Author: The University of Iowa Libraries

Prairie Lights and the Iowa City Public Library will co-sponsor Kathryn Stockett reading from her novel The Help from 2-3 p.m. Sunday, May 2 in Room A at ICPL. Doors open at 1 p.m. Space is limited.

Find out more about Stockett, and her first novel, The Help, at her Web site, http://www.kathrynstockett.com.

Stockett will be signing her book after the reading and copies will be available to purchase through on-site sales from Prairie Lights Bookstore. Signing time will be limited due to Kathryn Stockett’s schedule. Priority will be given to books purchased for the event.

Half the profits from books sold at the event will go towards funding for The Iowa City Book Festival, July 16-18th. For more information about The Book Festival, visit www.iowacitybookfestival.org.

For more information about this event, contact the Iowa City Public Library Fiction Desk at 356-5200, option 4; or e-mail [email protected]. Contact Prairie Lights Bookstore (Jan Weissmiller) at 319-337-2681.

Nancy Kraft,  Head of Preservation at the University of Iowa Libraries, will present two webinars to librarians and other curators across the country through The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS).

Disaster Preparedness and Planning
May 12, during Preservation Week (May 9-15)
Are you prepared for a disaster to your collection? According to the Heritage Health Index Report issued by Heritage Preservation in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 78 percent of us are not prepared, putting more than 1.6 billion items at risk in our libraries in the U.S. Preparedness is of utmost importance in the event of a disaster, large or small. Learn about the fundamentals of emergency planning, which include identifying key players, assessing risks, establishing collection priorities and other preparations for protection of your collections. Kraft discusses tools available for and gives tips on overcoming roadblocks to writing a disaster plan. Lessons learned in this session can be applied to any size institution.

Disaster Response
June 9
Once a disaster strikes, the knee-jerk reaction is to rush in and save everything. Rushing in without advance planning puts collections at risk of more damage and staff at risk of injury. This session discusses managing a disaster situation and salvaging collections. Topics covered include: assessment and planning, working with a vendor and volunteers, handling public relations and managing collection salvage. A single-building incident will be used as a case study to illustrate the implementation of a disaster response effort. Lessons learned in this presentation can be applied to disasters large or small no matter the size of the institution.

Kraft is responsible for directing the preservation and conservation of the library collections at the University of Iowa. In 2009 she received the Midwest Archives Conference Presidents’ Award for her extraordinary work following the historic levels of flooding that struck Iowa in the summer of 2008. She is also active in the American Library Association, where she served as 2005-2006 Chair of the Preservation & Reformatting Section of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services.

For registration information visit the Events & Conferences page on the ALCTS Web site at www.ala.org/alcts. Registration is only $39 for ALCTS members. $49 for non-members, and $99 group rate. All webinars are scheduled for 2 p.m. EDT (1 p.m. CDT, 11 a.m. PDT).

Preservation Week is a joint project of ALCTS, the Library of Congress, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services with contributing support from many other library and museum organizations. Corporate support is provided by Gaylord, Familyarchives.com, and Archival Products. For more information on Preservation Week, visit the Web site at www.preservationweek.org.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.

Congratulations to Political Science Professor Bob Boynton. His New Media in Political Discourse project was selected by Center for Research Libraries to receive the 2010 Primary Source Award for research. CRL gives out just three Primary Source Awards annually, one each for teaching, research, and access.

Boynton studies the use of new media in political discourse. His current research compares micro-blogging (Twitter) with mainstream media coverage for global news events, and Joanna Lee in Digital Library Services worked with Prof. Boynton to build a system that captures live Twitter feeds for data analysis. Support was provided by Chris Clark, head of Desktop Support Services.

The project, which involved collecting Twitter data by constantly running The Archivist, a free tool for harvesting “tweets,” is explained in a poster created by Lee and Boynton.

See the DLS Web site for more on the Libraries’ involvement in this project.

The Emmy Award that Barry Morrow received for writing the 1981 TV movie “Bill” is now on display in the University of Iowa Main Library in the Special Collections on the third floor. Morrow, an award-winning screenwriter who worked at the UI from 1974 to 1981, gave the Emmy to the university earlier this year.

Included as part of the Emmy display is a video loop that contains selected clips from the acclaimed documentary “A Friend Indeed: The Bill Sackter Story,” produced and directed by 1990 UI graduate Lane J. Wyrick. The display is available during the Library’s regular business hours. The film will be shown in its entirety at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 13, in Room 1505 of the Seamans Center as part of the second annual Bill Sackter Day. Other Sackter Day festivities will begin at 4:30 p.m. that day at Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop in North Hall on the UI campus.

