I'm the Literatues & Cultures Librarian at Middlebury College. I am the liaison the Anderson Freeman (multicultural student) Center, the Arabic department, the French department, the Gender Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS Program), the Language Schools, Linguistics and the Spanish & Portuguese departments
Dear Community Library Users and Fans of our Foreign Language DVD Collection:
This note is to inform you that starting Friday, May 31st, 2019, the next foreign language DVD you search for in the stacks may in fact be found in the foreign language browsing collection as we prepare for the Language Schools. Please see the map below and note the circled section on the main level, behind the browsing books collection. A selection of foreign language DVDs will be shelved there under headers that indicate their language, for example “Español.” Not all of the foreign language DVDs will be there as they will not all fit. Also, languages with schools located off campus, like Arabic and Italian, will remain in the regular DVD stacks. So please budget in extra time to seek out what you would like to find and feel free to ask library staff for assistance in locating what you seek.
Find some foreign language DVDs behind the browsing books section on the main level of the Davis Family Library.
Literatures and Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer interviews Madeline “Maddie” Hope, the Assistant Director of Health & Wellness Education, for Mental Health Awareness Month. Visit the Davis Family Library to engage with a thematic display on this topic. Credits go to Dr. Raquel Albarrán of the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies and students Jayla Johnson, Class of 2021, and Myles Maxie, Class of 2022, for the display’s design. Special thanks to Barbara Walter, Kat Cyr, Laura Kearley and Joseph Watson.
Professor Raquel Albarrán, Myles Maxie, Class of 2022, and Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer set up the Mental Health Awareness Month Display in the Davis Family Library lobby.
Katrina Spencer (KS): Hi, who are you? How long have you been here? What do you do on campus?
Maddie Hope (MH): Hi! I’m Maddie Hope. I’ve worked at Middlebury since July of 2018. I am a Health Educator, which means I provide trainings, one-on-one discussions and programs about topics related to health and wellness for students. My areas of focus are mental health, alcohol use and cannabis use. Come visit me in the Health and Wellness Education Office on the second floor of the Service Building. We have a massage chair!
Assistant Director of Health & Wellness Education Maddie Hope provides answers to important questions.
KS: What do you know about the display in the Davis Family Library?
MH: I know the display is focused on decreasing stigma related to discussing mental health challenges and providing different resources that can be accessed for support.
KS: Why is it important to reduce stigma surrounding mental health and illness?
MH: So often when people are struggling with mental health, they are also having a hard time connecting to themselves or others and stigma, or judgment, can make this problem worse. Stigma about mental health and mental illness is often the largest barrier to seeking support and feeling understood. These are two of the most important curative factors for mental health challenges. When we seek to understand the challenges others are facing rather than meeting them with judgment, we pave the way for healing.
KS: What resources are available on campus? To students? Staff? Faculty?
MH: For students, there is the Parton Center for Health and Wellness. Students can choose to speak to a counselor or a health care provider for mental health support. To make an appointment with a counselor, students can call 802-443-5141, or visit their office on the third floor of Centeno House. You can also read about counseling staff on campus at go/counseling/. If students are interested in meeting with a health care provider, they can call 802-443-3290, or visit their office on the first floor of Centeno House to make an appointment.
For staff and faculty, Human Resources provides a confidential service called Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP) which can provide short-term counseling services on a variety of topics and serve as a referral source for more long term services. More information can be found at go/EFAP/ or by inquiring with Human Resources.
KS: Are there any mental health counselors of color? And if not, what can community members do when they are seeking cultural familiarity and competency in their mental health care services?
MH: The Counseling staff at Middlebury is predominantly white-identified, but the counseling center is commiting to actively recruiting counselors of a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
This can certainly be a challenge. Community members have a few options here. It might be valuable to consider beginning an online counseling relationship. It may be helpful to search for a clinician in your home community or in Burlington, VT. Some counselors may be open to meeting completely online, or have a few sessions in person and then offer online appointments.
A few resources for finding a therapist who can provide cultural familiarity include:
A screenshot from the online directory Therapy for Black Girls
KS: Thank you for those resources above. How might the Health and Wellness Education Office and the Libraries collaborate in reducing the stigma surrounding mental health?
MH: Often the library can be a place students experience many overwhelming emotions (e.g. feeling fatigued from studying, experiencing frustration or hopelessness about assignments or workload). I can see some exciting potential to explore having consistent stress management events in the library for students, faculty and staff to enjoy. Providing opportunities to explore strategies to address overwhelming emotions together helps to show support for those who may have a hard time discussing mental health challenges with others.
KS: Brilliant. Thank you for your time. Students, keep a look out for the Health & Wellness Education’s Stressbusters Calendar out May 6th!
Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer poses at the Research Desk, modeling audiobook use with sex columnist Dan Savage’s American Savage.
Audiobooks on OverDrive are digital versions of a book, often a novel, that allow you to listen to a book’s text. Many come in downloadable MP3 format files and are therefore portable on many electronic devices like iPods. Sometimes the authors read their works to you with modest sound effects or other dramatizations of the story or action! Audiobooks can also be found on CDs in the Middlebury College Libraries’ collection. See a thorough listing here.
