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Victoria dressed as Elsa for Halloween
Nov 03 2016

Special Collections News 11/03/2016

Posted on November 3, 2016January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

speccollbanner

Newsfeed:

  • Edward Gorey’s Reawakening of Dracula by Hannah Hacker: https://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/speccoll/2016/10/24/edward-goreys-reawakening-of-dracula/
  • Keith/Albee Vaudeville Collection in DIY History! by Justin Baumgartner:  http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/preservation/2016/10/26/keithalbee-vaudeville-collection-in-diy-history/
  • 15 Vintage Recipe Collections to Explore (Check out #7!): http://mentalfloss.com/article/87451/15-vintage-recipe-collections-explore
  • 200-Year-Old Historic Books Reveal Hidden Fore-Edge Paintings (Check out the final GIFs): http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/hidden-paintings-on-edge-of-books
  • Why Do We Still Care About Shakespeare? Talk of Iowa from Iowa Public Radio with English Department Professor Adam Hooks: http://iowapublicradio.org/post/why-do-we-still-care-about-shakepeare

 

Instruction Update:

Join us in congratulating Amy Chen, Alonso Avila, and Margaret Gamm on the successful completion of their 2016 First Year Seminar classes.  Amy Chen taught, “The History of the Book: The Game,” Margaret Gamm taught, “Constructing Reality in Fiction: Using Primary Sources to Write More Creatively,” and Alonso Avila taught, “Liberation: A Hip-Hop State of Mind.”

For updates on our Instruction Program, and a lively feed of other content, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter. 

Great class visits to @UISpecColl to look at rare/unique maps- thanks to @AmyHildrethChen and @MHGamm for putting together awesome classes! pic.twitter.com/ORBZTMXpiD

— Andrew Steck (@HawkeyeSteck) October 28, 2016

Upcoming Special Collections Events & Events of Interest:

 

Iowa Bibliophiles Present Blaine Greteman:

Shakeosphere: Visualizing Shakespeare’s Networks

This event is part of SHAKESPEARE AT IOWA (August 29 – December 30), a celebration hosted by the University of Iowa Libraries.

Refreshments at 6:30pm – Program at 7:00pm – Special Collections Reading Room – Third Floor, UI Main Library

What can new digital technologies tell us about old books and the people who made them? Renaissance scholar and UI English Professor Blaine Greteman will discuss and demonstrate his digital project, “Shakeosphere,” which has mined information about publishers, booksellers, printers, and authors from half a million books published between 1473 and 1800. Shakeosphere uses this data to map relationships between these people, so that we can discover how Shakespeare and his contemporaries were connected by a rapidly changing communications network. By employing some of the same algorithms that Facebook uses to find your friends – or the NSA uses to find potential terrorists – Greteman and the team working on Shakeosphere are also able to identify the “hubs” in this network. This talk will explain some of the ways that such work reveals a hidden history of the printers, publishers, and booksellers who gave us Shakespeare.

View this event in the Campus Events Calendar

 

UI Libraries’ and UICB William Anthony Conservation Lecture with Barb Korbel

 Date: Thursday, November 10, 2016 – 6:00pm

Location: 2032 Main Library

Join us at the Main Library for the third annual William Anthony Conservation Lecture featuring Barbara Korbel. Korbel is the Collections & Exhibitions Conservator at Newberry Library in Chicago, IL.

 

University Lecture Committee: An Evening with Lois Lowry

Date: November 16, 2016 7:30pm

Location: Englert Theatre

View this event in the Campus Events Calendar

 

Event Recap:

Shakespeare Creepy Campus Crawl, October 28, 2016

Special Collections partnered with the Old Capitol Museum this year for a Shakespeare themed Creepy Campus Crawl. Despite the Cubs’ World Series game, 750+ kids and parents from across the region wandered from room to room, played in a Renaissance village, learned a period dance, played games like throwing skulls with Hamlet, made crafts like paper ruffs, wrote with quill pens, made Shakespeare buttons with a University of Iowa Librarian, and even met The Bard himself (played by Shakespeare Professor Adam Hooks from the Department of English).  Many thanks to the Iowa City/Coralville Convention and Visitor’s Bureau whose grant funding helped make this year such a success.

ICON Science Fiction Convention, October  28-30, 2016

University of Iowa Special Collections made our yearly trip to the ICON Science Fiction Convention in Cedar Rapids, now in its 41st year. In addition to running an information table about our science fiction collections and the Hevelin Fanzine Digitization Project, special collections librarians updated the community on the progress processing and digitizing the Rusty Hevelin Science Fiction Collection, taught sessions about Gene Wilder, and along with UI Librarian Lisa Martincek, taught a session about using University Library resources as a writer.  The ICON community designated The Hevelin Collection digitization as one of the recipients of proceeds from their annual charity auction. A previous fundraising effort from the community in 2014 raised $1955.