The special “Bill” Emmy display and video loop in the UI Main Library were made possible in part by gifts to the UI Foundation from Richard S. and Jeanne M. Levitt of Des Moines, Iowa, and Eileen S. Schmidt, of Greenwich, Conn.

Take a picture and post to our Facebook page. We’ll take the top three snapshots and submit to the Iowa Library Association for Library Snapshot Day.

The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (WWQR), a literary quarterly sponsored by the University of Iowa Graduate College and the Department of English, is now available online at http://ir.uiowa.edu/wwqr/. The official journal of the Walt Whitman Studies Association is edited at Iowa by editor Ed Folsom and managing editor Blake Bronson-Bartlett. 

Less than a month after the site’s public launch, The Walt Whitman Recording, has already become the second-most accessed item in Iowa Research Online, the university’s institutional repository. The article, by Folsom, describes the rediscovery of the “tape-recording of what may be an 1889 or 1890 wax-cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading four lines of his late poem ‘America.’” The audio has gained broad exposure recently in a Levi’s Go Forth commercial.

All journal back issues, beginning with the first volume in 1983, up to one year ago are full-text searchable from the site. Current issues are accessible to subscribers only. The site provides information about subscribing, announcements about Whitman-related matters, access to the searchable bibliography of everything written about Whitman from 1840 to the present, and up-to-date information on the census of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Soon, articles will also be available through bibliographic entries in the Walt Whitman Archive. 

WWQR is the latest journal to be added to Iowa Research Online, a dynamic archive of the research produced by faculty, researchers, and students, from published articles in peer-reviewed journals to presentations, theses, dissertations, and unpublished papers. WWQR is among four locally published e-journals hosted by the University of Iowa Libraries, with an additional two currently in production. To find out more about the Libraries support for locally journal publishing, see the Libraries e-journal hosting information. As with all efforts related to Iowa Research Online, this project was part of a broader Libraries initiative to support the transformation of scholarly communications.

—Nicole Saylor
Head, Digital Library Services

On May 16, 1960, working at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, Theodore Maiman and his co-workers C. K. Asawa and I. J. D’Haenens switched on a makeshift device that they had assembled, and hoped for the best. The device was revolutionary, yet deceptively simple and elegant–its essence was a powerful coiled flash lamp surrounding a synthetic, single-crystal ruby rod. The brilliant pulsed lamp excited chromium ions in the ruby, which then emitted a bright fluorescent pulse of red light. But the experimenters looked more closely and saw what they were hoping for, something much more unusual: a telltale burst of coherent radiation superimposed on the normal fluorescence. This team had just created the first working example of a laser.  — Thomas M. Baer, LaserFest.org

At this extraordinary moment, the Hughes Researchers could not have known the myriad uses the laser would come to be employed. A new exhibit at the University Libraries Main Library, “50 Years of Laser Innovation,” explores the beginnings of the laser, it’s many uses today and takes a peek at the future of the laser.

The exhibit opens with a laser demostration by Dale Stille and graduate students in Physics and Astronomy department in the North Exhibition Hall of the Main Library.

Thursday, March 25
7 p.m.
North Exhibition Hall, Main Library

For questions, contact Science Librarian Kari Kozak at 335-3024.

The 2010 Iowa City Book Festival is set for July 16-18, expanding the event from a one-day event to a three-day festival, which organizers hope will attract an even larger crowd after a successful start in 2009.

To accomplish that goal, organizers are asking local businesses to participate with programming and activities in their places of business on Sunday, July 18, which will be “A Day in the City of Literature” in Iowa City. Among the various activities envisioned are: author events and signings in area bookstores; book-related crafts/projects/materials highlighted in local businesses; open studios hosted by book artists; a walking tour of bookstores; activities for all ages at the Iowa City Public Library; appearances by food writers in restaurants; and book festival specials in local shops and restaurants.

On Saturday, July 17, festival activities will be held once again in Gibson Square outside the UI Main Library’s south entrance on the university campus, and will be a mix of booksellers, a small music stage, children’s activities, food vendors, book arts demonstrations and readings and panel discussions. The University of Iowa Libraries will host a pre-festival author dinner on Friday, July 16, in the North Exhibition Hall of the Main Library.

The UI Libraries sponsors the event with support from the UI Press, Iowa City Public Library, UI Center for the Book and Prairie Lights Bookstore. With additional support from the UNESCO City of Literature and the Iowa City/Coralville Area  Convention and Visitors Bureau, this year, festival organizers are working toward turning the Iowa City Book Festival into a major Midwest summer attraction, says Kristi Bontrager, festival co-director.

Businesses and organizations can submit their interest and/or proposal online at http://www.iowacitybookfestival.org/call.html.

