It is with a mix of sadness and joy that Special Collections bids goodbye to Colleen Theisen as she leaves to start her next big adventure. Colleen has accepted a job at Syracruse University as their Chief Curator of Exhibitions, Programs, and Education. Although we are sad to see her go, we cannot help but feel excited for this new chapter in her life. While at Iowa, Colleen helped create the group Historic Foodies, curated the exhibit “The Land Provides: Iowa’s Culinary Heritage” at Old Capitol, grew Special Collections instruction program, and brought national attention through NBC Nightly News and Atlas Obscura to our collections. Colleen’s last day will be June 1st, and we wish her the best of luck!
Taking over as our new Outreach and Engagement Librarian is Elizabeth Riordan. A recent graduate from the University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science, Riordan has been involved with Special Collections for the past two years, working as the Brokaw Graduate Research Assistant this past year. A Des Moines native, Elizabeth received BAs in Anthropology and in Theatre Arts from Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. A self-diagnosed silent film nut, Elizabeth is excited to work more with the Brinton Entertaining Company Collection and other film-related material here at Special Collections. She looks forward to getting involved with the community and finding ways to bring the collections out of the stacks for all to see.
Hear Kären Mason, curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives (at the University of Iowa Libraries) reflect on the significance of 6-on-6 high-school girls’ basketball, drawing on rich personal narratives from Iowa Women’s Archives collections. For most of the 20th century, the state of Iowa was nationally known for its devotion to a unique form of women’s sport known as 6-on-6 girls’ basketball. As other states abandoned 6-on-6, Iowa remained steadfast in its commitment until the state’s final 6-player championship in 1993, where Hubbard-Radcliffe prevailed over Atlantic, 85-66. The year 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the end of 6-on-6 girls’ basketball in Iowa.
Free to attend. Registration required.
Exhibits
Invisible Hawkeyes – African American pathfinders & tastemakers, 1930-1970
By looking at the University of Iowa and a smaller Midwestern college town like Iowa City, this book reveals how fraught moments of interracial collaboration, meritocratic advancement, and institutional insensitivity deepen our understanding of America’s painful conversation into a diverse republic committed to racial equality.
An exhibition co-curated by all the student employees in Special Collections. Their work processing collections, shelving books, providing references services, and teaching in our classroom brings the most beautiful, bizarre, profound, and silly historic items to their attention and each person provided a favorite item that you’re bound to love.
Where: Special Collections on the 3rd floor of the Main Library.
When: 8:30AM-5:00P M, W-F and 8:30AM-7PM on Tuesdays.
What gems are preserved inside of Iowa City’s libraries, museums, and archives?
At the area’s first-ever archives crawl, visitors can snoop in between the pages of historic diaries, read other people’s mail, hold feathers and fossils, and peer into mysteries revealed by historic artifacts like swords and locks of hair kept in remembrance.
All events are free and open to the public!
Between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm, the following sites will be open to the public. Each will offer tours, demonstrations, and short talks by experts (see specific times at archivesagainstamnesia.com/archives-crawl). Start your crawl at any of these sites, where you can pick up an archives crawl “passport” and map. Bring your fully stamped passport to any site for a prize!
University of Iowa Main Library, 125 W. Washington St.
University of Iowa Museum of Natural History, Macbride Hall, 17 N. Clinton St.
Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St.
State Historical Society of Iowa Research Center, 402 Iowa Ave.
All four sites will be open to visitors between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
The Iowa City Archives Crawl will occur prior to the 2018 Provost’s Global Forum and Obermann Humanities Symposium, Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice.
Free and open to the public.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Colleen Theisen in advance at 319-335-5923.
University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections is pleased to announce the acquisition of the library and papers of noted Romanian-American writer Andrei Codrescu. Comprising approximately eighty linear feet of manuscripts, books, audiovisual material, digital media, art works, and ephemera, this acquisition is a major addition to the University Libraries’ literary collections, and will provide a treasure trove of material for researchers in a variety of fields.
Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania in 1946. His literary career began with a number of poems written in Romanian when he was in his teens; it was during this period that he changed his surname from “Perlmutter” to “Codrescu.” Emigrating to the United States in 1966, he soon started writing and publishing in English. Living first in Detroit, he moved to New York and then to California, coming into extensive contact with the New York School of poets as well as the Beats. He held teaching positions at Johns Hopkins University and, for many years, at Louisiana State University, commuting by Greyhound bus to Baton Rouge from his home in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Since his retirement from LSU, Codrescu has been living in New York City while maintaining a rural retreat in the Buffalo River Valley in northern Arkansas, where besides writing he has been experimenting with sculpture and collage-constructions.
