Digital Library Services

Just returned from Indianapolis and Midwest Users Group Conference for CONTENTdm, the digital asset management software that we use to power the Iowa Digital Library.  This was the third annual meeting, but really the first year that it’s been truly regional, attendance-wise.  It was really positive to hear how numbers had grown in those three years.  In ’06, there were 30 attendees, and 60 last year.  This year, 101.  It shows a growing user base that will hopefully have a greater influence on the system’s growth and development.  More regional meetings are planned for this year including ones in the southeast and mid-Atlantic.

We received an update from Claire Cocco, CONTENTdm’s product manager on some exciting enhancements to expect later this year, and Glee Willis delivered a great keynote on day two, encouraging digital libraries to stretch the system through customizations in order to best serve information users, showing examples from some of the leaders in the CONTENTdm community.

I particularly enjoyed the University of Louisville’s session on using the MyMaps feature of Google Maps to add overlays as browse interfaces through which to enter cartographic resources in CONTENTdm.  DLS’s own Wendy Robertson spoke at a presentation about workflows for migrating MARC catalog records to CONTENTdm, which was well received by the audience.

I participated on panels discussing digitizing scrapbooks and yearbooks and using CONTENTdm for art collections, and also brought along Jen Wolfe’s eye-catching poster depicting how DLS handles scrapbooks.  Nicole Saylor served on the conference’s planning committee and Brian Thompson attended the meeting as a way to become more familiar with the system and its community of users.  So, LIT was well represented.

There was even talk of an upper-Midwest CONTENTdm users group getting together later this year.  It’s nice to see this kind of organization, but my hope is that CONTENTdm users can maintain a similar level of activity and working together between meetings, perhaps by blowing the dust off the user group wiki, which can help all levels of implementation make the best use of the system.

One of the most beneficial pieces of the meeting was meeting new people and talking about the different ways in which we’re using the system for digital library activities.  We enjoyed some good food and a great record store in downtown Indianapolis (sorry Jen, never made it to Trader Joe’s), but now it’s back to work.

–Mark F. Anderson
Digital Initiatives Librarian

The University of Iowa Digital Library now contains 100,000 items. To mark this milestone, a 13th-century Bible manuscript page from the Special Collections Department of the UI Libraries has been scanned and uploaded to represent the transformation of information storage over the centuries, from handmade parchment to zeroes and ones.

“Digital versions of rare records and documents bring new attention to the physical artifacts that have made up human communication in the past,” said Matthew Brown, director of the UI Center for the Book. “The Iowa Digital Library is exactly the kind of teaching tool that alerts students to meanings of the medium, whether it be paper or stone, handwriting or typeface, engraving or photograph.”

“As scholarship increasingly moves online, it’s essential that we follow suit with our physical collections,” said Nicole Saylor, head of Digital Library Services. “By increasing accessibility to the UI’s rare and unique materials through digitization, the Libraries will continue to be relevant and vital participants in the University’s research and educational processes.”

See the full press release here.

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: The president and the portrait: a featured presentation of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Fine Arts Festival, Iowa Memorial Union, State University of Iowa, June 10-Aug. 5., 1964
Creator: unknown
Collection: Art Festival Programs

I like “The President and the Portrait” which is part of the Festival of Arts brochures. This gives a biographical and portrait history of the Presidents of the UI from 1862-1964.  You can actually see photos or paintings of a lot of the guys who have UI buildings named after them!

–Dan E. Teets
Library Assistant, Central Technical Services

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: The Brownie Scouts in the Circus
Creator: Mildred Wirt Benson
Collection: Mildred Wirt Benson Digital Collection

Ghosts, kidnappers, thieves, and blackmailers abound in the novels of Nancy Drew author and UI alum Mildred Wirt Benson; our digital cover gallery features her intrepid teen sleuths battling a variety of these dark forces. But for me, the unintentionally terrifying dust jacket illustration from this 1949 title in Wirt’s Brownie Scouts series is the most spine-chilling — and definitely one of the most memorable — images from the collection.

–Jen Wolfe
Metadata Librarian, Digital Library Services

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: Close Hall, The University of Iowa, 1900s
Creator: unknown
Collection: Iowa City Town and Campus Scenes

My staff pick is Close Hall which served as the YMCA/YWCA in the early part of the last century. From John C. Gerber’s A Pictorial History of The University of Iowa (University of Iowa Press, 2005):

When Close Hall was dedicated in 1890, so many people came to admire it that the floors sagged alarmingly, and the building was instantly condemned.  After repairs, it reopened and became home to the YM-YWCA. On January 16, 1896 Close Hall was the site of the first basketball game between two college teams of five men on a side.  Iowa lost to the University of Chicago, 15-12.  After 1924 Close Hall served the Journalism Department, the University printing service, and the Daily Iowan.  On New Year’s Day 1940 the building caught fire… [p. 70]

Aerial photographs from the 1960s, also available in this digital collection, show what was left of the building; only one floor remained at the time. It was finally demolished between 1968 and 1970; Biology Building West now stands on its former site.

