Skip to content
Skip to main content

This photo contains Hawkeye history—now, Virginia Eichacker reflects on her aunt’s impact

This photo features the five undergraduate women who integrated Currier Residence Hall in 1946: Virginia Harper, Esther Walls, Nancy Henry, Gwen Davis, Leanne Howard, and Pat Smith. Their story lives on in the Iowa Women’s Archives and in Currier, where a mural commemorates their achievements at the university and beyond.

We are especially fortunate to have Harper’s (furthest right) niece and namesake, Virginia Eichacker, as a member of our Libraries Advancement Council (LAC). To mark the transition from Black History Month into Women’s History Month, we asked Eichacker about what this image and her aunt’s legacy mean to her.

As I look at the picture of the young women who integrated Currier Hall in 1946, the first thing that strikes me was that they were not looking into the camera but at something that appeared to be in the distance. In that same vein, I also noticed their smiles. It seemed they were smiling almost knowingly, aware that this was a significant moment in time…I know that, whatever my aunt was thinking and smiling about when the photographer took this picture, she did not imagine that 75 years later (2021), it would be part of a mural in a room in Currier Residence Hall—which she had been excluded from the year before.

Following her time at the University of Iowa, my aunt spent the next 50 years working to fight racial prejudice as a member of the Fort Madison branch of the NAACP. She was the first Black woman on the State Board of Public Instruction, where she championed the move for multicultural, nonsexist requirements in Iowa’s education.


If you’re looking for a local history of civil rights activism, the University of Iowa Libraries is a vital resource. The Main Library houses the Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA), filled with the papers and records of many remarkable individuals and organizations devoted to the ongoing struggle for civil rights and social justice. My aunt’s papers, the Virginia Harper Papers, are one such collection.

When approached about serving as a member of the LAC, I was honored to devote my energies toward actively championing the Libraries. And I want to encourage everyone to consider supporting the Libraries and the IWA as we close out Black History Month and start Women’s History Month.

I know that if my aunt could see this post, the same smile on her face in the picture 78 years ago would reappear.

Virginia Eichacker

Staff Q + A: Suzanne Glémot

Bookbinder, video game enthusiast, disco connaisseur

At Glémot workstation, instruments of precision and creativity combine to solve complex challenges.

How did you find your way into preservation and collections care?

I was somewhat aware of library preservation while I was a grad student working in the Conservation Lab, but was more interested in becoming a conservation technician—treating one book at a time—than I was in larger-scale collections care work. Coming out of my Book Arts and Library Science degrees, I was looking for tech jobs and book arts studio manager jobs: I really wanted to work on making or repairing books with my own two hands. The pandemic hit right as I was wrapping up my MFA, so those plans were put on hold for a while. During lockdowns and work-from-home, I focused on expanding my bookbinding skills as much as I could, and I made and repaired books from my little home bindery. Then, when jobs started opening up again in 2021, I found a collections care tech position at the Library of Congress: it was a high-volume, production-style bench position that allowed me to perform repair work on tons of books and grow my bookbinding skills through a library preservation focus. That job really opened my eyes to preservation and collections care as a career pathway and steered my library interest to collection-level preservation.

I like to frame preservation work through the question: “How do I help this book become (or stay) accessible to users, researchers, and students?”

What kinds of materials are your favorite to work with?

Never in my life did I think I’d say this, but right now I’m getting a kick out of working with old newspapers. It’s true they don’t feel great to the touch, and they are generally a preservation nightmare because of their fragility (which is caused by the fact that most newsprint is inherently acidic), but I love discovering what headline events and social movements were five years or five decades ago. It feels a little like getting to look back through time.

My all-time favorite materials to work with, though, are the books in the Conservation Lab’s Bookbinding Model Collection. I got to work with that collection in grad school, and once a week I work to organize, describe, and preserve this one-of-a-kind teaching collection, which traces the history and evolution of bookbinding crafts through time and across cultures. It’s a real gem.

How do you maintain focus on your detail-oriented work?