 

A woman and a girl sitting at a UI Libraries table A group of people dressed as Klingons Pete and Laura presenting at ICON

 

Halloween Guests in Special Collections:

Princess Elsa and the Winter Soldier visited the library this week.

https://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/post/152570764677/comicbooklibrariansupreme-the-winter-soldier

 

https://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/post/152561571747/the-disney-princess-elsa-graced-us-with-her

From the Web and Social Media:

Twitter recently announced that they will be closing down Vine, a social media platform for short looping videos that we have been using to bring you “box opening” videos showing our new acquisitions as they arrive.  Stayed tuned to this space as we soon reveal our new plans to bring you similar content in a new way.

Our delightful Hawkeye Ghost says goodbye to Vine and expresses our feelings better than we can do in this space:

 

https://vine.co/v/5paarQzXYur

 

 

 


Donate to the University Libraries’ Special Collections Fund

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Posted in News, Weekly UpdateTagged barb korbel, Blaine Greteman, creepy campus crawl, first year seminar, icon, shakeosphere
212 Classes taught in 2015
Jan 07 2016

A Look Back on 2015 in Special Collections

Posted on January 7, 2016January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

34,000 people visited the mobile museum exhibition, "Iowans in World War 2" and 3,000 Pages were digitized as part of the Hevelin Collection science fiction fanzine digitization projectOur instruction program had its biggest year ever with 212 classes taught in special collections and 38 in the Iowa Women's ArchivesBig year for social media. 1,000,000 loops on Vine, Instagram grew exponentially to over 3000 followers.We received donations of 18000 science fiction books, the earliest known recording of Stokely Carmichael, seriographs by Corita Kent and congressional papers from Jim Leach. Dada and Surrealism journal is now online and we answered 696 Reference questions last year.New staff include Alonso Avila, Amy Chen, Laura Hampton, Lindsay Moen, and John Fifield. We have a new video series called, "If Books Could Talk."The LULAC national president visited IWA and Janet Weaver was awarded the LULAC Council 307 builder award. We had new spanish language acquisitions including an artist's book called Orbita and 1960's-1970's mexican comic books called Los Supermachos.We visited many science fiction conventions this year including ICON, Demicon, Mid-South con and World Con and fans from ICON helped raise $1955 to fund digitization.

Posted in News, Year In ReviewTagged 2015, fandom, hevelin fanzine digitization, icon, infographic, instruction, janet weaver, los supermachos, mobile museum, new staff, orbita
Typewriters and a ditto machine
Oct 23 2015

News and Updates from Special Collections 10/23/2015

Posted on October 23, 2015January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

Upcoming Events

Halloween Event in the Learning Commons

Cover of "Japanese Fairy Tales" bookThis Halloween, join Special Collections and University Archives as we create a pop-up museum featuring items by American writer and artist, Edward Gorey, along with some of our more literally gory books.  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 gory (or Gorey) button of your very own.

We’ll be in Group Area D from 3:00-6:30pm in the Learning Commons on Tuesday, October 27th so head on over and prepare for some Gor(e)y sights.

 

Staff Awards and Recognition

Janet Weaver Receives League of United Latin American Citizens Builder Award

Image of Janet WeaverWeaver, who works as the assistant curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives, has conducted hours of interviews and research to create the Latino historical archives and the Mujeres Latinas project at the university to ensure that the history of LULAC’s Eastern Iowa councils is not lost.

 

 

Event Recap

40th anniversary ICON Science Fiction Convention

ICON logoSpecial Collections had a large presence at the 40th anniversary ICON Science Fiction Convention that took place last weekend in Cedar Rapids. ICON was founded forty years ago by students in Joe Haldeman’s science fiction class at the University of Iowa, and Rusty Hevelin was closely tied to this convention family.  Librarians from Special Collections participated in four ways:

  1. Official presentation of a check for $1,955 at the opening ceremonies. The community raised the money last year in an auction to support digitizing Rusty Hevelin’s fanzines.
  2. Had a table in the dealer’s room to give updates about the Hevelin Collection fanzine digitization.
  3. Appeared on many panels throughout the convention including an update about the digitization project, educational panels about science fiction topics, and they also hosted a panel about getting the most out of the library as a writer in partnership with librarian Lisa Martincek.
  4. Participated in a collaborative fanzine making project throughout the weekend teaching how to use traditional technologies such as typewriters and ditto machines. This project had an unexpectedly huge response from the community with contributions from multiple generations of fans ranging from children to award winning authors. A full report of this project will follow in a later blog post.
Laura and Pete presenting at a panel
Laura Hampton and Pete Balestrieri presenting
Colleen and Pete at a table in the dealer's room
Pete Balestrieri and Colleen Theisen in the dealer's room
Multiple generations of fans typing on typewriters
Multiple generations of fans typing a zine (Center is Hugo Award Winning author Joe Haldeman)
Typewriters and a ditto machine
Typewriters and a ditto machine
Special Collections staff with an oversized check
Special Collections staff with the donation check

Special Collections is already looking forward to ICON 41 next year!

