March 17th marks St. Patrick’s Day, a celebration of Irish culture that is often celebrated around the world. We’ve updated our Library Leisure libguide with new recipes (traditional Irish stews!), sections on arts and music, and a selection of literature in our collection from Irish authors (and more). For a cozy night in, check out the Irish films in our databases for a study break!
By popular request, the University of Regina Library is offering four additional student workshops in March. The sessions will be open to all students of any program.
Library Zoom At Noon Workshops:
Discover YoUR Library
· Discover tips and tricks when searching for research assignment sources.
It is global Open Education week! March 7-11 celebrates the developing movement and community of shared and open educational resources like open textbooks, journals, creative commons licensing, and much more. Information about OE Week can be found here: https://oeweek.oeglobal.org/
This week two online sessions are being offered at the University of Regina:
1) TODAY – Open Pedagogy discussion: Decolonization and Justice, Tuesday March 8, from 11:00 – 12:30 pm.
2) University of Regina OER by Subject Directory, Thursday March 10, from 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Stay tuned for two more Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons Licensing sessions coming up later in March.
You’re also welcome to check out some of the University of Regina Library and Open Textbook resources:
Our last Archer Book Club meeting for the semester with the “Memoirs and Storytelling” theme will be March 23, 2022 at 12pm, discussing Gather by Richard Van Camp
February 20-26, 2022 marks Freedom To Read week in Canada! Examining everything from challenged publications to censorship, Freedom To Read week is an opportunity to discuss access to information, controversial literature (and why it is so), and much more. Check out our updated Freedom To Read library guide tab, our general Fake News library guide (updated regularly), and the Freedom To Read website below.
We asked our librarians to share their research and reading recommendations for Black History Month and they responded with a wealth of information.
Kate Cushon, our librarian for business administration, English, and theatre, recommended the following databases/websites:
Black Drama – scripts of plays by Black playwrights.
Black Thought and Culture – “I use this less for purely literary studies, and more for when students/researchers are pursuing projects that are looking at primary resources. It has a really nice user-friendly Browse feature that would make it a wonderful resource for people to explore the content outside of a research perspective.”
Hello and welcome to this blog! Every month we’ll be exploring data in everyday life. I know that’s exactly what I said in the title, but introductions are tough, so bear with me. You may be wondering, what is data in everyday life and what do we need to explore? Well, we live in a data driven world where we consume and create data, which influences our lives in obvious and not so obvious ways. We’re all aware of how our phones collect our data and that websites will use cookies to collect data. We also see data constantly in news and social media, especially now given current world events.
We tend to view data, especially statistics and graphs, as neutral and factual. After all, they’re created using math. Math doesn’t lie. What we need to do is shift our perspectives on statistics, graphs, and other visualizations. We need to remember that yes, it’s purely math and numbers, but it’s a human hand guiding the analysis. A good analogy to consider is the one Dr. Joel Best uses: data is a diamond. It starts off as an ugly rock and its human hands that shape it into a beautiful jewel. That’s what we’re going to look at in this blog, we’re going to explore the human hands collecting, shaping, and publishing data. We’re also going to look at the human interpretation of data that’s been published and how it shapes our lives.
With that in mind, let’s explore one small sliver of data influencing our lives. February is Black History Month and while we explore, reflect, and celebrate Black History in Canada, we should also reflect on the experiences of Black people past and present. While we learn about horrifically racist polices and actions that occurred in the past, we need to realize that systematic racism still exists, and we have the data to prove it. For example, historic systematic racism included the practice of redlining, which is loosely defined as a series of race-based exclusionary tactics in real estate. While there is more documentation and literature out of the United States, there are historic examples from Canada including Africville, Nova Scotia and Hamilton, Ontario. In Canada, housing discrimination is illegal, so in theory redlining can no longer occur. However, AI redlining can and does still occur. In 2016, Propublica, revealed that Facebook advertising allowed realtors to target audience by ethnicity. A year later, they reported that despite the creation of policies to stop targeted advertising by ethnicity, ads were still being approved that would be considered housing discrimination. It 2019, the policies were finally enforced when Facebook reached a settlement with American civil rights organizations. These changes are promising, but the nature of AI data collection is still racially biased and requires more advocacy in areas such as housing, hiring, and healthcare.
So that’s a little sample of what we’ll be exploring in this blog. At times, we may be deep diving into heavy topics, but they will be some lighter topics too! I hope you’ll come back next month when we look at surveys, polls, and who is counted.
Whether you are looking for a new romantic film, recipes for sweet treats, or classic love stories, check out our Leisure Guide page for St. Valentine’s Day for books, movies and more!
