Special Collections

Special Collections & University Archives closed June 13, 2008 as the Main Library at the University of Iowa was evacuated due to rising floodwaters. The days prior were spent relocating Special Collections & University Archives material from basement storage. We were able to clear four to five feet of material above floor level with the help of hundreds of library and university staff, faculty, students, and community members. The story of the flood preparations in the library has reached many news outlets. We are pleased to say that while the basement of the library received several inches of water, none of our collections were damaged. The Main Library remains closed, however, as clean-up progresses.

Special Collections & University Archives staff are responding to email, but our ability to answer reference questions is severely limited. It may be several more weeks before we are operational again. If you have any concerns we can address in the meantime, please email lib-spec@uiowa.edu.

Special Collections has developed The Atlas of Early Printing, an interactive map depicting the early years of printing in the fifteenth century and the spread of the new technology across Europe. Using historical data and Flash technology, the website depicts information about printing’s spread along with cultural and historical information that provides context for the late fifteenth century. Visit the site at http://atlas.lib.uiowa.edu.

On display in Special Collections through March is a new exhibition on street literature. For over 400 years, news was disseminated to the poor and uneducated masses in England, Ireland, and other European countries through street literature. Many forms eventually reached America and other parts of the world. Street literature was a mirror of society, with its half-truths, lies, folk poetry, romances, and all manner of other foibles. Every imaginable subject was covered: politics, church propaganda, birth, death, love, marriage, adultery, murders, executions (often including what was claimed to be a final letter/confession by the accused), other crimes, sea adventures, and wars. 

This exhibit concentrates on types of street literature in England in the 16th through 19th centuries: how it was produced; the subjects it embraced; two of the chief publishers of the 1800s; and samples and copies housed in the University of Iowa Libraries.

A new exhibition in the third floor display cases outside Special Collections looks at changes in fashion illustration and printing technology. The Color of Fashion: Advances in Printing and Fashion Plates, 1770s-1930s will be on display throughout the fall semester.

An excerpt from the introduction to the exhibition:

For more than 200 years, fashion has been “plated” in books and magazines with illustrations that trace styles, trends, and fads in costume. Hence the “fashion plate” – a person who tries to measure up to the illustrations of the day.

Changes in fashion often reflect and react directly to changes occurring in society. The way they have been portrayed in print has also responded to changes in printing technology: fashion “plating” has always been on the leading edge of graphic design and press development and has helped drive innovation in color printing.

The exhibition From Monks to Masters: The Medieval Manuscript and the Early Printed Book is now open at the University of Iowa Musem of Art. 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 Greg Prickman of Special Collections & University Archives, and Kathleen Kamerick of the UI Department of History.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.

Among the books and manuscripts on display are beautiful illuminated manuscripts and many examples of incunabula (books printed before 1500). Together, these books illustrate a pivotal moment in history and demonstrate the relevance of historical materials to modern times.

Individual objects in the exhibition include a 15th-century “Book of Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” a homily of Pope Gregory the Great from around 1450 and two copies of the Nuremberg Chronicle.

In addition, the Museum will host an extensive series of gallery talks featuring UI faculty and staff. All talks begin at 7:30 pm in the UIMA Carver Gallery. The schedule is as follows:

June 28: Kathleen C. Kamerick - Changing the Hours: Praying in Manuscript & Print

July 26: Gary Frost - Medieval Bookbinding

August 2: Raymond A. Mentzer - Medieval Religious Texts

August 9: Edwin A. Holtum - Breaking With Galen: Anatomy and Medicine in the Early Days of Printing

August 16: Cheryl D. Jacobsen - They Did That All by Hand? The Dedicated Task of the Medieval Scribe

August 23: Timothy D. Barrett - On the Invention of Imitation Parchment: Papermaking in Europe 1300-1500

August 30: Sara T. Sauers - Early Modern Typography

September 6: Elizabeth Aubrey - From Singer’s Lips to Scribe’s Pen: Music in Medieval Manuscripts

September 13: Denise Filios - Constructing Power: Illuminated Manuscripts in Medieval and Golden Age Spain

September 20: Jonathan Wilcox - Questions of Authenticity: Medieval Charters, Medieval Manuscripts, and Modern Facsimiles

September 27: Glenn Ehrstine - Medieval Studies at Iowa, the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), and the Business of Early Books

October 4: Matthew P. Brown - The Persistence of the Medieval in Early American Book Culture

The 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. Public metered parking is available in UI parking lots west and north of the museum.

What can you learn from a theatre program? Of course we can learn the name of the production and the people who are in it. But that’s just the beginning of what you can learn from these colorful and enchanting bits of ephemeral art. Local history, theatre layout, design, following the careers of certain persons, and changes in fashion and advertising through the decades are just some of the research possibilities arising from these collections, which are highlighted in a new exhibition in Special Collections & University Archives.

The exhibit will be on display through September, offering visitors a glimpse of this unique form of cultural ephemera. Did you know that you could eat oysters and ice cream in the same establishment after the show? That one could obtain telephone service for $1 a month? That Oscar Wilde appeared at the Iowa City Opera House? And from announcements printed in the eighteen-nineties by the newspaper printers to the colorful artworks of the teens; from the swirling forms of Art Nouveau in the nineteen-twenties to the streamlined angularity of Art Deco in the early nineteen thirties, these programs record changes in art, architecture, and design.

A new exhibition has opened in the North Lobby of the Main Library here at the UI, which is drawn primarily from materials held by Special Collections. The exhibit is entitled Making No Compromise With The Public Taste and it examines the issues surrounding two of the major literary obscenity trials in the twentieth century - Ulysses in 1933 and Howl in 1957. Copies of the works are on display along with other materials published at the time, such as underground erotica, sex manuals, and other publications, providing some context to the climate in which Ulysses and Howl were published.

Another section of the exhibition looks at the evolution of the ratings system in the film industry, and uses the case of Logan’s Run, a popular science fiction film from 1976, to demonstrate how standards changed over the years. On display are correspondence and pages of a story treatment by Richard Maibaum from his attempt to adapt the film in 1968 for producer George Pal. This is a rare chance to view this little-known version of the story. If you are on campus or in the area, please stop by the Main Library and consider for yourself the changing nature of obscenity over the years.

The latest edition of The University of Iowa Faculty & Staff newsletter fyi contains a photo feature on historic children’s books held in Special Collections. Click on the link to see some nice photographs of these materials, which are always available to view in person in our reading room, and they can also be made available for presentations to classes.

Special Collections & University Archives will be open from 8:30 am - 5:00 pm Monday, November 20 - Wednesday, November 22. The department will be closed Thursday, November 23 & Friday, November 24.