Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) never came to Iowa City, so our connection with him in our collection is slight. However, since he recently died and given the importance of his work, I wanted to highlight a few items in our digital collections. The Esther Walls papers include 3 pictures of him at the Countee Cullen BranchContinue reading “Remembering Chinua Achebe”
Author Archives: Wendy Robertson
Happy birthday Bram Stoker
Here are some items from our collection that would make appropriate reading for Bram Stoker’s 165th birthday: Perry, Dennis R.. “Whitman’s Influence on Stoker’s Dracula.” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 3 (12 1986), 29-35. http://ir.uiowa.edu/wwqr/vol3/iss3/5 Explores the hitherto neglected topic of Whitman’s potential influence on his admirer, Bram Stoker, emphasizing the writers’ mutual fascination with death, with theContinue reading “Happy birthday Bram Stoker”
Little Village archive
We recently added the back content of Little Village magazine in our repository, which will ensure this important local title will remain widely accessible (http://ir.uiowa.edu/littlevillage/). Many of the contributors are current or past University of Iowa faculty, students and employees. Several months ago, Little Village staff contacted the University Archives to scan back issues ofContinue reading “Little Village archive”
One million
As of July 15, 2012, Iowa Research Online has had over 1,000,000 download of items. This means there have been 1,000,000 uses of University of Iowa faculty, staff and student created or supported content in the just over 3.5 years since IRO launched (January, 2009). More than half of this use occurred in the lastContinue reading “One million”
Wisława Szymborska, 1923-2012
Wisława Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, died on February 1, 2012. According to The Telegraph: The Nobel award committee’s 1996 citation called her the “Mozart of poetry,” a woman who mixed the elegance of language with “the fury of Beethoven” and tackled serious subjects with humor. While she was arguably the most popular poet in Poland,Continue reading “Wisława Szymborska, 1923-2012”
Books are spawned with the fecundity of Egyptian frogs
It can be interesting to see how views of education have changed since the late 19th century. The journal Educational Weekly, published from 1877–1881, opens a window onto teaching methodology of the era. One article, from the April 7, 1881 issue, offers some interesting thoughts from Dr. A. R. Benton, including the following snippets: “TheContinue reading “Books are spawned with the fecundity of Egyptian frogs”
Improved searching of Wallace Collection
We have recently improved the searching of our Henry A Wallace Collection. This enhancement makes finding letters, telegrams, postcards or memorandum much easier. In 1975, Earl M. Rogers and Leslie W. Dunlap published an index to the letters in our microfilm collection as well as to the correspondence in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (MicroContinue reading “Improved searching of Wallace Collection”
100,000!
Iowa Research Online has just passed the 100,000 mark! The repository launched in January 2009. Since that time, we have added 3,630 items to the collection which have now been used over 100,000 times. We are very pleased that our local scholarship has been receiving so much use. Our highest use collection is our electronicContinue reading “100,000!”
Happy Fourth of July
The Digital Library Services staff hopes everyone has a great Fourth of July weekend. We hope you have good times with family and friends. We hope you eat good food. We hope you enjoy fireworks displays. And we hope you stay safe.
Korean War
The Korean War started 60 years ago today. I grew up knowing about the war as fictionalized by M*A*S*H. In history class, we never made it that far into the twentieth century and, unlike today, the conflict between North & South Korea never came up in our current events conversations, making it a forgotten war.Continue reading “Korean War”