University Libraries

This series features the work and research of UI students. The following was compiled by Cecil Campbell, exhibition and engagement student lead for the Main Library Gallery. 

In 1916, the Tri-Cities area—Rock Island, Illinois; Moline, Illinois; and Davenport, Iowa—was the smallest community in the country to support a full symphony orchestra. Now the Quad City Symphony Orchestra (QCSO), it is one of the oldest continuously operating orchestras in the United States.

In 1965, 37-year-old James Dixon was hired as the music director, appointing him steward of this legacy and the most recent director in a line of (at the time) seven before him. Although Dixon’s programming choices initially tested the tastes of audiences and administrators alike, he quickly garnered a reputation for steady leadership.

While learning to work with professional musicians, Dixon also grew into his role in the organization’s ongoing efforts to secure subscribers—members of the community who provide essential annual support. The care and discipline Dixon brought to his work transformed him into a local celebrity. While that may seem like high praise, Dixon’s celebrity status could be seen in more than just reputation. For example, at the time Dixon joined the QCSO as conductor, the organization had a modest budget. By the time he retired in 1994, budgets were significantly larger owing to his fundraising efforts. 

Dixon’s—and the QCSO’s—long-term investment in local community has paid large dividends. When one considers not only how important the orchestra is—and was—to its audiences, but to the musicians themselves, it makes his level of commitment stand out all the more. As one of the Quad Cities’ oldest community groups, it makes sense that the QCSO has played a significant role not just in the lives of area residents, but in many of its members’ lives as well.

In a now-archived blog post from the Davenport Public Library’s website, special collections librarian Sarah J. Wesson wrote, “The Symphony has remained a cohesive group, weathering storms and uncertainties together. Though none of the original [early] musicians remain, of course, many of the current members have been with the orchestra for a remarkable length of time.” 

After 29 years with the QCSO, James Dixon left an impression as significant as his orchestra. Former QCSO executive director Lance Willett said,  “I think it’s something that rarely, if ever, will be seen again in most communities. That kind of dedication and connection to a community…is the sort of relationship that exists very, very, rarely.”

Learn more about James Dixon and his local impact in the spring 2026 Main Library Gallery exhibit, Orchestrating Community: The Public Service of Iowa Conductor James Dixon, which closes June 26.

This series features the work and research of UI students. The following was written by Cecil Campbell, exhibition and engagement student lead for the Main Library Gallery. 

There are a number of hallmarks that we look for when identifying children’s media: big pictures, bold and eye-catching colors, large fonts. Children’s books especially are known for these traits, and have been since the 19th century, when they first became their own market and genre. Much like kid’s television shows today, stories often included a moral, or lesson, that extolled virtues like selflessness, patience, and kindness. 

Orbis Pictus by Johannes Amos Comenius was published in 1658. As one of the first instructional picture books for children, Comenius’s approach leaned heavily on visual learning and the use of instructional pictures and drawings. The goal was to teach learning comprehension through association: pairing words with images by placing them next to each other, until reading the given word independently recalled the corresponding image. Scholar Andrea Korda, in their journal article “Thinking with Pictures: Memory, Imagination, and Colour Illustration in Victorian Teaching and Learning,” writes that pictures were essential to Comenius’s methods not only because of their familiarity as iconic representations, but also because, according to Comenius, “children (even from their infancy almost) are delighted with pictures.” 

An important and equally iconic aspect of early children’s books was the chromolithograph. The process of the chromolithograph involved drawing a picture using an oil or grease-based ink and transferring that image to stone or metal plates and then printing over that image multiple times using differently colored versions of the same image. When put together fully, the colors of the different layers would produce a fully colored and detailed image that evoked the feeling of an oil painting, but at a fraction of the cost. Depending on how much detail a chromolithographer wanted in their picture, they might use anywhere from as little as eight plates to as many as forty to complete an image. Though used many times in children’s books, the chromolithograph was also used in collectible trading cards, Christmas cards, and calendars.   

Children’s books such as A Party of Six: A Movable Toybook by notable 19^th-century author and bookmaker Lothar Meggendorfer also boasted interactive elements. These took the shape of flaps, pull tabs, and pop-up pictures that gave the book a feeling as though it were alive, as though it were a small puppet theatre instead of a book. These types of books enchanted children. Due to the significant amount of effort and detail they took to produce, these books typically were affordable only to richer and more affluent families.  

