Ghosts abound in our new digital collection about University of Iowa alumna Mildred Wirt Benson, the original author of the Nancy Drew mystery novels. Titles for the biographical articles “The Ghost of Ladora” and “The Ghost of Nancy Drew” play off Benson’s role as a ghostwriter. Teen sleuths confront the supernatural in novels like TheContinue reading “Haunted by Nancy Drew”

Although the Dentistry College Class Photos Collection is just over halfway complete, it has already received much attention surrounding the 125th anniversary of the UI College of Dentistry.  A University press release highlighted the collection and the excitement surrounding it. Illustrating the relevance of this digital collection, two people closely associated with its creation foundContinue reading “Digital connections: The Dentistry College Class Photos”

As with most technological advances, the shift from the card catalog to the online public access catalog (OPAC) didn’t happen overnight. At the UI, there was a decade of overlap during which users who wanted complete access to the Libraries’ holdings had to search both resources — the card catalog for materials published until 1980,Continue reading “Online public access cARTalog”

Just in time — barely — for the UI’s celebration of human rights week, DLS is pleased to announce the debut of our African American Women in Iowa Digital Collection. A joint venture between DLS, the Iowa Women’s Archives, and the African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa, the project unites the Libraries’Continue reading “Diversity, collections, collaboration”

While freshman students can often seem impossibly young to those of us on the other side of the information desk, library staff took comfort in finding that the packs of youths roaming the UI’s book stacks on Dec. 5 were in fact junior high school students from around the state, on field trips to doContinue reading “Child historians / historic children”

In response to popular demand for materials in this collection, DLS has completed the digitization of a set of desk catalogs held by Special Collections. What makes these materials particularly important is that the company, The Rand & Leopold Desk Company (previously Northwestern Furniture Company) was a local office amenities manufacturing firm that operated inContinue reading “File this under Useful”

While social gatherings with friends and family can be the most enjoyable part of the holiday season, accepting too many invitations can result in exhausting treks through perilous weather to a seemingly endless round of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s parties. However, refusing invitations without offending your would-be host can be tricky, which is whyContinue reading “Being muttonable”

For many librarians, the urge to collect and preserve the record of human culture isn’t checked at the door on the way out of the office. Just ask Mary Noble, who worked as a cataloger for over three decades at the University of Iowa Libraries. In her off hours, she scoured flea markets and antiqueContinue reading “Noble efforts”

This image is from a digitization work-in-progress of Gaspar Schott’s Physica Curiosa, originally published in 1662. Purporting to be a factual compendium of “curiosities,” the early medical book includes depictions of what we now categorize as animals, humans with congenital anomalies, and mythical creatures. Physica Curiosa is only the most recent volume featured in aContinue reading “Newborn with many animal heads”