We full-time staffers here at the library believe it’s a great place to work. We enjoy being around books and having access to the world’s knowledge, and it’s immensely gratifying to help connect our users to the information they need. We’re proud of this vocation. But we couldn’t do it alone, not by a long shot. In fact, the library employs almost as many student workers as full-time staff! In some years, even more. We rely on students to process interlibrary loan requests, assist in keeping the university’s archives well organized, check materials in and out at the circulation desk (especial ..read more

Where do we start? As you embark on your research journey, whether for a class paper, a senior thesis, or an independent project, navigating the vast sea of scholarly publications can feel overwhelming. Identifying the most relevant and impactful research often involves tedious citation chaining and sifting through mountains of potentially irrelevant articles. My name is Dennis Donathan and as a STEM Librarian, I recognize the challenges of research. I am excited to introduce you to a valuable tool that can make your research process more efficient: ResearchRabbit. ResearchRabbit is a free on ..read more

Before there was Black History Month, there was Negro History Week. On February 7, 1926, Carter G. Woodson, a history scholar and professor, launched the first Negro History Week in February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Woodson’s parents were former slaves and illiterate, and he spent most of his youth working on a farm or in the coal mines in West Virginia. He was mostly self-taught and entered high school at age 20. Woodson went on to graduate from Berea College in Kentucky, earn a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and become the sec ..read more

“Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.” – Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (1913) December 7th marks the 150th anniversary of Willa Cather’s birth. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer is best remembered for her novels about life on the American plains, including O Pioneers!, Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia.  Coates Library Special Collections & Archives is home to an extensive collecti ..read more

Conmemorando a la Comunidad: Latinx Experiences at Trinity University is a digital humanities project created during the summer of 2023 as a partnership between The Mexico, the Americas, and Spain (MAS) program and the University Archives. Research grants were awarded for two students and mentorship through the Mellon Initiative and Murchison Research Fellowship. The research team consists of Dr. Dania Abreu-Torres, Director of the MAS program and professor in Modern Languages; Abra Schnur, University Archivist; and students Lee Denney and Seb Mora. The purpose of the project is to design a s ..read more

In celebration of American Archives Month the San Antonio Regional Archivists (SARA) is hosting the first-ever San Antonio Archives Bazaar.  The event will take place on Saturday, October 7th, 2023 from 10 AM-2 PM, at Brick in the Blue Star Arts Complex. The archives bazaar is a free event open to the public, designed to showcase dozens of diverse archival collections from all over the San Antonio region. Over 20 archival repositories have signed up to exhibit materials.  To see a complete list visit the exhibitors section of the website. The event is sponsored in part by Humanities ..read more

Welcome back Trinity community!  As you walk through Starbucks you’ll notice three new posters highlighting some of the great research our Trinity faculty and students have published recently. Librarian Anne Graf had an opportunity to ask Dr. Victoria Aarons, O.R. & Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature, about her new book Memory Spaces: Visualizing Identity in Jewish Women’s Graphic Narratives. Here is what they discussed:  What drew you to the work that would become your new book, Memory Spaces: Visualizing Identity in Jewish Women’s Graphic Narratives? T ..read more

Are you one of the millions of people who fall in love with language learning each year? What resources do you use? If you’re enrolled in a language class, no doubt you use a textbook of some sort, and probably a pocket dictionary. And of course, nowadays there are hundreds of apps to help with grammar, vocabulary, and even full-text translation. But how do you improve your listening comprehension in a way that’s both helpful and entertaining? Thankfully the “language lab” days of listening to dust-covered cassettes with cringey dialogues are gone, but what has replaced that act ..read more

OK, why did I post a big still image from Fritz Lang’s 1927 film masterpiece Metropolis at the top of this article marking Public Domain Day 2023? Well, because now I CAN, without fearing accusations of copyright infringement or threats of a lawsuit. Metropolis entered the public domain on January 1st, 2023. That means that all copyright protections on the film have expired, without the possibility of renewal or extension. The work can be freely excerpted, publicly screened, digitized, or otherwise reformatted, reproduced, and sold commercially, or used as the basis of derivative wor ..read more

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