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University of Iowa

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Oct 25 2011

“It is such a happiness when good people get together—and they always do.”

Local readers are invited to Main Library this Friday to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility:

Sense and Sensibility title page

It has been two hundred years since a book was published in England “By a Lady,” entitled Sense and Sensibility. On October 30, 1811, Jane Austen’s first novel was published, creating a literary phenomenon that continues to this day. Join us in the Special Collections reading room on the third floor of the Main Library on Friday, October 28 from 4:00pm to 5:00pm, when we will celebrate this event with an informal gathering. Our copy of the first edition of Sense and Sensibility will be out for viewing, along with a few other Austen pieces. End your week with some good books and good company.
http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/speccoll/2011/10/25/sense-and-sensibility/

Those of you unable to make it here in person can enjoy a virtual discussion of Jane Austen fandom in this 2004 reading by Karen Joy Fowler from our Live From Prairie Lights archive:

Karen Joy Fowler reads selections from her novel The Jane Austen Book Club. She explains how she conceived the idea for the novel while at reading at an independent bookstore. Fowler recounts how she had seen a poster on the wall that had proclaimed “The Jane Austen Book Club”, and was excited to purchase the book with that title. When she realized that the poster was for an actual book club instead of a book, Fowler knew she had to pen a book with that title. During a question and answer session, Fowler explains the format of her book–the book club in her novel covers six of Jane Austen’s works over the course of six meetings. She goes on to discuss the tendencies of the characters in her book to relate specifically to characters in Austen’s works. Fowler, who is also a successful science fiction writer, feels that she has two separate careers in two completely distinct genres. She explains that she purposely keeps her two careers “separate” so that each fan base does not feel put off by her other works. Fowler goes on to recount her own experiences in a book club, and how these experiences informed her novel. She outlines her respect for Austen and Emily Dickinson, and her awe at their contemporary style of writing.
http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/vwu,256

Oct 19 2011

Iowa Writes autumn

NATHANIEL LETCHER
autumn fate

wet, limp leaves
helplessly meshed
in between the weave
of a thin railed fence
coated in grey paint

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/dp,1951

 

MADDIE MORIYAMA
Autumn

I sit on the house steps. I see memories rush past me as new ones come back. Golden leaves fall to the ground. I walk inside. Crinkle. I walk into my empty house. Nobody is here to greet me. I walk into
my hollow room. I sit on the cold, bare floor.
Tears fall down my cheeks. My old memories, my old friends,
my old house. Everything is gone. A new beginning appears.

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/dp,3083

 

LAURA LITTLEFORD
Water Garden, No. 5 (Katherine Kadish, monotype)

Autumn leaves, curved as black hearts,
cast a single red shadow. Thrusting
heart, grasping shadow. There is no
release from beauty.
There is no release.

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/dp,2785

 

JOANNA NAOMI TATMAN
Flicker

Trailing the car
In front of me

I follow the wake
Of autumn leaves

Parted in our passing.
A million spinning tops

That pirouette and flutter
Dancing the ballet

Of the season.
Twisting and twirling

The troupe attempts to
Take flight

Not knowing they’ve fallen
From glory

And that winter has
Pulled the curtain.

But yet still
They shimmer and dance

Applauded only
By my glaring taillights.

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/dp,2945

 

MARVIN BELL
Heading Home (from Port Townsend, Washington)

From clouds assembling, from cinders flying, from the whistle of skeleton bones,
from the smell of fennel blown inland near the dock,
from a line of gull song screaming
above the Bay, from that which is less than a ripple below
or a wisp on high,
we know to return, each autumn, to Iowa,
again to pick up the leaves where we left them.

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/dp,3029

Oct 12 2011

UI linguist adds to Iowa Digital Library with interactive collection of Madurese folk tales

Madurese Storytellers digital collection

The University of Iowa Libraries and a UI linguistics scholar have taken an important step toward preserving the culture of an often overlooked Indonesian ethnic group while at the same time opening worldwide access for students and scholars interested in delving deeper into the study of the Madurese language and culture.

William Davies, UI professor of linguistics and one of the world’s leading scholars on Madurese language, has launched the Madurese Storytellers digital collection, which features storytellers from the Island of Madura telling traditional stories along with accompanying English or Indonesian subtitles. The site is a key component of a larger project that includes DVDs and a series of short books to be used in schools in parts of Madura.

