Lift Every Voice: Celebrating 250 Years of African American Poetry

Posted by on January 16, 2021 No comments
LiftEveryVoice

LiftEveryVoiceThe University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press announces a new online exhibition:

Lift Every Voice: Celebrating 250 Years of African American Poetry

https://exhibitions.lib.udel.edu/lift-every-voice/

Lift Every Voice is a year-long, nationwide celebration of the 250-year tradition of African American poetry, its richness and diversity, and its central place in American poetry. The initiative is directed by Library of America in partnership with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and with libraries, arts organizations, and bookstores in all fifty states. It is supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emerson Collective.

Curated by English and American literature librarian Aimee Gee and launched in December 2020, this exhibition highlights materials from the collections of the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press and draws upon several past UD exhibitions. Lift Every Voice encourages visitors to reflect upon five intersecting themes that emerge from a close examination of the African American poetic tradition: The Freedom Struggle, Black Identities (Assertion & Protection), Black Experience in History & Memory, Black Language & Music, and Family & Community. Contact: AskSpec

IWU Campus Art Collection Now Online

Posted by on January 11, 2021 No comments
Buscando Mi Color
Buscando Mi Color

“Buscando Mi Color” (2017) by Lucero Sanchez

The Ames Library is happy to announce the publication of the IWU Campus Art Collection, an initiative to locate, catalog, and photograph the variety of art on campus. The collection contains more than 1,000 pieces of artwork which have been created or donated by Friends of the University, alumni, faculty, and students.

The collection contains paintings, prints, sculptures, pottery, and more by famed artists including Salvadore Dali, Arrah Lee Gaul, Frederick Hart, Utagawa Hiroshige, Leroy Neiman, and Rembrandt van Rijn. Notable faculty artists are Miles Bair, Fred Brian, and Rupert Kilgore. Items in the collection date from the 12th century to the present day.

We invite you to peruse the collection, and emphasize that the collection is available for classroom use, individual students’ assignments, and research. To discuss specific needs, please contact the University Archivist, Meg Miner, at mminer@iwu.edu or phone at (309) 556-1538.

Holiday Break & Beyond

Posted by on November 20, 2020 No comments

 

 

 

 

The Ames Library will be closed from Saturday, November 21 – Sunday, November 29 for the holiday break.

From Monday, November 30 2020 – Sunday, January 3 2021, the building will be closed. Please see our updated FAQ for more information about requesting library materials, access to the Thorpe Center, and contacting your liaison librarian. All staff will be on break between December 24 2020 – January 3 2021.

Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday season, and looking forward to the new year!

Native American Heritage Month

Posted by on November 9, 2020 1 comment

Banner for Native American Heritage Month To learn more about Native American Heritage Month…

Visit our book exhibit on the entry level of The Ames Library, curated by Meg Miner, University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian, and learn more about the John Wesley Powell Collection of Pueblo Pottery.

Visit https://nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov for exhibits, audio, and video.

Participate in the Native Cinema Showcase, Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 7 – 11 PM (available on demand until November 23)

Watch these and other PBS documentaries online:
Standing Bear’s Footsteps: The story of an Indian chief who redefined what it means to be an American
Urban Rez: How do Native Americans maintain their culture in a dominant society?
Kind Hearted Woman Part One: An unforgettable portrait of a single mother living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation

Learn more about Indigenous Land Acknowledgements, and learn what native land you live on.

Finally, check out IWU Writing Center’s Twitter for reading suggestions!

Author & Activist exhibit

Posted by on October 27, 2020 1 comment

Visit this exhibit at https://rosenbach.org/virtual-exhibits/

“ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON (1875–1935), poet, novelist, journalist, teacher, diarist, women’s suffrage organizer, civil rights leader, lecturer, political leader, and survivor of intimate partner violence, is a hero for our time. She combined her skills as an author and political activist to fight for social change.

“Born into the first generation of Black Americans after the end of slavery, Dunbar-Nelson represents a bridge between the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War and the civil rights movement of the mid-1900s. Her writings and social causes, which centered on race, gender, and power, feel as urgent today as they did during Dunbar-Nelson’s lifetime.”

