Tripode, 2023.
María, Daniel. Bisutería auténtica. Barcelona: Egales, 2023.
Migneco, Giulia. Donne e antimafia. Ed. Valeria Scafetta. Padua: BeccoGiallo, 2022.
Ondjaki. Vou mudar a cozinha : contos. 1a edição. Alfragide – Portugal: Caminho, 2022.
El Moumni, Salma. Adieu Tanger : roman. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2023.
Previtali, Enrico, Elena Ravera, and Stefano Rozzoni, eds. “Nuovi fascismi e nuove resistenze : percorsi e prospettive nella cultura contemporanea.” Ospedaletto (Pisa): Pacini editore, 2022.
Scotti Morgana, Silvia, ed. La letteratura dialettale milanese : autori e testi. Roma: Salerno editrice, 2022.
Sonko, Seynabou. Djinns : roman. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2023.
And remember, new acquisitions lists are running again for print titles in French, Italian, and Iberian Studies. Check them out!
LAUC-B Resolution on the Importance of Diversity in Collections
Last month, the Executive Committee of the Librarians Association of the University of California, Berkeley (LAUC-B) unanimously endorsed a resolution written by its Committee on Diversity stressing the importance of the continued acquisition of print materials during the pandemic and beyond. The statement reflected on temporary changes to the UC Berkeley Library’s collection development policies and the lasting impact they might have. LAUC-B chair Ramona Collins wrote in an email, “[. . .] the focus on acquiring more digital and fewer print resources can lead to further suppression of already underrepresented voices, topics and geographical areas.”
Faced with the prevalence of print publications from the Global South, East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Eurasia, the spectrum of viewpoints collected and preserved by academic libraries risks becoming impoverished. “Strong and diverse collections like Berkeley’s inspire and allow researchers to immerse themselves in cutting-edge discovery and teaching,” reads the statement, “but what happens when the acquisition of diverse resources becomes vulnerable to reduced funding or reprioritization?”
Aligned with the Library’s efforts to build and provide access to collections that help scholars work against racism and discrimination, the resolution was also inspired by statements issued in the past year by library organizations such as the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) and others across the academic library community.