Codrescu is perhaps best known for his regular commentaries on NPR’s All Things Considered beginning in 1983. His writing encompasses virtually every genre, including poetry, novels, short stories, plays, essays, book-length non-fiction, autobiography, and film scripts. In recent years he has resumed writing poetry in his “native” language, Romanian. (Romanian was actually his third language, since as a child growing up in Transylvania, he first spoke German and Hungarian.) Besides his numerous books of poetry and his novels, Codrescu’s most influential books include The Hole in the Flag (an account of his return to Romania as an NPR reporter just days after the 1989 revolution), The Disappearance of the Outside,The Posthuman Dada Guide,Bibliodeath, and a series of innovative autobiographical works. He is also well-known for editing the journal Exquisite Corpse, named after a surrealist game.
Andrei Codrescu has longstanding connections with Iowa City’s literary scene, having been friends with a number of local authors. His library is filled with dedication copies of books by Iowa writers, former participants in the International Writing Program, Beat poets, Romanian authors, and major figures representing every strand of contemporary American literature.
Andrei Codrescu and Timothy Shipe
In February of this year Codrescu presented a lecture-performance in connection with the Libraries’ exhibition Documenting Dada, Disseminating Dada; the video is available online. During his visit, he met with a variety of groups on campus, including the School of Library and Information Science, the MFA Program in Translation, the International Writing Program, and library staff. Discussions began with Special Collections staff concerning the possible acquisition of his papers, and in August librarians Tim Shipe and Amy Chen visited Codrescu’s Arkansas studio to inspect the collection and discuss terms. Following the successful conclusion of these discussions, the collection arrived at the University Libraries in mid-October, and is now in the preliminary stages of processing.
An art installation on the theme of post-communism, on site at Codrescu’s Arkansas studio; now in University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections.
Among the highlights of the collection are three unpublished novels, manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera related to the author’s published books (including the Romanian flag with the Communist symbol cut out that inspired the title of The Hole in the Flag), communications concerning assassination threats from the Romanian secret police, documentation of exhibitions, and a number of two- and three-dimensional collages and art installations. Also included are back-up copies of pre-1990 manuscript materials now housed at Louisiana State University. Codrescu’s library includes annotated books that Codrescu used during his research for his novels and non-fiction prose works. Also included is a comprehensive collection of Codrescu’s books, including some proof copies with manuscript revisions.
Andrei Codrescu’s collection promises to be a fruitful resource for researchers for many years to come, and a new draw for visitors to America’s first UNESCO City of Literature.
Tuesday, December 5, marks the 50-year anniversary of what was to that date the largest anti-war protest on the UI campus. Over 200 demonstrators gathered outside the Iowa Memorial to protest the presence of Dow Chemical representatives who were on campus to interview prospective employees. There were 18 arrests and the day’s events ushered in a new era of protest, both locally and nationally. Less than four months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson, citing eroding public support for his administration’s policy on Vietnam, announced he would not seek re-election to another term.
The day’s events were filmed and recorded by Robert Coover, an assistant professor of English, whose documentary is featured on our online exhibit, “Uptight and Laid-back: Iowa City in the 1960s.” To view the film in the online exhibit, go to https://dsps.lib.uiowa.edu/sixties/, scroll to videos, and click ‘On a Confrontation in Iowa City.’
Late October and November were filled with big events in Special Collections and the Iowa Women’s Archives.
Iowa Bibliophiles 15th Anniversary, 11-8-2017
The November meeting marked the 15th anniversary of the group. In celebration, the evening’s talk was given by Arthur Bonfield, who gave the inaugural Bibliophiles talk in November, 2002.
The Iowa Women’s Archives celebrated their 25th anniversary with an open house, a gallery tour, a gala dinner, and a full day symposium.
Teaching with Medieval Manuscripts
Teaching with Medieval manuscripts was a theme this month. Special Collections librarians and graduate student workers from the School of Library and Information Science all worked together to bring in all eight sections of the Medieval Art survey course Cave Paintings to Cathedrals (ARTH:1050:0A01).
Also this month Center for the Book faculty member Melissa Moreton partnered with librarians and graduate student workers to bring in two fifth grade classes from Horace Mann Elementary School to test a lesson teaching young students with medieval manuscripts.
“Saving Brinton” Documentary Premieres in New York City, November 9-16th
The documentary “Saving Brinton” premiered at DOC NYC. The documentary features a collection of very early motion pictures that are now housed in Special Collections. See a selection online. The documentary continues to play at film festivals around the country before a wider release next year. More.
NBC Nightly News Films in Special Collections, November 30, 2017
NBC Nightly News filmed a segment about miniature book creator, collector, and donor Charlotte Smith, and School of Library and Information Science student Bethany Kluender who has cataloged one thousand of the tiny books. The segment will air sometime in the next month.
