University Libraries

For one Hawkeye couple, the journey of a thousand miles started at a wobbly table in the Main Library.

In the late 1960s, Dr. Harold “Harry” Mihm was pursuing his MD at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille Carver College of Medicine, and Georgia Benda was an undergraduate studying special education. They began as strangers seated at a communal table on the Main Library’s second floor, both intensely focused on their coursework. In fact, one afternoon Harry was so absorbed in the task of annotating his anatomy textbook that he didn’t realize his scribbling was sending a tremor down the table, irritating the young woman a few seats away.

“It was distracting, so I asked him to please quit shaking the table,” says Georgia. They got to talking, and Harry offered her a ride home to keep out of the rain. So begins their origin story, a playful back-and-forth that has lasted a lifetime.

53 anniversaries and four children later, they’re both glad Georgia spoke up. They were married in 1970, at the beginning of Georgia’s senior year and Harry’s third year of medical school. After graduating from the College of Medicine in 1972 and completing an internship, residency, and fellowship, Harry went on to work as an OB/GYN for 36 years in the Quad Cities area, where the couple made their home. Georgia became an active member of the community and was soon elected to the school board in Bettendorf. She served six terms on the board of the Bettendorf Public Library and was a charter member of the Bettendorf Community Schools Foundation.

Now retired, the Mihms spend half the year in Bettendorf and half in Naples, Florida, a beachside town that boasts a robust community of Iowans. They enjoy spending time with their family, which has grown to include 11 grandchildren and a beloved Schnauzer. This year, Harry and his daughter made a cross-country road trip to Florida with the dog in tow, meeting Georgia in Naples to spare their canine companion a cramped journey under an airplane seat. 

“We’re Iowans, through and through,” says Harry. “But even Hawkeyes need some sun.”

But it may be that Harry and Georgia’s paths were always meant to cross. As it turned out, they both grew up in Northeastern Iowa, about an hour away from each other. While her mother, aunts, and sister had all attended Clarke College, which was then a women’s school, Georgia broke with tradition by becoming a Hawkeye. At first, this decision was slightly disappointing to her mother; she’d always hoped Georgia would attend Clarke and settle down with a graduate of its brother school, Loras College.  

It turned out that her mother had nothing to fear when her daughter moved down to Iowa City in 1967. Georgia started dating Harry and was stunned to learn that he’d earned his bachelor’s degree from Loras. It seems that life had plans of its own, brought to fruition by a fortuitous encounter at the Main Library.

Georgia and Harry have maintained a strong connection to the University of Iowa, and especially its libraries. Next time they visit Iowa City, they’re planning a visit to the building where it all began.

“It’s pretty amazing to think about. So much changes in 50 years, but the character and the culture of the place are the same,” says Georgia. “That’s how it is with us, too. We’ve grown together.”

The table where they sat that day may have been replaced, but the essence of the Main Library’s second floor—its towering stacks illuminated by tall windows—remains. And so do the students, who sit with their textbooks open, pens in hand, each one still on the first page of their own story.

Each year, the University of Iowa Libraries recognizes two graduate student employees for their contributions to the institution and the library or department in which they work. Recipients of an Academic Enrichment Award (AEA) are selected by a committee based on their application essays and the feedback of their supervisors, and winners receive a scholarship of $2,500. The winners for 2023-24 are Jennifer Miller and Ramin Roshandel. Below, Miller and Roshandel spoke to us about their work in the Libraries, what they’ve learned, and how they hope to apply the experience to their future careers.

Jennifer Miller is an MA student in the School of Library and Information Science and an MFA candidate at the Center for the Book. She was selected for her work in Preservation and Collections Care. Originally from Iowa City, the committee expressed appreciation for Miller’s sense of wonder and enthusiasm toward the materials in her care.

How has your work at the Libraries helped you develop important professional skills? How might you use those skills in your future career?

My work in Collections Care has helped me develop the professional skills needed to repair, restore, and preserve books in the circulating collection. In the future, I hope to work as a teacher or an academic librarian (or both) to facilitate research projects rooted in non-circulating items (special collections) including artist’s books and other primary resources. 

Has there been anything that surprised you about working in a library?

What has surprised me most about working in a library is the scope of the collection. For example, I recently cleaned and wrapped multiple oversized volumes of the London Times dating from the 1860s to 1900. These daily printed newspapers had been opened flat and bound together with a publisher’s binding. As I prepared them for off-site storage in the Libraries annex, I tried to imagine who read the papers when they first arrived here in Iowa City. Today, we usually think of printed newspapers as ephemeral, but these paper artifacts show the magnitude of printed news that circulated in our society pre-1900. The culture of the time period was reflected in every printed page, and they seem to be quite valuable as primary source research items. Yes, we can probably find digitized copies online, but these provide evidence showing how materially specific our cultural history of news production really was. The paper, the printing, the industry—it is all there in those objects which are now in storage in the annex. Perhaps they are waiting to become part of someone’s future research study. 

Ramin Roshandel, a PhD candidate in music composition from Iran, received an AEA award for his work at the Rita Benton Music Library. The committee were impressed by his dedication to his work and his attention to detail, as well as his thoughtful engagement with library users who called on him for assistance.

How has your work at the Libraries helped you develop important professional skills? How might you use those skills in your future career?

Through my work at the Music Library, I have been able to develop a great number of research skillsets. I have been using those skills and will use them in the future both 

in my own research as well as in my music composition pedagogy as an instructor.

Has there been anything that surprised you about working in a library?

There have been a couple of things that surprised me at the library, but maybe the most interesting one is, one time when I was looking for a book for a patron, I ran into another book in the stacks: The Canon of the Persian Music, which is the book I studied throughout my undergraduate time. It was, of course, the English version of the book, but finding it there, thousands of miles away, among thousands of other scores and books, was very surprising. It is also interesting that that book is not the only book about Persian music in the Music Library.