Special Libraries News

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.

Special Collections and University Archives Merge

On October 14, University Librarian Sarah Pritchard announced a reorganization within Northwestern's Special Libraries Division, one that had already been suggested informally through discussions in the space planning process. University Archives and Special Collections will be merged into a single new department, to be called "Special Collections and Archives." The purpose of this reorganization, following the example of the University of Chicago, Duke, UIC, Washington University and other ARL members, is to pull together staff with expertise in the processing, organization, and promotion of primary materials into a single larger unit, facilitating the sharing of curatorial skills and the integration of research. This also creates a single department of a size comparable to the larger departments of the division, e.g. Music and Digital Collections, and of a size more like the special collections departments of our peer institutions.

As the integration of Special Collections with Archives proceeds administratively, a national search for the head of this new combined department will be undertaken, based on a revised job description. This search will probably get underway in early 2009. The new department head will of course work closely with users and with the actual special collections, archives, or both; but will be heavily and primarily engaged in external affairs, donor relations, consortial projects, publications, grants, long-range planning and policy formulation.

Within this new framework, Scott Krafft will be promoted to Curator, Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and Assistant Director of Special Collections and Archives. Kevin Leonard becomes University Archivist and Assistant Director of Special Collections and Archives. The two assistant directors will be more focused on user services, content development, digital project planning and execution, and the supervision of reading room operations. These new titles and redefined responsibilities will become effective as of November 1.

Several other enhancements are planned for this new department. A new professional position as manuscripts librarian will be created, to work on processing and related services in both special collections and archives. The current special collections assistant position will become permanent--it has been a one-year renewable term position. There will be a new part-time exhibits and publications assistant, supported through endowed funds, which will report directly to the AUL for Special Libraries and will help all the departments in the division. Finally, a one-year renewable term LA2 position has been approved for University Archives.

For the time being there will not be any physical relocations. Tentative space planning for eventual renovations to Deering Library has already shown us several options for collocating the services, staff and collections of these units.

This reorganization is intended to help both Library and Archives work more effectively and mobilize a larger pool of expertise as we confront new challenges involving primary, analog, and digital resource management. This new larger department will also, it is hoped, give these collections a more visible presence at Northwestern as well as regionally and nationally.

University Archives Publishes First of New Monthly Newsletters

University Archives has begun publication of a brief, monthly newsletter, available here.

The newsletter, sent electronically to patrons, donors, and friends, highlights recent acquisitions, newly-opened holdings, and departmental news. Its purpose is to draw attention to the Archives' collections and services. One recently-developed product mentioned in the first issue of the newsletter is "On This Day in NU History," a daily blog entry featuring a pertinent event from the annals of Northwestern. On This Day can also be found on the Archives' Web site or acquired through RSS feed subscription.

Please take a look and see what's new from the past.

Special Libraries Report Exciting Year-end Purchases

Northwestern's Special Libraries—Africana, Art, Digital Collections, Music, Special Collections, Transportation, and University Archives—invest about $2 million annually in their collections, buying books, subscribing to thousands of journals, and acquiring the occasional rare manuscript, map, score, or photo collection. As our fiscal year comes to a close now at the end of August and our recurring obligations have all been met, we sometimes have unexpended funds which allow us to buy especially unusual, rare, even unique items. The last several weeks have been uncommonly busy and exciting!

Please click here to learn more.

Northwestern Joins Portico Archive Pilot Project

Northwestern University Library has accepted an invitation from Portico, the Mellon-funded not-for-profit digital preservation service launched in 2005 as part of Ithaka Harbors, to participate in an exciting new project to preserve locally created scholarly electronic content within the Portico archive. Northwestern will be partnering with fourteen other academic libraries to develop this new service, to be formally launched in Spring 2009. This partnership comes at just the right time for Northwestern, where we are well on our way to establishing our own repository infrastructure on the Fedora platform. Partners in the Portico Archive Pilot Project include Brigham Young University, Middlebury College, University of British Columbia and McMaster University in Canada, and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

The mission of Portico is to preserve scholarly literature published in electronic form and to ensure that these materials remain accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students. Currently, 56 publishers have committed more than 7,700 journals to the Portico archive, of which 4,199 have already been preserved. 468 libraries have joined Portico, including Northwestern as a charter member.

The new preservation service, which is one of Portico's first steps beyond e-journal preservation, involves developing protocols or "connectors" to facilitate the exchange of e-content between the Portico Archive and Northwestern's own institutional repository. The purpose is to protect locally-created repository content in the same way that Portico protects vulnerable e-journal content in the event of catastrophic loss, e.g through publisher bankruptcy.

At Northwestern, Library IT and the Digital Collections Department of Special Libraries will be the lead units in working with Portico. Steve DiDomenico, senior IS architecture engineer in IT, has been named our chief contact to Portico, but he will be working closely with Stu Baker, Bill Parod, Claire Stewart, and others to make this collaboration a success.

Two New Exhibits Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Deering Library

University Archives Presents:
Happy 75th Anniversary, Deering Library!
The exhibit, based on the new book, Deering Library: An Illustrated History, displays many of the photos used in the book. The wall cases feature huge blow-ups of four of the most beautiful color photos taken for the book by Peter Kiar; the black-and-white photos used throughout the exhibit, as well as artifacts, ephemera, correspondence, etc., come from the University Archives. Each of the cases tells part of the story of Deering Library: the previous libraries at NU, and the intrepid librarians who managed them; the design and construction of the building; its architectural detailing; its place in the hearts of NU students; the role of the Deering gardens; events and anniversaries; and the collections in Deering.

Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections presents:

1933: An Exhibit Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Deering Library
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of our beautiful Deering Library, we have selected a diverse cross-sectional representation of materials from some of the discrete collections held within the McCormick Library of Special Collections, all of which are united by a common thread: they were published or otherwise created in 1933, the year the Deering Library opened.

Exhibited items range from material from Chicago’s Century of Progress exposition, which opened in 1933, to books, prints and ephemera from our outstanding collection of 20th century European art movements including French and Czech Surrealist and Italian Futurist pieces.

To view images, additional information, and other exhibits at the Northwestern University Library, please click here.

Herskovits Library Featured in Big Ten TV Documentary

Big Ten TV Documentary Features Africana Library

A new nine-minute long video describing--and showing--the riches of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies was put on YouTube on June 16. Produced by the Big Ten Network, it features conversations with Africana staff members David Easterbrook and Esmeralda Kale along with History faculty member Butch Ware and History grad student Zachary Wright talking about their adventures of discovery in our stacks. The text accompanying the video on YouTube reads:

"80 years ago, a Northwestern University anthropology professor realized that no one was systematically collecting materials that documented the history and culture of Africa. Today, the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern houses the largest collection of African-related materials in existence. Scholars come from all over the world, even Africa, to sift through its treasures."

Take a look yourself at http://youtube.com/watch?v=0YEcyBsOzfk.