Information about events and participating businesses will be included in an official program, which will be distributed before the festival throughout Eastern Iowa, will appear on the festival Web site, and will be available at the Gibson Square portion of the Iowa City Book Festival on Saturday, July 17.

What is the future of the print book in a context of its digital delivery? Wide redefinition is in progress in fields as diverse as neurology of reading, digital preservation, e-book marketing, and technology of print on demand.

Book Studies Forum
Wednesday, March 10 at 4-5:30 p.m.
Main Library Second Floor Conference Room (2032)

Discussion extends from standards and certification of print originals to blog rants on the death of the book, electronic format competitions and favorite reading devices. Over arching this dynamic is the canonic role of the physical book and its imprint on the future of cultural transmission.

A short introduction will be offered by Gary Frost which will include an outline of a proposed fall seminar on the future of the print book. Forum participants will be invited to survey issues and experience reading devices.

As the Iowa City Book Festival grows, we are looking for an intern to help us with the marketing and publicity of the book festival.

Marketing interns will assist in all aspects of the marketing and publicity work for promotion of the 2010 Iowa City Book Festival. This intern must be in Iowa City for the summer of 2010.

Some duties will be based on experience and skills of the intern, others on the need of the committee. Scope of responsibilities is to assist in planning and organizing promotional plans for the Iowa City Book Festival. Also serve as primary tactician in the execution of distribution of promotional materials, contact research, and social media generation.

You can apply online today. The application deadline is March 15.

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the University’s Council on the Status of Women, History of Medicine Society and Iowa Women’s Archives will sponsor a reception and a public lecture by University of Iowa History Professor Paula Michaels.

Wednesday, March 10
4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Iowa Women’s Archives on the third floor of the Main Library. 

The festivities will begin at 4:30 p.m. with a reception featuring light refreshments.  At 5:15 p.m., Theatre Arts graduate student Janet Schlapkohl will entertain with “There’s This Thing Called Lamaze,” a brief monologue and song about natural childbirth in the 1970s.  

At 5:30 p.m., Professor Michaels will begin her lecture, “Comrades in the Labor Room: The International Story of the Lamaze Method, 1950-1980,” which reveals the origins of the Lamaze method in the Soviet Union, its promotion by the French Communist Party, and the deliberate efforts to obscure these leftist ties that made Lamaze palatable to U.S. women during the Cold War era. 

Please join us for any or all of these activities.

For more information, contact Sharon Lake, Chair of Herstory Committee; Kären Mason, Iowa Women’s Archives, at 319-335-5068; or  Ed Holtum, History of Medicine Society, at 319-335-9154.

To celebrate women’s history month and to unveil a new digital collection of UI alumna Eve Drewelowe, the UI Libraries will host a reception from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 3, 2010, in the North Exhibition Hall of the Main Library.

Joni Kinsey, Curator of the Drewelowe art collection, will speak briefly on the artist’s work and the significance of the collection.

Former faculty member Esther Bierbaum has died at her home in St. Petersburg, Florida.   Esther taught at the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science from 1983-1995 and was beloved by students and faculty.  We remember her rigorous and imaginative teaching and research.  Most of all, though, we remember Esther as a wonderful person — caring, giving, funny, fiercely independent and wise.  We are grateful for the dozen years she shared with the Iowa library community.

Here is a link to her obituary:
http://www.tributes.com/show/Esther-Bierbaum-87874641

In the latest issue of fyi: Faculty & Staff News at the University of Iowa, the Charlotte M. Smith Miniature Book Collection is featured in a photo spread.

A tiny collection of books held in Special Collections is dwarfed by the library’s other five million volumes. These 4,500 itsy-bitsy books are “miniatures.” From pocket-size to micro-miniature, most books in the collection were donated by one person, Charlotte M. Smith. The gift inspired others to add to the collection. Visitors may get an up-close look at the miniatures in Special Collections on the third floor of UI Main Library.

You can find more information about this unique book collection or Charlotte M. Smith, the woman who collected these miniatures in the UI Libraries’ Special Collections.

The chief goal of early immigration law in the late-nineteenth-century United States was the exclusion of “defective” persons and races. Douglas C.  Baynton, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Iowa will share his research on the topic of disability and immigration policy at the turn of the 20th century.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010
5:30-6:30 p.m.
Main Library, Second Floor Conference (rm 2032)

The advent of immigration law can be best understood in the context of the institutionalization of disabled people, sterilization of the “unfit,” euthanasia campaigns, sign language proscription, “unsightly beggar” laws, and a growing desire to keep disabled people out of sight. The larger context, in turn, was a cultural transformation in the understanding of history, time, and progress.

