Many of Main Library staff on the first floor will be moving to renovated space on the fifth to make room for Learning Commons. The fifth floor space has been under construction since early spring and today the furniture is being moved in.
The movers will be using the southeast elevator (D) to transport the furniture upstairs. Please use the other elevators or stairs in the building. Thanks.
Dragons, mandrakes, and potions have taken over the cases outside Special Collections & University Archives!
Students in Donna Parsons’ Honors Seminar titled “Harry Potter and the Quest for Enlightenment” have curated an exhibit using materials from Special Collections. The exhibit is one part of a semester long project utilizing Special Collections materials for research. The students chose one item from the collection to represent their research and worked together to fit their items into themes for display.
Parsons’ seminar has the students closely read the texts and analyze their themes as well as investigate the influences from the literary canon and the effects on popular culture in the US and Britain. She envisioned the collaboration with Special Collections as an exciting opportunity to enhance student learning. “The Harry Potter series is filled with extensive references to science, literature, mythology, and history,” Parsons says. “Partnering with Special Collections has supplied my students with the resources needed to trace a specific reference and discuss its relevance to a particular scene, character, or plotline. The partnership has also provided the context for a deeper understanding of the series and its appeal to a diverse audience.”
Greg Prickman, Head of Special Collections & University Archives, welcomed the collaboration. “The idea to have the students create an exhibition was Donna’s, and we quickly agreed to it. Rather than showing or telling, we are giving them the chance to do their own showing and telling, which results in a unique learning opportunity that can only be experienced with access to original historical documents.”
Kelsey Sheets, a student in the seminar, loved finding out how complex the world of Harry Potter really is. “In the past I have read books about how J.K. Rowling draws inspiration from a wide variety of historical and mythical sources and incorporates them into the series, but my own research [on links between the study of Potions and the muggle study of Chemistry] really solidified this point and made me appreciate the depth of the wizarding world.”
The exhibit will be on display until June 1st on the third floor of the Main Library outside Special Collections & University Archives anytime the library is open.
Collection encompasses 100 years of material.
The University of Iowa Libraries has acquired a significant collection of pulp magazines, fanzines, and science fiction books owned by the late James L. “Rusty” Hevelin. The collection encompasses nearly one hundred years of material, documenting in great detail the development of science fiction, popular culture, and participatory fan culture in the United States during the twentieth century.
Rusty Hevelin began collecting pulp magazines in the 1930s when they were a popular item on newsstands. Pulps were cheaply produced weekly fiction magazines. They were the training ground for many of the most famous science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. The collection contains thousands of pulps, ranging from the early Thrilling Wonder Stories, the eclectic Weird Tales, character titles such as The Shadow, The Spider, and Doc Savage, and many examples of mystery, western, and aviation pulps. “This vast collection of material rarely collected by traditional libraries is a goldmine for teachers and scholars,” said Corey Creekmur, UI Associate Professor of English and Film Studies. “Pulp magazines were central to mid- 20th century American popular culture, but their ephemerality has made them rare and inaccessible for later readers. The arrival of this collection makes Iowa a major archive for future research in this area.”
Fanzines push science fiction genre
Readers of pulps began communicating with one another through the letter columns in each issue, and this back-and-forth exchange soon developed into fanzines, which fans produced on home mimeograph or other printers, and distributed through the mail and at conventions. The collection is particularly rich in the early years of science fiction fanzines, including several titles that Hevelin produced.
Science fiction grew out of the pulps and into mainstream publishing, and the Hevelin collection documents this process in thousands of hardcover and paperback science fiction books. First editions of Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and other writers are included, along with many paperback novels. Together, these materials depict the great diversity of styles in science fiction as the genre evolved.
“The Hevelin collection presents a rare opportunity to study the development of this genre, as seen in many of its most important formats, through the lens of a single collector,” says Greg Prickman, Head of Special Collections & University Archives. “Fans like Rusty weren’t just fanzine writers, or pulp collectors, or science fiction readers, they were all of these things, and Rusty’s collection shows how these materials interact with one another.”
The University of Iowa Libraries is home to internationally significant science fiction collections. Holdings include the Horvat Collection of Science Fiction Fanzines, the Ming Wathne Fanzine Archive Collection, and a growing body of materials resulting from the Fan Culture Preservation Project, a partnership with the Organization for Transformative Works.
Jennifer DeBerg, Clinical Education Librarian at Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, was awarded the Arthur Benton Excellence in Reference Services Professional Development Award for 2012. Jennifer received kudos from nursing students, research colleagues, faculty and staff in her nomination letter
The award is given biennially to a University Libraries professional staff member who has demonstrated outstanding commitment in providing reference services for the University community. The $1,000 award, made possible by a generous endowment from Dr. Arthur Benton, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Neurology, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, will support a professional development activity related to the advancement of library reference services.
Jennifer is a librarian liaison to Communication Sciences & Disorders, Family Medicine, College of Nursing, Nursing Services and Patient Care, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation, Otolaryngology, Pediatrics, Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Science, and Rehab Therapies & Rehab Counseling.
The University of Iowa History of Medicine Society announces the R. Palmer Howard Dinner for 2012, Friday, April 13, 2012, 6:00-9:30.
Lynda Payne, prof. in Medical Humanities & Bioethics, and History, University of Missouri Kansas City will speak on “Spot Ward, Crazy Sally, and the Chevalier Taylor: Three Medical Quacks in Eighteenth-Century Britain”.
