Library News

Models are needed for a photo session in the branch libraries on Tuesday, September 5; Thursday, September 7, and Monday, September 11. These photos will be used in the Libraries newsletter and website.

Every student who signs-up and participates will receive a $5 gift certificate to the IMU. Please contact Kristi Bontrager (kristi-r-bontrager@uiowa.edu) to sign up.

Tuesday, September 5
9:00 – 9:30 a.m. at the Psychology Library (W202 Seashore Hall)
9:30 - 10:00 a.m. at the Physics Library (350 Van Allen Hall)
10:15 - 10:45 a.m. at the Biological Sciences Library
11:00 - 11:30 a.m. at the Math Library (125 Maclean Hall)

Thursday, September 7
9:00 - 9:15 a.m. at the Chemistry Library (second floor, Main Library)
9:30 - 10:00 a.m. at the Lichtenberger Engineering Library (2001 Seamans Center)
10:15 – 10:45 a.m. at the Geoscience Library (136 Trowbridge Hall)
11:00 - 11:45 a.m. at the Pomerantz Business Library (C320 PBB)

Monday, September 11
1:00 - 1:30 p.m. at the Rita Benton Music Library (2000 Voxman Music Building)
2:00 - 3:00 p.m. at the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Kristi. Thanks for your help.

As often as possible, the UI Libraries is eliminating paper copies of materials for reserve and replacing them with electronic copies of reserve materials, particularly when the materials are journal articles. Often the material is provided as a link to a full text database that the library subscribes to. In other cases, reserve staff scan photocopies provided by the instructor to create a PDF that can be read using the free software Adobe Reader.

Students can get to the materials assigned for their courses either through ICON (the University’s course management system) or via the InfoHawk reserve database. (Note that some branch libraries also have listings of electronic reserves from their home pages.)

For more information about Course Reserves at the UI Libraries, you can check online at http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/services/courseres.html.

As students return to the Main Library, they will notice some construction and re-organization projects.

The Information Arcade® is being renovated and expanded. A new “smart” classroom is being added. This classroom will be equipped with 24 student computer stations and one instructor station. Construction of this project will be ongoing throughout the semester with a projected availability for the spring 2007 semester.

The Information Technology Center (ITC) in the main corridor of the second floor is moving to the south end of the eastside second floor reading room. This move will allow the ITC to expand beyond its current space limitations. This move also is expected to be completed by the spring 2007 semester.

A new ADA-compliant restroom is being constructed on the first floor, north of the Information Desk. This addition will provide easy access to restroom facilities on the first floor in the main corridor. The expected completion date for this project is also in the spring 2007 semester.

While we understand that the work to accomplish these changes can be distracting, we are doing everything we can to minimize interruptions during busy times of the day. Once completed, these renovated facilities will provide library users with more access to computers in a more comfortable environment.

If you have questions or comments, please contact Nan Seamans, Associate University Librarian, 319-335-5867. We look forward to better serving the UI community with these new facilities.

Interlibrary Loan users now can choose which branch library to pick up their loan materials, potentially saving them a trip across campus.

For example, if a psychology student needs a book that the UI Libraries does not own, that student can make an interlibrary loan request online and choose to pick up the book at the Psychology Library instead of the Main Library or the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. The student will receive a notification e-mail with the pick-up location (Psychology Library) listed when the book arrives. After using the requested book, the student should return it to the pick-up location a couple of days before the noted due date.

Generally interlibrary loan requests for books or other physical materials can be filled within 10 working days, many times much faster.

As always for articles, interlibrary loan users can request electronic delivery to their desktop or photocopies mailed to them. The average turnaround time for electronic delivery of articles is 5 working days.

All UI faculty, staff, and students are eligible to use the Interlibrary Loan service. Once registered, interlibrary loan users can designate the pick-up location for all of their requests. To change the pick-up library location, users simply need to review personal information and choose another pick-up location.

Books, reports, theses, microfilm, videos and other research materials not owned by the UI can often be borrowed from another library. Last year the Main Library filled nearly 20,000 interlibrary loan requests.

Ruthann McTyre, head of the Rita Benton Music Library, has been appointed to serve on the Hancher Auditorium Committee. Ruthann is one of three staff members, three faculty and six students confirmed by the President of the University to serve.

The committee advises Charles Swanson, Executive Director and Judith Hurtig, Artistic Director for Hancher on the selection of events to provide a balanced program of music, theater, dance and the other performing arts. The committee also gauges public reaction to the cultural and entertainment programs offered at Hancher.

Ruthann joined the UI Libraries in the spring of 2000. She has been involved in the arts since she began studying voice in the 9th grade. Eventually she earned a Master’s degree in Vocal Performance from Southern Methodist University. Outside of her role in the music library, Ruthann is involved in community arts activities. In 2003, she spoke about the role of music in Ann Patchett’s novel, Bel Canto for Iowa City’s One Community, One Book program. She has performed in two of the School of Music’s summer opera productions, including most recently, the production of “A Little Night Music.”

Birds have long captured peoples’ imaginations, and those flights of fancy are on display in a new exhibit at the University of Iowa’s Main Library that includes a display of bird specimens from the UI Museum of Natural History unseen for years.

“Words, Like Feathers Fly: Chronicles of Iowa Birders” will be on exhibit in the Main Library’s North Lobby through October. Admission is free. The exhibit features a display of birding journals kept by two avid Iowa birders, Shirley Briggs of Iowa City and Pearl Knoop of Marble Rock. Both women donated their journals to the UI Libraries’ Iowa Women’s Archives following their deaths, Briggs in 2004 and Knoop in 1998. Samples of their writings and observation are on display.