As both time and the children’s book industry progressed, chromolithography fell out of style, making way for modern machine color printing, which made color printing both cheaper and easier. Because of this, brightly colored children’s books, trading cards, calendars, and the like became much cheaper and accessible to people outside of the upper classes.  

A Party of Six is on display in the Main Library Gallery’s Paper Engineering in Art, Science, and Education exhibition, which showcases the fascinating world of paper technologies. Curated by Giselle Simón, Damien Ihrig, and Elizabeth Yale, this interactive exhibition invites visitors to explore paper dolls, flap books, pop-ups, tunnel books, volvelles, and books that use paper to make sounds while learning about their historical and contemporary significance. It is open to the public through Dec. 19, 2025. 

Further reading:

Korda, Andrea. 2020. “Thinking with Pictures: Memory, Imagination, and Colour Illustration in Victorian Teaching and Learning.” Paedagogica Historica 56 (3): 269–92. doi:10.1080/00309230.2018.1550520. 

Visit the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections and Archives to view editions of Orbis Pictus and other historic children’s books.

This series features the work and research of UI students. The following was written by Cecil Campbell, exhibition and engagement student lead for the Main Library Gallery. 

Cards are found in many games, across time and place. They can be adapted to appeal to different ages, different playing styles, and even different commercial franchises. The history of card games is very much one of evolution and innovation. Though the 52-card deck has existed since the 15th century, thought to originate in France, the oldest playing cards are thought to date back to the Tang Dynasty during the first millennium. Though the cards that we’re familiar with today are made of plastic-coated cardstock, Tang Dynasty playing cards were made of paper, printed with woodcuts, and doubled as a form of currency.

In his History of Playing Cards, Rodney P. Carlisle talks about the rise in popularity of playing cards across Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries:  

“Writings from this period document card games being played in Spain by 1371, and in France and Switzerland by 1377. The early decks were handmade works of art available only to the rich, but the introduction of the mass production of paper around 1400, coupled with the popularity of woodcut printing, quickly led to the creation of inexpensive decks for the general public.” 

Cards have a wide range of uses. Historically, they’ve been used as collection items, to tell fortunes, for currency, and of course, for gambling, having been associated with gambling for as long as they’ve been around. Card players from the Tang Dynasty would have used the cards themselves as betting money, raising the stakes by literally gambling away the hands they played with. As card playing spread across Europe, some governments found themselves more troubled by this new pastime than they’d expected. Carlisle wrote that “[in 1397] the prévôt of Paris declared a workday ban on recreations that could distract workers; in addition to cards, dice, tennis, and all forms of bowling were named in the decree.” 

Possibly the only use for cards as famous as gambling is fortune telling. Tarot cards are a popular form of fortune telling, along with oracle decks, though fortune tellers have also been known to use regular card decks to tell fortunes. Le Livre du Destin, or The Book of Fate, is a French 32-card oracle deck from 1900. It features a wide variety of different archetypes of people, in typical fortune telling fashion, all meant to relate to some potential aspect of a person’s life.  

Before we can understand how to use The Book of Fate, we must first understand how tarot and oracle decks work. Tarot is more universally known and also follows a more rigid system of rules than oracle decks. Tarot decks are made up of 78 cards, the most well-known of which are the Major Arcana. Major Arcana take the form of archetypes, such as “The Empress,” “The Fool,” “The Hermit,” or “The Hanged Man.” These cards represent broad life lessons and challenges that we may face, like going through a loss, a change in direction, or new beginnings. Sound vague? They’re meant to be! The answers that tarot gives are broad and are accepted to not take shape for days to weeks or even months after a reading. 

So, what’s the difference between tarot and oracle reading? Oracle decks are much more freeform, with no standard number of cards and no consistent imagery from deck to deck. Typically, oracle cards rely on our immediate intuition for interpretation, and are better suited to answer more specific, “yes/no” type questions. While a tarot reading invites the reader to meditate on what the answers could mean, oracle cards require a good deal less overthinking. So, since The Book of Fate is an oracle deck, we should ask questions that are less vague and more to-the-point than what we’d ask if we were reading tarot. Additionally, the types of cards in the deck will let us know what types of answers we’ll get. The cards in The Book of Fate are based mostly on common social roles, characters, or themes seen among English or French society in the late Victorian era, such as “a soldier,” “a man of law,” “a fair-haired girl,” or “a business letter.”  

