University Libraries

Members of the Internet Creator’s Guild who are makers of educational video have come together this week to collectively release work on the theme “Create.” The University of Iowa Special […]

Have you ever accidentally lost or deleted your old files? Have you ever had trouble locating the current version among multiple versions of your paper?

Come and learn best practices on file naming conventions. File naming conventions are a set of rules that help you name your files in a consistent, logical, predictable way, allowing you to distinguish similar files from one another at a glance. With good file naming conventions, you will be able to access files without rethinking the process each time.

Thursday, March 23rd, 1:00pm-2:00pm (East Information Commons, 2nd Floor, Hardin Library)

Sign up for these workshops or request personal appointments online.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program please call Janna Lawrence at 319-335-9871.

Have you ever accidently lost or deleted your old files? Have you ever had trouble locating the current version among multiple versions of your paper?

Come and learn best practices on file naming conventions. File naming conventions are a set of rules that help you name your files in a consistent, logical, predictable way, allowing you to distinguish similar files from one another at a glance. With good file naming conventions, you will be able to access files without rethinking the process each time.

Thursday, March 23rd, 1:00pm-2:00pm (East Information Commons, 2nd Floor, Hardin Library)

Sign up for these workshops or request personal appointments online.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program please call Janna Lawrence at 319-335-9871.

Using images can add interest to your assignments and presentations, but do you know where to find good images and how to ensure that you use those images ethically?

This workshop will help you understand copyright, creative common licenses, and public domain. You will also learn where to search for stock and health sciences images and how to cite your images appropriately.

Our next session:
Wednesday, March 22nd 11:00am-12:00pm (East Information Commons)

Sign up for these workshops or request personal appointments online.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program please call Janna Lawrence at 319-335-9871.

Using images can add interest to your assignments and presentations, but do you know where to find good images and how to ensure that you use those images ethically?

This workshop will help you understand copyright, creative common licenses, and public domain. You will also learn where to search for stock and health sciences images and how to cite your images appropriately.

Our next session:
Wednesday, March 22nd 11:00am-12:00pm (East Information Commons)

Sign up for these workshops or request personal appointments online.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program please call Janna Lawrence at 319-335-9871.

As Project Conservator at the UI Libraries, I am tasked with several workflows that are slightly outside of the regular Libraries Lab flow. One being conservation of the Keith Albee Vaudeville Theater Scrapbooks (see more here and here), another being treatment of Linn County Recorder’s Office record books.

Nearly 430 Linn County record books have been surveyed for treatment, and after just over a year, we have worked through approximately 115 of them, getting the books back into use at the County Recorder’s Office. As you will see in the photos below, their office faced a catastrophic disaster in the floods of 2008. Eight years later, recovery work is ongoing.

In the UI Libraries’ conservation lab, we remove books from damaged covers, dry clean textblocks, separate adhered pages, humidify and flatten warped pages, and even wash pages of the record books in preparation for rebinding at a commercial bindery. Each book in this large collection is unique and requires different types of treatment. We evaluate each book prior to starting treatment to determine the needs of each item.

 

June 11, 2008: Vault Room at the Linn County Recorder’s Office 1 hr before closing time (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

June 14, 2008 taken from same perspective as above, after flooding, prior to clean-up (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

Instilling some order… (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

Moldy books, already dry, were hosed down and wiped off (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

FAST FORWARD 8 Years: Joan McCalmant, Linn County Recorder, stands with record books, many of which have undergone conservation treatment at the University of Iowa Libraries, currently in use at the Linn County Recorder’s Office, on the 2^nd Floor.

 

Graduate student, Lindsey Blair, dry cleans, and works on page separation.

 

Before treatment image of a sewn volume. Notice the warped spine and pages and caked mud on pages.

 

A mud-caked page during stages of washing (Do not try this at home!)

 

Loose pages in a humidification chamber where paper fibers soften and relax. Pages are dried flat, under weight, before being rebound. (Do not try this at home!)

