As part of the Second Monday Author Series, Dr. Bill Morelan will be discussing his book, The Novice Teacher Survival Guide:  How to Avoid Personal Injury and Major Property Damage.  The book was written in a satirical style reminiscent of Dave Barry or Andy Borowitz.  The book is a tongue-in-cheek look at education’s sacred cows.  Morelan wrote it under the pseudonym Justin Case.  

Dr. Morelan is the department head of the Educational Leadership Master’s program at Arkansas Tech.  The program prepares candidates for state licensure as a building-level principal.  

Rescheduled for Monday November 21, at 7pm.  This World War II veteran will be the guest of our November 2022 Second Monday Author Series. Jock Davis is the author of Four Brothers: Reliving the Great Depression and World War II.  The book is Mr. Davis’ personal story of growing up during the Great Depression and then going off to war with all three of his brothers. He had a distinguished military career where he was awarded a combat ribbon with three battle stars for his service in the South Pacific during World War II and the Meritorious Service medal for outstanding service throughout his 37-year military career.  

Davis moved to Russellville in 1946 to attend Arkansas Tech University on the GI Bill.  It was there he met his wife Melba whom he highly talks about in the book.  He received his bachelor’s degree from Tech in 1955 and his master’s degree from the University of Arkansas in 1957.  Davis also had a 55-year career in agricultural business in sales and sales management. In 2006 he was inducted into the Arkansas Tech Alumni Hall of Distinction.  

Mr. Davis will soon be 98 years old.  Come on out and take advantage of this rare opportunity to meet this one-of-a-kind gentleman.  One lucky person will leave with a free signed copy of the book.  For more information contact Luke Heffley at lheffley@atu.edu or 479-964-0546.

Unfortunately, this event will be postponed due to an illness in Mr. Davis’ family.  We will keep you updated on social media as to when he can re-schedule.  We will also let you know if we have another guest author for our series next week. 

The Ross Pendergraft Library & Technology Center will be hosting a series of events called Tech Votes in preparation for the November 8th elections. Earlier this fall the library was part of National Voter Registration Day in order to get voters on campus registered for the big day. The newly formed RSO (registered student organization), Do Something!, worked with Ms. Angela Black, the Interim Library Director, to register 104 people to vote.  

Events this month focus on voter education and discussions with various candidates who are running for different offices in the state of Arkansas.  The first event will feature Pamela Luker from the Pope County Cooperative Extension Office who will discuss the ballot four ballot issues as follows:

1. Authority to call special legislative sessions
2. 60% of voter approval for new constitutional amendments
3. Religious freedom amendment
4. Adult use cannabis amendment

This will take place in room 300A  on Thursday, October 13 at 6:00 PM followed at 7:00 PM by Michael Kalagias, the Libertarian Candidate for the 3rd District of the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Monday, October 17 at 3:00 PM Anna Beth Gorman, a candidate for Secretary of State will meet in room 300B.   

Thursday, October 20 at 5:00 PM the Libertarian Candidate for Arkansas Governor, Ricky Dale Harrington, Jr. will be here to talk about his platform and answer questions.  

Friday, October 28 at 5:00 PM Tech Votes will welcome Chris Jones, the Democrat Candidate for Arkansas Governor. 

The gubernatorial candidates are part of a series from the American Association of University Professors and is co-sponsored by the library.  They will both meet in 300A.  

Refreshments will be served at all Tech Votes events.  We hope to see you there.  All programs are free and open to the public.  

Mr. Ken Teutsch will be the featured speaker on September 12th at 7:00 pm for the Second Monday Author Series in the Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center. The event will take place in room 300B.  Ken is the Multimedia Coordinator for Online Programs at Arkansas Tech and has been at the university for almost nine years.  He will be discussing his recently published novella, S-10 to Valhalla, among other works. Mr. Teutsch will also share tales of his winding path from street entertainer and stand-up comedian via radio and television to having numerous short stories published in magazines and anthologies, along with award-winning stage and screenplays.

The presentation entitled, “Is He Serious?” will also include tales about his comedy alter-ego, Rudy Terwilliger, an emerging country music almost-superstar, who has been breaking into the music business for the past forty years!

There will be a free drawing for a copy of the book and also signed copies available for purchase that evening.

For more information about this event or the Second Monday Author Series, contact Luke Heffley at (479) 964-0546 or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to stay in the loop on all Library events.

Welcome back to campus! The library will be hosting workshops to introduce you to the vast online library resources specifically to undergraduate students.  You will learn how to find different types of sources using Find it, such as books, dvds, and scholarly articles.  You will discover research guides and specific databases for use in your major field of study.   The Undergraduate Workshops will be offered at two different times:

Tuesday, August 30, 2022, 3:30-4pm & Wednesday, August 31, 2022, 4-4:30pm  

Register using the QR code to the left for Undergraduate Workshops or follow this link. 

There will be a workshop for graduate students as well.  This workshop will feature using subject-specific databases and using RefWorks.  RefWorks is a research management tool that is free for you to use.  You can easily organize articles and create a Reference page.  The graduate workshop will be offered:

Monday, August 29, 2022, 5pm-5:30pm

Register for Graduate Workshop using the QR code at the right or follow this link. 

New York Times photo by Michael Evans (29 June 1970).

Today Pride Month is a month-long celebration of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transexual, Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) people. There are many activities across the country and the globe that bring awareness of the LGBTQ+ triumphs and struggles.  The first Gay Pride  gathering took place on June 28, 1970, with a march led by Gay activist groups in New York City in honor of the Stonewall Uprising of the previous June in Manhattan.  The uprising at Stonewall Inn occurred when the police raided the well-known Gay bar and encountered resistence.  These riots went on for six consecutive nights.  These marches or parades continued to be an annual event until it finally evolved into a month-long celebration. 