Why might I want use them?
If it’s hard to find still moments to sit down and open a print work or scroll through an ebook, audiobooks offer a hands-free alternative to the other formats. So, you can carry out household chores, drive, or even exercise while listening to an audiobook.
In terms of what the Middlebury College Libraries holds on OverDrive, just visit go.middlebury.edu/overdrive for access to over 200 audiobooks. If you’re a Vermont resident and a holder of a public library card, you can access 5,000+ titles through the Green Mountain Library Consortium. See go.middlebury.edu/gmlc for more information and use your last name in all caps, ex. ALI, as your password.
Yes, sure! But that depends on what you like. One of my favorite parts of my job is readers’ advisory. Look at the bolded type for genre:
If you want a psychologicalthriller in the realm of domestic noir, I recommend The Silent Wife.
If dystopianfantasy is what you’re into, Director of Access and Discovery Terry Simpkins and Library Associate Kat Cyr swear by N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Series.
If you want to access a classic and haven’t gotten around to it, Things Fall Apart is available.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer lit? I really enjoyed Less. Dr. Marcos Rohena-Madrazo of the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies is a big fan of Redefining Realness.
Historical fiction? Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-prize winning The Underground Railroad is recommendable.
And we have memoirs like Michelle Obama’s Becoming— though you may have to wait awhile to get to this one. See my review of it in The Campus, in the meanwhile.
Oh, and if you’re studying a foreign language like Spanish, you’ve got about 10 works to choose from on OverDrive and several on CDs in many languages found in the foreign language browsing collection on the main level of the Davis Family Library.
There’s a lot out there!
How can I use them and what should I know about the app?
There are three basic steps for accessing audiobooks:
A flyer with detailed instructions on how to use OverDrive’s audiobooks, a condensed version reproduced at left
Download the OverDrive app, create an original account and after signing in, add the Davis Family Library.
When prompted to sign in with a library card, accept, but use your Middlebury credentials instead.
Make a selection, borrow and manage your ebookshelf.
Also, when in doubt, you are welcome to ask a librarian for help or visit the guide found at go.middlebury.edu/ebookguide. With regard to the OverDrive app, there are some cool options like setting a timer for when you want the recording to stop playing, for example, if you’re getting in bed to sleep, and adjusting the speed of the player if you want to move through some text more quickly or more slowly than others. There’s some bookmarking, too.
There are two loan periods: 7 days and 14 days. Know that only one user will use each audiobook at a time. So, if desirable, you can place a hold on a work if you want to be in line for when a popular item is released. Check out up to three audiobooks at a time!
Last words?
They’ve changed my life, for the better. I hope they are of use to you, too. Also, to hear more from Middlebury audiobook users, see this week’s issue of The Campus.
Come Visit the 4th Annual Middlebury Write-In, Wednesday, December 5th, from 8:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. in Davis Family Library 201 or the Anderson Freeman Center.
On Wednesday, December 5th, from 8:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m., supported by the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research (CTLR), the 4th Annual Middlebury Write-In will be held. Students can receive writing assistance from tutors and research help from librarians in Davis Family Library 201 or in the Anderson Freeman Center. Snacks will be served. For more information, visit go.middlebury.edu/writein.
Like myself, many of the MiddKids with whom I frequently interact are people of color. While I am a Californian from Los Angeles, many of the students I serve are New Yorkers and they employ a vivid use of language I have yet to encounter outside of the North. In a loosely anthropological study, I have prepared the briefest of satirical dictionaries to highlight some of my favorite uses of the students’ slang. Let me know if I get them right– or, more likely, wrong. And also, like, #fuhrealsies, use the tips. Here are five examples of contemporary slang in trying times, used in *completely* fictional scenarios ;). Some hyperbole is used for dramatic effect:Continue reading →
From April 16th- April 23rd, Chellis House-Women’s Resource Center will be hosting an interactive display in the Davis Family Library atrium called “fat ‘n’ hairy: ways i’m failing the patriarchy.” The display includes a variety of library materials and first-hand accounts from community members listing the ways they are failing the patriarchy. For more, read below.
In honor of Multiracial Heritage Month, student group Mixed Kids of Middlebury (MKM) has organized a multimedia display of works created by and featuring multiracial individuals, interracial couples and interracial families. Come to the Davis Family Library atrium from Monday, April 2nd through Monday, April 9th to see it. Three students of multiracial heritage respond to questions about representation and identity below.
The collaborative, locally sourced, internationally themed, contemporary and historical exhibit “Hair Me Out” is now installed on the Upper Level of the Davis Family Library and includes multimedia components in the atrium. It explores the political, diasporic and stylistic phenomena surrounding Black hair from all around the world. This exhibit will be installed from February 21st through March 20th. Stop by to see it and visit go.middlebury.edu/hairmeout to see its digital representation.Continue reading →
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