News – News & Announcements

Mar 27 2020

2020: The Year of the QuaranZINE

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Elizabeth Riordan

The following is written by Rich Dana, Olson Graduate Research Assistant for Special Collections.

As librarians, we are engaged in service to our communities, and that service doesn’t end when the library has to lock its doors to protect its patrons and workers. All of us are faced now with leveraging any tools at our disposal to serve those who need to continue teaching, learning, researching, creating and maintaining some continuity in their lives during the “social distancing” of the current moment.

I was sitting in a comfortable weekend rental apartment above Rago’s Funeral home in Chicago (famous as the location of Al Capones wake) with my family when the reality of the situation really set in. The Art Institute was closing. Concerts were canceled. Visiting a nearly empty Quimby’s bookstore, manager Liz Mason and I discussed the cancellations of all upcoming zine fests, art book and small press events. It occurred to me that zine-makers would be dealing with the quarantine as they do many of life’s struggles; by making zines about it. Liz threw out a title for such efforts, calling them “quaranzines.”

That afternoon I set up a Facebook group as a hub place for collaboration and as a collection point for these quaranzines. By the time I got back to Iowa the next day, cities across the nation were implementing “shelter in place” orders, and well over 200 people had joined the Covid-19 zine group.

From 5 Ways to Keep Busy (when you can’t leave the house) by Kelly Wooten

Members hail from all over the world, reporting on what they are seeing and making, sharing their work. Marc Fischer from Chicago prints a 2-page issue of Quaranzine every day, posting them on light poles and bus stops around the neighborhood. Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam in Siem Reap, Cambodia is asking for people to send artwork and writing for her first issue of QuaranZINE. She is working on it despite the high temperatures and the lack of air conditioning caused by power outages in the village. As I prepare the first issue of my own quaranzine, Dri-Koff Weekly, another zine arrives in my mailbox. 5 Ways to Keep Busy (when you can’t leave the house) by Kelly Wooten in Chapel Hill.

We all hope that quaranzines are a thing of the past soon. Until then- I’ve got another issue to put out.

The Social Distancing Festival

Submissions are open to all, though the organizer is currently prioritizing work that was cancelled/disrupted/delayed due to the need for social distancing and COVID-19.

Submit and learn more about The Social Distancing Festival here

Flatlands Press

Flatland Press invites you to submit pieces for Flat Space, a publication that will be created around this period of social distancing.Present themes orbiting around forms of communication, shorten the distance between us, and antiquated tech/dead tech.

Please submit ideas, images, writings at Flatlandspress@gmail.com
Please add: Flat Space to subject headings.

THE SPACE BETWEEN: a free PDF coloring/activity book by PS1 & friends

Local Iowa City group, Public Space One brings you Space Between: The PS1 & Friends (never ending) activity book (vol. 2 could be with you!)

Click here if you’d like to submit to the community coloring/activity book.

The Quarantine Times:

“This project continues until the crisis ends, at which point all artists’ contributions will be promptly compiled into a publication and released at a celebration. We’ll be together again.”

Check out more about this project here.

Quaranzine Fest 2020!

A viral safe-space for your zines!
Quaranzine Fest is simple. Post your work on the platform of your choice April 4th and 5th tagged #quaranzinefest. There’s more info on their website including a funny / awkward tutorial on how to digitize your analog zine with an iPhone!

On April 4th and 5th like, comment, and share the work of others! Be a good samaritan – do more than just browse and passively like. If you can afford it, mail order some zines – after all it’s a zinefest!

Quaranzine:

A Daily Riso zine by Marc Fischer is open to publishing work by others:

Copies are posted in public places in his neighborhood in Chicago, left in some Little Free Libraries in the area, shared online on social media, and distributed more formally eventually when it’s safe for people to get together in groups. Get in touch if you are interested.

QuaranZINE

From Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam:

If you are fortunate enough to be in (self) quarantine, I would like to create a zine, aptly titled, “QuaranZINE”. In this work, I aim to collectively publish short writing pieces, poems, art, rants, and almost anything that is produced during quarantine.

For more information please contact a.dam@studenti.unisg.it with the subject heading: QuaranZINE.

