The comment period for the Bonneville Power Administration's draft environmental impact statement for its proposed I-5 Corridor Reinforcement Project available has been extended to noon on Monday, March 25, 2013. The multi-volume draft impact statement is located along the curve on the fifth floor in Millar Library. The draft also can be found on the Bonneville Power Administration's website at: http://www.bpa.gov/Projects/Projects/I-5/Pages/Draft-EIS.aspx.

Portland, OR – Portland State University Library is one of 840 libraries and state humanities councils across the country selected to receive the Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Library Association (ALA). The program aims to familiarize public audiences in the United States with the people, places, history, faith and cultures of Muslims in the United States and around the world.

The Muslim Journeys Bookshelf includes the following titles, organized by theme:

American Stories

• A Quiet Revolution by Leila Ahmed
• Prince Among Slaves by Terry Alford
• The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States, edited by Edward E. Curtis IV
• Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel
• The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam by G. Willow Wilson

Connected Histories

• The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance by Jim Al-Khalili
• In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
• When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the “Riches of the East” by Stewart Gordon
• Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf, translated by Peter Sluglett
• The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal

Literary Reflections

• Minaret by Leila Aboulela
• The Arabian Nights (anonymous), edited by Muhsin Mahdi, translated by Husain Haddawy
• The Conference of the Birds by Farid al-Din Attar, translated by Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi
• Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Maureen Freely

Pathways of Faith

• Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan A. C. Brown
• The Story of the Qur’an: Its History and Place in Muslim Life by Ingrid Mattson
• The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam by F. E. Peters
• The Art of Hajj by Venetia Porter
• Rumi: Poet and Mystic, edited and translated by Reynold A. Nicholson

Points of View

• In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
• Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
• House of Stone by Anthony Shadid
• Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie

Art Architecture and Film

• The Art of Hajj by Venetia Porter
• Islamic Arts by Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair
• Islamic Art Spots (short films designed, written, and presented by D. Fairchild Ruggles, and produced by Twin Cities Public Television)
• Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World (2011)
• Prince Among Slaves (2007)
• Koran by Heart (2011)

The books and films comprising the Bookshelf were selected with the advice librarians and cultural programming experts, as well as distinguished scholars in the fields of anthropology, world history, religious studies, interfaith dialogue, the history of art and architecture, world literature, Middle East studies, Southeast Asian studies, African studies, and Islamic studies.

For information about these new materials, please visit http://library.pdx.edu/ or contact Elisheva Cohen, Portland State University Middle East Studies Center Outreach Coordinator, 503-725-5054, e.cohen@pdx.edu. To obtain copies of program materials, please contact Elisheva Cohen. Additional information is available at http://library.pdx.edu/muslimjourneys.html.

The Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys is a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities, conducted in cooperation with the American Library Association. Major support for the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf was provided by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Additional support for the arts and media components was provided by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

The Portland State University Library will partner with the University’s Middle East Studies Center to present a series of programs to introduce, promote, complement and contextualize the collection. Events will include presentations by Muslim Journeys Project Scholar, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Reed College; Dick Davis, Professor of Persian and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, Ohio State University; Stephen Dale, Professor Emeritus of History, Ohio State University; Aria Menu-Sepehr; author of We Heard the Heavens Then, a memoir about the Iranian Revolution; and Bishupal Limbu, Assistant Professor of English, Portland State University. Additional information is available online at http://www.pdx.edu/middle-east-studies. This programming is supported by the U.S. Institute of Peace Public Education for Peacebuilding Support initiative.

The Portland State University Library is at the heart of the Portland State community, and is committed to providing excellence and innovation in research, teaching, and learning support. Along with its diverse collection of information resources, the University Library offers special collections and archives that feature unique materials of regional and scholarly interest; produces an extensive array of user-centered information services; and delivers a strong instruction program dedicated to improving students’ academic success. Located in an iconic building in the beautiful South Park Blocks, the Portland State University Library serves the largest student body in the Oregon University System, providing collaborative study spaces and technology-enabled environments designed to enhance students’ learning experiences.

The Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University promotes understanding of the people, cultures, languages and religions of the Middle East. As a National Resource Center for Middle East Studies under the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI program, the Center serves as a resource on issues pertaining to the Middle East through activities that reach students and scholars, as well as businesses, educators, and the media. The Middle East Studies Center supports academic conferences, workshops, cultural events, lectures, and a resource library.

