The UN Day 2021. Stop Asian Hate

During the UN day 2021, ISGR Campus Götaberg has decided to celebrate the many cultures and stories within Asia in order to build an antiracist and equitable future. A hate against Asians communities has risen during the Covid-19 pandemic and resulted in anti-Asian violence, killings and more. A reason to this might be that political and cultural conversations in media are leaving out of the Asian perspective. The ISGR library hope that the books below can help to improve the visibility and awareness of Asian countries and peoples around the world.

The library would also like to highlight the human right of freedom of expression. Journalists around the world, not only in Asia, sometimes get arrested simply because of reporting, documenting, expressing their opinion, speeking up about misconditions and more.

Since we got the focus on Asia today, the library would like to highlight a couple Chinese citizens who have been imprisoned, because the government see them as a threat because of sharing information in order to make the life better for other people:

Zhang Zhan is a Chinese lawyer and journalist. She was one of the first to travel to Wuhan to report on covid-19. Last year she was arrested for her journalistic work. Since then, she has been detained and also sentenced to four years in prison.

Gui Minhai is a Chinese publisher and poet who published books critical to the regime and reported information abroad. Because of this he was detained by Chinese authorities during a holiday trip in Thailand and sentenced to ten years in prison in a pseudo-court.

Together we need to change attitudes and raise awareness of all people’s right to provide and access information vital to their lives. Such transparency is essential.

Below you will some tips of books on the theme of Asia, that are asked for by the students.

Writing workshops in the near future

In about one and a half week, both grade 6 and 8 will participate in writing workshops, underpinned by the National Arts Council.

Grade 6 will meet Lena Ollmark who mainly writes horror novels and short stories for secondary school students, but also books in other genres, translations and TV and film scripts.

“My visits and workshop exercises have ghost stories in focus. Mainly because I love horror and ghost stories – but also because ghost stories are very good to have as a basis when talking about writing and storytelling. The components of the story often become clear and I think it is effective to describe different storytelling techniques and tricks with the help of ghost stories.” / Lena Ollmark

Grade 8 will meet the Egyptian Palestinian Australian author and lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah, with a PhD in Islamophobia.

“What does social justice mean to you?  In this workshop Randa Abdel-Fattah will share insights from her experiences as a writer, lawyer and anti-racism activist and her current academic research as a sociologist working with young people exploring their fears, aspirations and identities as they come of age in today’s social and political climate. We will explore themes around justice, point of view, empathy, values and intersectionality.

The students will need to bring 2 photos to the workshop: one of themselves today and another one from when they were 8-10 years old.” / Randa Abdel-Fattah

Black Lives Matter themes in literature. Anti-racist month of October

At ISGR the month of October is the anti-racist month when there is an extra focus on teaching how to be an anti-racist. The students also learn about the Black Lives Matter movement, islomophobia and other topics important for racial justice in education.

The ISGR library, Campus Götaberg has put together a presentation on Black Lives Matter themes in literature and also created a list of books on the same theme.

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On October 26th all 8th graders will also have a writing workshop with one of the most important voices within Muslim literature, the Palestinian Egyptian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah. That workshop will happen both within Anti-racist month of October and Creative School underpinned by the National Arts Council.

randa-abdel-fattahDownload

Randa has written five books that are all available to borrow in the ISGR library, Campus Götaberg: Ten things I hate about me, Does my head look big in this?, Where the street had a name, The lines we cross and Coming of age in the war on terror.

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West Pride Festival 2021

To celebrate the West Pride Festival 2021, the library has put together a reading list of novels on LGBTQIA+theme. The novels are all to be found in the LGBTQIA+ section in the library and will be on display next week. (There are more novels on LGBTQIA+ theme though, but these are the more than 70 novels that are placed in the LGBTQIA+ section.): 

books-on-lgbtqia-themeDownload

In the library the students will also be welcome to color drawings by the author / illustrator of the LGBTQIA+ comics series Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. We hope they will enjoy this, since the Hearstopper series is very popular among the students at the moment. Here you can read about it:  https://www.aliceoseman.com/heartstopper

Dag Hammarskjöld

Around the world, attention is drawn to Dag Hammarskjöld this month, because it has then passed 60 years he passed away. He was the UN’s second secretary general in the order and died in a plane crash near Ndola in what was then Northern Rhodesia.

There are several book having been written about Hammarskjöld, for example Gåtan Hammarskjöld that was published last year. In that one, Ove Bring, Professor Emeritus of International Law, is trying to find out the reason to why the plane with Hammarskjöld in crashed, when he was on a mission to Kongo. Was it sabotage, shooting or some other reason?

Hammaskjöld is known for being an excellent international leader and vitalizing the United Nations as organization. He worked eight years for United Nations. As a person he was intellectual, peacekeeping and calm. He also had a knowledge in several languages and an interest in aesthetic subjects. A famous expression by Hammarskjöld is: ”The United Nations was not created to bring us to heaven, but to save us from hell”. Here you can read more about Hammarskjöld.