Reception, dinner and lecture will be at the Sheraton Hotel. Make your reservations now but no later than April 6 with Donna Sabin, 319-335-6706, donna-sabin@uiowa.edu Online form (print & mail): http://hosted.lib.uiowa.edu/histmed/index.html. Seats for the lecture only will be available.
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Women’s Resource and Action Center with a piece of cake and a lively discussion of the early days of WRAC and the women’s liberation movement in Iowa City. Panelists will include Sondra Smith, Gayle Sand, Sandy Pickup, Jill Jack, with Laurie Haag moderating.
Friday, March 23, 2012
4:00-6:00 p.m.
Iowa Women’s Archives
3rd floor, Main Library, University of Iowa
Pi, Greek letter, is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th. Pi = 3.1415926535…. Pi is used in many different fields and can be seen in our everyday lives. It may be seen in art, structural design, body mobility, navigation, and probability. To celebrate the versatility of this number, the various campus libraries will celebrate at the same time, showing how pi is used in their subject areas.
Due to March 14th being during spring break, the celebration will take place next Monday, March 19th at 3:14 p.m.
Events will be held at the following libraries: Art, Pomerantz Business, Lichtenberger Engineering, Hardin, Main (near the Information Desk), Music, and Sciences. Join us at any of these locations to learn more about pi and have some apple pie bites.
Collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources with Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh], a free, easy-to-use web browser tool. Learn more at our hands on session and start gathering your materials in Zotero right away.
Tuesday, February 28th, 3:00-4:00pm
Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, East Information Commons
Sign up for this class online: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/regform.html or by calling 319-335-9151.
Get more information about Zotero or download it for free online: http://www.zotero.org.
The University of Iowa Libraries has recently completed a project to digitize the entire run of Hawkeye yearbooks, comprising more than 38,000 pages documenting UI history from 1892 to 1992. The digital collection, with its vast assortment of yearbook photographs and illustrations enhanced by full-text search functionality, is available at http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/yearbooks.
University Archivist David McCartney said the yearbooks are the go-to source for many, if not most, reference questions concerning twentieth century campus life. Online access makes it an even richer resource for alumni and the general public.
The yearbooks are the latest addition to the Iowa Digital Library, http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu, which features more than 450,000 digital objects created from the holdings of the UI Libraries and its campus partners. Included are illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, fine art, political cartoons, scholarly works, audio and video recordings, and more.
Research by a University of Iowa led team reveals new information about why paper made hundreds of years ago often holds up better over time than more modern paper.
Led by Timothy Barrett, director of papermaking facilities at the UI Center for the Book, the team analyzed 1,578 historical papers made between the 14th and the 19th centuries. Barrett and his colleagues devised methods to determine their chemical composition without requiring a sample to be destroyed in the process, which had limited past research. The results of this three-year project show that the oldest papers were often in the best condition, in part, Barrett says, due to high levels of gelatin and calcium.
“This is news to many of us in the fields of papermaking history and rare book and art conservation,” says Barrett. “The research results will impact the manufacture of modern paper intended for archival applications, and the care and conservation of historical works on paper.”
Barrett says one possible explanation for the higher quality of the paper in the older samples is that papermakers at the time were attempting to compete with parchment, a tough enduring material normally made from animal skins. In doing so, they made their papers thick and white and dipped the finished sheets into a dilute warm gelatin solution to toughen it.
“Calcium compounds were used in making parchment, and they were also used in making paper,” Barrett says. “Turns out they helped prevent the paper from becoming acidic, adding a lot to its longevity.”
Barrett acknowledges that some may wonder why research on paper longevity is worth doing today, when art or text on paper can be scanned at high resolution and viewed later on a computer. He notes that close analysis of the papers themselves can often shed new light on a particular historical episode or figure. For example, when letters from a particular writer are found on especially poor quality paper given the writer’s time and place, it may indicate something significant about the writer’s financial situation. When a book was printed on very high quality paper for its period and location, it may suggest something new about the publisher’s intended audience and marketing strategy.
“Both instances provide evidence wholly lacking in digital scans of the same pieces of paper,” Barrett says. “Paper does more than support words or images. It can bring alive its own moment in history or show us how to make longer lasting paper in the future.”
Even in a digital age, some materials will still be created and preserved on paper. For instance, Barrett and his UI papermaking team worked with National Archives staff in 2000 to produce special handmade paper that now sits beneath the Charters of Freedom at the Archives Rotunda in Washington D.C.
“The information lying dormant in paper in important books and works of art needs to be preserved for researchers in future generations to uncover and utilize,” Barrett says. “Just as important, paper originals — that can be read without hardware and software — will continue to be essential backups to digital scans long, long into the future.”
Barrett’s group included Mark Ormsby, physicist at the National Archives and Records Administration Research and Testing division; Joseph Lang, UI professor of statistics and actuarial science; Robert Shannon at Bruker Elemental; Irene Brückle, professor at the State Academy of Art and Design in Stuttgart, Germany; Michael Schilling and Joy Mazurek from the Getty Conservation Institute; Jennifer Wade at the National Science Foundation; and Jessica White, a UI graduate student who is now proprietor of the Heroes & Criminals Press.
The Institute for Museum and Library Services, the University of Iowa, and the Kress Foundation provided funding for the research. The UI Libraries is hosting the newly launched website http://paper.lib.uiowa.edu/ which details all the project goals, procedures and results. The UI Center for the Book is a part of the Graduate College.