Dri-Koff Weekly:

A one page mimeograph zine available by mail, or as a print-and-fold pdf. Coming out weekly until this is over. Art, writing, comics, helpful hints and observations about living and staying sane during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Send submissions or requests for copies to ricardo.obsolete@gmail.com.

Downloads available soon.

Social Distance Quara-zine! Collective zine-making in the age of Covid-19 Facebook Group

Social Distance Quara-zine is an online zinefest. The world was a lonely enough place before, and now this. While we are all in lock-down mode, maybe we can find a way to get together via pictures and words, to share ideas, make communal art and survive the madness together (while staying at least 3 meters apart.)

Want to learn more about zines, zine-making or the zine collections at the University of Iowa? Check out:

Zine resources at Special Collections

And be sure to check out these other great sources as well!

Zine Librarianship

Making your own zines

Zine lesson plans from Barnard College

Feb 14 2020

Ellen Day Hale Paints Her Way into UI History

Posted on February 14, 2020February 17, 2020 by Elizabeth Riordan

Through some great research, our University Archivist David McCartney discovers some of the “unknown” facts that are part of new UI Presidential Portrait Gallery in the Main Library, as he explains below.

When the UI Presidential Portrait Gallery was formally dedicated late last year, staff in Special Collections responsible for this display knew that there were still some ‘gaps’ in some of the portraits’ stories. For example, labels accompanying some of the displayed portraits note that the artist is unknown. But as we continue to learn more of the history of this collection and how it came into being, we update and correct our records – and labels – as needed.

oil portrait of George Thacher — Oil on canvas of George Thacher by Ellen Day Hale

The George Thacher portrait is a case in point. Thacher (1817-1878) was the University’s fifth president, serving from 1871 to 1877. His portrait is an oil-on-canvas, dark in tone and realistic, a style appropriate for the late nineteenth century. The artist’s name was somehow lost in the records as the portrait, along with others in the collection, moved from one campus location to another for nearly a century, until settling in the Main Library.

Well, now we can fill in this gap. Recently, a closer examination of the portrait revealed a nearly-obscured name in the lower left corner: “E.D. Hale.” The signature is difficult but not impossible to ascertain. From this, we were able to confirm via an internet search that the artist was Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940). Our sources for this include the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and an entry on American Gallery online.

According to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Ellen Day Hale was “among the wave of American artists, both men and women, who traveled to Europe

for training in the last quarter of the 19th century. She is best known for her Impressionist figure studies. Hale, the only daughter of the noted orator and author Edward Everett Hale and Emily Baldwin Perkins, came from a family filled with notable figures. Her great-great-uncle Nathan Hale was a Revolutionary War patriot; her great-aunt Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and her brother Philip and his wife Lilian Westcott Hale were also professional painters.”

The Boston Art Club was the setting for the first exhibition of her work in 1876. Because both she and George Thacher were from New England, we can speculate that the portrait was completed during the last one or two years of his life, after he left Iowa to return to the northeast to be close to family in light of illness. Hale was perhaps in her early twenties when she completed the portrait, likely one of the first works of a long and distinguished career. She was also the first woman to produce a presidential portrait for the university.

View the portrait gallery online or view in person on the Main Library’s fifth floor.

Oct 20 2019

The Remarkable John Giorno

Posted on October 20, 2019October 21, 2019 by Elizabeth Riordan

The following comes from Olson Graduate Assistant Rich Dana

John Giorno, poet and organizer of the Dial-A-Poem project, setting up a reel of recorded poetry at the Architectural League in Manhattan in 1969.
Photo Credit Patrick A. Burns/The New York Times

John Giorno, poet, artist, and activist, passed away Friday, October 12th at the age of 82. Although readers may not be familiar with his name, Giorno was one of the most influential American artists of the post-war 20th century. He blurred the boundaries between written, visual and performance art, fine art, and pop culture.

A native New Yorker, Giorno grew up among the literary and artistic giants of the early 1960s. He appeared in early Andy Warhol films, and he became a junior member of the beat movement, befriending the likes of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Brion Gysin.

