The UCBA Library will be closed Monday, May 28th in honor of Memorial Day. We will resume our regular Summer Semester hours on Tuesday, May 29th at 8:00 am. Please visit our hours webpage to view all UCBA Library hours, including holidays and any exceptions to our regular schedule.
Category Archives: UCBA News
UCBA Library Staff Lend a Helping Hand
by Christian Boyles and Michelle McKinney
Christian Boyles, Collection Services Manager, and Michelle McKinney, Reference and Web Services Librarian, took part in UC’s university-wide, service day, UC Serves on Continue reading
UCBA Library’s Book of the Month for May
by Christian Boyles
About the book
The improbable and exhilarating story of the rise of Snapchat from a frat boy fantasy to a multi-billion dollar internet unicorn that has dramatically changed the way we communicate. In 2013 Evan Spiegel, the brash CEO of the social network Snapchat, and his co-founder Bobby Murphy stunned the press when they walked away from a three-billion-dollar offer from Facebook: how could an app teenagers use to text dirty photos dream of a higher valuation? Was this hubris, or genius? In How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, tech journalist Billy Gallagher takes us inside the rise of one of Silicon Valley’s hottest start-ups. Snapchat developed from a simple wish for disappearing pictures as Stanford junior Reggie Brown nursed regrets about photos he had sent. After an epic feud between best friends, Brown lost his stake in the company, while Spiegel has gone on to make a name for himself as a visionary–if ruthless–CEO worth billions, linked to celebrities like Taylor Swift and his wife, Miranda Kerr. A fellow Stanford undergrad and fraternity brother of the company’s founding trio, Gallagher has covered Snapchat from the start. He brings unique access to a company Bloomberg Business called “a cipher in the Silicon Valley technology community.” Gallagher offers insight into challenges Snapchat faces as it transitions from a playful app to one of the tech industry’s preeminent public companies. In the tradition of great business narratives, How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars offers the definitive account of a company whose goal is no less than to remake the future of entertainment.
Is it checked out? Don’t worry about it. Here are some other titles on the subject.
Brotopia : Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley | HD6060.5.U5 C52 2018
For women in tech, Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops, where millions of dollars grow on trees. It’s a “Brotopia,” where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties. In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don’t Be Evil! Connect the World!)–and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao’s high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they “won’t lower their standards” just to hire women. Silicon Valley’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. It’s time to break up the boys’ club. Emily Chang shows us how to fix this toxic culture–to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.
Wild Ride: Inside Uber’s Quest for Global Domination | HE5620.R53 L37 2017
In your pocket is something amazing: a quick and easy way to summon a total stranger who will take you anywhere you’d like. In your hands is something equally amazing: the untold story of Uber’s meteoric rise, and the massive ambitions of its larger-than-life founder and CEO. Before Travis Kalanick became famous as the public face of Uber, he was a scrappy, rough-edged, loose-lipped entrepreneur. And even after taking Uber from the germ of an idea to a $69 billion global transportation behemoth, he still describes his company as a start-up. Like other Silicon Valley icons such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, he’s always focused on the next disruptive innovation and the next world to conquer. Both Uber and Kalanick have acquired a reputation for being combative, relentless, and iron-fisted against competitors. They’ve inspired both admiration and loathing as they’ve flouted government regulators, thrown the taxi industry into a tailspin, and stirred controversy over possible exploitation of drivers. They’ve even reshaped the deeply ingrained consumer behavior of not accepting a ride from a stranger—against the childhood warnings from everyone’s parents. Uber has made headlines thanks to its eye-popping valuations and swift expansion around the world. But this book is the first account of how Uber really became the giant it is today, and how it plans to conquer the future.
Silicon Valley | Streaming Film
American Experience, TV’s most-watched history series, brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today. The collection includes a number of great episodes from the series, including American Experience Silicon Valley. In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip — an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.