Portland, OR – The Portland State University Library has received $2,000 in funding support from the Public Education for Peacebuilding Support initiative of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). The support will enable the Portland State University Library and Middle East Studies Center to present programming to introduce, promote, complement and contextualize the Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys, a collection of books, films, and other resources chosen with a view to familiarizing the American public with Islam and the cultural heritage of Islamic civilizations around the world.

Events will include presentations by Muslim Journeys Project Scholar, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Reed College; Dick Davis, Professor of Persian and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, Ohio State University; Stephen Dale, Professor Emeritus of History, Ohio State University; Aria Menu-Sepehr; author of We Heard the Heavens Then, a memoir about the Iranian Revolution; and Bishupal Limbu, Assistant Professor of English, Portland State University. Additional information is available online at http://library.pdx.edu/muslimjourneys.html or http://www.pdx.edu/middle-east-studies.

Portland State University Interim Vice Provost for International Affairs remarked, “As Oregon’s largest and most diverse public university, located at the heart of on of America’s most progressive cities, Portland State places students in a vibrant and varied cultural center. The Middle East Studies Center squarely aligns its public programming with the University’s motto, ‘Let Knowledge Serve the City’.”

“The United State Institute of Peace is pleased to support organizations like Portland State University and their contribution to the national conversation around international conflict – and methods for resolving those conflicts nonviolently,” commented United States Institute for Peace President Jim Marshall.

The United States Institute of Peace is the independent, nonpartisan conflict management center created by Congress to prevent and mitigate international conflict without resorting to violence. USIP works to save lives, increase the government’s ability to deal with conflicts before they escalate, reduce government costs, and enhance national security. The United State Institute of Peace is headquartered in Washington, DC with offices in Baghdad, Iraq, and Kabul, Afghanistan.

As part of its congressional mandate, the United State Institute of Peace devotes a portion of its budget to support organizations that will advance the field of conflict management by developing new techniques, establishing best practices, and professionalizing the field through education and training. The Public Education for Peacebuilding Support is a program of USIP administered by the Institute of International Education.

As a National Resource Center for Middle East Studies under the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI program, the Middle East Studies Center promotes understanding of the people, cultures, languages, and religions of the Middle East. Under this mandate, Portland State University supports collections, scholarship, research, teaching and programming about Islam and the cultural heritage of Islamic civilizations around the world.

Recent and ongoing events in the Middle East underscore the growing need to understand the region. As audiences continue t be bombarded by media images of war, violence and protests, it is critical to put a human face on the Middle East and Islam and to promote knowledge about the diversity of its cultures and societies. The Muslim Journeys collection and associated programming will provide audiences with insight into Islam from a variety of perspectives. Participants will work to break down traditional stereotypes and assumptions held about Islam and the Middle East.

The Bridging Cultures Bookshelf: Muslim Journeys is a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities, conducted in cooperation with the American Library Association. Support was provided by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Additional support for the arts and media components was provided by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

The Portland State University Library is at the heart of the Portland State community, and is committed to providing excellence and innovation in research, teaching, and learning support. Along with its diverse collection of information resources, the University Library offers special collections and archives that feature unique materials of regional and scholarly interest; produces an extensive array of user-centered information services; and delivers a strong instruction program dedicated to improving students’ academic success. Located in an iconic building in the beautiful South Park Blocks, the Portland State University Library serves the largest student body in the Oregon University System, providing collaborative study spaces and technology-enabled environments designed to enhance students’ learning experiences.

The Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University serves as a resource on issues pertaining to the Middle East through activities that reach students and scholars, as well as businesses, educators, and the media. The Middle East Studies Center supports academic conferences, workshops, cultural events, lectures, and a resource library.

The library is offering a variety of workshops this term to support faculty in their teaching and research. These workshops will help faculty design effective research assignments, use library resources and other materials in their classes while respecting copyright, organize their research sources, understand their rights to their published works, and make their own publications more visible.

The library is also offering workshops specifically tailored to graduate students. These are designed to introduce them to library research, help them find data sets, do lit reviews, organize their research and more!