Put your arms around me honey, West Branch, Iowa : Toothpaste Press, 1984
Photo from UIowa Libraries

His fiery and transgressive spoken-word style laid the groundwork for the performance art and slam poetry movements, and his open and unapologetic descriptions of his life as a gay man was thematically revolutionary at the time. His Giorno Poetry Systems “Dial-a-Poem” service in the late 1960s allowed users to call a series on answering machines and hear writers discussing the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, and other politically-charged topics.

Sources close to Giorno say that the 82-year-old artist was in good health and was working in his studio at the time of his death. Readers can find out more about Giorno in the New York Times obituary.

Special Collections holds several of Giorno’s works, which are available to view any time in the reading room.

Jul 19 2019

An Olson’s Goodbye

Posted on July 19, 2019 by Elizabeth Riordan

An Olson’s Goodbye

By Micaela Terronez

For the past two years, I have had the great fortune of learning about the inner workings of special collections and archives as the Olson Graduate Assistant at The University of Iowa Special

Collections. It’s hard to believe my time at Iowa has already come to an end. It feels like just yesterday when I arrived on my first day and was in complete awe of the amazing collections and people in the department. I remember being so utterly terrified, however, of the stacks upon stacks of materials. How would I ever figure out where something was?! It took time and, well, a library catalog. But I also relied heavily on the talented staff and students of the department to help me adjust to what seemed like a never-ending world of manuscripts, books, maps, and artifacts. I have learned so much in the past two years, and I am forever grateful to the department for their guidance and knowledge that they have graciously shared with me. Also, thank you to my friends – both old and new—and my family for your unconditional support and love over the past two years. Like former Olson Hannah Hacker’s goodbye, I have also decided to leave with my own spin on a classic song. Here is “The Stacks are Alive,” a rendition of “Prelude/ The Sound of Music.”

The stacks are alive with the sound of book carts
With squeaks that they have sung for several years
The books fill my heart with the sound of reading
My heart wants to hear every word that appears

My heart wants to beat like archival boxes
that open and close by patrons
My heart wants to sigh like brittle paper
from near and far places
To laugh with a friend when you are working
tears on the way
To sing through the day like an old book cart hoping to stay

I go to the stacks when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I’ve heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of libraries
And I’ll return once more

Thank you Micaela for everything you’ve done for this department! We wish you the absolute best in the next chapter of your adventure.

Picture of Rare Book Curator Diane Dias De Fazio

May 22 2019

New Curator of Rare Books coming to Special Collections

Posted on May 22, 2019May 24, 2019 by Elizabeth Riordan

The University of Iowa Libraries is excited to announce that Diane Dias De Fazio will be joining Special Collections as the new Curator of Rare Books this July.

Dias De Fazio is joining us from New York, where she has been working as a librarian at the New York Public Library since 2016. Her work with the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy, as well as her work with the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, included outreach, instruction, and various public service duties such as reference and research consultations. She was also instrumental in running various social media outlets for the library. Dias De Fazio brings with her a strong background in book arts and more than a decade of special collections experience to the University of Iowa.

“I am deeply honored for the opportunity to work with the staff, students, and collections at UI and UICB [University of Iowa Center for the Book] and look forward to collaborations and engaging with the UI community across departments,” said Dias De Fazio.

A graduate from Fordham University in New York, Dias De Fazio received her Bachelors in Drama and History. She went on to get her Masters of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University, and a Master of Science in Library and Information Science with a concentration on Archives & Special Collections and Museum Libraries from Pratt Institute in New York. In 2016, Dias De Fazio was named a “Bright Young Librarian” by Fine Books & Collections magazine, and continues to actively engage in ACRL Rare Book and Manuscript Section (RBMS) Annual Conference.

Special Collections is thrilled to bring Diane Dias De Fazio on board, and we cannot wait to see what new, exciting things she brings to the department.

Apr 01 2019

Exhibit to Celebrate Walt Whitman’s 200th Birthday

Posted on April 1, 2019April 16, 2019 by Meaghan Lemmenes

Hailed as “America’s poet” by poet Ezra Pound and others, Walt Whitman is a familiar name to most Americans, even if they haven’t read his most famous work Leaves of Grass. Even 200 years after his birth, Whitman finds himself the center of countless research questions and an inspiration for modern writers. For someone who starts one of his famous poems with “I celebrate myself, I sing myself,” it only makes sense that the University of Iowa Libraries follow suit and take time to celebrate Whitman’s legacy with the exhibit Walt Whitman: A Bicentennial Celebration.