Davies and Surachman Dimyati, a professor at Universitas Terbuka in Jakarta and a UI alumnus, recorded native storytellers performing “carèta ra’yat Madhurâ,” traditional Madurese folk tales and historical narratives. These creation tales, tales of the introduction of Islam to the island, and love stories shed light on the historical and cultural development of the Madurese…

Read full press release

Oct 4 2011

Crowdsourcing correspondence

Oliver Boardman letter to father, July 1861

The crowdsourcing project for Civil War diaries transcription has been so successful that we’re happy to announce its expansion to include the digital collection’s correspondence — all 5800+ pages of it. As before, we’re asking you to help improve the usefulness of these materials by transcribing handwritten pages in order to make them full-text searchable, as well as easier to read and browse. But while the diaries chiefly contained informal firsthand accounts of soldiers, the letters were written with an audience in mind and also include the accounts of friends and family back home, providing a fuller view of life during the Civil War. Please help with transcription to make these valuable artifacts more accessible for the scholars, genealogists, and Civil War enthusiasts who use them.

Civil War Diaries and Letters Transcription Project

Sep 20 2011

A snapshot of life on the Chautauqua circuit

Chautauqua tent, Lake Charles, Louisiana, 1910s
Chautauqua tent, Lake Charles, Louisiana, 1910s

One of our first digital collections, Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century is also one of our largest, and it gets bigger all the time. In addition to digitized brochures, programs, and audio recordings, the collection now contains almost 800 photographs depicting life on the road for the Redpath Lyceum Bureau’s performers, agents, and crew members as they imported culture to the Midwest — one big tent at a time.

View the Chautauqua Photographs digital subcollection

Crowd watching storyteller, 1910s
Crowd watching storyteller, 1910s
Lecturing on numbers, 1920s
Lecturing on numbers, 1920s
Gambling for Redpath pay, 1911
Gambling for Redpath pay, 1911
Boarding a train, 1920s
Boarding a train, 1920s
Sold out sandwich board, 1910s
Sold out sandwich board, 1910s
Aug 26 2011

Women’s Suffrage in Iowa: an online exhibit & digital collection

The Iowa Women’s Archives and University of Iowa Libraries are marking Women’s Equality Day—Friday, Aug. 26—by unveiling a new digital collection documenting the decades-long campaign by Iowa women to gain the right to vote.

The Women’s Suffrage in Iowa Digital Collection is the culmination of a yearlong project to select and scan photographs, letters and other primary sources from the University Libraries, the State Historical Society of Iowa, and Iowa State University’s Special Collections Department.  This collection is now available through the Iowa Digital Library at http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/suffrage. It offers researchers, teachers, students, historians and genealogists a centralized starting point for further investigation into this significant period in Iowa’s history.

“This is a great example of the power of digitization. Women’s Suffrage in Iowa brings together documents scattered throughout collections in the Iowa Women’s Archives and other institutions and makes them available to a wide audience within and beyond the borders of Iowa,” said IWA curator Kären Mason. “We hope the digital collection will entice Iowans to visit the Iowa Women’s Archives, the State Historical Society, or Iowa State. Since we were only able to include a fraction of the rich suffrage collections in Iowa there are many treasures yet to be uncovered”…

Read the full press release

Aug 17 2011

Winet new director of Digital Studio for Public Humanities

Jon Winet, Director of the Digital Studio for Public Humanities at the University of Iowa

Jon Winet has been named the inaugural director of the Digital Studio for Public Humanities at the University of Iowa.

The new Studio is a campus-wide initiative based in the Main Library that will encourage and support public digital humanities research and scholarship by faculty, staff, and students, including those involved in “Public Humanities in a Digital World,” one of the interdisciplinary faculty “clusters” that have been established so far under the UI Cluster Hire Initiative.

Provost P. Barry Butler Professor stated in a note to faculty late last week:

“Winet has long been a strong advocate and practitioner of public digital humanities and art.  Many of you may know him as one of the driving forces behind the online art and literature project The Daily Palette.  He directs The University of Iowa UNESCO City of Literature Mobile Application Development Team, which last fall launched ‘City of Lit,’ an iPhone app that highlights Iowa City’s rich literary history.  He has engaged in a series of collaborative projects around politics, art, language, and image in the Information Age, including ‘Novel Iowa City,’ an experimental community writing project created and presented via Twitter during the 2011 Iowa City Book Festival.  He is currently in pre-production on ‘First in the Nation,’ a New Media documentary project on the run-up to the 2012 Iowa Caucuses.  In 2007, he received the UI President’s Award  for State Outreach and Public Engagement.”

The Libraries is excited to have the Digital Studio located on the first floor of Main Library and we look forward to partnering with Jon and others on this exciting initiative. You will hear more about the Digital Studio in the months ahead, as it gets up and running under Jon’s leadership. Welcome, Jon!