Skip to content
Skip to main content
University of Iowa

University Libraries

Apr 20 2010

Boynton Project with Digital Library Services Wins Award

Congratulations to Political Science Professor Bob Boynton. His New Media in Political Discourse project was selected by Center for Research Libraries to receive the 2010 Primary Source Award for research. CRL gives out just three Primary Source Awards annually, one each for teaching, research, and access.

Boynton studies the use of new media in political discourse. His current research compares micro-blogging (Twitter) with mainstream media coverage for global news events, and Joanna Lee in Digital Library Services worked with Prof. Boynton to build a system that captures live Twitter feeds for data analysis. Support was provided by Chris Clark, head of Desktop Support Services.

The project, which involved collecting Twitter data by constantly running The Archivist, a free tool for harvesting “tweets,” is explained in a poster created by Lee and Boynton.

See the DLS Web site for more on the Libraries’ involvement in this project.

Apr 13 2010

Morrow Emmy on display at Main Library

The Emmy Award that Barry Morrow received for writing the 1981 TV movie “Bill” is now on display in the University of Iowa Main Library in the Special Collections on the third floor. Morrow, an award-winning screenwriter who worked at the UI from 1974 to 1981, gave the Emmy to the university earlier this year.

Included as part of the Emmy display is a video loop that contains selected clips from the acclaimed documentary “A Friend Indeed: The Bill Sackter Story,” produced and directed by 1990 UI graduate Lane J. Wyrick. The display is available during the Library’s regular business hours. The film will be shown in its entirety at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 13, in Room 1505 of the Seamans Center as part of the second annual Bill Sackter Day. Other Sackter Day festivities will begin at 4:30 p.m. that day at Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop in North Hall on the UI campus.

The special “Bill” Emmy display and video loop in the UI Main Library were made possible in part by gifts to the UI Foundation from Richard S. and Jeanne M. Levitt of Des Moines, Iowa, and Eileen S. Schmidt, of Greenwich, Conn.

Mar 29 2010

Walt Whitman Quarterly Goes Digital

The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (WWQR), a literary quarterly sponsored by the University of Iowa Graduate College and the Department of English, is now available online at http://ir.uiowa.edu/wwqr/. The official journal of the Walt Whitman Studies Association is edited at Iowa by editor Ed Folsom and managing editor Blake Bronson-Bartlett. 

Less than a month after the site’s public launch, The Walt Whitman Recording, has already become the second-most accessed item in Iowa Research Online, the university’s institutional repository. The article, by Folsom, describes the rediscovery of the “tape-recording of what may be an 1889 or 1890 wax-cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading four lines of his late poem ‘America.’” The audio has gained broad exposure recently in a Levi’s Go Forth commercial.

All journal back issues, beginning with the first volume in 1983, up to one year ago are full-text searchable from the site. Current issues are accessible to subscribers only. The site provides information about subscribing, announcements about Whitman-related matters, access to the searchable bibliography of everything written about Whitman from 1840 to the present, and up-to-date information on the census of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Soon, articles will also be available through bibliographic entries in the Walt Whitman Archive. 

WWQR is the latest journal to be added to Iowa Research Online, a dynamic archive of the research produced by faculty, researchers, and students, from published articles in peer-reviewed journals to presentations, theses, dissertations, and unpublished papers. WWQR is among four locally published e-journals hosted by the University of Iowa Libraries, with an additional two currently in production. To find out more about the Libraries support for locally journal publishing, see the Libraries e-journal hosting information. As with all efforts related to Iowa Research Online, this project was part of a broader Libraries initiative to support the transformation of scholarly communications.

—Nicole Saylor
Head, Digital Library Services

Mar 24 2010

Lasers in the Library, Mar 25 at 7 p.m.

On May 16, 1960, working at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, Theodore Maiman and his co-workers C. K. Asawa and I. J. D’Haenens switched on a makeshift device that they had assembled, and hoped for the best. The device was revolutionary, yet deceptively simple and elegant–its essence was a powerful coiled flash lamp surrounding a synthetic, single-crystal ruby rod. The brilliant pulsed lamp excited chromium ions in the ruby, which then emitted a bright fluorescent pulse of red light. But the experimenters looked more closely and saw what they were hoping for, something much more unusual: a telltale burst of coherent radiation superimposed on the normal fluorescence. This team had just created the first working example of a laser.  — Thomas M. Baer, LaserFest.org

At this extraordinary moment, the Hughes Researchers could not have known the myriad uses the laser would come to be employed. A new exhibit at the University Libraries Main Library, “50 Years of Laser Innovation,” explores the beginnings of the laser, it’s many uses today and takes a peek at the future of the laser.

The exhibit opens with a laser demostration by Dale Stille and graduate students in Physics and Astronomy department in the North Exhibition Hall of the Main Library.

