Library News

Beginning this fall, UI Libraries users can search smarter. The new and improved Smart Search on the UI Libraries website provides a single search box that searches the InfoHawk Catalog, the Iowa Digital Library, E-resources, E-books, E-journals and even journal articles.

During this early release period, we want to hear about your experience using Smart Search (http://smartsearch.uiowa.edu). We will compile these responses to continue improving functionality for our library users.

As the green flag flies over the Amazing Library Racing field, we have a pretty tight race at the front. The top five spots are separated by less than one hour!

Today’s lap may prove to be the fastest yet!

Follow this link to find your next clue.

Race on!

One of the clues in the Amazing Library Race asks racers to create an avatar. Here is a sampling of submissions.

You’ve heard of the TV show “The Amazing Race,” now you can participate right here on campus. Instead of teams racing around the world, teams (of one or two UI students) in the Amazing Library Race will “race” around the UI Libraries - solving clues and completing tasks.

At the end the three fastest teams will choose between top-level prizes like a pair of Iowa Football tickets, a pair of Hancher tickets to DBR and the Mission or a $100 Community Gift Certificate.

Everyone is a winner in the Amazing Library Race, thanks to a Coca-Cola grant and donations from area businesses more than $600 worth of prizes will be awarded.

There will be three laps of racing, each with three tasks to complete. The first lap starts today at 12 p.m.; the second lap starts Friday, September 28 at 8 a.m.; and the third lap starts on Tuesday, October 2 at 8 a.m.

Follow this link to the first clue and start the Amazing Library Race today!

Members of the Grayhawks (UI Retirees Association) and other retired community members will be visiting the Main Library today for “Preserving Family Photographs, Part 1″ in the Conservation Lab from 2 - 3:30 p.m.

This hands-on session will be led by Nancy E. Kraft, Head of the Preservation Department and Gary Frost, University Libraries Conservator. The session will cover the various film and photo types with suggestions for handling, storage and extending the life of the image; photo album and scrapbook problems and possible solutions; how to determine the acidity or color fastness of paper; how to perform light cleaning of photos and how to display photos safely.

Future retirees sessions include “Preserving Family Photographs, Part 2″ in the Information Arcade on Tuesday, October 16 from 10 - 11:30 a.m. Mark Anderson and Jennifer Wolfe from Digital Library Services department will demonstrate best practices in digitizing photos. You’ll learn the technical requirements that will make your photos usable, and you’ll add descriptors to your photos that will help you organize them.

For more information about Back to the Libraries sessions for retirees, contact Kristi Bontrager (kristi-r-bontrager@uiowa.edu or 319-335-5960).

Join Journalism students as they read excerpts from a selection of banned or challenged books from the list of the Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century compiled by the Radcliffe Publishing Course.  

Tuesday, September 25
2:30 – 4:15 p.m.
First Floor Rotunda
Adler Journalism Building 

1. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

 2. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

 4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

 9. 1984 by George Orwell

 12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

 11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov

 15. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

 18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 

 21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

 24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

 28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

 29. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

 53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

 97. Rabbit Run by John Updike

 And Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

The numbers represent the book’s ranking on the top novels list. 

Readers are students in Law, Media and Current Issues, a course taught by Carolyn Stewart Dyer, professor of journalism and mass communication.  Banned Books Week is the American Library Association’s celebration of the freedom to read.

Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual event celebrating the culture and traditions of U.S. residents who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean, as well as the contributions of Hispanic Americans to the United States.

The Hispanic community in Iowa is experiencing an exciting time of change as it begins historic growth in the state.  The Hispanic population in 2006—nearly 115,000—represents an increase of 28% since 2000.  Hispanic enrollment at the University of Iowa during the spring term in 2007 was 767.

The Main Library is hosting an exhibit for the 2007 Hispanic Heritage Month.  It is located across from the Information Desk, near the elevator. The display features selected items from the Iowa Women’s Archives’ “Mujeres Latinas” project and highlights University of Iowa Hispanic and Latina/o students, faculty and alumni, as well as resources available in the Main Library about the Hispanic and Latina/o experience.

For more information on the exhibit contact Rachel Garza Carreón at rachel-carreon@uiowa.edu.

Iowan Mildred Armstrong Kalish will read from Little Heathens, her memoir about growing up during the Great Depression, at 7 p.m., Monday, Sept. 17, in Shambaugh Auditorium of the University of Iowa Main Library.

The reading is free and open to the public. A crew from University of Iowa public radio station WSUI AM910 will be on hand to record the readings for future broadcasts. Live broadcasts will be available on The University’s Writing University web site.

Kalish, who grew up in Garrison, taught English at several colleges, including The University of Iowa. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser says of Kalish’s memoir, “This lovely book, so unaffected and so generous, opens the door to a past I knew as a child in Iowa, and I wept with joy and recognition as I read it.”

September 2007
Issue 3.07

Welcome to the September issue of Transitions.

The purpose of this irregular electronic newsletter is to bring to readers’ attention some of the many new projects and developments affecting the current system of scholarly communication, with emphasis on new products and programs, the open access movement and other alternative publishing models. Scholarly communication refers to the full range of formal and informal means by which scholars and researchers communicate, from email discussion lists to peer-reviewed publication. In general authors are seeking to document and share new discoveries with their colleagues, while readers–researchers, students, librarians and others–want access to all the literature relevant to their work.

While the system of scholarly communication exists for the benefit of the world’s research and educational community and the public at large, it faces a multitude of challenges and is undergoing rapid change brought on by technology. To help interested members of the UI community keep up on these challenges and changes we plan to put out 4-6 issues per year of this newsletter.

This newsletter aims to reflect the interests of its readers so please forward comments, suggestions and entries to include to karen-fischer@uiowa.edu. Also, read the health sciences counterpart to Transitions: Hardin Scholarly Communication News.

Table of Contents:

Campaign against Open Access and Public Access to Federally Funded Research
Scholarly Publishing Out of Step with the Academy
Scholarly Publishers Issue Position Paper on Author/Publisher Rights
U.S College Book Price Study
Economic Stability of Open Access
Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication
Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Joins Google’s Library Project
Do Open Access Articles Have Greater Citation Impact?
Flattening of the U.S. Output of Scientific Articles: 1988–2003
Amazon Will Digitize Universities’ Books and Sell Print-on-Demand Copies
L.A. Times Editorial: Accessing NIH research
Yale Libraries Pull Out of BioMed Central Over Cost of Publication

Last spring the UI Center for Human Rights named Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name as this year’s selection for the One Community, One Book project.

As an on-campus sponsor of the project, the UI Libraries is hosting a discussion of this fascinating memoir on Wednesday, September 19th at 7:30 p.m. in the Main Library Second Floor Study Lounge, located directly above the North entrance of the library.

Blood Done Sign My Name, which won the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction and published by Random House in 2004, is the true story of 23-year-old Henry Marrow, who was murdered in 1970.  In the wake of the killing, young African-Americans took to the streets.  The author’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history.  In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away.  Tyson returns to Oxford 30 years later to make sense of what happened and how the events changed his life.  As he weaves together childhood memories with the realities of present-day Oxford, he sheds new light on America’s struggle for racial justice.

The author, Timothy B. Tyson, a North Carolina native, is a senior research scholar of documentary studies at the History Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University; visiting professor of American Christianity and southern culture at Duke Divinity School; adjunct professor of history and adjunct professor of American studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.