 

The warped, mud-caked textblock from above, split into two volumes, rebound at the commercial bindery after cleaning and flattening in the UI Libraries’ conservation lab.

As Project Conservator at the UI Libraries, I am tasked with several workflows that are slightly outside of the regular Libraries Lab flow. One being conservation of the Keith Albee Vaudeville Theater Scrapbooks (see more here and here), another being treatment of Linn County Recorder’s Office record books.

Nearly 430 Linn County record books have been surveyed for treatment, and after just over a year, we have worked through approximately 115 of them, getting the books back into use at the County Recorder’s Office. As you will see in the photos below, their office faced a catastrophic disaster in the floods of 2008. Eight years later, recovery work is ongoing.

In the UI Libraries’ conservation lab, we remove books from damaged covers, dry clean textblocks, separate adhered pages, humidify and flatten warped pages, and even wash pages of the record books in preparation for rebinding at a commercial bindery. Each book in this large collection is unique and requires different types of treatment. We evaluate each book prior to starting treatment to determine the needs of each item.

 

June 11, 2008: Vault Room at the Linn County Recorder’s Office 1 hr before closing time (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

June 14, 2008 taken from same perspective as above, after flooding, prior to clean-up (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

Instilling some order… (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

Moldy books, already dry, were hosed down and wiped off (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

FAST FORWARD 8 Years: Joan McCalmant, Linn County Recorder, stands with record books, many of which have undergone conservation treatment at the University of Iowa Libraries, currently in use at the Linn County Recorder’s Office, on the 2^nd Floor.

 

Graduate student, Lindsey Blair, dry cleans, and works on page separation.

 

Before treatment image of a sewn volume. Notice the warped spine and pages and caked mud on pages.

 

A mud-caked page during stages of washing (Do not try this at home!)

 

Loose pages in a humidification chamber where paper fibers soften and relax. Pages are dried flat, under weight, before being rebound. (Do not try this at home!)

 

The warped, mud-caked textblock from above, split into two volumes, rebound at the commercial bindery after cleaning and flattening in the UI Libraries’ conservation lab.

As Project Conservator at the UI Libraries, I am tasked with several workflows that are slightly outside of the regular Libraries Lab flow. One being conservation of the Keith Albee Vaudeville Theater Scrapbooks (see more here and here), another being treatment of Linn County Recorder’s Office record books.

Nearly 430 Linn County record books have been surveyed for treatment, and after just over a year, we have worked through approximately 115 of them, getting the books back into use at the County Recorder’s Office. As you will see in the photos below, their office faced a catastrophic disaster in the floods of 2008. Eight years later, recovery work is ongoing.

In the UI Libraries’ conservation lab, we remove books from damaged covers, dry clean textblocks, separate adhered pages, humidify and flatten warped pages, and even wash pages of the record books in preparation for rebinding at a commercial bindery. Each book in this large collection is unique and requires different types of treatment. We evaluate each book prior to starting treatment to determine the needs of each item.

 

June 11, 2008: Vault Room at the Linn County Recorder’s Office 1 hr before closing time (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

June 14, 2008 taken from same perspective as above, after flooding, prior to clean-up (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

Instilling some order… (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

Moldy books, already dry, were hosed down and wiped off (photo: Joan McCalmant)

 

FAST FORWARD 8 Years: Joan McCalmant, Linn County Recorder, stands with record books, many of which have undergone conservation treatment at the University of Iowa Libraries, currently in use at the Linn County Recorder’s Office, on the 2^nd Floor.

 

Graduate student, Lindsey Blair, dry cleans, and works on page separation.

 

Before treatment image of a sewn volume. Notice the warped spine and pages and caked mud on pages.

 

A mud-caked page during stages of washing (Do not try this at home!)

 

Loose pages in a humidification chamber where paper fibers soften and relax. Pages are dried flat, under weight, before being rebound. (Do not try this at home!)

 

The warped, mud-caked textblock from above, split into two volumes, rebound at the commercial bindery after cleaning and flattening in the UI Libraries’ conservation lab.