Thursday, March 25
7 p.m.
North Exhibition Hall, Main Library

For questions, contact Science Librarian Kari Kozak at 335-3024.

Mar 15 2010

Iowa City Book Festival seeks participants, vendors for July 16-18 event

The 2010 Iowa City Book Festival is set for July 16-18, expanding the event from a one-day event to a three-day festival, which organizers hope will attract an even larger crowd after a successful start in 2009.

To accomplish that goal, organizers are asking local businesses to participate with programming and activities in their places of business on Sunday, July 18, which will be “A Day in the City of Literature” in Iowa City. Among the various activities envisioned are: author events and signings in area bookstores; book-related crafts/projects/materials highlighted in local businesses; open studios hosted by book artists; a walking tour of bookstores; activities for all ages at the Iowa City Public Library; appearances by food writers in restaurants; and book festival specials in local shops and restaurants.

On Saturday, July 17, festival activities will be held once again in Gibson Square outside the UI Main Library’s south entrance on the university campus, and will be a mix of booksellers, a small music stage, children’s activities, food vendors, book arts demonstrations and readings and panel discussions. The University of Iowa Libraries will host a pre-festival author dinner on Friday, July 16, in the North Exhibition Hall of the Main Library.

The UI Libraries sponsors the event with support from the UI Press, Iowa City Public Library, UI Center for the Book and Prairie Lights Bookstore. With additional support from the UNESCO City of Literature and the Iowa City/Coralville Area  Convention and Visitors Bureau, this year, festival organizers are working toward turning the Iowa City Book Festival into a major Midwest summer attraction, says Kristi Bontrager, festival co-director.

Businesses and organizations can submit their interest and/or proposal online at http://www.iowacitybookfestival.org/call.html.

Information about events and participating businesses will be included in an official program, which will be distributed before the festival throughout Eastern Iowa, will appear on the festival Web site, and will be available at the Gibson Square portion of the Iowa City Book Festival on Saturday, July 17.

Mar 9 2010

What is the future of the print book? Mar 10 at 4 p.m.

What is the future of the print book in a context of its digital delivery? Wide redefinition is in progress in fields as diverse as neurology of reading, digital preservation, e-book marketing, and technology of print on demand.

Book Studies Forum
Wednesday, March 10 at 4-5:30 p.m.
Main Library Second Floor Conference Room (2032)

Discussion extends from standards and certification of print originals to blog rants on the death of the book, electronic format competitions and favorite reading devices. Over arching this dynamic is the canonic role of the physical book and its imprint on the future of cultural transmission.

A short introduction will be offered by Gary Frost which will include an outline of a proposed fall seminar on the future of the print book. Forum participants will be invited to survey issues and experience reading devices.

Mar 5 2010

“Comrades in the Labor Room,” Women’s History Month Lecture

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the University’s Council on the Status of Women, History of Medicine Society and Iowa Women’s Archives will sponsor a reception and a public lecture by University of Iowa History Professor Paula Michaels.

Wednesday, March 10
4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Iowa Women’s Archives on the third floor of the Main Library. 

The festivities will begin at 4:30 p.m. with a reception featuring light refreshments.  At 5:15 p.m., Theatre Arts graduate student Janet Schlapkohl will entertain with “There’s This Thing Called Lamaze,” a brief monologue and song about natural childbirth in the 1970s.  

At 5:30 p.m., Professor Michaels will begin her lecture, “Comrades in the Labor Room: The International Story of the Lamaze Method, 1950-1980,” which reveals the origins of the Lamaze method in the Soviet Union, its promotion by the French Communist Party, and the deliberate efforts to obscure these leftist ties that made Lamaze palatable to U.S. women during the Cold War era. 

Please join us for any or all of these activities.

For more information, contact Sharon Lake, Chair of Herstory Committee; Kären Mason, Iowa Women’s Archives, at 319-335-5068; or  Ed Holtum, History of Medicine Society, at 319-335-9154.

Mar 1 2010

Women’s History Month reception, Mar 3

To celebrate women’s history month and to unveil a new digital collection of UI alumna Eve Drewelowe, the UI Libraries will host a reception from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 3, 2010, in the North Exhibition Hall of the Main Library.

Joni Kinsey, Curator of the Drewelowe art collection, will speak briefly on the artist’s work and the significance of the collection.

Feb 23 2010

Esther Bierbaum 1928-2010

Former faculty member Esther Bierbaum has died at her home in St. Petersburg, Florida.   Esther taught at the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science from 1983-1995 and was beloved by students and faculty.  We remember her rigorous and imaginative teaching and research.  Most of all, though, we remember Esther as a wonderful person — caring, giving, funny, fiercely independent and wise.  We are grateful for the dozen years she shared with the Iowa library community.

Here is a link to her obituary:
http://www.tributes.com/show/Esther-Bierbaum-87874641