Leaves of Grass (1855) : picture from The Walt Whitman Archive website

Curated by Stephanie Blalock, a Digital Humanities Librarian, James O’Neil, a Ph.D candidate in English, and Ed Folsom, a professor of English, this exhibit aims to highlight Whitman‘s life through his early works of fiction, as well as his famous editions of Leaves of Grass.

“What we’re going to have on display here is just the tip of the iceberg in our collection, really,” O’Neil said.

All three of the curators have a different focus when it comes to Whitman’s life. This aided to the curation of the exhibit, as each curator was able to fill in specific gaps of knowledge about the poet’s life.

This exhibit has been in the works since 2016. With the vast amount of resources available about Whitman through the Whitman Archive and the holdings at University of Iowa Libraries’ Special Collections, the exhibit looks at several versions of his notable work Leaves of Grass, including a first edition. However, the curators also want to focus on his fiction, journals and old age prose.

“Whitman is generally remembered as the author of Leaves of Grass, but not as a fiction writer,” Blalock said. “He actually got his early start in the early 1840’s when he was about the age of some of our undergraduates here, writing for newspapers as a journalist and writing fiction.”

There will also be a connection to Iowa. The University Press reprinted several of Whitman’s political pamphlets he wrote after the Civil War, so there will be a case about Iowa, as well as other references sprinkled throughout the exhibit. The curators also stress looking at the screen outside of the exhibit entrance. The screen will have different artwork and interactive maps to give viewers more areas of exploration outside of the exhibit space.

Walt Whitman: A Bicentennial Celebration will open April 5th and there will be a talk in the exhibit space from 3:30-6:00 by curators Stephanie Blalock and Ed Folsom that day. Their talk will kick off a series of events to take place throughout spring and the beginning of summer. The schedule of Walt Whitman Symposium Events can be downloaded through the link.

Feb 12 2019

Rare Recordings of Civil Rights Activists Available Now

Posted on February 12, 2019February 13, 2019 by Elizabeth Riordan

Exciting news from University Archivist, David McCartney, about the incredible recordings found in the Eric Morton Civil Rights Papers.

In 1963 and 1964, attorney Bob Zellner recorded a series of interviews with civil rights activists in Mississippi and Alabama. Zellner conducted the interviews on behalf of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in an effort to document the activists’ experiences, which were often under challenging and violent circumstances.

The interviewees participated in the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964, later to be known as Freedom Summer, a drive to register African Americans in the Magnolia State to vote. For decades, attempts by blacks to register at county court houses across the state were met with intimidation, harassment, and even violence. Freedom Summer was an organized response to this situation, with activists from across the U.S. participating, including over 800 college and university students. Among them were about a dozen students from the University of Iowa.

Students and Civil Rights activists holding hands in front of bus during Freedom Summer — Freedom Summer: Photo from the
Ted Polumbaum collection at Newseum

Why Mississippi? At the time, only seven percent of eligible black adults in the state were registered to vote, the lowest rate in the nation. SNCC, the Council of Federated Organizations, the NAACP, and other civil rights organizations targeted Mississippi for this effort due its discriminatory Jim Crow laws and practices. In response to this, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson the following year.

Eric Morton in Armed Forces Uniform in 1951 — Eric Morton in 1951: Photo from Eric Morton Civil Rights Papers

The interviews are part of the Eric Morton Civil Rights Papers (MsC 0999). Morton (1934-2015), a native of Detroit, Michigan, and a U.S. Army veteran of the Korean Conflict, held various positions with SNCC from 1962 to 1966 in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina. He was Materials Coordinator for Freedom Summer and later served as Project Director for the North Carolina Project, which covered nine Black Belt counties. After this he worked to elect black officials including John Conyers and Ron Dellums to Congress and Coleman Young as mayor of Detroit.

