La Cuesta Rancho Santa Barbara County : 1892, from the “Hispanics on the Central Coast – 300 Years of History” Collection by the Black and Gold Cooperative Library System. Public Domain.

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, you might be interested in checking out contemporary and historical digital archives covering art, literature, politics, and much, much more! 

Here are some examples to explore, and advice for finding even more, but feel free to post other favorites in Comments:

UCSB Library, Department of Special Research Collections (on Calisphere) includes an extremely rich range of LatinX visual art archives and artists’ papers, as well as oral histories, sound recordings, and more. (Also see New York’s MoMA for a list of Archives of LatinX art).

Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (Library of Congress) Listen to recordings of readings, interviews, and older biographies of and by “writers from thirty-two countries are represented in this collection which includes readings in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Náhuatl, Zapotec, Aymara, English and Dutch.” Recordings cover 1873-present. More about the collection.

Veteranas and Rucas (on Instagram) Historical “Photo Archive/self representation archive by/for self identified Women of So.Cal” by Guadalupe Rosales.

LLILAS Benson Digital Collections (University of Texas) Rich set of archives including everything from the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive to Archive of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas to books printed in Mexico before 1601 to speeches and documents from a wide variety of countries’ political leaders, not to mention oral histories of Latinos and Latinas of the WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War generations.

Hispanic/Latino Heritage (National Archives) Arts, Entertainment, and Culture; Education and Civil Rights, Government and Politics; Diplomacy; Veterans; and more.

San Diego Lowrider Archival Project (University of San Diego) “The San Diego Lowrider Archival Project documents the history of lowriding in San Diego and the surrounding borderlands, from the 1950s through today. The project includes photographs, car club documents and memorabilia, official records, meeting minutes, dance posters and lowrider art. These materials reflect important qualities of the lowrider movement: creativity, independence, cultural pride, resistance, activism, community service, collectivism, tradition and ritual, and cultural continuity.”

Don’t forget to search Calisphere, California’s central digital archive of primary sources covering the history of our state. For example, you can find sources on the Zoot Suit Riots or the Mexican American Political Association there.

You can also look at other state archives, such as New York, that have been working on documenting LatinX history of the US.

If you want to dive further into the hundreds of digitized and physical archives available, or search for a specific topic, location, or heritage of interest to you, here are some open web searches to get you started:

[ hispanic OR latino OR latina OR chicano OR chicana OR latinx archives ]

[ “mexican OR cuban OR salvadoran OR rican OR peruvian american” archives ]

Are you excited for Leigh Bardugo’s next Grishaverse book? Counting the days for the sequel to Children of Blood and Bone? Maybe you just learned there’s a third book in Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series. But if you’re anything like us, there is just one problem: you cannot quite remember where the last book left off. What had the main character just discovered about her magic? Who was left dead; who had just arisen from the dead? Who was dating whom?

Fortunately, we have discovered Recaptains, if you need “a refresher before the sequel is released, this is where you need to be.” Beyond a short synopsis and a longer, bullet-pointed step-by-step review of the plot, the “How did it end” section of each entry reviews the major plot details of the last few chapters–leaving you ready to pick the story up once more.

A lot the entries are user submitted, so beyond finding the information you need without rereading the whole series, you can also submit summaries of books that you love and hope to share with other readers. Check out their website or follow them on twitter!

The library is delighted to announce that we now have audiobooks that you can check out!

Our collection, offering a range of choices for listeners age 11-18 and beyond, is with the ebooks in Overdrive. If you want to see which of our audiobooks are recommended for someone your age, check out our Pinterest board.

If you are not an audiobook devotee already, you might be wondering what there is to get excited about. Click on a cover below to take a listen to some samples from our collection and find out:

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope (Gr. 8+) Full Cast Reading

The Night Circus (Adult for young adult) Reader: Jim Dale

The Graveyard Book (Gr 5-8) Readers: Tim Dann and Neil Gaiman

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy (Gr. 6+) Reader: Katherine Kellgren

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Gr. 9+) Reader: Lin-Manuel Miranda

How It Went Down (Gr 9+) Full Cast Reading

Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War (Gr 7+) Reader: Ray Porter

So check out some audiobooks today, an tell us how you enjoy experiencing books in a whole new way!

Learn how to check them out on our how-to page.

