Library News

The Iowa Women’s Archives oral history project, Mujeres Latinas has been recognized with the UI President’s Award for State Outreach and Public Engagement.

The annual award honors those who demonstrate exemplary outreach to the State of Iowa and the public in general. The $1,000 awards are given in four categories: faculty, staff, student and group/organization.

“Giving back and providing valuable service to our community, state, nation and world are central to our mission and important responsibilities to Iowa’s citizens who have invested their resources and their trust in the University of Iowa for 160 years,” UI Interim President Gary Fethke said. “These awardees represent the remarkable outreach that the UI community performs, and I commend them on the talent and generosity with which they have engaged themselves with the public.”

The Mujeres Latinas Project (a group/organization recipient) has achieved notable success in documenting the largely unknown stories of Latina women in Iowa through oral histories and other collections. The Iowa Women’s Archives established the project, under the oversight of IWA Curator Kären Mason, to collect and preserve information that documents the lives of Latinas and their families and their contributions to Iowa history. Between 2005 and 2007, the project has conducted 91 oral history interviews throughout Iowa and has collected letters, photographs, family records, organizational records, and newspaper articles that have been organized, cataloged, preserved, and made available to students, scholars and the public.

Pictured above is the Iowa Women’s Archives staff for the Mujeres Latinas project, Rachel Garza Carreon, Janet Weaver and Kären Mason.

Norman Borlaug, Iowa native, Nobel Prize winner, founder of the World Food Prize, and recent recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, is credited with saving billions of lives worldwide through his agricultural research as a microbiologist. His early career with the Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture established the foundation for further study of plant pathology and improved food production. His research led to the development of disease resistant varieties of wheat which are adaptable in various growing conditions, and provide exceptionally high yield potential. His achievement revolutionized agriculture and earned his reputation as the “Father of the Green Revolution.”

The government publications collection at The University of Iowa Libraries contains a rich variety of materials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for both researchers and consumers. The collection spans more that 100 years of research and documents the enormous change in methods of land and plant stewardship and animal husbandry. Food and nutrition, natural resources and environment, animal-borne diseases, climate and trade are a few of the topics included in the collection.

To locate recent titles go to InfoHawk. To search for books and journal articles go to Agricola, the National Agriculture Library database. Not all of the government publications in the UI collection are searchable in InfoHawk, but may be found by using specialized indexes such as the Cumulative subject index to the Monthly catalog of United States Government publications, 1900-1971 (shelved in Main Reference Collection FOLIO Z1223 .A181). Ask a librarian if you would like assistance.

University of Iowa Libraries and the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) will present a series of free public lectures to be held in the museum in conjunction with “From Monks to Masters: The Medieval Manuscript and the Early Printed Book,” an exhibition that will be on display at the museum through Oct. 7.

The exhibition of more than 50 objects explores the transition from a time when books were hand copied by a select group of literate and often religious scribes to the era of mass-produced books created by master printers using the latest 15th-century technology — the hand-operated wooden printing press.

The lectures, presented at 7:30 p.m. Thursday evenings in the UIMA Carver Gallery, will provide insight into the medieval world in which the books and manuscripts were created. Subjects range from techniques of bookbinding, to religious and musical practice, to the knowledge of anatomy and medicine in the middle ages.

UI faculty and staff will present the lectures. The dates, topics and speakers are listed below.

– July 26: Gary Frost, “Medieval Bookbinding”

– Aug.  2: Raymond A. Mentzer, “Medieval Religious Texts”

– Aug.  9: Edwin A. Holtum, “Breaking With Galen: Anatomy and Medicine in the Early Days of Printing”

– Aug.  16: Cheryl D. Jacobsen, “They Did That All by Hand? The Dedicated Task of the Medieval Scribe”

– Aug.  23: Timothy D. Barrett, “On the Invention of Imitation Parchment: Papermaking in Europe 1300-1500″

– Aug.  30: Sara T. Sauers, “Early Modern Typography”

– Sept. 6: Elizabeth Aubrey, “From Singer’s Lips to Scribe’s Pen: Music in Medieval Manuscripts”

– Sept. 13: Denise Filios, “Constructing Power: Illuminated Manuscripts in Medieval and Golden Age Spain”

– Sept. 20: Jonathan Wilcox, “Questions of Authenticity: Medieval Charters, Medieval Manuscripts, and Modern Facsimiles”

– Sept. 27: Glenn Ehrstine, “Medieval Studies in Iowa”

– Oct. 4: Matthew P. Brown, “The Persistence of the Medieval in Early American Book Culture”

The exhibition is a collaboration of UI Libraries Special Collections, the Hardin Library’s Martin Rare Book Room and the UIMA. It was organized by David Schoonover and Gregory Prickman of Special Collections & University Archives at the UI Libraries, and Kathleen Kamerick of the UI Department of History.

This exhibition is open to the public free of charge.

The UI Museum of Art, located on North Riverside Drive in Iowa City, is open noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, and noon to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Admission is free.

For more information on the UI Museum of Art visit http://www.uiowa.edu/uima. Learn more about UI Libraries Special Collections at http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/.