In 1968 Morton worked with a group of local activists to organize the 1969 National Black Economic Development Conference where James Forman presented his historic speech, “The Black Manifesto.” In later years, Morton worked as an International Organizer for AFSCME organizing hospital workers and housekeepers in northern California and UC Berkeley. Later, his academic career included the position of Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fort Valley State University of Georgia.

Eric Morton donated his papers to the University of Iowa in 2014, in large part because of his friendship with Stephen Smith (1944-2009), a University of Iowa student from Marion, Iowa. Morton and Smith worked together in Mississippi during Freedom Summer; both were assaulted by white supremacists on the night of July 15, 1964 while delivering voter registration materials from Jackson to Greenwood.

More about how the Eric Morton papers arrived at Iowa is here.

Listen to the interviews from these activists and other recordings from Morton’s collection below:

Jimmie Travis, (1942-2009)

Jimmie Travis closeup — Jimmie Travis: Photo from Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Inc.

Learn more about Jimmie Travis

Jimmie Travis, additional interview (1942-2009)

Learn more about Jimmie Travis

Annie Devine (1912-2000)

Learn more about Annie Devine

George Greene (1943-2018)

Learn more about George Greene

Louis Draper's photo of Fannie Lou Hamer walking dirt road — Fannie Lou Hamer: Photo by Louis H. Draper at the National Museum of African American History

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

Learn more about Fannie Lou Hamer

Hartman Turnbow (1905-1988)

Learn more about Hartman Turnbow

Charlie Cobb (1943- )

Learn more about Charlie Cobb

Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998)

Young picture of Stokely Carmichael — Stokely Carmichael: Photo from the Bettmann-Corbis Archive

Learn more about Stokely Carmichael

Dan Pearlman

Rev. Martin Luther King prepared statement on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964

Singing at community meetings in Mississippi, 1962-1964; locations and dates unknown

Singing at community meetings in Mississippi, 1964; locations and dates unknown; additional recording

Feb 01 2019

An Exhibit for the Senses

Posted on February 1, 2019 by Meaghan Lemmenes

The great thing about artists books is that it shows us the various shapes, sizes, and textures that books can come in. Publishing companies, who also vary in shapes and sizes, help get these books out into the world for everyone to enjoy.

Curated by University of Iowa Professor Jennifer Buckley, Seeing Seeking Feeling Reading: Granary Books is an exhibit highlighting the book’s flexibility as a concept and as an intellectual and sensory experience by exploring the works published by just one company, Granary Books.

Granary Books is an independent publishing company in the United States and one of the proprietors is a University of Iowa graduate, Steven Clay. Clay graduated with a Bachelor’s in English and Religion in 1978. He describes Granary’s mission as “exploring the relationships between seeing and reading, reading and seeking,” which is where the name of the exhibit comes from.

The exhibit will feature Granary editions all organized into three categories: limited edition artists’ books, writer/artist collaborations, and books about books.

“These Granary Books live on the third floor in Special Collections, but many library patrons don’t know that they exist, or where to access them,” Buckley said. “The Main Library Gallery is a wonderful publicly accessible and beautiful site in which to share the riches of Special Collections.”

Buckley was able to work with Clay and library staff, including Exhibition Designer Kalmia Strong and Head Conservator Giselle Simón, in order to make this exhibit happen.

Seeing Seeking Feeling Reading: Granary Books will be open to the public on February 1 until March 15 on the first floor of the Main Library.

In addition to the exhibit, Cecilia Vicuña, a multidisciplinary artist-activist who makes poems, paintings, installations, books, performances, and films, is coming for a lecture on February 14 at 7:30 p.m. in 240 ABW and she will be doing a poetry reading on February 15 at 4:30 p.m. at the Dey House.

Steven Clay is also coming to give a lecture about the publication and materials in the Main Library on February 15 from 3 p.m.-4 p.m.

“I want viewers to leave the exhibit reminded that books come in many forms and formats, and that viewing is not all we do to or with them,” Buckley said. “Readers can interact with books in multiple ways while using multiple senses. Exhibitors should come back to Special Collections to see, hold and feel Granary Books for themselves.”

“It’s your Special Collections, too!”