Image source: “Music with Lyrics” by Tarun Kumar from Flickr

Original: “But I’ve got a blank space, baby/And I’ll write your name.”   (“Blank Space,” by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback)

Paraphrase: I’m single, so we should date. (Lindsey E., ’21)

It can be challenging to learn to use your own words to express ideas and facts that you get from reading you do while carrying out research. Conveying an idea from your reading in your own words is called paraphrasing. Recently, the seventh graders got some great paraphrasing practice, translating Taylor Swift lyrics into “everyday” spoken English. Here are some lyrics, if you want to give it a try:

• “’Cause, darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”(“Blank Space,” by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback)
• “But she wears short skirts/I wear T-shirts/She’s cheer captain/And I’m on the bleachers” (“You Belong with Me,” Taylor Swift and Liz Rose)
• “Nice to meet you, where you been?”(“Blank Space,” by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback)
• “Someday I’ll be living in a big ole city/And all you’re ever gonna be is mean” (“Mean,” by Taylor Swift)

Students listed tips on paraphrasing effectively, which included:

• Read until you understand what the sentence is saying,
• Identify terminology that is specific to your topic (you can use it in your paraphrase),
• Articulate the big idea, and
• Cover it up the original source and say it in your own words.

Of course, when you paraphrase, what you write is often about the same length as the original.

When you want to quickly convey the big ideas of a longer passage, that is called summarizing.  A fun way to practice summarizing is picking a song you love, and telling the story or the moral that song conveys in one, short sentence:

Song title: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman)

Summary: “A fun word to say and make you feel good with also confusing people.” (E. Lewis, ’21)

Song title: “Sorry” (Julia Michaels, Justin Tranter, and Justin Beiber)

Summary: “I let you go and now I want you back.” (E. Smith, ’21)

Can you take your favorite song and summarize its meaning? How about paraphrasing some of your favorite lines? It is a great way to get a feel for the difference between the two skills.

Of course, whether you are paraphrasing or summarizing, you have not done it right if you don’t give credit to the source that gave you the information or ideas that you use. So, a huge “Thank you!” to Amber Lovett, a library school students at the University of Michigan, for the idea of using Taylor Swift lyrics.

On Monday, March 28, the library will celebrate its 3rd annual Edible Book Festival. Everyone in the Casti community is welcome to join us from 3:30-6:00 for literarily-inspired games and food. Everyone who comes can vote in our Edible Book competition. Don’t forget to RSVP or volunteer to help out!

Community members are invited to create entries for the competition. The rules are simply that all creations must be made out of edible components and must either illustrate a concept from a book or be food that appears in a book. Families or groups of students are welcome to collaborate on entries. They may be dropped off in the morning or just before school ends for the day. Please label all entries with creators’ first and last names, and bring in the book that inspired your creation, or a printout of the cover. Check out these examples from past years.

All attendees will get to vote to award prizes to their favorite entries…and then eat the creations!

This year’s prize categories are:

• Most original
• Best food eaten in a book
• Healthiest
• Funniest/punniest
• Best simple idea
• People’s choice
• Most Shakespeare-licous

Whether you create an edible book, want to play literary games, do word-inspired art, or admire the creative work of our community (and groan over bad puns), we look forward to seeing you there!

When: Monday, March 30–3:30 to 6pm

• Contest entry registration all day    7:45am-3:30pm
  • be sure to register all entries before 3:30
• Voting   3:30-4:15
• Snacks  4:00
• Games and Edible Book Festival creation-viewing throughout

Where: Espinosa Library

Who: Students, family members, adult members of the Casti community and their families

What: Games, projects, treats, and voting!

Click here to RSVP!

Source: Pioneer Girl
By Laura Ingalls Wilder
Edited by Pamela Smith Hill

Have you ever read historical fiction and been consumed by the question of what really happened? If you wondered about the real life of the Ingalls family from the Little House on the Prairie series, Pioneer Girl is the book for you. I grew up reading about Laura, Mary, Pa, Ma, and little baby Grace, their dog Jack, and their travels across the west by covered wagon in the decades after the Civil War. The books were written in the 1930s for children, and they were based on Laura’s life. I wondered, as I grew older, what was real, and what was fiction? Now, thanks to editor Pamela Smith Hill, I have been able to dive into Laura Ingalls Wilder’s first autobiographical account, Pioneer Girl, fully annotated with extensive research, illustrated with amazing primary sources. Hill includes an extensive introduction covering Wilder’s writing process and her collaboration with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who also published novels based on her mother’s experiences. If you ever wondered about the real Nellie Olson (based on several girls) or the railroad company Pa worked for, or the cutter Almanzo Wilder drove, it is all here, footnoted and ready for you to dive in.