University Libraries

“Blood Done Sign My Name” by Timothy B. Tyson, the true story of a black U.S. Army veteran killed by three white men in Oxford, N.C. in the early 1970s, is the 2007 selection for “One Community, One Book — All Johnson County Reads.”

The project promoting insights on human rights in the United States is coordinated by the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights (UICHR) in conjunction with other sponsoring organizations from Johnson County and the UI.

The goal of the project is to encourage people to read and discuss the selected book in order to develop a greater community awareness of human rights issues locally, nationally and internationally.

The book, published by Random House in 2004, is the true story of 23-year-old Henry Marrow, who was murdered in 1973. In the wake of the killing, young African-Americans took to the streets. The author’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away.

Tyson returns to Oxford 30 years later to make sense of what happened and how the events changed his life. As he weaves together childhood memories with the realities of present-day Oxford, he sheds new light on America’s struggle for racial justice.

“Blood Done Sign My Name” won the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction. Tyson, a North Carolina native, teaches and writes about the history of African-American freedom movements in the 20th-century South. He holds appointments in the department of history at Duke and in the department of American studies at the University of North Carolina.

The “One Community, One Book” project will run from mid-September through mid-November. Teachers, students, librarians, book groups and others are encouraged to participate. By announcing the selection now, the project sponsors hope to allow time for groups to read the book and participate in fall community discussion forums, and for teachers to plan classroom discussions around the book.

The UI Libraries will host a community discussion of the book in the fall.

In an effort to provide faculty and students access to the latest resources in their disciplines, the UI Libraries periodically enrolls in trial subscriptions to online resources. During and after the trial, library staff encourages feedback from faculty and students about particular resources. History Reference Online will be under consideration until June 18.

History Reference Online is an extensive, full-text online collection of reference titles available as a subscription to libraries and covers a broad range of subjects including:

• American and World History
• Pop culture, folklore, and mythology
• Law and government
• History of religion
• Geography
• Political, social, and military history
• World and U.S. issues
• History of science, technology, and the environment

This easy-to-use single search box leads students and researchers to credible, citable research materials. Library users can search across the entire collection or a single book, and History Reference Online offers thousands of focused bibliographic records and selective bibliographies.

Learn about other resources currently under consideration.

by Sid Huttner, Head of Special Collections 

By 1965, Kurt Vonnegut had published four novels in paperback, but Slaughterhouse Five was several years in the future. Hardly famous and far from rich, Vonnegut accepted an invitation to teach in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Among his students was Loree Rackstraw. They became close and lasting friends. Although she aspired to writing herself, after taking her degree Rackstraw returned to Cedar Falls and became a member of the University of Northern Iowa English faculty.

In 1984, Vonnegut used brightly colored magic markers to make a suite of eight untitled drawings on 14×17 inch sheets of art paper. Shortly after he created them, Vonnegut sent the drawings to Rackstraw, and they hung, framed, in her living room until Vonnegut and artist Joe Petro asked to borrow and photograph them as the base of a set of silk screen prints titled Enchanted I.O.U.s. The prints restore a depth of color somewhat faded in the original drawings.

There is much to be learned by study of Petro’s work in juxtaposition to Vonnegut’s, and we are honored by Loree Rackstraw’s decision to place the original drawings in the Libraries where they will be permanently available to scholars and students.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Bindings: News for Supporters of the University of Iowa Libraries.

For more about collections related to Kurt Vonnegut, check Special Collections.

As part of the Greek Week activities, fraternity and sorority members will “Crash the Main Library” on Tuesday, April 17 between 8 p.m. and 12 a.m.

Members can sign-in at the table in the second floor Group Study Space.

For more information, contact Greek representatives: Greg Buehner or Jamie Wagner.

The work of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recently been in the news. The Executive Summary for Policymakers (pdf), part of its 4^th Assessment Report, was recently released. The report documents the current scientific understanding and analysis on global climate change and recommends policy actions to address the global warming that is currently occurring on Earth. The IPCC will continue working on this issue and the more comprehensive Assessment Report is due out later in 2007.

The IPCC works within the framework of the United Nations. The University of Iowa Libraries is a United Nations (UN) depository library and collects a wide variety of materials published by the UN. For more information about the UN collection, please visit the UN Research Guide. For more information, contact Brett Cloyd (brett-cloyd@uiowa.edu).

University Archivist David McCartney has been elected to a two-year term as secretary of the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC). He’ll join Dennis Meissner of the Minnesota Historical Society (president-elect), Tanya Zanish-Belcher of Iowa State University (vice president), and Craig Wright of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum (treasurer) as MAC officers.

With over 1,100 individual members and about 180 institutional members, MAC is the nation’s largest regional archives organization, serving 13 states. Corporate, government, religious and university archives are members, as are historical societies, manuscripts repositories, and other special collections.

UI Libraries Conservator Gary Frost, Larry Raid of the Working Linotype Museum and graduate library science student Bethany Templeton are hosting a historical printing exposition at the Mossman Printing Services Building today, Thursday, April 5, from 9:00 am until 4:00 pm.

You can see some of the technology that shaped early 20th-century commercial printing practices. You can actually try your hand at running a Linotype, Washington-style press and a small jobber press and make your own personalized bookmark.

The Mossman Printing Services Building is located south of downtown Iowa City on Riverside Drive.  To get there by

• By bus: The Iowa City Transit Westport bus leaves Old Capitol Mall at 45 minutes past each hour and stops on Riverside Drive on the hour just across the street from the Mossman Building.
• By car: Drive south on Riverside Drive through the intersection of Highways 1 and 6. Stay on the main road, which turns into Old Highway 218 South (Riverside Drive splits off near the Army Reserve facility). The Mossman Building is on the left, across from Colonial Bowling Lanes and between the two Hubbard Feeds buildings.