USC Upstate Library News

Get ready to place your orders!

Beginning February 10, Perk Up! the library's café, will be open on Fridays through the remainder of spring semester. The coffee shop will operate from 8 am to 2 pm on Friday, along with its current schedule of 8 am to 3 pm, Monday through Thursday.

Friday hours for the café has been a frequent request of the USC Upstate campus community. Thanks to their efforts, USC Upstate Dining Services is now able to meet this request.

So whether you want a coffee, a latte, a frappe, a quick nosh, or a more substantial sandwich, Perk Up! can now cure your craving five days a week.

Update: The posters will remain on view through the remainder of spring semester 2023.

The USC Upstate Library celebrates Black History Month 2023 with an exhibit of posters of highly regarded African American and Black historical figures, civil rights activists, and cultural leaders. These posters are on view from February 7 through early March on the 1st floor of the library near the PerkUp! coffeeshop/café.

Three of the posters commemorate "Black Resistance," this year's Black History Month theme as designated by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the organization that founded this annual celebration.  

Additional posters are reproductions of colorful portraits originally created by Mr. Johnson Paints. Arranged alphabetically from left to right on the café walls, the following portraits are featured:

• Stacey Abrams, American politician, attorney, businesswoman, writer, and voting rights advocate
• Muhammad Ali, heavyweight champion boxer and civil rights activist
• Maya Angelou, poet, writer, performer, professor, and civil rights activist; author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Jean-Michel Basquiat, graffiti artist and painter
• Chadwick Boseman, actor and playwright, well-known for his role as Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe; a native of Anderson, South Carolina
• Ruby Bridges (as a child), civil rights activist and philanthropist, who at age 6 became one of the first Black children to integrate the New Orleans all-White public school system
• Ketanji Brown Jackson, attorney and jurist, now serving as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court
• Amanda Gorman, American poet and activist who became the first National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States in 2017; she presented her poem, "The Hill We Climb," at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden
• Fannie Lou Hamer, voting, civil, and women's rights activist; in collaboration with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she organized Mississippi's Freedom Summer
• Katherine Johnson, mathematician for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) whose calculations of orbital mechanics are viewed as foundational to the success of the first and subsequent space flights by U.S. astronauts
• Marsha P. Johnson, a key figure of the 1960s LGBTQ+ rights movement in the U.S., AIDS activist, and performer
• Martin Luther King, Jr., minister and civil rights leader; winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for combating racism through nonviolent protest and civil disobedience
• John Lewis, American civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman; he was one of 13 original Freedom Riders and served as Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• Barack Obama, attorney, U.S. Congressman, writer, and 44th President of the United States
• Michelle Obama, attorney, writer, and former First Lady of the United States
• Rosa Parks, long-time civil rights activist, well-known for her pivotal role in the 1955-56 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott
• Tupac Shakur, American rapper and actor

Who did we miss? Thousands! There are so many important people and events in Black and African American history and culture. These posters offer only a sampling of the rich tapestry of Black and African American resistance, persistence, and success.  

Now on view in the library's 1st floor Research & Reference area is a display of select USC Upstate yearbooks published between 1969 to 1989. This display has been created in honor of USC Upstate Homecoming Week (February 19-25) to celebrate Spartan school spirit and to highlight a unique library collection.

All yearbooks are available for checkout. The display features a corresponding QR code for people to view a digital campus timeline exhibit for homecoming. The library's Archives & Special Collections unit created this digital exhibit using various materials and resources in its collections.

The display will be on view through February. 

The USC Upstate Library is excited to present Book Talk: Guns in America with author Dr. Michele Covington, on Thursday, March 2, 3-4 pm, in Tukey Theatre (Library Building, Ground Floor).

Guns in America: An Introduction and Overview provides readers with a brief examination of critical gun issues in the United States, beginning with an overview of types of guns and ammunition and their evolution in our country's history. Dr. Covington presents a balanced examination of the intersection of guns with the law, the economy, and society.

Dr. Covington is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Director of the Upstate Crime Analysis Center (UCAC) at USC Upstate Greenville. She is a former law enforcement officer who has been teaching and researching policing, violence, firearms, crime analysis, and community crime issues since 2003. Under her direction, the UCAC exists to educate and increase visibility of crime analysis and evidenced-based policing in the Upstate region of South Carolina.

One attendee will walk away with a copy of the book. Learn more about Dr. Covington's work with crime analysis here.

Now on view on the terrace at the USC Upstate Library's main entrance are a series of posters created by the News Literacy Project, a national education nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a "more news-literate America."

The posters featured are designed to help readers and viewers "know your news" by

• Understanding what is news and what isn't
• Identifying quality journalism and news reporting
• Identifying types of misinformation
• Understanding bias in the media and in public opinion
• Identifying conspiratorial thinking
• Learning what information to trust and what to be wary of
• "Sanitizing what you share," that is to say, learning how to do your part to stop the spread of misinformation

These posters will be on view through spring semester 2023.

New library course

The posters also announce a new 1-hour credit course, LIBR U105: News Media Literacy, which will be taught in the second half of spring semester 2023 (February 27-April 21) by Reference and Instruction Librarian Erika Montgomery.  The course will provide an introduction to critically evaluating information in the news media. Topics will include misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. Students will explore biases in the media, as well as their own personal biases and how those affect the way they interpret media. Students will also learn different ways people can be misled and how false information spreads.

The prerequisite to this course is ENGL U101.

On Thursday, February 2, representatives from the Spartanburg County Public Library (SCPL) will visit the USC Upstate Library to offer free library cards to county residents and "college cards" to Upstate students who reside outside of Spartanburg County. 

Be sure to stop by PerkUp, the Upstate Library's café/coffee shop, between 10 am and 2 pm to get your card. Spartanburg County Public Library staff will also share information about all the free resources and services that SCPL has to offer. These include the digital archive of the Spartanburg Herald Journal and downloadables such as Overdrive e-books and audiobooks, Kanopy streaming movies, and Freegal streaming music.