University Archives Acquires History of Hydraulics Lab Collection
The C. Maxwell Stanley Hydraulics Laboratory at the University of Iowa is one of the nation’s leading fluids-related research centers. Established in 1920, it is also historically significant. Recently the University Archives acquired a set of daily journals maintained by the laboratory’s first director, Floyd Nagler of the College of Engineering faculty. The typewritten logs document activity at the laboratory from 1921 to 1933, its first dozen years of operation. During this time, the laboratory was formally established as the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research (IIHR), and in 1932 ground was broken for the present-day structure on the west bank of the Iowa River.
Here is Prof. Nagler’s terse but turning-point entry from Tuesday, July 5, 1932:
“University Building Committee agreed to construct partitions in hydraulic laboratory addition. Contractor began excavation for foundation of laboratory.”
The journals have been added to the Records of the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research (collection no. RG 10.0006.001) and are open for research. The Dept. of Special Collections expresses its appreciation to Dennis A. Hill for making this acquisition possible.
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“Freaky Friday” October Halloween Video Series on Facebook
Elizabeth Riordan, graduate student assistant in Special Collections and student in the Scho0l of Library and Information Science wrote and directed a Halloween film series for our Facebook premiering every Friday in October. Watch the whole playlist here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/uispeccoll/videos/
Slate magazine interview with Peter Balestrieri, curator of Science Fiction and Popular Culture, about launching a crowdsourcing opportunity for fans to connect with 1930s fanzines. Retyping the Future’s Past: An archival transcription project from the University of Iowa invites us to explore the history of science fiction.
Join Special Collection for a pop-up exhibit of STRANGER READS! We will be featuring items that inspire the series, “Stranger Things”, along with some more frightful and unusual material. You’ll even be able to take a bit of our collections with you, in button form! We’ll have the library’s button maker available for you to create a button of your very own. See Facebook event.
Monday, October 20, 3pm, Group Area D, Learning Commons
Iowa Bibliophiles 15th Anniversary with Guest Speaker Arthur Bonfield
The Iowa Bibliophiles is a gathering of book collectors and those interested in the history of books, held monthly during the academic year at the University of Iowa Libraries. The November meeting marks the 15th anniversary of the group. In celebration, the evening’s talk will be given by Arthur Bonfield, who gave the inaugural Bibliophiles talk in November, 2002.
We will gather for hors d oeuvres and refreshments at 6:30pm in the Special Collections Reading Room on the third floor of the University of Iowa’s Main Library. At 7:00pm Arthur Bonfield will talk about mathematical and descriptive (anthropocentric) geography as depicted in representative European books printed between 1493 and 1750. These books were frequently titled a “cosmography”,”geography”, “chronicle”, or “history”, and sought to describe various parts of the world as the authors understood it. A number of the geography books from this period will be available for viewing at the time of the talk. The event is free and open to all. More information.
Professor Arthur Bonfield is Allan Vestal Chair and Associate Dean Emeritus at the University of Iowa Law School and for the last 60 years has been collecting original copies of books printed during this period.
Wednesday, November 8, 2017, Special Collections Reading Room, 3rd Floor Main Library
The Iowa Women’s Archives will be celebrating their 25th Anniversary November 10-11, 2017.
There will be an open house, exhibition tours, a gala dinner with guest speaker Rekha Basu, and an all-day symposium on Saturday.
All events are free except the gala dinner. Please RSVP for the dinner and the symposium.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Colleen Theisen in advance at colleen-theisen@uiowa.edu or 319-335-5923.
From the Web and Social Media
Our podcast, Historically Yours, has a new episode reading a letter from Arkham House Publishers with details about printing and paper in 1943 during war time.
More information: https://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/speccoll/2017/10/25/historically-yours-podcast-episode-7-academics-fans-h-p-lovecraft-and-the-price-of-paper/
Raymond Mentzer, Daniel J. Krumm Family Chair in Reformation Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, and Greg Prickman, Head of Special Collections will present about books and the Reformation during the 500th Anniversary Year. A selection of related books will be on display. Read more.
William Anthony Conservation Lecture—Mark Esser “Bookbinding Has Been Very Good to Me”
Thursday, October 12th. Light refreshments at 6pm. Talk at 6:30PM.
E105 Adler Journalism Building
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Colleen Theisen in advance at colleen-theisen@uiowa.edu or 319-335-5923.
Frank and Indiana Brinton from Washington, Iowa toured the Midwest starting in the late 1890s putting on shows with motion pictures. More than 30 years ago, Washington, Iowa history teacher Michael Zahs took in their collection of early film history and kept it safe for more than 30 years, donating the collection to the University of Iowa in 2014. As that process started, a documentary crew started following Mr. Zahs and created Saving Brinton, a documentary about “Two men, born a century apart, bound together by 20,000 feet of film and the gently rolling hills of Washington County, Iowa.”