 

New Acquisitions

An Alice in Wonderland Acquisition for the 150th Anniversary of its publication

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Sesquicentennial Edition. Inky Parrot Press, 2015.

This sesquicentennial edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland hosts a variety of creepy yet intriguing illustrations, juxtaposing Japanese artistic interpretations of Alice with Welsh interpretations, English, Italian, South African, Russian, Indonesian, and more.

Cover of 2015 edition of Alice
Title page of 2015 edition of Alice
Inside image of 2015 Alice

 

News and Announcements

Oberman Center House Logo

“Alt-Ac” Newsletter

Amy Chen is working with a team at the Obermann Center to set up a newsletter on alt-ac careers that will go out a few times a semester. The newsletter will link to articles on the topic and it will also cover upcoming events, speakers, and contacts that would be of interest to alt-ac inclined graduate students. To make sure this newsletter is successful, she needs to locate the students who would be interested in receiving this information.

If you want to learn more about alt-ac careers, please complete this sign-up sheet: https://goo.gl/Wg5UkH.

 

Upcoming Campus Events of Interest

Image from Aristotle's book which is the subject of the lecture2015 Brownell Lecture on the History of the Book | Center for the Book

Mary E. Fissell on “Making Babies: A Look at an Early Sex Manual”

Thu, 11/05/2015 – 7:30pm, W151 Papajohn Business Building (PBB) 

Aristotle’s Masterpiece was the bestselling book about making babies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean from the late 17th to the early 20th century—but the book isn’t by Aristotle, and it’s not usually considered a masterpiece…

 

 

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Posted in News, Weekly UpdateTagged Alice in wonderland, alt-ac, awards, Brownell lecture, colleen theisen, ditto machines, icon, janet weaver, joe haldeman, LULAC, mary fissell, news, science fiction, typewriters
Image of John Fifield Presenting about the library at the Recoleta
Oct 16 2015

News From Special Collections 10/16/2015

Posted on October 16, 2015January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

Librarians in the Wild:

ICON Science Fiction Convention October 16-18th, 2015

Image of the front cover of the first ICON convention program
ICON Program, 1975

The ICON Science Fiction convention began 40 years ago, born from a passionate group of fans that met in a science fiction class taught here at the University of Iowa by the Hugo and Nebula award winning author Joe Haldeman, and the same group who formed a U.I. student group called S.F.L.I.S. (Science Fiction League of Iowa Students). This weekend marks the convention’s 40th Anniversary. (See the program booklet for the first ICON convention from 1975: Here).

The 40th Anniversary convention is taking place this weekend at the Doubletree in downtown Cedar Rapids.  (There is still time to register). A partner exhibition is being held at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art including works created by each Artist Guest of Honor that has been a featured guest in the history of the convention.

Special Collections staff with an oversized checkAt the opening ceremonies Friday night, University of Iowa Librarians Peter Balestrieri and Colleen Theisen will be officially presented with a check for $1955.00 that was raised by the community in an auction last year to be used to support the digitization of the 1930s-1950s fanzines in the James L. “Rusty” Hevelin Science Fiction Collection. Rusty was a beloved member of the ICON community, and the community came together both donating items to be auctioned and bidding on those items in a heartwarming display of support for the University of Iowa’s role in carrying on the care and legacy of Rusty and his collection.

You will be able to catch the University of Iowa librarians throughout the weekend at the convention, both at a table in the dealer’s room where you can pick up our zine detailing the current status of the Hevelin Fanzine Digitization Project, and also at various panels throughout the weekend about Science Fiction and zine history, about using a University Library for research as a writer, and as co-conspirators for a project to make a mimeographed fanzine over the course of the weekend.

Read more about the Fanzine Digitization Project: Slate article or Official FAQ.

Read more about the donation: Here

 

Event Recap:

Iowa Bibliophiles October Meeting

Image of John Fifield Presenting about the library at the Recoleta

Wednesday, October 14th, John Fifield, one of our current Olson Graduate Assistants, presented about his work this summer at the Convent of the Recoleta in Arequipa, Peru, where he assisted with identifying and cataloging early printed books in the convent’s collection.  In the photo on the screen (click thumbnail to enlarge) you can see images of the exquisite handcrafted display cases in the convent library that were built by Bill Voss, of the University of Iowa conservation lab, on an unrelated trip in years past. Thanks to everyone who attended, especially the many new faces this month! The lively Q&A that followed the talk had to be cut short due to time constraints, so any unanswered follow up questions can be directed to john-fifield@uiowa.edu.

