Blog Squad

The IU Libraries “Blog Squad” is a group of five students who blog about the IU Libraries. Each student is paired with a librarian who helps them learn about the libraries and how the libraries can contribute to the student’s academic success. Librarian David Oldenkamp sent squad member Joey on a visit to the Lilly Library. Read about it on Joey’s blog.

To read more about the Blog Squad, visit http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=8537.

Persian playing cards

The IU Libraries Preservation Lab blogged about treating a collection of Persian playing cards from the Lilly Library.

The collection consists of 8–10 different sets of Persian playing cards ranging in date from ca. 1850–ca. 1950. More information about the cards is available in the library catalog.

Late age of print

IU Professor Ted Striphas new book, The Late Age of Print, focuses on contemporary book culture with attention to “e–books, book superstores, online bookselling, Amazon.com, and Harry Potter.” He shot a promotional video for his book at the Lilly Library during the 2009 spring semester. You can see glimpses of the Remembering Lincoln exhibition as Striphas strolls through most of the Lilly Library’s public spaces. I haven’t read the book (yet) but it is getting good reviews. Richard Nash describes it as a “must–read” for “those interested in the confluence of culture and economics as it relates to books.”

Watch the video and read about Striphas’s experience making it on The Late Age of Print blog.

– Erika Dowell, Public Services Librarian

As a part of IU Libraries’ celebration of Archives and Special Collections Month, the Lilly Library will host a performance of selections from the Starr Sheet Music Collection and Sam DeVincent Collection of American Sheet Music.

Last year’s presentation showcased Presidential Campaign songs; this year’s theme (as the title states) is songs of the Great Depression.

The show will occur on the 80th anniversary of the actual stock market crash of October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday). Come out and hear Christopher Goodbeer, Alicia McCarthur, Thea Smith (singers), and Yonit Kosovske (pianist) perform these sometimes mournful but mostly optimistic songs.

Selections include the title song, “Brother Can You Spare a Dime,” “We’re in the Money,” “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” “Hallelujah I’m a Bum,” and others. A reception follows.

–Christopher Goodbeer, IU Jacobs School of Music student

Event Details
Brother Can You Spare a Dime: Popular Music from the Great Depression
Thursday, October 29 5:00pm
Slocum Room, Lilly Library

The new furniture for the Lilly Library Reading Room arrived last week, so now the room is not only beautifully renovated but also well–appointed!

As always, the Reading Room of the Lilly Library is open to anyone wishing to use the library’s resources, and the staff are available to answer questions relating to the collections.

–Virginia Dearborn, Reference/Technical Assistant

View more images of the Reading Room.

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

The Lilly Library actively collaborates throughout the year with other cultural heritage institutions in the exchange of materials for exhibition purposes. Current loans include materials from the Delany manuscript collection, included in the exhibition Mrs. Delany and Her Circle (September 24, 2009 – January 2, 2010) on display at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut in partnership with Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, England. Other ongoing exhibitions include Lincoln: The Man You Didn’t Know, at the Northern Indiana Historical Society, Inc. and the South Bend Center for History located in South Bend, Indiana.

A recently completed exhibition loan included a selection of correspondence to and from Thomas Mann seen at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York City in their exhibit: Publishing in Exile: German-Language Literature in the U.S. in the 1940s.

After returning from exhibitions, all of these materials are available for use in the newly renovated Lilly Library Reading Room by researchers and interested members of the general public.

— Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

View more images from the Delany mss. collection.

I recently had the pleasure of attending my first Miniature Book Society Conclave, which was held August 28–31 in Princeton, NJ. The annual meeting, held in a different location each year, includes workshops, tours, auctions, a book swap meet, and the announcement of the annual traveling exhibition book competition winners.

The Miniature Book Society, or MBS, is an international non-profit organization chartered in 1983. Its purposes are to sustain an interest in all phases of miniature books and to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information about miniature books.

What Is a Miniature Book?
In the United States, a miniature book is usually considered to be one which is no more than three inches in size — height, width or thickness. Outside of the United States, books up to four inches are collected as miniature books.

The Lilly Library and Miniature Books
The Lilly Library has been the legal repository of the archives of the Miniature Book Society since approximately 1996. The archive includes not only the files and records of the business activities transacted by the organization but also the entries and papers relating to the annual miniature book competition and traveling exhibition which is sponsored by the organization. You can read more about the Miniature Book Society mss. collection here.

In addition, the Lilly is home to the Ruth Adomeit collection of thousands of miniature books, as well as the reference materials, books, correspondence, articles, photographs, etc. which Mrs. Adomeit accumulated over a lifetime of collecting. These books were exhibited in 2001 and a selection of them can be seen in the online exhibition 4000 Years of Miniature Books. You can read more about the Ruth Adomeit mss. collection here.

The Lilly Library is always actively collecting miniature materials of all kinds and is interested in receiving non-duplicative miniature books and other related material. The MBS archive, as well as the Adomeit collection, is available for use in the Lilly Library Reading Room. As always, we welcome visits not only by those with a research need for the materials but also by members of the interested general public.

— Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

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.

The bulk of the renovation of the Lilly Library Reading Room has been completed!

We’re all happy to be out of the lovely but tight quarters of the Elisabeth Ball Room (which served as a temporary reading room over the summer) and into the sunlit and roomy “new” space. The new furniture is not due to arrive until next month, but there is temporary furniture in place to accommodate readers and staff.

–Virginia Dearborn, Reference/Technical Assistant

View more images of the renovation.

One of the many services the Lilly Library provides for researchers is that of “digitization on demand.” A recent successful and much appreciated example of this service was the digitization of the “Testamentaria,” a manuscript from the Lilly Philippine mss. II Collection.

Requested by Prof. Ted Bergman, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Department of Modern & Classical Languages at California State University Fresno, Prof. Bergman noted in his request:

The ‘testamentaria’ of Charles Connelly, an Irishman from Crosswell (near Glinsk in County Galway), contains much information on financial communications between Ireland, Spain and the Philippines. In the late eighteenth century, Connelly served in Mexico and the Philippines, where he participated in the Sociedad Económica del País by planting cash crops in an effort to increase the Spanish Crown’s profits. Connelly’s estate was being settled at the height of the Spanish Enlightenment. The communications include several mentions of Fr. Thomas Connelly and Fr. Thomas Higgins, co-authors of the monumental Diccionario nuevo de las dos lenguas espanõla é inglesa (1797-1798) as well as transactions carried out through the merchant banking house of Patricio Joyes e Hijos. In addition, the document contains a copy of a letter from Charles Connelly’s family members in Ireland certified by Leandro Fernández de Moratín, which made its way into the record in Manila.

Other scholars, when notified by Dr. Bergman about the completed project, agreed that “it sounds like an incredibly rich source, particularly for people working within our network of scholars on Ireland and the Spanish and Spanish American world.”

In addition, Professor Bergman provided us with links to other organizations and researchers working in this area of studies who would find the manuscript a valuable resource:

http://www.irishinspain.org

http://www.irishinspain.org/participantes.html

– Cherry Williams, Curator of Manuscripts

View more images from the Lilly Philippine mss. II Collection