–Bobby Duncan
Library Assistant, Digital Library Services

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: Hattie Jacobs’ postcard collection, 1908-1910
Creator: unknown
Collection: Noble Photographs Digital Collection

I am fond of old postcards because I like to read other people’s mail. A few from the Noble Photograph Collection grabbed me, all addressed to Miss Hattie Jacobs.

The back reads, “Hattie, do you indulge in such dreams? I’m surprised if you do. Ah, piffle. Billie”

On the back: “Dear H. Everybody is O.K. Mrs. Butler from across the street died last night. Too bad, is not it? Goodbye W.S.”
I am left wondering for whom W.S.’s heart is afire.

Why is he standing on a chair? If he wants to get next to her, why doesn’t he sit next to her?

Judging by her mail, Miss Hattie Jacobs must have been a lot of fun.

–Joanna Lee
Digital Library Fellow, Schoool of Library and Information Science

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: Children’s wonder book
Creator: Steinwender-Stoffregen Coffee Co.
Collection: Szathmary Recipe Pamphlets Digital Collection

This is a page from the “Children’s Wonder Book”, a 1905 advertising pamphlet for Yale Coffee containing puzzles and games for children. Despite the incongruity of a coffee advertisement aimed at children (or perhaps because of it), I like this object because of the creativity and simplicity of the various activities. In an age of video games and Toys ‘R Us, it’s a nice reminder that good old fashioned entertainment can be had with a lemon and some matchsticks.  

–Jane Monson
Digital Library Fellow, School of Library and Information Science

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: James Van Allen on deck at an arctic rockoon expedition, 1950s
Creator: Joseph Kasper
Collection: Research Collections Images

Prof. James Van Allen adjusting equipment about to be sent aloft during an arctic expedition to launch research “rockoons,” precursors to rockets, at the very beginning of the Space Age. The subject matter is of interest to me, but I also like the fact that this image is from a slide taken by a graduate student on the expedition — it has the feel of a snapshot rather than a more “official” photograph, bringing us closer to the historic moment we are witnessing.

–Greg Prickman
Assistant Head, Special Collections & University Archives

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: Supersisters trading cards, 1979
Creator: Supersisters
Collection: Iowa Women’s Archives Founders Digital Collection

In 1978, Lois Rich was asked by her 8-year-old daughter, a baseball card collector, why there weren’t any pictures of girls on the cards. By the following year, Rich had sought out and received grant funding from educational organizations to create the Supersisters trading card set, featuring 72 feminist heroines. With subjects ranging from puppeteer Shari Lewis to politician (and future IWA co-founder) Mary Louise Smith, the cards have been dismissed by some modern-day pundits as a “noble but misguided” project (“It’s sort of hard to imagine kids getting excited about them — ‘Hey, I’ll trade you two Bella Abzugs for a mint Shirley Chisolm!’”). However, I find them a fascinating artifact documenting the areas in which women were — and weren’t — making progress during the second wave of feminism.

–Sarah Dorpinghaus
Digitization Specialist, Digital Library Services

As the Iowa Digital Library approaches the 100,000-item mark, we’re celebrating this milestone by highlighting some of our favorite items from the collections.

Title: Threshing at the Graham farm, Davis City, Iowa, 1910s
Creator: unknown
Collection: Noble Photographs Digital Collection

One of my favorite images from the digital collections is this image of threshing. I was fortunate to have a great-grandfather still living in south central Iowa and great-aunts and -uncles who wanted to carry on the farming tradition when I was a child in the 1980s. Great-grandpa still had a steam engine for threshing. The entire family came to the land one day when I was 6 years old and we used that old dated machine to thresh. It was extremely hot, there was hay flying everywhere in the air, and I remember moving a blanket across the south part of the field where there were small trees along the fence so I could remain in the sparse shade. The absolute best part of the day was the picnic lunch where everyone took a break and sat down to eat. What an incredible memory to build for the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of how the work was done long ago in Iowa. I’ll never forget it!

–Sara Baird
Library Assistant, Central Technical Services