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Full-Text Articles in History

Conflicting Philosophies: Two University Librarians And A Presidential Bibliophile, Meg Miner Aug 2017

Conflicting Philosophies: Two University Librarians And A Presidential Bibliophile, Meg Miner

Meg Miner

This case study explores how one personal interest of President Minor Myers, jr.—that of a life-long book collector—influenced the University’s library collections and its leaders. Myers arrived with a desire to make IWU a nationally recognized, Phi Beta Kappa–affiliated institution. As one tactic for achieving these goals, Myers actively engaged in library collection development through practices shaped by his methods of book collecting. Bulk acquisitions—through gifts-in-kind and lot purchases—and a prohibition on weeding aided in his pursuits. His vision for the library challenged the style of the first university librarian (UL) who resigned two years after Myers’ arrival. The actions …


Fall 2017 Report On "Portrait Of A Collector", Meg Miner Aug 2017

Fall 2017 Report On "Portrait Of A Collector", Meg Miner

Meg Miner

The four final products (a collection of interviews with people who knew Myers, two essays, and one peer reviewed article) comprised in the 2016 sabbatical project on Minor Myers, jr. are described here. An explanation of works planned but not completed is also available.


After The Interview, Jenna E. Nolt Jul 2017

After The Interview, Jenna E. Nolt

Jenna Nolt

No abstract provided.


Mapping The Oratory Of Frederick Douglass, Olivia Macisaac, Peter Harrah, David Lewis, Lynette Taylor, Leann West, Matthew Young Jun 2017

Mapping The Oratory Of Frederick Douglass, Olivia Macisaac, Peter Harrah, David Lewis, Lynette Taylor, Leann West, Matthew Young

Olivia MacIsaac

This project is a multidisciplinary study of Douglass’s speaking tours throughout his long public career as an abolitionist, human rights advocate, and politician. For this initial phase, our primary aim was data collection for which our research team sampled a single year from each of the six decades from the 1840s to the 1890s. This was the time period in which well-known runaway slave and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass toured the United States and Europe. The purpose of this study is to develop a spatial representation of the itinerary of Douglass’s speaking-related travels. This will not only enable us …


Collection Highlights-Ajl.Pptx, Geraldine Dickel Jun 2017

Collection Highlights-Ajl.Pptx, Geraldine Dickel

Jerry Anne Dickel

The American Jewish Immigration Collection is an archival collection of over 300 items, mostly correspondence, with reports of various kinds, some pamphlets, articles or essays, mainly from the archives of Louis Levy and Joseph Erhlich. Louis Levy and Joseph Erhlich were very active in organizations established to assist Jewish immigrants. The bulk of the collection dates from 1888-1918, which were peak years of Russian Jewish immigration. Much of the collection relates to the work of, or supported by, the Baron de Hirsch fund. This collection sheds light on the lives of Russian Jewish immigrants, and the efforts made by various …


A Tale Of Two Chemists: Academic Journals And The Technology Of Science Communication, Shawn Martin May 2017

A Tale Of Two Chemists: Academic Journals And The Technology Of Science Communication, Shawn Martin

Shawn Martin

No abstract provided.


Crowdsourcing Digital Public History, Jason A. Heppler, Gabriel K. Wolfenstein May 2017

Crowdsourcing Digital Public History, Jason A. Heppler, Gabriel K. Wolfenstein

Jason Heppler

The generation of communal knowledge is not a new phenomenon. In the late nineteenth century, the Oxford English Dictionary solicited volunteers to submit words and their usage for inclusion in the dictionary ( 1 ). Carl Becker, writing in 1932 on what was already an old discussion in the historical profession, noted that "if the essence of history is the memory of things said and done, then it is obvious that every normal person, Mr. Everyman, knows some history" (2). The historian Jo Guldi's work on participatory mapping shows that urban planners in the middle of the twentieth century attempted …


A Call To Redefine Historical Scholarship In The Digital Turn, Jason A. Heppler, Douglas Seefeldt, Alex Galarza May 2017

