Special Libraries News

Three New Special Libraries Exhibits for the Summer

Northwestern's Special Libraries have given visitors to campus this summer several attractive reasons to stop by the library. Three new exhibits showcase areas of our collections with strong visual components.

Just after entering the library, visitors can explore the lost art form of the phonograph album cover. Sound Design: The Rise and Demise of Album Art is a new exhibit that celebrates the glory days of the album cover, explores its dual identity as an art form and a marketing strategy, and mourns the loss of a consumer experience that has been gradually extinguished by the advent of downloadable music. Classic flower-power covers of the 60s and 70s--the original skull-and-roses cover on the Grateful Dead's eponymous 1972 release or the psychedelic, fish-eye portrait of Jimi Hendrix on his 1967 album, Are You Experienced—alternate with the dignified covers and distinctive crown-of-tulips logo of Deutsche Grammophon, the brainchild of advertising consultant Hans Domizlaff (1892–1971), now recognized internationally as one of the fathers of modern marketing. This fascinating exhibit, drawn from the vast collection of more than 25,000 LPs in the Northwestern Music Library, was curated by Music Library and Art Collection staffers Greg MacAyeal, Stephanie Hewson, Lindsay King, and Morris Levy. It runs through September 10, 2009. More information can be found here.

Then, in the corridor to Deering Library, the exhibit Daniel Burnham at Northwestern marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of architect Daniel H. Burnham's Plan of Chicago by adding a very local touch to the current city-wide celebrations. This mastermind of big-city planning became a resident of suburban Evanston in 1887 and designed over twenty buildings in the area. Although Northwestern can claim just one Burnham building—Fisk Hall, built in 1898—Burnham's connection with Northwestern dates to 1895, when he received an honorary degree, and continued to 1905, when he submitted several potential "Plans of Northwestern" to the Board of Trustees. This exhibit, co-sponsored by the University Library and the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, and featuring materials from the University Archives, includes documents and photographs, blueprints from the construction of Fisk Hall, and sketches of Burnham's proposals for a redesigned Evanston campus—which make for an interesting comparison with the Plan of Chicago he produced a few years later. The exhibit, which will continue into the fall, was curated by Associate University Archivist Janet Olson. For more information, please click here.

Finally, upstairs in Deering Library, we celebrate Northwestern University Library's extensive collection of international children's literature with the exhibit Best of Bologna: Edgiest Artists of the 2008 International Children's Book Fair. Produced in collaboration with the Bologna Book Fair and the Itabashi Art Museum in Tokyo, "Best of Bologna" features works by 23 talented children's illustrators from around the globe—Argentina, Belgium, Germany, Iran, Japan, and Russia, among other countries—a selection from an original pool of more than 3,000 artists who competed to be featured in Bologna at the world's largest and most important annual children's book event. The exhibit includes a movie about the Bologna Fair created by Ayami Moriizumi along with personal statements from each of the illustrators, offering intriguing glimpses into the ideas and experiences that inspire these artists. "Best of Bologna," curated by Special Libraries staff members Kim Specht and Jeff Garrett, will run through October 8, 2009. Click here for more information.

All exhibits are free and open to the public during the Library's public hours (Monday–Friday, 8:30–5:00). "Burnham at Northwestern" is also viewable Saturdays 8:30-noon.

Roberto Sarmiento Wins 2009 Professional Achievement Award

The Transportation Division of the Special Libraries Association recently presented its 2009 Professional Achievement Award to Northwestern's Roberto Sarmiento. The award recognizes not only Roberto's outstanding contributions to the division, but also his distinguished service and significant contributions to transportation libraries and librarianship across the country. The citation reads in part:
"As director of NUTL, Roberto has maintained the library's stature as the premier transportation library in the world. His dedication to the highest standards of operations and services has served as a model for transportation libraries everywhere. In particular, his commitment to collaboration and cooperation and efforts to make transportation information accessible to research and practitioners everywhere have benefited countless members of the transportation community."
All of Roberto's colleagues in the Special Libraries Division and across Northwestern University Library salute him for this award and for his achievement—and for helping us all by contributing to Northwestern's reputation for excellence, nationally and internationally.