This weekend an event will take place at Backåkra at Österlen, where Hammarskjöld had a house. Tomorrow our IT technician Dick will be one of many participating in a memorial service at 13-14 over there, together with Archbishop Antje Jackelén and Cabinet Secretary Robert Rydberg

First News. Journal subscription

The ISGR library Campus Götaberg has got a journal subscription to First News because of its subscription to the encyclopedia Britannica.

The newspaper is reporting worldwide news and contains news on science breakthroughs, environmental stories, sports, political stories, entertainment and more. 

It strives to foster news literacy, provide fascinating facts and create global awareness. 

You will have access to a printed copy of each issue in the library. You will also get access to it digitally via your teacher or the library, if you ask for it. There is a new issue published every Friday. 

We hope you will enjoy reading it!

Tip of a book bringing up terror

Yesterday it was 20 years since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and maybe a planned one aimed at the White House.

These attacks shocked a whole world and 2,977 people lost their lives. Behind the hijacking were 19 men from the al-Qaeda terrorist group.

The Egyptian Palestinian Australian youth author Randa Abdel-Fattah has written a book on how life has changed for a whole generation, growing up in the wake of 9/11 attacks. For them the war on terrorism has become part of everyday life, where especially Muslims have been exposed to islamophobia during a long time now.

In society, security measures have been introduced to combat terrorism, counteract the radicalization of young people and violence-related extremism. But how has the society, that also represent the adult generation to young people, succeeded in doing this? Abdel-Fattah examines that in her book through interviews with young people, out from an international perspective. The book also brings up questions as trust, a growing political polarisation and the raise of the far-right. It will be available for loan in the libary from about September 21st.

On October 26, all 8th graders will meet Abdel-Fattah for a writing workshop on the theme of social justice. We are very excited and looking forward to this!

Britannica, EBSCO MasterFILE Premier and Global Issues in Context (GIC)

There have been some updates regarding our encyclopedia Britannica, subscription to EBSCO databases and the database Global Issues in Context.

Britannica has sent us some information explaining their editorial process (see attached file).

britannica-editorial-departmentDownload

Our subscription to EBSCO databases has gone through a makeover, because the subscription we used to have doesn’t exist any longer so we have needed to move over to the MasterFILE Premier version. It contains three databases. Those are:

• MasterFILE premier, covering  general reference, business, health, education, general science, multicultural issues and much more.    
• GreenFILE, covering the human impact on the environment. It is the same database as we had before. It brings up: global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
• MasterFILE eBook Collection, covering  biography, history, careers, cooking, literature, genealogy, health, parenting, personal finance, politics, architecture, science, current events, social-emotional health, sports, and travel.

The login to this subscription is the same as before. If you don’t know about it, please contact your librarian. To learn about using EBSCO and the various features and functions available, please read through this instructional poster:

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In addition to this, we will get a test subscription to Global Issues in Context. It integrates news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, statistics, and more. For login to this database, please contact your librarian.

Note that we are right now using test subscriptions for the EBSCO MasterFILE premier and Global Issues in Context subscriptions, since there have been changes in the databases and we would like to try out those.

The EBSCO MasterFILE Premier subscription we got until the beginning of November and Global Issues in Context one until October 8th. 

Talking books. For you who need it

Most of you already know about this service, but I would like to promote the usage of talking books for you who have any reading disability. Talking books are not the same as audio books. They are in a special format and provided by the National Agency for Accessible Media. 

When you sign up for a talking book account at the ISGR school library, both you and your parents / guardians need to approve to the user rules, since you are under 18 years old. When you have done that, you will get the possibility to download and listen to fiction in:

• Swedish (115 544 books)
• English (20 739 books)
• German (551 books)
• French (406 books) 
• Spanish (545 books) 
• Various books in mother tongue

You usually listen to talking books via the Legimus-app, that is free to download, on your phone. If a title is not represented at Legimus, you or your teacher can ask ISGR library to hand in a title suggestion to Legimus.

Who got the right to Legimus? Those are you with:

• reading and writing difficulties
• visual impairments
• physical disabilities, such as mobility impairments and hearing impairments
• intellectual disabilities
• neuropsychiatric disabilities, such as autism, adhd.
• temporary reading impairments
• intellectual disabilities

Please feel free to contact the ISGR library if you have any questions and / or would like to sign up for a talking book / Legimus account! 

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Award ceremony for the Summer Reading Challenges

For those of you who have participated in the ISGR Summer Reading Challenges, it is time for you to hand in your filled in forms, because it needs to be done no later than Wednesday September 8th. 

When you hand in your summer reading challenges, you will get to choose a book as a gift, among prize books or new books in the library (see the trolley for books to be cataloged). 

Before you leave the library, you will need to tell the library what book you have chosen.

If you have taken the digital illustration challenge or any other challenge you would like to share the result from, please feel free to publish it on the library blog.

Below you can see the result from the digital illustration challenge, taken by Matilda N i 7A.

It pictures a scene from a fantasy novel. Do you know which one?