CNU Library Blog - LibGuides at California Northstate University

Title: Low-Fat Love Stories.

Author: Patricia Leavy & Victoria Scotti.

Publication info: Rotterdam, The Netherlands : Brill. 2017. eBook.

Description: American Fiction Awards 2018 - award-winning finalist in the category short stories! Low-Fat Love Stories is a collection of short stories and visual portraits based on interview research with women about a dissatisfying relationship with a romantic partner or relative, or their body image. The stories focus on settling in relationships, the gap between fantasies and realities, relationship patterns, divorce, abuse, childhood pain, spirituality, feeling like a fraud, growing older, and daily struggles looking in the mirror. Once upon a time and happily ever after take on new meaning as the women's stories reveal the underside of fairytales and toxic popular culture. Written in the first-person with language taken directly from each woman's interview, the stories are raw, visceral, and inspirational. As a collection, the stories and art set you on an emotional rollercoaster and illustrate the different forms “low-fat love” may take, and the quest for self-worth in the context of popular culture that tells women they are never enough. The authors developed an original method of “textual visual snapshots” for this book. Low-Fat Love Stories can be used in a range of courses in art education, gender/women's studies, popular culture, psychology, relational communication, sociology and social work; or as an exemplar in research or qualitative methods, narrative inquiry, arts-based research or creative writing courses; or it can be read entirely for pleasure by individuals or in book clubs.

Hi CNU Library Users,

My name is Francis Francisco, and I am the librarian at the Rancho Cordova campus of CNU! I wanted my first blog post to be an opportunity to introduce myself to those of you who haven’t yet gotten a chance to meet me. I’m originally from Canada, specifically Vancouver, British Columbia, but I grew up for most of my life in San Francisco, California. And yes, putting two and two together, that would make me "Francis Francisco from San Francisco." Pleasure.

My experience working as a library professional started as early as my undergraduate years, when I worked as a student library employee for UC Davis’s libraries. There, I earned my BA in Film Studies with dreams to move to Southern California and work in film production. Spoiler alert: it did not work out. But that’s ok! Be that it may, I realized my love for libraries has always been my North Star. I fell in love with libraries, not just because of their reliable wealth of information available to us, but for their unwavering way of fostering community for any individual who steps into its spaces. I believe it was Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series, who said, “When in doubt, go to the library.” There’s truth to that statement. For me, libraries have always provided me with the support that I needed in various points of my life. I wanted to “give back” in a way. Ultimately, my devotion to this cause led me to a career working for academic libraries while earning my MLIS at San Jose State University in 2024.

Today, now here at CNU Library, I intend to instruct information literacy and research-finding skills, which I am most passionate about in librarianship. My work is driven by the current information environment that we live in. I aim to lead instruction with the intent of teaching users how to recognize good information from bad information, especially when combatting misinformation/disinformation, as so much of it is littering our lives, affecting not only in how we live it, but our relationships with one another. Information through AI use is another topic that fascinates me. I believe there is enormous potential for it as a teaching tool, however, like many new concepts, it still needs further refinement and understanding.

My goal here at CNU is to contribute my knowledge, expertise, and ideas, with the hope that I can be of some use to our users and their academic pursuits. Librarianship requires continuous learning and thoughtfulness as the field is always evolving due to technological changes in how information is communicated, as well as the changes in information behaviors from users themselves.

-Francis

Title: Saving the Reef: The Human Story Behind One of Australia’s Greatest Environmental Treasures

Author: Rohan Lloyd

Publication info: St Lucia, Queensland : University of Queensland Press. 2022

Location: Academic eBook Collection

Description: While in the past Australians wrestled with what the Reef is, today they are struggling to reconcile what it will be... To do this, we need to understand the Reef's intertwining human story. The Great Barrier Reef has come to dominate Australian imaginations and global environmental politics. Saving the Reef charts the social history of Australia's most prized yet vulnerable environment, from the relationship between First Nations peoples and colonial settlers, to the Reef's most portentous moment - the Save the Reef campaign launched in the 1960s. Through this gripping narrative and interwoven contemporary essays, historian Rohan Lloyd reveals how the Reef's continued decline is forcing us to reconsider what ‘ saving'the Reef really means.

Happy birthday to Louis Lewin, a German pharmacologist who lived from 1850 to 1929. In 1881, Lewin wrote the book Die Nebenwirkungen der Arzneimittel, which was translated to English as The Untoward Effects of Drugs: A Pharmacological and Clinical Manual. It was the first book of its kind.

Louis Lewin also indirectly contributed to an ongoing debate about dental amalgam fillings: do they cause mercury poisoning, or not? One of his patients was chemistry professor Alfred Stock, who died from mercury poisoning (allegedly from occupational exposure, not from his fillings). While determining the cause of his poisoning, Lewin noted that his dental fillings were a possible source. Stock wrote against further use of amalgam, which refueled the ongoing debate on the topic in Germany.

Dental amalgam fillings do contain small amounts of mercury. Amalgam is an alloy of mercury which uniquely (and at a low cost) produces the versatility and strength required to fill and support a decaying tooth's shape. Read more in the links below!

Read more:

About Louis Lewin on his Wikipedia page.
About his 1881 book, Die Nebenwirkungen der Arzneimittel, here.
Stock's insistence that doctors cease usage of amalgam is translated to English here.
About the history, science, and significance of dental amalgam fillings in this article in NCBI.

Low-Fat Love Stories

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