Digital Library Services

In a parallel universe where the economy is in better shape, it would have been great to have temporary Digital Projects Librarian Shawn Averkamp moved to permanent staff. Alas in this universe, we have to say goodbye, as she leaves today to prepare for relocating to The University of Alabama Libraries, which has been lucky enough to hire her as a Metadata Librarian. From Shawn’s first digital fellowship project building the African American Women Students at the UI collection, to her recent duties helping to implement Iowa Research Online, Shawn has made her mark in DLS, and will be greatly missed personally as well as professionally.

In salute to Shawn, here are some artifacts from Traveling Culture, another collection she’s worked on. If it weren’t for the economy, we would have liked to hire an actual chorus of dancing men to see her off.

This past week, the Iowa Digital Library surpassed 250,000 items. There has been much to celebrate since the 100,000th item was added just a little over a year ago, as several new collections have been released. They range from historical photographs of the UI’s trendsetting physical education program for women to material related to Abraham Lincoln to photographs and oral history accounts of last year’s flood.

The 250,000th item represents an upcoming collection of 18th-century sheet music by French composer and publisher Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831). Most of these scores were published within his lifetime and a handful were issued by Pleyel’s own publishing house.

Printed around 1790, Pleyel arranged this collection of songs for voice and keyboard. These melodies originally appeared in some of his many string quartets.

12 elegant ballads

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Welcome to the Iowa Digital Library home page version 2.0! We hope you enjoy the newly redesigned site as much as we do. The old page dated all the way back to 2006, making it 21 in dog years, and virtually ancient in digital library years. Designed in response to our rapid growth since then, the new site features improved scalability and browsability, allowing quicker and easier access to our ever-increasing number of digitized artifacts.

Special thanks to digital library graduate fellow Angela Murillo for spending much of last semester contributing to the project, and also to our colleagues in the Applications & Web Services department for assisting with design and functionality, to our colleagues at other institutions whose work inspired us, and to the users who provided us with valuable feedback. Please keep the comments and suggestions coming by filling out our user survey or e-mailing us at lib-digital@uiowa.edu.

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