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286….

March 14^th is Pi Day!!!

 

Beginning geometry students might remember finding the area of a circle – pi x radius squared…. But, what is Pi (π) and why does it rate its very own day?

Pi is one of the most famous and mysterious of numbers. Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it’s diameter, Pi seems simple. However, it is an irrational number. An irrational number cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction and the decimal representation therefore never ends, nor does it ever settle into a permanent repeating pattern. Scientists have calculated billions of digits of Pi, starting with 3.14159265358979323…. with no end in sight. It could be calculated to infinity and there would be absolutely no way to know which number would come next.

Pi is not only irrational, it is also transcendental! A transcendental number is a number that is not a root of any algebraic equation having integral coefficients, as π  or e. All transcendental numbers are irrational, but not all irrational numbers are transcendental.

Pi is used all around us every day – Christian Constanda, the University of Tulsa’s C.S. Oliphant professor of mathematical sciences, says, “Look at a football: when you compute the volume, then Pi gets involved in the formula.” Constanda also said, “If you drive through a puddle, creating a wave with the car, that involves Pi. If you see a tornado, that definitely involves Pi.”

Martin Krzywinski, a bioinformatics scientist, began publishing his pi art in 2013.  He also explains, “…Any word that you can think of, when encoded in numbers, would show up in pi, says Kryzwinski. So would the entire works of Shakespeare, all possible misprints and permutations of Shakespeare, and even, if you were patient enough, pi itself…”

 

Photos from Maths has never looked so appealing! dailymail.com

 

Want to see what 100,00 digits of Pi look like? Go here.

Some Pi Day Fun Facts:

• In the Star Trek^© television episode, Wolf in the Fold, Spock defeats an evil enemy in the Enterprise’s computer system. How? He ordered it to “compute to the last digit the value of pi.” Which we know, can not be computed!
• The number 360 occupies the 360^th position in the digits of Pi.
• Divide the length of a river – with all the bends and curves – by the length of the river would be “as the crow flies,” the average ration will be approximately Pi. Watch this youtube video for an explanation!
• In 2008 a crop circle with Pi embedded in it appeared near Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, England.

Want to impress your friends with how many digits of Pi you can recite? Here is a song that should help you remember….

^{The Pi Song. Originally sung by Hard ‘N Phirm. Sept. 17, 2006}

Take a look around today – how many instances of Pi can you find? Or sit and contemplate a piece of your favorite pie…

Just remember – you’d be irrational to not celebrate Pi Day!

Resources:

Adrian, Y. E. O.. The pleasures of pi,e and other interesting numbers. 2006. Singapore : World Scientific. Engineering Library QA95 .A2 2006

Posamentier, Alfred S. 2004. [Pi] : a biography of the world’s most mysterious number. Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books. Engineering Library QA484 .P67 2004

Maths has never looked so appealing! Oct. 3, 2013. dailymail.com

The Pi Song. Originally sung by Hard ‘N Phirm. Sept. 17, 2006. youtube.com

Mead, Wendy. March 13, 2015. Fascinating Facts About Pi Day & Birthday Boy Albert Einstein. A&E Television Network, LLC. Bio.

Rouse, Margaret. Definition : Transcendental Number. TechTarget. WhatIs.com

West, Marc. July 1, 2008. Pi appears in a crop circle. +plus magazine .

Interesting Facts about Pi. 2016. Buzzle.com

Walton, Rod. March 14, 2014. Pi common in everyday life, not just dessert. Tulsa World .

Swanson, Ana. March 14, 2015. 10 stunning images show the beauty hidden in pi. The Washington Post .

Other Resources:

Stewart, Ian. 2013. Visions of infinity : the great mathematical problems. New York, NY : Basic Books.Engineering Library QA93 .S75 2013

Stewart, Ian. 2015. Professor Stewart’s incredible numbers. New York : NY : Basic Books. Engineering Library QA241 .S8123 2015

Happy Pi Day (3.14) Domino Spiral. March 13, 2011. youtube.com

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286….

