Programming Librarian: Brainstormer

The mass appeal of many fiction best-sellers seems to come from the combination of mythic characters and realistic, historically identifiable settings. These five novels, published between 1852 and 1971, are united not only by their reliance on a sense of place but also by the similarity of their myth making.

Manifesto, history, and fiction collide in this series to present a multi-layered view of the condition of Native Americans. Eye-opening and thought-provoking, this series will teach you more about Native Americans than you ever learned in school.

This series examines Christopher Columbus and his effects on history from a variety of genres and viewpoints: cultural, historical, fictional, and satirical.

“Rebirth of a Nation” brings to life the issues, the events, and the personalities that divided a nation and led the North and South through war to reconciliation. Through reading and discussion, we have an opportunity to experience the Civil War, to debate and judge for ourselves the merits of the principles the Union and Confederacy fought for so bitterly, and to increase our understanding of the forces that finally bound the nation together.

The selected works in this series tell the story of the significance of both solitary and communal moments of reflection and transformation. Careful examination of these pieces advances the perspective that the lessons of freedom have been reborn throughout African American history and that those lessons have served to nourish each succeeding challenge.

Images from the Picturing America collection celebrate scenic as well as man-made wonders—those carved by the forces of nature and those crafted by human ingenuity. Some also suggest the ways in which human experience is shaped, even defined, by place.

Images from the Picturing America collection present Native American art from pre-historic Anasazi pottery, through nineteenth-century ledger art, to the pottery and basketry of the early twentieth century. Art created by non-Natives depicting Indian imagery are also included and give rise to a tension often expressed by Native American writers: how do we become the artists rather than the object of the art?

The images in Picturing America suggest ways in which the railway transformed the American landscape and helped determine where settlements and industry would develop.

The images drawn from the Picturing America collection as well as the books selected for the Land of Opportunity series explore the extent to which we have fulfilled the promise of America.

This series explores the diversity within the writings of those whose linguistic and cultural heritage stems from Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other Spanish-speaking Central and South American countries.