October is Archives and Special Collections Month! This year’s event is entitled Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Documenting the Great Depression, and not only is the Lilly Library hosting an exhibition and a musical performance this month – please visit the event website for details – but there are also related online resources available from the Lilly Library year–round.
One of the Lilly Library’s first online exhibitions is called The Works Projects Administration* in Indiana. Created in 1997 by Lilly Library intern Patrick Dawson, this exhibition draws upon Great Depression–era materials donated by John K. Jennings (WPA Administrator for Indiana 1935–1943), including video and audio clips, as well as many photographs from various WPA projects carried out in Indiana.
*Introduced in 1935 as the Works Progress Administration, the WPA became known as the Works Projects Administration in 1939.
–Virginia Dearborn, Reference/Technical Assistant
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The Lilly Library is pleased to debut another excellent online exhibition developed in 2008 by former graduate student employee, Denise Griggs: Fore-Edge Paintings in the Lilly Library.
This exhibition features paintings created along the fore-edge of pages in a book, an art form that first became popular in the late 18th century. Many of these paintings “vanish” when the book is closed and are only visible when the pages are fanned open, though some of the fore-edge artworks in the Lilly Library’s collection can be seen along the edge of the closed book. The subjects in the paintings range from countrysides to cityscapes, religious devotion to seats of government.
Denise Griggs also developed an online exhibition on English writer Daniel Defoe.
–Virginia Dearborn, Reference/Technical Assistant
View more image clips from the online exhibition here.
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The Lilly Library posted its first online exhibition in 1997, and we have added new ones to the web site on an irregular basis. Sometimes graduate students in library science develop online exhibitions for course credit, then bring them to us for official posting. Sometimes, Lilly Library staff and student employees develop an exhibition at the request of a Curator or the Director.
In some ways the online exhibition is a creature of 1997. The current buzz in libraries is all about Google Books and creating online collections of materials scanned in their entirety. But our staff believes there is still a place for the online exhibition. We can promote specific groups of material in a way that goes beyond the cataloging records without the expense of a large digitization project. Online exhibitions are easily found in web search engines. Once researchers find the exhibition online, they can arrange a visit to the Library or contact us about ordering photocopies or more digital images.
For the past year, Denise Griggs, a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Science, has worked part-time to develop new online exhibitions for the Lilly Library. This week, Daniel Defoe: The Collection of the Lilly Library debuts. It features pamphlets, books, and newspapers published by the prolific English writer, best known for his novel, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
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