With the exception of two online sessions, all of the classes will be held in the Millar Library and require no advanced registration. To see all of the workshops the library is offering this term, visit http://library.pdx.edu/workshops/workshops_calendar.php

We are delighted to announce that the McNair Scholars Online Journal (2004-2012) is now available in PDXScholar. The McNair Scholars represent majors in many fields across the arts and sciences, and that breadth of interest is reflected in each volume’s variety of topics.

Browse the volumes by author, title, subject or date.

Join Portland State at the annual celebration of the life and poetry of the late William Stafford, Oregon's poet laureate. Several poets will be reading their favorite Stafford poems plus one or two of their own. Readers will include Professor Emeritus Shelley Reece, Don Colburn and Portland State MFA graduate students. There will be an open microphone for you to read your favorite Stafford poem and one of your own poems. Refreshments will be served at the reading.

William Stafford Birthday Celebration Poetry Reading
Thursday, January 24, 2013
7pm
Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 333
Free and Open to the Public

For more information about William Stafford, please visit the Friends of William Stafford web site.

PSU Library is pleased to announce a new collection in PDXScholar, Cascadia Ecolopois (http://dr.archives.pdx.edu/xmlui/handle/psu/8756).

This collection contains reports of term-long projects conducted by graduate classes in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. They stem from a report created by Regional Plan Association in New York and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, MA, along with students at the University of Pennsylvania on the emerging "megaregions" in the US. A megaregion refers to a networked group of metropolitan regions, and is modeled on the notion of "megalopolis," a territory of continuous urbanization usually associated with the corridor from Boston on the north to Richmond on the south. One of the emerging megaregions identified through this work is "Cascadia," the territory from northern California through British Columbia, and centered on the Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC metropolitan regions. Unlike its eastern counterpart, the megalopolis, the ecolopolis refers to networking of the three principle metropolitan regions in Cascadia but calls for maintaining their separation by working and wild landscapes. In this way, Cascadia would develop its own distinctive megaregion, tied intimately to the culture and "brand" of the Pacific Northwest, and avoiding the continuous urbanization associated with more sprawling examples of megaregion development.

The Millar Library building will be closed during the University’s Winter Closure, Saturday, December 22, 2012 – Tuesday, January 1, 2013. Some of our services will be unavailable.

Returning Books
During the closure, you may return library materials to the outside book drops. There are two book drops to choose from: one is located above the south stairs at the front of the Library and the other is on the corner of Harrison and 10th.

Borrowing Books through Summit and Interlibrary Loan
Students and faculty may submit borrowing requests for library materials through Summit and Interlibrary Loan, but requests will not be processed until the library re-opens on Wednesday, January 2nd. You will not be able to pick up Summit or Interlibrary Loan books during the closure.

Library Reference
Phone and email reference will be closed, however you may ask questions through the Library's 24/7 chat and text reference service, which will be open through the closure except Dec. 24, Dec. 25, Dec. 31, and Jan. 1.

Library Catalog and Databases
The library catalog and databases should be functioning normally throughout the closure.

Have you ever wondered how changes in your neighborhood happen? It’s possible that some of these changes are related to PSU student work. Students in the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program all complete client-focused community-based planning projects in their culminating course, the MURP Workshop. Many of these projects have won state and national awards for the quality and creative problem-solving evident in the work.

The PSU Library has just received a collection of MURP Workshop Projects and made them available in PDXScholar, the library’s digital repository. These projects are an excellent example of how PSU and the library engage with PSU's motto: Let knowledge serve the city. Over time these project documents will show how our area has grown and changed, and how PSU students have been a part of that.

Have MURP students impacted your community? Peruse the collection by author, title, subject, or date to find out!

The Draft Injury Assessment Plan has been released for public comment and will be discussed Dec. 12, 2012 at the Richland Library (955 Northgate Dr., Richland, WA 99352), Gallery Room from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm. The Draft Injury Assessment Plan is a guiding document for the Hanford Natural Resource Damage Assessment. It describes the types of assessment activities needed to quantify the extent of injury to natural resources from releases of hazardous contaminants.

You may download the Injury Assessment Plan at www.hanfordnrda.org.

Print copies of the Injury Assessment Plan are available for public review on the wall of the fifth floor curve of the Portland State University Library.