In celebration of International Women’s Day, we’re featuring a few of the thousands of artifacts in our Iowa Women’s Archives Digital Collections:

Today the University will be marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth with a presentation hosted by the Obermann humanities center. Along with lectures on Dickens by UI and community experts, the event will feature selections from the Libraries’ Dickensiana holdings, including some of the correspondence digitized for our Leigh Hunt Letters collection: CharlesContinue reading “Dickens’ bicentenary”

The UI’s Art Building West, winner of a 2007 American Institute of Architects Honor Award, was open for less than two years when it sustained severe damage in the floods of 2008. With original construction costs of $21.5 million, the building recently completed its $14.2 million refurbishment and is finally back in business. Check outContinue reading “Art Building West back in business”

The University of Iowa Libraries has recently completed a project to digitize the entire run of Hawkeye yearbooks, comprising more than 38,000 pages documenting UI history from 1892 to 1992. The digital collection, with its vast assortment of yearbook photographs and illustrations enhanced by full-text search functionality, is available at http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/yearbooks. “We, as students, areContinue reading “Hawkeye yearbook, documenting 100 years of UI history, now online”

Research by a University of Iowa led team reveals new information about why paper made hundreds of years ago often holds up better over time than more modern paper. Led by Timothy Barrett, director of papermaking facilities at the UI Center for the Book, the team analyzed 1,578 historical papers made between the 14th andContinue reading “Barrett research with Libraries’ Special Collections reveals secrets of old paper”

  MICHAEL S. LEWIS-BECK Snow Fall The snow comes in silence, with the wind in stillness. Quiet white, makes a new morning. digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/dp,2799   SYNDY CONGER Snowbirds A bluejay drifted into the plum framed by our frosted window. Snow dust floated to the ground as he froze, silent as the snowy dawn. Then, counting itContinue reading “Iowa Writes winter”

With almost 14,000 historic editorial cartoons in Iowa Digital Library, we have no shortage of Baby New Years, a figure commonly seen in newspapers around this time of year. Early samples below of older, fully-clothed children show the symbol still in flux, but by the 1930s it had solidified into the top-hat-and-diaper-clad infant we’re familiarContinue reading “Old Baby New Years”