See selections from the collections, including a few of the only surviving copies of films thought lost, and selections of films that were colored by hand!:
And catch the film starting Friday at Film Scene in Iowa City. Greg Prickman, head of Special Collections is there throughout the film, and you can catch glimpses of many other UI librarians and faculty in the film.
University of Iowa Special Collections & University Archives Greg Prickman and his family walking the red carpet at State Theatre in Washington, Iowa.
Last fall, Special Collections became the new home for the Tom Brokaw papers, a collection that covers the life and career of a man who was welcomed into the homes of millions of Americans through NBC Today and Nightly News. The collection contains various aspects of his life, from appointment books to photos to letters from the White House. While the collection arrived pretty well organized and in good condition, there was work that needed to be done to get it ready for public viewing.
That is where I come in. I was hired in the spring of 2017 as the Graduate Research Assistant to work on the papers of Mr. Brokaw. My job is to make sure all the materials are properly stored in archival containers, sorted for easy access, and described online in a finding aid for anyone who wishes to look.
Several people have inquired about seeing the collection and want to know when it will be open for research. Well, at this point in time I am still processing the collection. For those of you who are eager to start looking at the collection now, there is a small display of objects in Special Collections’ Reading Room. Until the whole collection is ready, I thought it would be nice to share with those interested what is happening with the collection now.
The biggest priority is getting items properly stored in acid-free folders and removing any sticky notes or rusty paperclips from the material. As I have gone through this collection, I have removed hundreds of rusty paperclips and staples that held documents together. As odd as it sounds, rust can damage more than just metal, but can harm paper material as well.
Okay, so that may not seem very glamorous, and may even sound tedious, but it is important. However, the thing I’m most proud of so far is my work with the press badges. Brokaw saved several of his press badges, some as early as the 1960s up to President Trump’s Inauguration. Many are from history-making events, like the Reagan/Gorbachev meeting. They were originally kept in a Pan-Am bag, and soon the mass of badges morphed into a tangled beast of chains and string. Because of my master skills in detangling my own necklaces at home, it only took about 5 hours to detangle the passes and put them in individually labeled bags. I get that as you read this you may think I’m crazy for being so proud of this, but let me tell you, there is nothing more satisfying than looking at these badges all nicely ordered and in place. I suppose this strange satisfaction means I’m pursuing the right occupation, right?
I just finished with correspondence, and there is a cornucopia of names within this collection from Kennedys and Bushes to Redford and Hanks. There were also several letters from people, not famous or wealthy, who wrote Brokaw about his books on the Greatest Generation. Many of them wanted to share their own personal stories about the war, glad to have someone interested in what they had to say. Needless to say I required a box of Kleenex for this portion of processing. These letters of remembrance are tinged with sadness but also pride, they are the “Greatest Generation” after all.
What I can say to you now is the collection is worth the wait. This collection will leave you in awe of what one man has seen and reported on in his lifetime, what we as a people have experienced together over the last 50 years. When Brokaw visited the University of Iowa last fall, the United States seemed to be in free-fall with recent events. I had the chance to ask him how he could keep moving forward after seeing and reporting on so much devastation and heartbreak over his expansive career. Without any hesitation, he responded that these moments of devastation are just that, moments. More importantly, he is always amazed at how human beings have the ability to bounce back and keep moving, no matter what. This reverence he has for the human spirit resonates throughout the collection, showing us where we have been as a group and where we can go moving forward.
It is with a mix of sadness and joy that Special Collections bids goodbye to Colleen Theisen as she leaves to start her next big adventure. Colleen has accepted a job at Syracruse University as their Chief Curator of Exhibitions, Programs, and Education. Although we are sad to see her go, we cannot help but feel excited for this new chapter in her life. While at Iowa, Colleen helped create the group Historic Foodies, curated the exhibit “The Land Provides: Iowa’s Culinary Heritage” at Old Capitol, grew Special Collections instruction program, and brought national attention through NBC Nightly News and Atlas Obscura to our collections. Colleen’s last day will be June 1st, and we wish her the best of luck!
Taking over as our new Outreach and Engagement Librarian is Elizabeth Riordan. A recent graduate from the University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science, Riordan has been involved with Special Collections for the past two years, working as the Brokaw Graduate Research Assistant this past year. A Des Moines native, Elizabeth received BAs in Anthropology and in Theatre Arts from Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. A self-diagnosed silent film nut, Elizabeth is excited to work more with the Brinton Entertaining Company Collection and other film-related material here at Special Collections. She looks forward to getting involved with the community and finding ways to bring the collections out of the stacks for all to see. 
