Step into the Past: Celebrate Renaissance Faires
Umpqua Community College is hosting a Renaissance Faire on July 19, 2025. This coincides with the College's production of Spamalot, a lovely musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Sue Shaffer Learning Commons and Library invites you to celebrate the enchantment and educational value of Renaissance Faires, joyful gatherings that blend entertainment, history, and embrace the Riverhawk community spirit.
Renaissance faires, often held throughout the summer and fall, celebrate the art, culture, and daily life of the Renaissance period (roughly the 14th to 17th centuries). These events invite attendees to engage with a world of historical reenactments, artisan crafts, period music, live theater, and educational demonstrations that illuminate one of the most dynamic periods in human history.
Don't forget beautiful paintings created in the Renaissance, such as the Mona Lisa (pictured above).
Whether you're donning a doublet or simply curious about life in the 1500s, the UCC Library offers a variety of resources to explore the rich tapestry of Renaissance life and learning:
Books and eBooks – Explore Fashions from that time period with Costume and Fashion Source books Elizabethan England, and The Medieval World, both by Kathy Elgin. Check out books about the Renaissance with: A Short History of the Renaissance in Northern Europe by Malcolm Vale, these works offer insight into politics, art, science, and society during the Renaissance.
Gale OneFile: Fine Arts – Access articles on Renaissance artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Titan and how their art helped to shape the cultural rebirth of Europe by blending science, beauty, and human emotion in groundbreaking ways.
Gale OneFile: World History- Check out the thinkers of the time such as Galileo, and Machiavelli and explore how their ideas shaped the modern world.
Films on Demand – Watch engaging documentaries such as Renaissance, or Leonardo da Vinci: a two-part film series by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon which highlights Leonardo da Vinci's Life.
Kanopy – Stream historical dramas and educational films like The Middle Ages around the World or The Private Life of Henry VIII, perfect for a deeper understanding of the theatrical and political world brought to life at fairs.
JSTOR – Delve into scholarly research about Renaissance festivals themselves—how they originated, what cultural purposes they serve today, and their educational potential as living history.
Renaissance faires are more than entertainment—they’re an opportunity to reflect on innovation, humanism, and the power of creativity in shaping societies. They encourage curiosity and community through playful yet profound connections to the past.
The UCC Library is here to support your journey into this fascinating historical period with curated resources and helpful guidance. We encourage you to visit a fair, explore our collections, and let history come alive.
Huzzah and happy exploring!
We Celebrate World Honeybee Day
The third Saturday in August, August 16, 2025, marks World Honeybee Day, a global celebration of one of the planet’s most important pollinators. Honeybees play a vital role in our ecosystem and food systems, supporting biodiversity and helping produce over one-third of the food we eat. This day is an opportunity to appreciate their essential contributions, and to recognize how we can help protect them.
At the UCC Library, we believe that understanding the natural world is a key part of education, sustainability, and collective well-being. World Honeybee Day invites us to pause and ask: How do our actions impact the world around us? How can we support ecological health and balance? To support this reflection, the Sue Shaffer Learning Commons and Library offers a wide range of digital and streaming resources focused on bees, pollination, environmental sustainability, and conservation.
Books and eBooks:
Explore titles like The Bees in Your Backyard by Joseph S. Wilson and Olivia Messinger Carril, a beautifully illustrated guide that helps readers identify native bees and understand their behavior and habitat. Our Native Bees: North America's endangered pollinators and the fight to save them by Paige Embry, highlights the vital yet often overlooked role of North America's native bees in ecosystems and agriculture, as the author explores their importance through personal adventures and conservation efforts. And for those interested in beekeeping, The Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum offers an accessible introduction to starting and maintaining a hive.
MasterFILE Premier:
Browse scholarly articles on Bee Vision to explore how bees perceive the world. You can read this study that shows that Bees teach each other puzzle solving, highlighting their intelligence. The article Honey Bees in Demand discusses how farmers and beekeepers can collaborate to support bee health while meeting agricultural needs. Research topics such as the impact of pesticides on bee health, climate change, and urban beekeeping as a form of conservation.
Films on Demand:
Watch Vanishing of the Bees, a documentary that examines the mysterious decline of honeybee populations around the world and explores the consequences for food security and environmental health. Another featured film, Hive to Honey, shows Award-winning Colorado apiary Bee squared, led by owner Beth, a behind the scenes look at local honey production while highlighting the vital role of bees and how we can help protect their future.
Kanopy:
This platform offers several compelling documentaries on pollinators and conservation. Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? presents a poetic, urgent look at the global bee crisis and the people working to heal it. Seed: The Untold Story also highlights the connection between pollinators and food security, emphasizing the importance of biodiversity and indigenous farming practices.
Gale OneFile: Environmental Studies and Policy:
Find timely articles on environmental policy, agriculture, and bee conservation. Notable reads include: Land Use and Season Interactively Affect Honeybee (Apis mellifera) Body Size and Fat Stores. which talks about human driven habitat changes impact honeybee health, with this study showing seasonal and land use effects on their size, fat stores, and survival traits. If you are a coffee drinker, Tropical agriculture: the value of bees to coffee harvest might interest you. This article explores how honeybees significantly boost coffee yields and highlights the importance of pollinator friendly habitats for sustainable tropical agriculture.
Protecting Our Pollinators, One Day and Every Day
World Honeybee Day is more than a tribute to bees, it’s a call to stewardship, inviting us to learn more about how we can support the environment, both locally and globally. At UCC, we are committed to fostering an informed and engaged community that values sustainability, science, and the delicate balance of nature.
Whether you're curious about pollination, concerned about climate change, or considering planting a bee-friendly garden, the UCC Library is here to support your learning with resources that inform and inspire.
Take a moment this August, and every day, to appreciate the tiny workers that keep our planet blooming. Because when we care for bees, we care for the future.
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