Jan 25 2019

Discovering the Rich World of the Encyclopedia

Posted on January 25, 2019January 28, 2019 by Elizabeth Riordan

Encyclopedias.

If you’re like me, then you haven’t really given them much thought. Growing up in pre-Google days, my family owned a 1988 set that was used and abused by my siblings and I, for both school reports and building forts, and they proved a go-to for school projects and reports in those early years of my education. However, I was more concerned about the information contained within these volumes that I never thought about these encyclopedias as an object in themselves.

On February 13th, Iowa Bibliophiles will finally give you and me the chance to take a moment to appreciate the encyclopedia as an object. Professor Emeritus Arthur Bonfield will be giving his talk “Development of the Eighteenth Century English Encyclopedia or Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences,” exploring not only the history of the English encyclopedia, but also examining early Latin and French encyclopedias that preceded the 18th century English publications.

Professor Emeritus Bonfield has been collecting rare books for over 60 years now. His collections includes over 1,000 original copies of books from early printing days, including volumes on exploration, geography, English literature and history, and of course encyclopedias.

Encyclopedias might seem like an uncommon topic to collect, but as Rebecca Romney and J.P. Romeny explain in their book Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History,

“The ability to organize information and distribute it to the public is an incredibly powerful tool…to prioritize information is to control information. And to control information is to control people.” (Romeny 90)

Please join Special Collections and Iowa Bibliophiles on February 13th to hear a fascinating talk about something so many of us take for granted with Professor Bonfield.

An image of ‘electricity’ found in an 18th C. English Encyclopedia

Event starts at 7pm in the Special Collection’s Reading Room (3rd floor of the Main Library), with refreshments served at 6:30pm. Find out more on our Facebook event or on the UI Event Calendar.

Jan 25 2019

Earn your own bookbinding badge with this new exhibit

Posted on January 25, 2019February 7, 2019 by Meaghan Lemmenes

Do you have an interest in bookbinding? Have you always wanted to be a boy or girl scout but never took the opportunity to join? Or maybe you miss those scouting days? Well, now is your chance to earn your Bookbinding badge and join the Book Scouts.

Curated by Olson Graduate Assistant Laura Michelson, graduate student Zoe Webb, and graduate student Damien Ihrig, How to Earn Your Book Scouts Merit Badge is an exhibit now on display in the reading room of Special Collections.

This exhibit breaks down the process of bookbinding in chronological order, starting with a 1950’s Official Boy Scout Bookbinding Kit, which they discovered up in the Conservation Lab of the Main Library. From there, the three graduates display the materials used in making books, including parchment and minerals used in making different colored paints and dyes. The exhibit continues with displays of several historical book binding models, as well as their own creations from their classes in Center for the Book.

“There’s more to the creation of books that people don’t understand sometimes,” Michelson said.

The addition of their own bookbinding work brings their curation of this exhibit to a personal level.

“It does a good job of capturing the specific things that we’re interested in individually,” Ihrig said.

Michelson, Webb, and Ihrig are three graduate students in the School of Library and Information Sciences with a graduate certificate in Book Studies (BLIS). They were asked to create an exhibit about their experiences in the BLIS program and they found that bookbinding was something they all had in common.

But, what made this exhibit really come to life was the boy scout bookbinding kit.

From left to right: Zoe Webb, Damien Ihrig, and Laura Michelson

“We weren’t sure how to set up the exhibit,” Webb said. “We had a lot of the pieces but it was still a little confused, and the kit made everything fall into place.”

They also wanted to add an element of interactivity with the exhibit because the boy scout bookbinding kit included a checklist on how to earn the badge in bookbinding. So, they created their own list for participants to earn their book arts badge for the new Book Scouts.

Along with the list, there will also be a pop-up exhibit on March 6th from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. where people can make their own book and check-off an item on their list to get their badge. Other items include visiting the exhibit, visiting Special Collections, attending a bibliophiles talk and then submitting a form by April 2nd. Then you could be an owner of a Book Scouts Merit Badge.

You can download the list here or pick one up at the front desk at Special Collections. Once filled out, turn it into the Special Collections front desk to receive your own badge!

How to Earn Your Book Scouts Merit Badge is currently on exhibit and will be up until the mid-to-late April.