This program is sponsored by The University of Iowa History of Medicine Society. Light refreshments will be served. For more information contact Ed Holtum at 319-335-9154.

The UI Libraries welcome National History Day students from across Eastern Iowa to a research workshop. These students prepare projects around a theme and present them at an annual competition.

Reference, Special Collections and Iowa Women’s Archives library staff put together a special library guide webpage for these students: http://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/nhd .

Students will be visiting the Main Library on Tuesday, February 16. If you have any questions, please contact Janalyn Moss, Reference & Instruction Librarian, 335-5698.

The University of Iowa Libraries will join libraries across the country for a “Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig” on Thursday, February 25 at 5 p.m. in the Main Library Second Floor Conference Room.

The lecture by Lawrence Lessig will last 45 minutes, and will be followed by a 30 minute interactive Q & A session. The event will be moderated by Elizabeth Stark of the Open Video Alliance. Questions can be submitted using the hashtag #wireside.

Lessig has been described as the “foundational voice of the free culture movement.” He will be speaking via online video from Harvard Law School.

This is a talk about copyright in a digital age, and the role (and importance) of a doctrine like “fair use.” Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video.

As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage participation, not just passive consumption.

The Wireside Chat is made possible with the support of iCommons and the Ford Foundation.

Last week, The Iowa Digital Library’s collection for the UI Museum of Art was named ALA’s Digital Library of the Week!  See the sidebar in this week’s American Libraries Direct or the news item in ALA’s ilovelibraries.org.

The permanent collections of the University of Iowa Museum of Art contain more than 12,000 objects, from masterworks of European and American Art of the 20th century to a world-renowned collection of traditional African Art. Currently, the UIMA Digital Collection features over 5,100 of the museum’s 12,000 objects; the rest of the holdings will be added in the near future.

More items have been added to the collection since the review was written, so instead of “over 5,100″ it’s now “more than 9,800.”

On Monday, February 15, painters will begin work in the east hall (leading to Administration Offices).  The west wall of the central corridor will be the next project.

The paint being used is odorless, but library users are advised this project will be taking place. Chair rails are also being installed along the corridor to protect the freshly painted walls.

The life and work of painter Eve Drewelowe (1899-1988) are celebrated in a new digital collection created by the University of Iowa Libraries and the School of Art and Art History. This pioneering artist, who in 1924 received the UI’s first Master’s degree in studio arts, is the focus of the Eve Drewelowe Digital Collection, available online at http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/drewelowe .

To unveil the digital collection and to celebrate women’s history month, the UI Libraries will host a reception from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 3, 2010, in the North Exhibition Hall of the Main Library. Joni Kinsey, Curator of the Drewelowe art collection, will speak briefly on the artist’s work and the significance of the collection.

In addition to her pioneering role as an artist trained in a university and a college of liberal arts, Drewelowe represents another “uniquely American phenomenon,” according to UI School of Art and Art History Professor Wallace Tomasini:

[A] farmer’s daughter in a sparsely populated agricultural area, far removed from great urban art centers, can indulge in her desire to become an artist; can enjoy the benefits of an education which introduces her to the literature, the history and the art of the great civilizations of the world, and can have the freedom to be an individual, to be independent and to do the unusual. From the beginning, Eve Drewelowe was a rebel, a challenger of complacency and the expected role career model for women. [from the book Eve Drewelowe. University of Iowa School of Art and Art History, 1988.]

After graduating from the University in 1924, Drewelowe went on to enjoy a lengthy career as an artist. She exhibited in nearly a dozen states and was a founding member of the Boulder Arts Guild; her work was shown at National Association of Women Artists exhibitions, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Denver Art Museum, and the National Museum of Women and the Arts. Drewelowe also became an art patron, funding a scholarship in her name for female students majoring in art at The University of Iowa.

Upon her death, Drewelowe bequeathed her artworks and personal papers to the School of Art and Art History. When the Iowa Women’s Archives was established in 1992, the papers were placed in the Archives on permanent loan. These materials have now been digitized in their entirety for the online collection, which features more than 700 items, including paintings, sketchbooks, scrapbooks, and correspondence.

“Drewelowe’s art is breathtaking,” says Kären Mason, Curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives. “And it’s exciting to see it made so accessible through the Iowa Digital Library. The Drewelowe Digital Collection brings together her artwork and her papers and gives people a chance to better understand the context within which she created her art. It’s great for scholars, but also for anyone who enjoys art.”

For more information about the project, contact Kären Mason, Curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives, at 335-5068, or Nicole Saylor, Head of Digital Library Services, at 335-9275.