A cup of coffee before diving into detail-oriented work is a must, and I usually pair it with a podcast episode (or two or three). I particularly love audio essays that consider the intersection of video games and art/art history or think about why certain narrative/interactive features of video games work as well as they do. On the days where the weather is particularly overcast, I turn on some old disco hits instead…it helps the coffee go further.

Any particularly fun anecdotes about the job?

As a rule of thumb, using tape on books and library materials is a big no-no. Tape generally makes paper brittle over time and is terribly challenging to remove without damaging the item it’s on, if it can be removed at all. This year I’ve been working on repairing a couple of pop-up books, and the material I am using to repair the pop-up elements is…tape! Granted, it’s very specialized and conservator-approved tape, but I’m still tickled to be using what should be an illicit technique as a valid repair.

What advice would you give to a college student about careers, libraries, or life in general?

I think the most important thing you can do for yourself as you prepare for your life outside of school is to build community. Hopefully, you’ll end up in a really good job you are excited to show up for and grow into. But even if your job is less than perfect, the thing that will carry you through those inevitable professional and personal rough patches in life are your friends and loved ones. The same people you share meals and interests and trust with are the people who will be pumped to read over a cover letter or resume for you in the future and who you’ll help debrief after that interview. I’m a firm believer that no one accomplishes anything without some degree of help and support, and that extends to job searches and building career paths.

More concretely though: keep a running document where you keep track of all your resume activities. Cultivate a hobby that has nothing to do with your work. Remember to drink water, and stop to stretch from time to time.

Glémot’s workstation and tool collection highlight the multifaceted nature of preservation and collections care work. Presevation is both an art form and a technical skill. According to Glémot, “I am most excited for those days where I get to plug away at the bench making boxes or mending tears in paper, but any task that leads me to return a book to the stacks feels like time well-spent.” 

(Left: Glémot repairs a pop-up book.)

Author Q + A: Carmen Maria Machado

Acclaimed author, Hawkeye, former student library employee

Carmen Maria Machado has seen the stacks from every angle: as reader, shelver, and writer.  And during her time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she came to appreciate the UI Libraries as study spaces and research resources. The Her Body and Other Parties author chatted with us about what she learned from her time as a student library employee during undergrad, and made sure to share some fittingly wry and writerly advice. 

Did you ever have a job during undergrad or grad school that you did alongside coursework? How did that affect your time as a student? 

Yeah, I had jobs in college! I actually worked in [my college] library. I wasn’t very good at it, to be super clear. I was pretty lackadaisical—I feel like I never quite mastered it. I was mostly at a little desk in the front where you could ask me questions. But then they would have me shelve, and I just could never figure out the classification system. I feel like I was always putting books in the wrong place. 

I also worked at a paint-your-own-pottery studio in college. In grad school, I was teaching because it was part of my funding package. And after grad school, I worked at Lush. I came home every day smelling like all of Lush. I’ve had a million jobs. I mean, I wasn’t really making a living full-time as a writer until a few years ago.

What’s your relationship to libraries in general? 

Oh, I love libraries. I used to spend a lot of time in my local library as a child. I literally belonged to a group of teenage library workers. Back then, me and my friend who worked in the library together left a note for our favorite librarian. We taped it under one of the shelves. And years later, my friend went back and let me know that it’s still there. 

And later—obviously when you’re doing research, libraries are a huge resource. I remember going into the UI Main Library during grad school and using the microfiche and visiting Special Collections. It felt so exciting. 

Do you have any advice for undergraduates?

It can be so hard to exist right now. But really, what I’d say is: “Always move toward your obsessions.” 

What has changed about your writing over time?

It always changes. It always is sort of shifting. When I was in grad school, I began to figure out what I wanted my voice to be, what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it. But I was definitely one of those kids who always wanted to be a writer. 

What is it like to see your own books on the shelf? 

When I was younger, it always meant so much to see books on shelves. So seeing my own work on people’s bookshelves and in bookstores and libraries—it’s really surreal and beautiful. And I wish I could go back and tell little Carmen that that was going to happen one day. I always believed it would, on some level. 

You’re right in the middle of the alphabet, so that’s pretty good real estate. 

Exactly. It’s awesome.