Plan your next trip with Travel and Culture Books from the UCBA Library
by Christian Boyles
Pack your bag, find your travel charger, get an electricity converter and buy some foreign currency, because the Summer is the perfect time to explore the world. Your UCBA library has you covered Continue reading
UCBA Librarian’s Bookish Adventures at the Ohioana Book Festival
UCBA Library’s Reference and Web Services Librarian, Michelle McKinney, enjoyed a fun-filled day of bookish adventures in nearby, Columbus Ohio on Saturday, April 14, 2018. Here’s how she spent the day… Continue reading
Another Successful National Library Week in the books for UCBA Library
The UCBA Library enjoys celebrating National Library Week with our students, staff and faculty and this year was no different! Visitors had the chance to participate in a number of activities such as “Guess How Many Bookworms” are in a jar, Book Drive for local non-profit Adopt a Book, submitting Book Recommendations and Wake Up And Read Pajama Day.

Madaline Bowman wins the Exam Week Survival Basket

Rebecca Dabb won the jar of gummy Bookworms by guessing 226 bookworks (there were 225)
- Amber Lanese’s winning button design
- UCBA Library Faculty and Staff
- Library faculty and staff wear PJs in honor of NLW’s theme, Wake Up and Read!
- Student Assistants, Tiffany and Isabella don their PJs at the desk
- Lauren Wahman and Christian Boyles and the Tournament of Titles and decked out in PJs for National Library Week’s Sleep In and Read theme. April 2018.
- Book Suggestions from the UCBA community
- Button Contest Finalists
UC Librarians and Staff Member Selected to Participate in Library Leadership Ohio 2018
Congratulations to UC’s Hong Cheng, Craig Person and Michelle McKinney on their selection to participate in Library Leadership Ohio 2018!
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The State Library of Ohio and OhioNET are pleased to announce the cohort of developing leaders selected to participate in Library Leadership Ohio 2018. Participants were carefully chosen based on their outstanding leadership potential; excellent communication skills; successful library employment experience; initiative, commitment and reasonable risk taking; forward-thinking approach to problem solving; and commitment to the profession.
“Library Leadership Ohio has long been recognized as Ohio’s premier institute for helping future leaders identify and develop their skills. It is gratifying to look around the state and see LLO graduates in key leadership positions throughout Ohio’s library community,” expressed State Librarian Beverly Cain. “I look forward to meeting the 2018 Library Leadership Ohio class and working with them to lead Ohio’s libraries to even greater levels of achievement.”
“OhioNET is pleased to partner again with the State Library of Ohio to facilitate development of the next generation of library leaders in Ohio. We have been working since last fall to make sure that LLO 2018 gives the greatest opportunities for invited attendees to learn from—and with—each other, and to further develop strong ties across library types,” said OhioNET Executive Director/CEO Michael P. Butler. “Library Leadership Ohio is a tremendous example of what collaboration can do for the benefit of the entire Ohio library community, and I am grateful to all who have helped to make LLO 2018 a reality.” Continue reading
Wake Up and Read at the UCBA Library
Celebrate National Library Week with fun activities and chances to win an Exam Week Survival basket of goodies! Collect a raffle ticket for participating in activities and earn additional chances to win each time you participate!
Monday, April 9 – Friday, April 13
Monday – Friday
- Donate a children’s book! All donations go to local, non-profit Adopt a Book, (which was started in 2011 by local 8 year old siblings).
- Accepted donations: new or used (in good condition) books for ages birth through high school.
- Donations not accepted: magazines, encyclopedias, and textbooks.
- Recommend your favorite book(s) to fellow students!
Friday
- “Wake Up and Read” but leave those jammies on! Wear your pajamas and earn another raffle ticket!
Come to the Library Information Desk to participate in the above activities and collect your raffle tickets!
The more you celebrate National Library Week with us, the more chances you’ll have to win the amazing Exam Week Survival basket on display at the Library Information Desk!
Other Activities:
- UCBA student-designed button giveaway
- “Guess How Many Bookworms” contest. The winner gets an entire jar of gummy worms!
- Free color therapy bookmarks
- Donuts and coffee on Friday morning beginning at 8:30 a.m.
- Cast a vote in UCBA Library’s 1st Annual Tournament of Titles
Announcing the UCBA Button Design Contest Winner
Amber Lanese’s winning button design
Congratulations to Amber Lanese, the winner of a $30 UC Bookstore Gift certificate, UCBA candy-filled cup and bragging rights! Her design entry received the most votes of any entrant, and has been crowned the winner!
Amber with gift and winning button
We want to send a big thank you to everyone who participated in our button design contest and helped make it a success!
April Book of the Month
by Christian Boyles
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
HD6280 .B77 2017
About the book
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short Continue reading