Below: Roberto Sarmiento (l) accepting award from Mary Geary (r).
Photo: Matthew Barrett

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Report on the State of Special Libraries at Northwestern

The Special Libraries Division was created in October 2007 to support the overall mission of the Library: to provide information resources and services of the highest quality to sustain and enhance the University’s programs....(more)

Repairing the Bonawit Window in Deering Library

G. Owen Bonawit (1891 - 1971) was one of the premier creators of stained glass windows in North America during the early decades of the 20th century - the heyday of collegiate Gothic. So it was no surprise that when architect James Gamble Rogers was commissioned to design and build the new Charles Deering Libary for Northwestern in the late 1920s, Bonawit was tapped to create a cycle of 68 stained glass windows to grace the new library's offices and reading rooms. Many of Bonawit's designs were based on themes and images chosen by... more information

Visit by U of Illinois MLIS Students

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 14, a group of MLIS students from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be visiting special libraries at Northwestern. Among the highlights of the visit will be the Africana Library, Digital Collections, the Government and Geographic Information Department, Transportation Library, and University Archives. Roberto Sarmiento, head of the Transportation Library, will be hosting the group during their visit to Northwestern.

Art Collection Adds Space for Growth

To accommodate the continuing growth of its book and journal collections, the Art Collection has now added 25 new double-face shelving units—300 shelves in all—to the Eloise W. Martin Reading Room. At the same time, a number of older wooden shelving units have been replaced by more stable metal units. In the process of expanding available shelf space, several wooden tables have been displaced, but there will continue to be adequate seating and work surfaces for library patrons, even during reading week and other high-volume times.
To protect the spectacular aesthetics of this cathedral-like hall, the new shelving units been added symmetrically at both the north and the south ends, and attractive wooden end panels cap each row of shelving.
In the adjacent Architecture Reading Room, new rows of shelving have also been added, in part to give users more browsable shelving, but also to accommodate recent construction which has significantly widened the doorway linking Deering Library to the 3rd Level of Main Library.

Northwestern's Obama in Africa Collection

Barack Obama songs, bumper stickers and posters from Africa are now collectibles. In a library collection, that is.

Librarians at the world-renowned Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University have begun a collection called “Africa’s Response to Barack Obama.” It is the first such collection spurred by the election of a United States president.

“Obama’s election is an event of enormous significance in Africa,” explains David Easterbrook, head of the Herskovits Library, which houses the largest separate collection of Africana anywhere in the world.

Even before Obama won the Democratic nomination, music CDs, performance DVDs, T-shirts, posters, books, bumper stickers, bookmarks, greeting cards and materials in other formats began proliferating across the African continent to honor his achievement.

“These things document not just how Obama’s achievement is being celebrated in Africa but also how Africans are interpreting and applying it to their hopes for change in their own countries,” librarian Easterbrook says.

Two exhibition cases at Northwestern’s University Library now display some of those materials. One is in the first floor exhibition area of the library at 1970 Campus Drive, Evanston. Another is in the entryway to the Herskovits Library on University Library’s fifth floor. A third case -- also in the Herskovits entryway -- will be complete by the end of the week. All are on view until Dec. 31.

Among the collectibles are musical CDs (don’t miss musical group Kenge Kenge’s irresistible “Obama for Change”; a T-shirt bearing portraits of Kenya’s three Os (that’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga, football star Dennis Oliech and Obama); and tickets to “Obama: The Musical” (now at the Kenya National Theatre in Nairobi).

Then, of course, there’s the enormously popular bumper sticker “Obama is Unbwogable!”

Unbwogable? Think unshakeable. Unbeatable. Unstoppable. Sometimes a word just sounds like what it is!

For further information about the “Africa’s Response to Obama” collection, call (847) 467-5918. For library hours, call (847) 491-7658.