DRP News and Events
With a few items from the Iowa Digital Library, we celebrate Juan Gris 125th birthday, known for his cubist style and working alongside Picasso (a fellow countryman) and Braque whose cubist work was largely monochromatic. Juan Gris, on the other hand, painted his cubist designs with a brighter palette more in keeping with his friend Henri Matisse.
–Ann Khan, Digital Research and Publishing
It’s the Spring equinox, and the flowers are bringing us back to life, perennially a cause for celebration as the Iowa Digital Library illustrates.
Bird on hand by Tilly Woodward, 2006 | The Daily Palette Digital Collection
UI dancers, 1910s | Iowa City Town and Campus Scenes
Flower baskets, Lost Nation, Iowa, 1915 | Noble Photographs
Floral postcard, 1910s | Noble Photographs
Scrapbook cover, 1997 | Evelyn Birkby Collection
Equinox by David Whannel, 2008 | The Daily Palette Digital Collection
Expanding our manuscript transcription crowdsourcing site to include materials outside of the Civil War collections is taking longer than expected — apparently digitizing thousands of pages of manuscript cookbooks dating from the 17th century is not quite as straightforward as one would wish. But the scanning is finally underway, and we’re using the extra time it’s taken to investigate Scripto, a specialized tool that could help us manage our crowdsourcing workflows more efficiently. Meanwhile transcription on the Civil War materials is still going strong — we expect to receive our 10,000th submission within a month and we’re picking up new users all the time, such as Pinterest member Alicia Lea, who wrote the lovely testimonial below.
In celebration of International Women’s Day, we’re featuring a few of the thousands of artifacts in our Iowa Women’s Archives Digital Collections:
Holy City residents, Bettendorf, Iowa, 1920s | Mujeres Latinas
Basketball practice, 1938 | University of Iowa Physical Education for Women
Betty Ford at the National Republican Convention, Kansas City, 1976 | Iowa Women's Archives Founders
Girls' dance troupe, Roland, Iowa, 1910s | Noble Photographs
Fence climbing, The University of Iowa, 1920s | African American Women in Iowa
"...But you know it's a leap year," editorial cartoon, June 21, 1904 | Editorial Cartoons of J.N. Ding Darling
"Yes, Virginia, this is a leap year," newspaper column, Feb. 29, 1968 | The Daily Iowan Historic Newspapers
"Leap year," mixed media by Jill Erickson, 1987 | School of Art & Art History Graduate Archive
Over on the Twitter account for the Libraries’ Civil War transcription crowdsourcing project, we’re taking a break from our Black History Month tweets to highlight some Valentine’s Day content, such as Albert Cross’s 1862 diary entry indicating a conflicted relationship with the holiday: “I wish the mail would come as this is Valentine’s Day. I am expecting some valentines though I can’t say I crave any.” By the next day, this ambivalence appears to have cleared up after the arrival of — spoiler alert! — the expected valentines from a not-so-secret admirer: “Yesterday I received two valentines whitch was very Interesting Indeed. I have a very good idea who they came from and I shall call on them in a few evenings and talk to them about the matter.”
James B. Weaver’s 1861 love letter to his wife is no less passionate for having been written on September 3rd rather than February 14th — romantic excerpt below, lovingly transcribed by our crowdsourcing volunteers:
James B. Weaver letter to wife, 1861 | Civil War Diaries and Letters
…I am now writing by Candlelight, & I would be the happiest man living could I get one sweet kiss from you this night. Darling you will pardon me won’t you for writing you so much about my love for you, for I really do not feel like writing about anything else. I think of you all the time. You are constantly in my mind. O darling how much good it does my very soul to prove true to such a true woman as you are. I pledge you my word before God that I am all yours and that I would rather die at once than prove unfaithful to you. I always thought that you had more attractions for me than any woman I ever saw long yes years before I married you, but now I know you, and indeed you are tenfold more woman than I ever imagined you in my love dreams. God love you my own true, honorable, highminded wife. Darling you know that I am a man of very, very strong passions, but I pledge you my honor & my very soul before God that I am all yours, every whit. You are mine thank God. O what a [pinnacle?] love is. I am happy in loving you…
[he goes on for two more pages]
Skipping ahead a few wars, our Valentine’s slideshow linked below features a cherubic Stalin and Hitler among more familiar symbols of love:
XOXO, The Libraries: romantic artifacts from our research collections
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Self portrait with Charles Dickens, by James Louis Steg, 1964 | University of Iowa Museum of Art
Today the University will be marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth with a presentation hosted by the Obermann humanities center. Along with lectures on Dickens by UI and community experts, the event will feature selections from the Libraries’ Dickensiana holdings, including some of the correspondence digitized for our Leigh Hunt Letters collection:
Charles Dickens correspondence, 1842-1870 | Leigh Hunt Letters
Charles Dickens letter to Leigh Hunt, May 24, 1844 | Leigh Hunt Letters
Wisława Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, died on February 1, 2012. According to The Telegraph:
The Nobel award committee’s 1996 citation called her the “Mozart of poetry,” a woman who mixed the elegance of language with “the fury of Beethoven” and tackled serious subjects with humor. While she was arguably the most popular poet in Poland, most of the world had not heard of the shy, soft-spoken Szymborska before she won the Nobel prize.
She has been called both deeply political and playful, a poet who used humor in unforeseen ways. Her verse, seemingly simple, was subtle, deep and often hauntingly beautiful. She used simple objects and detailed observation to reflect on larger truths, often using everyday images – an onion, a cat wandering in an empty apartment, an old fan in a museum – to reflect on grand topics such as love, death and passing time.
On May 6, 2011, Prairie Lights hosted a poetry reading celebrating the work of older poets, including Szymborska. You can hear her poems, as well as selections from Elizabeth Bishop, Donald Justice, Stanley Kunitz, W.S. Merwin, and W.B. Yeats in this recording: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/vwu,2897
Our collection also includes a discussion with Bronislaw Maj on the difficulties of translating Szymborska’s idiomatic language and colloquialism into an international literary language: http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/vwu,448
And if you’d rather remember her by reading one of her books, you can check those out too!
The UI’s Art Building West, winner of a 2007 American Institute of Architects Honor Award, was open for less than two years when it sustained severe damage in the floods of 2008. With original construction costs of $21.5 million, the building recently completed its $14.2 million refurbishment and is finally back in business. Check out these images of ABW from the Iowa Digital Library before stopping by to see it in all its newly restored glory:
Construction, 2005 | University Communication and Marketing Photographs
Flood damage and repair, 2008 | Iowa City Flood
The University of Iowa Libraries has recently completed a project to digitize the entire run of Hawkeye yearbooks, comprising more than 38,000 pages documenting UI history from 1892 to 1992. The digital collection, with its vast assortment of yearbook photographs and illustrations enhanced by full-text search functionality, is available at http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/yearbooks.
“We, as students, are aware that the … University of Iowa possesses many and rare advantages,” explained the student editors in the preface to the very first Hawkeye published in 1892. The stated goal of the student body was “to aid its alma mater by giving to the world an estimation of its real worth.”
“The Hawkeye is our go-to source for many, if not most, of our reference questions concerning twentieth century campus life,” says University Archivist David McCartney. “The yearbook collection is indispensable, and with online access now available it will become an even richer resource for our alumni and the general public.”