Check out our display case for books regarding current issues within the LGBTQ+ community.  There’s also a display of fiction and memoir on the table near the elevators.  For more New York Times articles use the A-Z Databases on the homepage to access the New York Times with Index database.  There you will find primary sources about many more historic moments in Pride history.  

It’s that time of the semester again.  Finals!  The library will be open overnight Wednesday & Thursday, April 27 & 28, 2022 for finals. It will be open from 7AM on Reading Day all the way through 9PM on Friday, April 29. Coffee will be served at midnight. Check out our new official “break room”.  RPL 300A will be a student space to relax, de-stress, and re-charge.

The Break Room will be open for students to chill out between 11PM & 7AM. The coffee will be served in there along with some light snacks. There will be games, puzzles, and coloring available while back-to-back episodes of “The Office” play on the big screen. 

Don’t forget to book your study room now if you are planning on using one.  They fill up fast during finals. You can reserve your own study room at bookit.atu.edu

Take care of yourself through these stressful times.  Eat healthy, get enough sleep, and pace yourself.  You can do it.  

After a two-year hiatus from the popular program, the 2nd Monday Author Series is back. Join us Monday, April 11, 2022, at 7pm in room 300A at the Ross Pendergraft Library & Technology Center. We are happy to have Eli Cranor, a Russellville native, and resident, as our guest speaker. He will be discussing his new book, Don’t Know Tough, his first novel.  The book was chosen out of over 200 nationwide submissions as the winner of the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest.  There will be signed copies of the book available for purchase that evening. 

“Friday Night Lights gone dark with Southern Gothic; Eli Cranor delivers a powerful noir that will appeal to fans of Wiley Cash and Megan Abbott.” from Penguin Random House.

The book is about Trent Powers who relocates his family from Anaheim to Arkansas to coach the Denton Pirates. The Pirates are a high school football team powered by a volatile but talented running back named Billy Lowe. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his unstable mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, and it’s not long before he crosses a line. Instead of punishing him, though, Trent takes Billy into his home, hoping to protect his star player as the Pirates begin their playoff run. But when Billy’s stepfather is found murdered, nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the town apart– from the publisher, Soho Crime. 

Photo credit – Andrew Kilgore

About the Author: “Eli Cranor played quarterback at every level: peewee to professional, and then coached high school football for five years. These days, he’s traded in the pigskin for a laptop, writing from Arkansas where he lives with his wife and kids. ” http://elicranor.com

For more information about this event or the Second Monday Author series, contact Luke Heffley at (479) 964-0546 or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to stay in the loop on all Library events.

This event will be streamed live.  Use this link to join us. https://atu.webex.com/atu/j.php?MTID=mded64510dd7cea6fe7513b8a2f9ca5f5

Tonight kicks off the 7th International Film Festival presented by the Ross Pendergraft Library and the English and World Languages Department. The film is Undine (2020), a German film with English subtitles, about a historian lecturing on the urban development of Berlin who is faced with an unpleasant situation with the one she loves (IMDB).  The film will be shown at the Doc Bryan Auditorium at 7:00 pm.

The purpose of the festival is to offer a glimpse into other cultures and ways of life, to foster an open-minded global cultural identity, to enjoy talented actors and directors from around the world, and to extend sociology, anthropology, and language courses.  The festival was created by  Dr. Lowell Lybager and Philippe VanHoutte librarians at the Ross Pendergraft Library.  Since then it has been supported by members of the English and World Languages Department and organized this year with the help of Dr. Nelson Ramirez.  Title selections were made by the faculty of World Languages. 

The festival includes 8 films, 7 languages, and 3 weeks of viewing pleasure.  A sample of upcoming screenings include the 1954 Japanese language version of Godzilla and the wildly popular Spirited Away (2001). Other languages featured are French and Spanish. For a full schedule and information about all the films go to http://filmfest.atu.edu

This event is part of Tech’s On Track program as part of the Global Focus track.  All films are free and open to the public and will be shown at the Doc Bryan Auditorium.  

The Ross Pendergraft Library and the Social Movements class are working together to bring a Human Library to Tech. This is happening at the library in room 300B on Thursday, November 4, 2021. This will be the fifth Human Library to take place here since 2015.  Our inaugural event included one of the first Black students at Arkansas Tech, Barbara Lackey. Zach Stone who titled his book Zach the Deaf Trans and Bshaer Ahalrazi, an international student who lives with physical challenges, were also “books” at the first human library at Tech. 

You may be wondering what a Human Library is. It is an event where the “books” are people. People who have defied stereotyping. People that you may not get to meet and talk to every day.  The “readers” are the people like you who attend the event and “check out” a book. The book then talks about their unique experiences in life as part of a subculture or marginalized community.  There is time at the end of the session for the reader to ask questions.  The purpose of holding this event is to promote inclusion by getting people, that may not ordinarily sit down together, to talk in a safe environment.  The Human Library provides a place for open conversations about sometimes difficult subjects. 

The very first Human Library or “Menneskebiblioteket” as it is called in Danish, was held at a festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. After the success of the first event one of the founders, Ronni Abergel, realized the potential of such a feat and subsequently formed the Human Library Organization (HLO).  The non-profit organization lends its name and provides guidance to other groups interested in hosting a program. Over the last 19 years, Human Libraries have taken place in 85 countries and 6 continents.  We are honored to be part of such a positive experience. 

Stop by and check out a book.  This event is FREE and open to the public.