March 14^th is Pi Day!!!

 

Beginning geometry students might remember finding the area of a circle – pi x radius squared…. But, what is Pi (π) and why does it rate its very own day?

Pi is one of the most famous and mysterious of numbers. Defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it’s diameter, Pi seems simple. However, it is an irrational number. An irrational number cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction and the decimal representation therefore never ends, nor does it ever settle into a permanent repeating pattern. Scientists have calculated billions of digits of Pi, starting with 3.14159265358979323…. with no end in sight. It could be calculated to infinity and there would be absolutely no way to know which number would come next.

Pi is not only irrational, it is also transcendental! A transcendental number is a number that is not a root of any algebraic equation having integral coefficients, as π  or e. All transcendental numbers are irrational, but not all irrational numbers are transcendental.

Pi is used all around us every day – Christian Constanda, the University of Tulsa’s C.S. Oliphant professor of mathematical sciences, says, “Look at a football: when you compute the volume, then Pi gets involved in the formula.” Constanda also said, “If you drive through a puddle, creating a wave with the car, that involves Pi. If you see a tornado, that definitely involves Pi.”

Martin Krzywinski, a bioinformatics scientist, began publishing his pi art in 2013.  He also explains, “…Any word that you can think of, when encoded in numbers, would show up in pi, says Kryzwinski. So would the entire works of Shakespeare, all possible misprints and permutations of Shakespeare, and even, if you were patient enough, pi itself…”

 

Photos from Maths has never looked so appealing! dailymail.com

 

Want to see what 100,00 digits of Pi look like? Go here.

Some Pi Day Fun Facts:

• In the Star Trek^© television episode, Wolf in the Fold, Spock defeats an evil enemy in the Enterprise’s computer system. How? He ordered it to “compute to the last digit the value of pi.” Which we know, can not be computed!
• The number 360 occupies the 360^th position in the digits of Pi.
• Divide the length of a river – with all the bends and curves – by the length of the river would be “as the crow flies,” the average ration will be approximately Pi. Watch this youtube video for an explanation!
• In 2008 a crop circle with Pi embedded in it appeared near Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, England.

Want to impress your friends with how many digits of Pi you can recite? Here is a song that should help you remember….

^{The Pi Song. Originally sung by Hard ‘N Phirm. Sept. 17, 2006}

Take a look around today – how many instances of Pi can you find? Or sit and contemplate a piece of your favorite pie…

Just remember – you’d be irrational to not celebrate Pi Day!

Resources:

Adrian, Y. E. O.. The pleasures of pi,e and other interesting numbers. 2006. Singapore : World Scientific. Engineering Library QA95 .A2 2006

Posamentier, Alfred S. 2004. [Pi] : a biography of the world’s most mysterious number. Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books. Engineering Library QA484 .P67 2004

Maths has never looked so appealing! Oct. 3, 2013. dailymail.com

The Pi Song. Originally sung by Hard ‘N Phirm. Sept. 17, 2006. youtube.com

Mead, Wendy. March 13, 2015. Fascinating Facts About Pi Day & Birthday Boy Albert Einstein. A&E Television Network, LLC. Bio.

Rouse, Margaret. Definition : Transcendental Number. TechTarget. WhatIs.com

West, Marc. July 1, 2008. Pi appears in a crop circle. +plus magazine .

Interesting Facts about Pi. 2016. Buzzle.com

Walton, Rod. March 14, 2014. Pi common in everyday life, not just dessert. Tulsa World .

Swanson, Ana. March 14, 2015. 10 stunning images show the beauty hidden in pi. The Washington Post .

Other Resources:

Stewart, Ian. 2013. Visions of infinity : the great mathematical problems. New York, NY : Basic Books.Engineering Library QA93 .S75 2013

Stewart, Ian. 2015. Professor Stewart’s incredible numbers. New York : NY : Basic Books. Engineering Library QA241 .S8123 2015

Happy Pi Day (3.14) Domino Spiral. March 13, 2011. youtube.com