An example from UI Special Collections of a typical 17th-century Peruvian book will be in the case just inside the doors of Special Collections for the rest of October if you would like to stop by and learn about printing in Peru during the Spanish Colonial period.

 

 

From the Web and Social Media:

1. This month’s Old Gold column

1960 U I Football Team Photo

Remembering a time when postseason play was limited: 1960 Hawkeye football squad loses once, misses out on Rose Bowl

University Archivist David McCartney’s monthly Old Gold column tasks him with being a sports writer this month.

Photo: The 1960 Hawkeye football team. Image courtesy of University of Iowa Yearbooks collection, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, UI Libraries.

 

2. Weekly Dada related posts on Instagram – #dadagrams

Tim Shipe, curator of the International Dada Archives, has been posting about Dada on Instagram once a week on Thursdays. The #dadagram series will continue as a lead up to the 100th Anniversary celebration in 2017.  Fans of Dada should definitely keep tabs on this series on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

This week's #dadagram is Walter Serner's Letzte Lockerung! Serner was active in the Dada movement on Switzerland and France. His "Letzte Lockerung" was published as a "Dada Manifesto" in 1920; in the expanded 1927 edition, he would change the subtitle to "A Handbook for Swindlers (and Would-Be Swindlers). [xPT2639 E8 L4 1920] #uiowa #specialcollections #libraries #dada #dadaatiowa #walterserner #switzerland #france #letzelockerung #20thcentury

A post shared by U. of Iowa Special Collections (@uispeccoll) on Sep 24, 2015 at 12:52pm PDT

 

3. Milestone Reached – 20,000 likes & reblogs

Sometimes it is nice to step back and recognize milestones. This animated GIF of re-sewing a text block on single raised cords upstairs in the UI Conservation Lab is now one of the most popular social media post we’ve ever made. With comments like “OMG, I’ve wondered how to do that for the longest time!”, it’s clear that even a momentary snippet can bring to light some of the otherwise invisible work that happens behind the scenes in the library.

https://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/post/121122960772/re-sewing-a-text-block-on-single-raised-cords

 

New Acquisitions:

1. Georg von Logau. Hoc volumine continentur…poëtæ tres egregii. Augsburg 1534

Latin classes return to Special Collections every semester to survey the material history of the transmission of Latin authors through time. We hope to see this little book used in many Latin classes over the years. Featuring work by Gattius , Nemesianus, and Calpurnius, it focuses on hunting, fishing, sporting dogs, and country life, and should be a very approachable text for even brief visits.

Title Page Image
Inside Text Image

2. Peter and Donna Thomas The Renaissance Pleasure Faire Broadsides, 1974-2011.

A retrospective collection of ten typographic broadsides that Peter and Donna Thomas made when working at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. The broadsides were all letterpress printed on Peter’s handmade paper. They were illustrated with linoleum cuts and watercolor rubrication by Donna. An introductory broadside and a book they published in 1988 with a photographic history of the Faire are included with the broadsides.

https://vine.co/v/eQraX7BnZwD

Want to stay connected?  Follow us on social media:

Facebook linkTwitter LinkInstagram LinkTumblr linkYouTube linkVine link

Posted in News, Weekly UpdateTagged 1960 Hawkeye Football, colleen theisen, dada, donation, greg prickman, Hoc volumine continentur, icon, Iowa Bibliophiles, Old Gold, Peter and Donna Thomas, Peter Balestrieri, The Renaissance Pleasure Faire Broadsides, tumblr
Special Collections staff with an oversized check
Jul 28 2015

Science Fiction Fans Raise $1,955 To Support Hevelin Collection Digitization

Posted on July 28, 2015January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

Every year at the ICON Science Fiction convention in Cedar Rapids the organizers collect fan created artwork, crafts, and donated memorabilia which are auctioned off to support charities and projects.  Last fall, the chosen project was The University of Iowa Libraries’ initiative to digitize the James L. “Rusty” Hevelin Science Fiction collection, an especially meaningful choice to the community, resulting in an outpouring of donations and fast-paced bidding wars.

Rusty Hevelin was a science fiction fan, pulp collector, fanzine creator, huckster (a dealer at conventions), and voracious reader for most of his 89 years. He was also involved with the Iowa Science Fiction conventions ICON and Demicon from the time of their founding.  After his death in 2011, his collections came to the University of Iowa Special Collections where a recent unprecedented initiative to digitize around 10,000 of the earliest fanzines from roughly 1930s-1950s has begun.

The University of Iowa Libraries’ Community is deeply grateful for the generosity of the science fiction community and for their support.

The next ICON science fiction and fantasy convention will be at the Cedar Rapids Doubletree on October 16-18, 2015.  Details here.

Special Collections staff with an oversized check

 

Posted in News, Science Fiction and Popular CultureTagged donation, fundraising, hevelin collection, icon, science fiction3 Comments

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