As you explore the exhibition, we invite you to consider how Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s life and work can inspire residents of the United States today. How much has changed for women (especially women of color), LGBTQ+ people, Black Americans, and other people of color since Dunbar-Nelson pursued her activism in the early 20th century? How can we carry on the work she started? How can artifacts found in museums, libraries, and archives help us discover previously overlooked historical figures?

Thematic sections structure “I Am an American!,” meaning that the exhibition offers interpretive views into the life, times, and work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson.Thus, the documents and objects on view are not organized chronologically.

Open Access Week: Understanding the Connections Between Open Access, Equity, and Inclusion

Posted by on October 23, 2020 No comments

October 19-25 is designated as International Open Access Week. Open access is defined as the free, immediate, online availability of research articles combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. The open access movement began in the 1990’s and has grown and matured along with the internet. The theme of this year’s Open Access Week is: “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.”

Those unfamiliar with open access, might wonder if tying improving open access to making any sort of real dent in the deep and systemic problems related to equity and inclusion isn’t just an attempt to co-opt an important nationwide movement.  In 2008, Aaron Swartz, a young programmer and open access visionary wrote a Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto which includes the following: “Those with access to these resources – students, librarians, scientists – you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not – indeed, morally, you cannot – keep this privilege for yourselves.”  As Swartz makes clear, information is power, but if this power (in the form of access to information) is not the same for everyone, then inequity is the result. Knowledge builds upon knowledge, so the only equitable way forward is to reduce discrepancies in who has access to information.

Open access is one component of a broader “open” movement that also includes open source software, open educational materials (OER), and open data. Together these initiatives are beginning to re-shape who has access to information and who doesn’t, pointing the way to a more equitable and inclusive future.

Stop by and see the Open Access display in the Ames library and check out The Ames Library’s guide related to Open Access and Open Educational Resources.

Free images to use and reuse and Happy OA Week!

Posted by on October 22, 2020 No comments
Olveritas Village

Olvera Street in the oldest part of downtown Los Angeles, California

Here’s a seasonal and timely message from the Free to Use and Reuse collection at the Library of Congress.

The seasonal part of the message is they are profiling images of autumn, Día de Muertos and Halloween in this subset of their collection.

The timely part is that this is also Open Access Week, a global event for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. This year’s emphasis is on examining who the knowledge-sharing and information spaces and systems are designed for, who is missing, who is excluded by the business models we use, and whose interests are prioritized.

OA 2020 banner logo

 

Congratulations to Chris Sweet!

Posted by on October 14, 2020 No comments

Chris Sweet, Information Literacy Librarian

Congratulations to Chris Sweet, Information Literacy Librarian, for completing the Open Education Network’s Certificate in Open Educational Resources (OER) Librarianship! Funded with a grant from the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries of Illinois, this highly competitive program aims to develop leaders within academic librarianship to aid in the creation and implementation of OERs at participants’ institutions. Chris has also been appointed to CARLI’s OER Committee, which will create a plan for supporting OERs across the consortium.

To learn more about OERs, please check out our guide.

Design on Display: COVID Runaway Fashion Show

Posted by on October 7, 2020 1 comment

Last week, students in Professor Lozar’s Foundations of Art and Professor Bullock’s Beginning 3D Design courses competed in a COVID Runaway Fashion Show, displaying designs with the goal of promoting social distancing and experimenting with building wearable constructions out of cardboard. The winning design, “Building/Burning” by Andrew Browne is now on display on the Minor Myers jr statue in front of The Ames Library. More coverage and photos of the students’ creations are available on the Pantagraph’s website.

You can be a Citizen DJ!

Posted by on September 29, 2020 No comments
citizen_dj_logo

citizen_dj_logo

The Library of Congress sponsors many kinds of residency programs. One of them involves different kinds of digital humanities projects.

Citizen DJ is a project by Brian Foo developed during his time as an Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress. The application invites the public to make hip hop music using the Library’s public audio and moving image collections. By embedding these materials in hip hop music, listeners can discover items in the Library’s vast collections that they likely would never have known existed. For technical documentation and code, please see the report.