Also included are bird specimens from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most originally collected by the Rev. Clinton Mellon Jones in New England. The Jones collection, which includes more than 600 birds, was donated to the UI Museum of Natural History in 1926. The dozen specimens in the exhibit have not been on public display for many years.

Birding has always been a popular hobby for Americans, and Iowans in particular. Eagles, owls and pigeons figured prominently in Ioway American Indian clan culture. White explorers and settlers of the 1800s began almost immediately to chronicle bird observations, collect eggs and eventually compile detailed lists of birds seen in Iowa. In 2001, 46 million Americans, or 22 percent of the population, identified themselves as birders or birdwatchers, according to the 2001 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. About 813,000 Iowans, or 34 percent, of the state’s residents call themselves birders, topping the combined number of Iowans who participate in hunting and fishing.

Other Iowa birders included in the exhibit include Ding Darling, Arthur Francis Allen and Bernt Olaf Wolden.

The exhibition is free of charge and open during regular Main Library hours.

Each of the images above is taken from the new Shirley Briggs collection in the Iowa Women’s Archives. Click on them for a larger image. More information about birds and birding in Iowa is available online at http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits.

Libraries staffers Kristin Baum and Sarah Andrews are taking cARTalog on the road to the Iowa State Fair on Sunday, August 20 at 3 p.m. as part of the University of Iowa booth.

Fairgoers will get to learn about the public art project and the history of the card catalog as well as see some of the works that were submitted for the cARTalog exhibition.

Kids can make their own cARTalog project from recycled catalog cards to take home.

The University of Iowa Libraries joins the campus community in remembering James A. Van Allen, whose pioneering research led to the discovery of radiation belts surrounding the earth. Van Allen played a key role in the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1950’s and 60’s. As a professor of physics at Iowa, he directed several graduate students in the assembly of data-gathering equipment for Explorer I, the U.S.’s first satellite, launched in 1958. His notes and reports about Explorer and other space exploration projects may be found in his papers, located in the UI Libraries Special Collections & University Archives. There is an online guide to the papers available, as well as a description of the collection from the journal Books at Iowa.

Also at the University Libraries are Dr. Van Allen’s 1936 master’s thesis, “A Sensitive Apparatus for Determining Young’s Modulus at Small Tensional Strains,” and 1939 doctoral dissertation, “Absolute Cross-section for the Nuclear Disintegration…” He prepared both while a graduate student at Iowa. His autobiographical essay, “What is a Space Scientist,” appears in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 18 (1990).

These photographs of Dr. Van Allen during the 1950’s, along with many others from his career, are in the Frederick Kent Collection of Photographs, faculty series, University Archives. Click on them for a larger image.

Also pictured is the first page from the draft of “Distribution of Trapped Radiation in the Geomagnetic Field (1959)”. It is the first draft of an article he co-authored with two of his students, Sekiko Yoshida and George H. Ludwig, announcing the existence of magnetic radiation belts encircling the earth, based on data gathered from the 1958 launching of Explorer I. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

Dr. Van Allen presented a lecture to the National Academy of Sciences at its annual meeting on May 1, 1958, in Washington, DC., at which time he announced the existence of radiation belts encircling the earth. He described how his team had set out to analyze cosmic rays in the earth’s atmosphere, using Iowa-prepared data gathering equipment loaded on the Explorer satellites launched in early 1958. In addition to cosmic ray data, though, they found something else, unexpectedly:

Van Allen lecture excerpt 1 (mp3, 0:59, 1.17 MB)

Later in his lecture he described their findings of magnetic radiation belts encircling the earth:

Van Allen lecture excerpt 2 (mp3, 1:47, 2.09 MB)

The University of Iowa International Programs announced new directors in five of its area studies programs and groups.

Edward Miner is the new director of the African Studies Program, replacing Rex Honey, a UI geography professor in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS). Miner is currently International Studies bibliographer for the University Libraries, where he manages library collections in African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, as well as linguistics. His research interests include digital librarianship and archives and their role in African development. He co-edited the digital archive Nuer Field Notes (Indiana University Digital Library Program, 2003), and currently manages a UI Libraries digital project on Akan religion and medicine. Miner has been at the UI since 2002 and will serve as director of the African Studies Program for three years.

Linda Walton has accepted an offer to become the next Associate University Librarian and Director of the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences effective August 31. Linda comes to the University of Iowa Libraries from the Galter Health Sciences Library at Northwestern University where she has been the Associate Director.

“She has solid experience in health sciences librarianship and plenty of energy,” says Nancy L. Baker, University Librarian. “I am delighted to have Linda join the Libraries’ administrative group and assume leadership of the Hardin Library.”

Linda was attracted to the UI and the Hardin Library primarily because of the commitment to and progressive nature of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. “The interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the University shows that the people are truly interested in health care and their patients,” said Walton. “Nancy Baker and the Libraries’ administrative team recognize the unique attributes of a health sciences library and sees this as a plus to the library system as a whole. Working together is critical in this complex information age.”

Some of the challenges Linda sees for all librarians involve understanding the ethical and legal information access issues brought about by the ease of information transfer over the Internet. She also wants to enhance the library user experience by developing tools that help faculty, students, staff and researchers connect with information resources more effectively.

After completing her graduate degree in library science at Indiana University, Linda worked for a small private psychiatric hospital library. This position proved to be the beginning of her career in health science librarianship. She appreciated the structure of health science libraries which allows for networking among libraries, developing library services and programs through grant funding and interlibrary lending. The fast pace of the medical world and being a part of the clinical setting all added to the excitement of being a health sciences librarian for Linda.

Hardin Library for the Health Sciences is part of the University of Iowa Libraries. Hardin serves the combined information and research needs of the five health science colleges of the University of Iowa as well as the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. Each year Hardin also fulfills nearly 30,000 information requests of health professionals across the country. For more information about Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, check online at www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin.