The Lilly Library, Indiana University

Curator of Dermatology, Science, and General Medicine Erin Chiparo shares her exciting discovery of an uncataloged copy of an important work of astronomy and the work by Rare Materials Cataloger Craig Dethloff to transcribe, translate, and research the handwritten notes found inside.

Provenance, Paleography, and Planetary Motion Curator of Dermatology, Science, and General Medicine Erin Chiparo shares her exciting discovery of an uncataloged copy of an important work of astronomy and the work by Rare Materials Cataloger Craig Dethloff to transcribe, translate, and research the handwritten notes found inside. This story begi...

Our 2023-2024 Newsletter cover story highlights the treasures of the The Lilly Library, Indiana University. Read about some of the cool materials held within the library in our newsletter, or check them out during regular hours!

🔗https://blogs.iu.edu/ilsnewsletter/newsletters/2023-2024-newsletter/

On MONDAY, JUNE 10 @ 4:30pm, The Lilly Library will present a pair of lectures by artists Nihad Dukhan and Huner Emin on the history and practice of Arabic calligraphy as well as the ways in which they have utilized this art form in their own works. This event is 𝗵𝘆𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗱, so please join us on Zoom if you can’t attend in person! In addition to our two speakers, selections from the Lilly Library’s collection of Arabic materials will be available for lecture participants to view. Refreshments will be provided. Click here for more details: https://events.iu.edu/libraries/event/1431024-the-art-of-arabic-calligraphy

In addition, Nihad Dukhan will be leading an Arabic calligraphy workshop on TUESDAY, JUNE 11 @ 3:00pm. Dr. Dukhan, a certified master of Arabic calligraphy, welcomes beginners and enthusiasts alike as he offers a hands-on exploration of traditional tools and techniques used in this ancient art form. All materials will be provided but spots are limited, so make sure you register in advance! Details and registration info here: https://events.iu.edu/libraries/event/1439703-arabic-calligraphy-workshop-with-dr-nihad-dukhan

Nihad Dukhan and Huner Emin’s lectures, as well as Dr. Dukhan’s workshop, have been made possible through generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion, & Cultural Heritage; the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures; and the Arabic Flagship Program

This month is Asian American And Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Pictured here is Elephant Lullaby, an example of an ancient Thai poem composed by a court poet to commemorate the taming and presentation of a white elephant to the kings. This 2013 book is printed by Gunnar A. Kaldewey on Thai Kozo paper and includes an English translation of the poem by Jirapat Samranvedhya. The poem entreats the elephant to forget its family and previous life while promising the elephant a luxurious future.

“May the guardians of the high heavens and all that is holy always be with you.”

Today is Lost Sock Day—a day to mourn the loss of our single socks to the chaotic throes of the universe's whims... and throw away their left-behind mates.

To celebrate, here is Edward Gorey's 1972 book The Abandoned Sock, a picture book that depicts the harrowing tale of an escaped sock's fate. The story of its abandoned mate remains unknown.

We at the Lilly hope your missing socks are having better adventures out there in the world.

From our collection of The Black Panther Black Community News Service: this issue from August 2, 1969 discusses the power of youth in enacting social change. 55 years later, the importance of free speech and the right to assemble resonates strongly with our students.

Proving that April does not need to be the cruelest month, here is a set of books titled Four Months / Four Seasons, with linocuts by Ruth Fine. Each month features a different season and folds out to create a panorama. The page is printed using a reduction linoleum cut process, where each section is partially cut from the block which is then printed, then cut again and printed again, multiple times. April is a lovely kaleidoscope of pastels on paper made by Katie MacGregor.

For anyone who missed our very special April 1st bird flip, please observe this beautiful plate from Audubon’s Birds of America, courtesy of Chuck Jones (and IU Libraries graphic designer David Orr)! The really wild thing is that Audubon drew the birds in Birds of America as close to life-size as possible, so if you saw the real Daffy Duck in person, he would be roughly this size.

We love our minis! We also love miniature book collector Ruth Adomeit, who made our collection possible! Click the link to read all about her and her tiny tiny books.

Lilly Library home to 16,000 miniature books The Lilly Library at Indiana University brings a world of knowledge to your fingertips – literally. The library owns thousands of miniature books, measuring three inches or less. Some are so small they sit comfortably on the end of a finger.

You may have heard, but there is going to be a solar eclipse happening on April 8. While Bloomington is in the totality, it still isn’t safe to look at a solar eclipse without eye protection. Lucky for you, the Lilly has free eclipse glasses! Stop by our front desk and pick up your pair. You can be safe AND stylish just like Helen, our wonderful Outreach Assistant! And while you’re here, take a minute to check out our current exhibition, Receding Horizons: A Celebration of Astronomy at the Lilly Library ☀️ 😎

The Lilly’s own Erin Chiparo made an appearance on this morning’s episode of Indy Now! Watch Erin talk about our fabulous astronomy exhibition (which she helped curate!) and find out a bit about what’s going on in Bloomington the day of the big eclipse ☀️

Visit Bloomington Solar Eclipse - 3/26/24 Visit Bloomington Solar Eclipse - 3/26/24

Register for our upcoming virtual talk where we will learn about some of the stunningly beautiful and culturally important Islamic manuscripts housed in the Lilly’s collections! This Wednesday, March 27, 2:00-3:15 with Dr. Yasemin Gencer of Wayne State University.

Whose History?: Islamic Manuscripts Join us virtually on Wednesday, March 27, for the next installment of our series, “Whose History?”

THANK YOU to everyone who came out to last night’s exhibition opening event for Receding Horizons: A Celebration of Astronomy at the Lilly Library! An extra big thank you to our wonderful partners: WonderLab Museum, Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive, and the Indiana Geological and Water Survey Learning Lab. We had so much fun and we hope you all did too!

Raffle prizes for Opening Reception: Receding Horizons! To enter the raffle, all you need to do is visit at least one of our four activities: the pop-up exhibition in the Reading Room, the short films about space courtesy of the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive in the LeBien Room, Indiana Geological and Water Survey’s meteorite in the Ball Room, and WonderLab Museum in the Lecture Hall. Each activity gets you a ticket and another chance to win one of these prizes!

This Thursday! We’re ready!

Opening Reception: Receding Horizons Join us at the Lilly Library as we celebrate our spring exhibition: Receding Horizons: A Celebration of Astronomy at the Lilly Library.

Huge thank you to Dr. Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh for speaking at this year’s Medieavalia and for leading this morning’s workshop! Dr. Watenpaugh helped us explore the Lilly’s Armenian manuscripts, including this spectacular 18th century scroll and 15-16th century codex. Her book, The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript from Genocide to Justice, is a must-read for anyone interested in book history, provenance, and restitution.

Join us for the 2024 Mediaevalia Public Lecture featuring Dr. Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh (University of California, Davis) presenting “Survivor Object: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Church to Museum.” The lecture will be held from 5:00-6:15 PM in the Lilly Library Lecture Hall followed by a catered reception in the Slocum Room until 7:00PM. Read more and register at the link in our bio!

There will also be a workshop with Dr. Watenpaugh on Thursday, February 29 from 10:30-12:00 at the Lilly Library. Please email [email protected] to reserve your spot in the workshop.

New York Fashion Week may be over, but it’s always fashion week in the Lilly stacks! Check out these amazing illustrations of fashion across time and space in this 1800’s French book Le Costume by Frédéric Hottenroth. This book contains hundreds of pages of colored illustrations of clothing, tools, and decorations from ancient Egypt to India of the Middle Ages and contemporary Western Europe.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and we need to know: would you still love us if we were a worm?

(From Denkwurdigkeiten der Welt, 1707-1709)

Join us at 3:00pm EST on February 22 for the rescheduled 2023 Ngũgĩ Lecture!

This year’s Ngũgĩ Lecture will be presented by Professor Alamin Mazrui of Rutgers University. After the talk, he will be joined in conversation by Professor Ndirangu Wachanga of the University of Wisconsin. Participant Q&A will follow. Learn more and register to attend at the link in our bio!