Of course, while their use might be more straightforward than tarot, oracle readings do still take a little interpretive work from the user. After all, the point of fortune telling decks is that they can be applied to and interpreted by just about anyone, regardless of circumstance or background!  

The Book of Fate is on display in the Main Library Gallery’s Paper Engineering in Art, Science, and Education exhibition, which showcases the fascinating world of paper technologies. Curated by Giselle Simón, Damien Ihrig, and Elizabeth Yale, this interactive exhibition invites visitors to explore paper dolls, flap books, pop-ups, tunnel books, volvelles, and books that use paper to make sounds while learning about their historical and contemporary significance. It is open to the public through Dec. 19, 2025. 

Further reading:

“History of Playing Cards.” In Encyclopedia of Play in Today’s Society, edited by Carlisle, Rodney P., 289-93. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2009. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412971935.n170.

This series features the work and research of UI students. The following was written by Cecil Campbell, exhibition and engagement student lead for the Main Library Gallery.

Everyone can relate to the experience of playing with toys as a little kid. Whether Barbie dolls or action figures, dump trucks or Hot Wheels, the toys we played with were vehicles for our imagination and the stories we wanted to tell. Of course, this is far from a new phenomenon. Dolls specifically have been around for thousands of years, with the oldest examples being made of stone and clay and more recent examples being made of plastic or porcelain. One of the first commercially available paper dolls was made in 1810 by S & J Fuller. Her name was Little Fanny, and she quickly sparked a whole genre of children’s toys of a similar style.

For those who couldn’t afford the luxury cost of a porcelain doll or for those who simply couldn’t sew, paper dolls offered an easily accessible alternative, with both everyday people as well as large corporations making their own versions. The paper clothing pictured below was handmade by Lois Crasper Thor from Clinton, Iowa circa the mid-20th century. While commercial versions of paper dolls certainly existed during the time these were made, dolls like these were perhaps the most common sort. Anyone could make their own dolls with whatever clothes they liked, and often a profession and life story to match. Paper dolls were, and continue to be, an outlet for childhood storytelling and imagination. Part of what they represented was possibility—the idea that you really could be anything.

Of course, the existence of handmade paper dolls didn’t mean that the commercial doll industry was suffering. In Old Paper Dolls: Popular Adult Collectibles, Anne Gilbert writes about the rise of the paper doll: “By 1859 Godey’s Lady’s Book began publishing a complete series of paper dolls; six boys and six girls, with a set of their own newest fashions.” Like all dolls, paper dolls were equally influential in terms of both gender roles and clothing trends, the two were often intertwined. By the early 20th century, popular fashion and homemaking newspapers and magazines such as McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Woman’s Home Companion were publishing their own paper doll families. Dolls have a history of reflecting pop culture at the time—current fashion trends, as well as popular occupations or hobbies. Movie stars, horse jockeys, tennis players, artists, and more can all be found represented in different paper dolls.

Just as we might find different toy franchises featuring modern celebrities with their own toys or dolls today, celebrities and public figures have also historically been represented by paper dolls. Though women were made into dolls more often than men, certain exceptions, like this 1981 copy of The First Family Paper Doll & Cut-Out Book featuring Ronald and Nancy Reagan, serve as small reminders that the demographic wasn’t completely singular. Though there were certainly more paper dolls fashioned around women and girls, dolls fashioned around boys and men existed and were in some cases highly prized by their owners, much like the Ken dolls of today.

The materials in this article are on display in the Main Library Gallery’s  Paper Engineering in Art, Science, and Education exhibition, which showcases the fascinating world of paper technologies. Curated by Giselle Simón, Damien Ihrig, and Elizabeth Yale, this interactive exhibition invites visitors to explore paper dolls, flap books, pop-ups, tunnel books, volvelles, and books that use paper to make sounds while learning about their historical and contemporary significance. It is open to the public through Dec. 19, 2025.