2023: IU Libraries Year in Review

For the Peripheral Medieval Manuscripts team, working together to capture the beauty of these antique texts and make them discoverable and accessible to audiences around the world goes far beyond what could be accomplished working alone.

On January 1 of each year, Public Domain Day heralds the release of art works from copyright. Organizations such as the HathiTrust make these available, which was immeasurably beneficial during the pandemic lockdown. IU Libraries is a member of HathiTrust.

The Lilly Library at Indiana University established an endowed curator of religious collections to increase public understanding of the role of religion in daily life, thanks to a $2.5 million grant to the Indiana University Foundation from Lilly Endowment Inc.

This research demonstrates the incredible determination, resilience, and hardships of colored individuals earning degrees during the Great Depression amidst high racial injustice. They moved onward and upward to accomplish their goals and become prominent scholars, educators, and change makers.

In February 2023, IU Libraries invited people to join them in paying tribute to the students, past and present, who bring Black brilliance, innovation, and creativity to Indiana University Bloomington.

Unpacking Madeline Kripke's life and extensive collection as a lexicographer. Her life and importance at the Dictionary Society of North America and at The New York Times. 

Indiana University Libraries and IU Press were honored to celebrate the launch of a new book, Lucky Medicine: A Memoir of Success beyond Segregation, by Lester W. Thompson. Hosted by IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav, Thompson was joined by special guests including Da'Ja'Nay Askew, Managing Editor of the IU Journal of Black Student Experience.

This post is part of a series of reflections from the "Midwest Indigenous Cartography" project, which is an ongoing initiative that seeks to explore Indigenous worldviews, conceptions of cartography, and map-making practices, particularly in the Midwest. 

In this blog post, exhibition curators Rebecca Baumann and Maureen Maryanski share some of their favorite items and stories from the Lilly Library's "400 Years of Shakespeare" exhibition.

When Jerónimo Lobo (1595-1678) documented his efforts as a Portuguese Jesuit missionary in Ethiopia, in addition to his descriptions of the geography, people, and nature of East Africa, he included a detailed account of the unicorn, “the most celebrated among Beasts.”

IU faculty, students, and staff now have a more effective and efficient "front door" to discover, access and can now share research data and services through the newly created IU Research Data Commons, thereby exponentially growing the impact of IU’s research output.
 

In 2022-2023 IU Libraries recognized the first Lofton Family Student Employee Excellence Scholarship winners. Four exceptional IU Libraries Lilly Library student employees were celebrated for outstanding student contributions to IU’s rare book and manuscript library.

Seamus Heaney and Alfred David's professional but increasingly collegial and fraternal collaboration is recorded in the David mss. 1996-2008 in the Lilly Library Special Collections. The collection consists of correspondence not only between David and Heaney but also between other notables involved in the Beowulf translation, such as the Norton editor Julia Reidhead and the distinguished critic and Norton editor Meyer (M.H.) Abrams.

Utilizing extensive research and data to better understand user behavior, EBSCO has created a new user interface (UI) for EBSCO Discovery Service™ (branded as OneSearch@IU here at the Bloomington Campus), combining the popular features of modern websites with the research functionality necessary for libraries.

Stargazing: Re/Imagining the Life of Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Breckenridge was a multi-media performance of artists and scholars who came together to contemplate the life of the IU first family's paid domestic servant, who lived in the Wylie House.

From June 5 through June 7, Summer Sprint OER fellows met in person for the first time as a cohort. Led by Diversity Resident: Scholarly Communications Librarian, Haley Norris, the OER Summer Sprint Program provides instructors with a stipend, the expertise of librarians and instructional technologists, and the opportunity to learn alongside their peers.

Artificial intelligence is causing a stir among the arts community as concerns surrounding the future of artistic occupations loom. Some wonder if their work will become irrelevant, and will the work they produce be protected?

We were excited to celebrate with Archives graduate student Jo Otremba in their receipt of an Indiana Humanities Wilma Gibbs Moore Fellowship! Jo was one of six fellows to be awarded $5,000 for a humanities-based research project examining anti-Black racial injustice and structural racism in Indiana.

Greater awareness has risen recently concerning the phenomenon of “Poison Books”: that is, books containing pigments composed of heavy metals that are known to be hazardous to human health.

Indiana University Press mined its rich catalog of backlist titles to kick off an ambitious, open access collection of scholarly monographs collaboratively published by Big Ten university presses.

The Wells Library was delighted to host literally thousands of students during Welcome Week for the Graduate Reception and Herman B House Party. 

Eva Stuart will receive $2,000 from IU Libraries for her entry in the Safer Together contest: An Archival Remix Contest. She thought vintage ambulance sirens blaring and motionless bodies lying on the ground would drive home the importance of street safety and the dangers of traveling on campus.

Archivists, scholars, filmmakers and historians from across the globe convened on the Indiana University Bloomington campus September 13 to 16 for a conference promoting new scholarship on the topic of 16mm film.

Appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, Ferriero served as the Archivist of the United States for a dozen years. At the free Q&A session held in in IU's historic Woodburn Hall, Ferriero spoke about open government, presidential records and classified documents, and described the key role archivists play in collecting, preserving, and sharing histories.

The Lilly Library had on display the exhibition Global Slaveries, Fugitivity, and the Afterlives of Unfreedom. The exhibition was curated by Professors Pedro Machado (Associate Professor, Department of History) and Olimpia Rosenthal (Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese), with assistance from Ursula Romero and others at the Lilly library.

On the last day of August in 2023 the busy Education Library paused daily operations to host an open house celebrating its completed renovations. The refreshed library is a visible signal of Indiana University's commitment to continued leadership in inspiring talented primary and secondary educators, and supporting advanced teacher-education programs for those already in the field.

Indiana University hosted many hybrid events. These events highlighted scholarly visibility, which funded support for open-access publishing, and OA book and journal publishing.

One hundred vivid tales of iconic, unique, and historically significant cinematic devices from around the world fill a new bilingual coffee table book co-edited by an IU Libraries director.