A Call To Redefine Historical Scholarship In The Digital Turn, Jason A. Heppler, Douglas Seefeldt, Alex Galarza

Jason Heppler

This is a collaboratively-written call for the American Historical Association to appoint a task force to survey the profession as to the place of digital historical scholarship in promotion and tenure and graduate student training and to recommend standards and guidelines for the profession to follow. This document is a product of many of the exciting changes discussed below. It began at a session atTHATCamp AHA 2012 that included graduate students, tenured and non-tenured faculty, and librarians. These participants and others continued their conversations at the physical conference and afterwards on the web. Additional signatures and edits in the …


The Early History Of The Mill Valley Public Library, Rebecca Karberg May 2017

The Early History Of The Mill Valley Public Library, Rebecca Karberg

Rebecca Karberg

The Mill Valley Public Library, in Mill Valley, CA, was founded thanks in large part to the efforts of an energetic group of women. This and other facets of the library's early history are representative of trends in the history of small-town libraries in the United States, and this paper examines how the Mill Valley Public Library followed those trends and bucked some others, including the tenure of the second librarian, Sibyl Nye.


Questioning The Past And Possible Futures: Digital Historiography And Critical Librarianship, Heidi Jacobs, Calin Murgu Mar 2017

Questioning The Past And Possible Futures: Digital Historiography And Critical Librarianship, Heidi Jacobs, Calin Murgu

Heidi LM Jacobs

The role of history as a discipline is, as Burton and Sweeny claim, not only to transform our understanding of the past and the present but also to shape possible futures. Digital historical projects are transformative endeavors that attempt to negotiate and navigate the past and articulate these possible futures. Drawing on the foundational ideas of critical librarianship to “intervene in and disrupt” structural inequities and on examples from digital historiography, we argue for a more robust role for librarians within these transformative endeavors. In so doing, librarians can use conscious, deliberate, reflexive actions to work toward animating values central …


Shining A Light On A University Special Collection With Data Visualization, Lisa Deluca, Katie M. Wissel Mar 2017

Shining A Light On A University Special Collection With Data Visualization, Lisa Deluca, Katie M. Wissel

Kathryn Wissel, MBA, MI

The Valente Collection is a 29,000 volume special collection that bridges Italian and Italian American history, literature, religion and art. It is a unique asset for the library and the university. One concept for promoting this collection and offering insight into the holdings is visualization. This goal of this poster is to help academic librarians assess which tools are most appropriate to create visualizations of current collections. Examples of different visualization types are explained including Excel Power Map. Tableau and Datawrapper.


The Politics Of Special Collections And Museum Exhibits: A Civil War Or The War Of Northern Aggression?, Christopher J. Anderson Jan 2017

The Politics Of Special Collections And Museum Exhibits: A Civil War Or The War Of Northern Aggression?, Christopher J. Anderson

Christopher Anderson

This essay examines the political nature of curating special collections and museum exhibits. Exhibits are designed to draw attention to historical or contemporary issues in order for viewers to reflect on the past and to ask questions in the present. The contents of an exhibit also echo the educational backgrounds, interests, and biases of both curator and curatorial team. As a result exhibits are framed ideologically, sociologically, and even theologically in order to give voice to the voiceless and to champion certain positions from history. This essay investigates the contested nature of exhibits by highlighting their basic and complicated spectrums …


Science Serving Industry: Documentary Authority And Industrial Influence In 19th Century American Chemistry, Shawn Martin Dec 2016

Science Serving Industry: Documentary Authority And Industrial Influence In 19th Century American Chemistry, Shawn Martin

Shawn Martin

No abstract provided.


Digital Libraries, Digital History, And The Use Of Omeka, Shawn Martin Dec 2016

Digital Libraries, Digital History, And The Use Of Omeka, Shawn Martin

Shawn Martin

A module focusing on using Omeka as way to build digital libraries, particularly focusing on a digital history project, Leadership at Indiana University: Andrew and Theophilus Wylie, 1820 - 1890.