Your blogger has been quite busy lately, which has been the reason in the decline in blogs. He has been busy trying to lead a new club he founded last summer at the University of South Florida, Tampa campus: The Japanese Club at USF.

The first thing you might be saying to yourself is “Hey you aren’t Japanese?!” and trust me I get it all the time. While it’s true that I am not Japanese, the Japanese Club at USF, known for short as the “J-Club” is meant to create awareness for Japanese culture around the USF community and enrich students in it. I don’t think you necessarily have to be Japanese to appreciate their culture. Many people enroll in Japanese courses to learn the language and also have a personal interest in its culture: its history, politics, art, music, cuisine, and various other aspects of the nations culture. USF has a relatively small Japanese student community, so I didn’t mind taking the initiative to lead this.

In fact right now I am enrolled in a Japanese politics, history, and cultural course: Japan Today which is filled to max capacity, evidence that many people are interested and want to know more about the land of the rising sun. Also if you didn’t know, USF also has several active Japanese Martial Arts Clubs on campus such as the Aikido Club, Chito Ryu Karate Club, Karate Club, and Kenjutsu Club…so there is already plenty of Japanese interest on campus; it is all just spread out.

At a Japanese picnic hosted by the Japanese teachers at USF

So far the J-Club has held club meetings for a few months with each meeting having themes around Japanese cities, traditions, history, and various other parts of Japanese culture. We try to get people to learn and get involved as much as possible in the culture. We went to Orlando on a road-trip last October to the Orlando Japan Festival and there was over eight cars full of people walking around taking part in a festival filled with culture. It was really an amazing sight and hopefully there will be many more opportunities to come for people to get involved.

At the Orlando Japan Festival

Of course we like to have fun like any other club and have also had many socials to try and help members bond and create a social network among people who have a similar interest. Some of the socials we have had are sushi socials: where we go out and eat together at sushi restaurants, a bowling social, and a karaoke social just to name a few.

At the Japanese Club Bowling Social

We have tried to support the Japanese teachers and the Japanese Institute in their efforts to bring Japanese culture to USF by promoting their events and also have started Japanese Language Workshops where people can come and learn Japanese for free after receiving numerous inquiries that people are interested in the language but didn’t have the time to enroll in a real class or they couldn’t include it into their schedules since their major isn’t related.

I think it’s truly fun and rewarding to make this possible. Maybe it’s something for you. If you’d like to know more check out the club’s facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/usfjclub, add us on Blackboard, and even shoot an email over to usfjapaneseclub@gmail.com if you have further questions.

Here at Gleeson we put out a newsletter called Global Update once a semester. I’m the editor of this newsletter — I compile the articles, edit them for readability, add images, and format the publication. I consider Global Update to complement the library blog, Gleeson Gleanings, as a sort of location for greatest hits and b-sides — that is, it is one place to find some information you might have seen on the blog as well as other harder to find information.

Check out our latest issue by visiting Gleeson’s web page The Word: Library News in Many Voices where you can also find links to blogs written by USF librarians and links to other social media like Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

You may have noticed us library people like clever names and puns, so you may be wondering about the name Global Update. It’s a play on the function of updating a batch of records at one time through our back-end catalog managing software, Millennium. Catalog Librarians and Systems Librarians can add, take away, or edit information in a group of records at one time by doing a global update. My hope is that the latest issue of Global Update will provide new information to a group of people at one time, and that we’ll have some fun doing it!