Library News & Events

Hey there, Oilers! Here are Shafer Library's hours for the summer starting May 30th. From May 12-29th, we will be open Monday-Friday 9am to 4pm and closed Saturday and Sunday. Have a fun Summer and congratulations to the class of 2025!!!

Hey there, Oilers! In preparation for Finals week, Shafer Library will be open Late Friday, May 2nd, from 7:45 am to 7:00 pm to give you a little extra study time! Please note that the Knowledge Bar will not be open to provide technology help.

Shafer Library will be closing early on Thursday, April 17 at 5pm and will be closed from Friday April 18 through Monday April 21 for the Easter Holiday. Have a great break!

Happy Flashback Friday, Oilers! We've shown off quite a few different kinds of items and records that the Archive keeps over the last few years of Flashback Friday, but while going through our shelves we found a whole box filled with these relics of modern technology, filled to the brim with sports rosters, graphics, and recordings. 

Floppy disks, created for commercial use in 1971 by IBM, can last for 10-20 years if stored properly, so maybe we can get these opened up one day! While some of you might not be familiar with floppy disks or though they'd gone the way of the Dinosaurs eons ago, that's actually not the case. 

Despite Sony ending production of the floppy disk in 2011, there were so many manufactured that you can still buy unused ones today and there sure is a market for them! British Airwaves continued to use them until the early 2020s! And according to a BBC article Boeing still uses them to install software on some of their aircraft. The Muni Metro light railway in San Francisco also still uses them to help get people moved around the city. Many companies and government bodes still rely on them, but a lot are starting to phase them out, like Japan did as recently in 2024!

For archives, though, this means that we always have to be considering obsolescence of technology and how we can best preserve the data. Even now, CDs are being used less frequently as things move more onto the Cloud, and who's to say we'll continue to have access to DVD/CD drives in the future if the tools used to read them also stop being produced. Lucky for us, floppy disk drives still exist! Now if only VHS to DVD conversion was cheaper…

Hey there, Oilers! Happy Flashback Friday! Now we all know that there are a lot of great student organizations on campus, but did you know there used to be a Science Fiction club? Or that it had a magazine? Future Focus, the Fanzine affiliated with the club, was published on campus from 1978-1979 before it moved off campus for the rest of its run which as far as we can tell was about 1989 according to the last mention of it we found in a Pulse article on our Findlay Memory digital archive. What a good run! 

Future Focus included reviews, original art, and original stories by (during its UF run) Findlay students, later branching out to other creators.

Here's a short story called Bloodsport by editor Reed Richmond.

And a piece looking at the art of famous sci-fi illustrator Frank Frazetta.

The club itself also hosted special events, like a viewing of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” featuring a special appearance by Mr. James “Scotty” Doohan!

Do you think campus should revive the Sci-Fi club? I could see that little crab mascot wearing Oiler orange for sure!

Happy Valentine's Day, Oilers! Still looking for gift ideas for that special someone? Not sure if dinner or a movie is the way to go? Take a look at these helpful columns from the Pulse, maybe Oilers from the past can help you out! Click on the images for a link to our Findlay Memory digital archive that has transcripts of the articles!

Thrifty Valentine's

Here we have some helpful advice from 1998 on how to have a fun yet frugal day with your sweetheart, including getting a small bag of candy from Dietsch Brothers or write a poem and eat cheese. If you are anti-Valentine's day, our author Cut-Rate-Cupid here has some movie recommendations or says to bake yourself some cookies!

Digital Holidays

Flashforward to the year 2000, having survived Y2K, we have some recommendations on using AOL or Blue Mountain to send a digital Valentine's day card, they're colorful and animated and oh so modern, making this Librarian feel oh so old that I remember the sites listed in this article.

Pay it forward

Skipping ahead to 2002, maybe you and your boo can instead participate in a charity event, like this Valentine's day food drive and card making party, so sweet!