At her Oct. 22 Friends of the USC Libraries Literary Luncheon, novelist Lisa See reflected on sibling rivalries and the nuances of what is for many people the longest relationship in their lives. In Shanghai Girls, sisters Pearl and May Chin have a complicated relationship. In this clip, See shares a funny anecdote about her sister Clara.

The USC Libraries subscribe to the Web of Science and Web of Knowledge databases. To help you get more from these resources, the publisher is offering live and recorded training on topics ranging from basic search functions and citation metrics to specialized classes on EndNote and Reference Manager. Keep reading for a complete schedule of online classes. 

The director of the Harvard University Library and historian of books and print culture will speak at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 10, in the Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall on the second floor of Doheny Library. Presented by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the USC Libraries, his talk is titled Old Books and e-books.

The USC Libraries reached the highest-ever Good Neighbors Campaign participation rate with this year, finishing at 65%. The rate was double last year’s participation rate and significantly above the approximately 40% participation rate that GNC staff expect to find this year among USC faculty and staff.

Lamancas atjautigais idalgo Don Kihots is the latest addition to the USC Libraries’ L.A. Murillo Cervantes collection. After returning from a trip to Latvia, librarian Dace Taube donated the volume, which is only one of three copies in the United States. It features illustrations by Latvian artists, which you can see after the jump.

The libraries’ Deb Holmes-Wong and Matt Gainer are working closely with USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture on the Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative. The project will create a searchable Web site hosted by the USC Digital Library that will provide access to primary archival materials documenting the growth of global Pentecostal and charismatic religious faiths.

In this clip from her Oct. 22 Friends of the USC Libraries Literary Luncheon, Lisa See talks about her expectations as a 19-year-old and how they differed from her current life as a bestselling author. She got at least one of her wishes—knowing exactly what it’s like to live out of a suitcase.

In this clip from her Oct. 22 Literary Luncheon, Lisa See discusses how her most recent novel relates to her childhood memories of her family’s gift shop in L.A.‘s China City. During a recent visit to the shop’s new location in Pasadena, she discovered that many of the objects she remembered were gone—and that many of the people who remembered China City were in their 80s and 90s.

At her Oct. 22 Friends of the USC Libraries Literary Luncheon, Lisa See shared the history and family stories that inspired her most recent novel, Shanghai Girls. In this clip, she talks about the “beautiful girls” in 1930s advertisements, which represented the hopes for independence among women of the period. These advertisements used figures of “modern women” to sell everything from motor cars and whiskey to bicycles and pesticides.

At her Oct. 22 Friends of the USC Libraries Literary Luncheon, Lisa See shared the history and family stories that inspired her most recent novel, Shanghai Girls. She delighted the capacity audience with stories about her great-grandfather, background on glamorous 1930s Shanghai, and reflections on sibling rivalry and the bonds of sisterhood. In this clip, she talks about the discipline and passion of writing.