While we await the early spring promised to us by groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, here is 1752’s A Compleat Herbal by James Newton, M.D. Newton began this work in the 1680’s and died before its completion, leading to this posthumous and, sadly, incomplet publication. Even if unfinished, this volume is densely illustrated with copper-plate illustrations of a rather comprehensive catalogue of plants. Here are some favorites 🌺

Visit the Lilly Library’s South Gallery to see our new exhibition, Out of Africa: Nadine Gordimer and the “Live World.”

2023 marked the centenary of world-renowned author, political activist, and Nobel Prize Winner Nadine Gordimer, born in Springs, South Africa in 1923. This exhibition features items that document her connections to the wider world. These connections include her European Jewish ancestry, her American publishers and publication venues, her correspondence with other writers, her international activism, and her recognition as a world writer by prestigious international prizes including the 1974 Booker Prize for Fiction and the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Thank you to exhibition curator Mireille Djenno (), Global Special Collections Librarian at Princeton University.

The Lilly Library's spaces and events have changed a lot over the years. If you haven't visited in awhile, you might be surprised. Our wonderful Outreach Librarian, Ursula Romero, talks about creating welcoming spaces and the joys and trials of public services librarianship in this episode of "Conversations in Cultural Heritage," a podcast series from Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Heritage. We're so proud of Ursula for being awarded this prestigious fellowship and grateful for the work she does here. If you have felt welcome at the Lilly Library, drop her and her colleagues a word of thanks!
https://chfellowspodcasts2.pubpub.org/pub/episode1/release/3

Sometimes we feel like work never ends, but at least we’re not this apothecary’s apprentice! This compendium of compound medicines was hand-copied by an industrious J. G. F. Schaeffer, who could not afford to buy his own copy of the book. His signature, along with a note describing his plight in 1819, is written in German on the first leaf. Notice the change in his handwriting’s size as he runs out of pages.

Last week, actress Lily Gladstone made history as the first indigenous woman to win a Best Actress Golden Globe for her portrayal of Mollie Burkhardt in the film Killers of the Flower Moon. The Lilly has some amazing books that give a peek into the difficult history of the Osage Nation, of which Gladstone’s Burkhardt was a member. One such book is John Joseph Matthews’ Wah’Kon-Tah.

An Osage descendant, John Joseph Matthews explores the tragedy of the Indian Removal Act through the Osage Nation in his 1934 novel, stressing the dignity and wit of his people. To write this snapshot of the past, Matthews uses the journals of Major Labian J. Miles to help recreate the Osage’s world from the last quarter of the 1800s to the first quarter of the 1900s. Wah’Kon-Tah includes illustrations and a fold-out map of the Osage Agency by May Todd Aaron, an artist who grew up in Gray Horse, Oklahoma. The Lilly’s copy is from Ernie Pyle’s library and is signed by the author.

Get a peek at the work of our colleagues in the Craig Preservation Lab. We are so grateful for the work they do preserving and protecting our collections!

A Glimpse into the Paper Lab Hello Fair Blog Readers! My name is Natalie Guingrich and, as the newest addition to the Preservation Lab, I thought I would introduce myself and offer a glimpse into some of the projects I have worked on over the past 2 months. I am the Lab’s Paper Conservation Technician, which means I work prim...

We all know the Lilly collections are excellent for scholarly research, but did you know that they can be just as useful for artistic inspiration? This incredible watercolor illustration was created by Lilly librarian Isabel Planton, and was inspired by a woodcut from John Gerald’s “The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes” (1597). We love the carnival barker Brasile Kidney Bean In His Full Bigness!!

Have you ever created something based on something you saw at the Lilly?

We could not be more delighted to announce the acquisition of the archives of stage magician, writer, and actor Ricky Jay. The collection includes extensive research files related to Jay’s writings and research, correspondence, photos, and much more. Also included is Jay’s collection of spirit photography. Check out the link in our bio to read the full press release and learn about this remarkable collection.

We could not be more delighted to announce the acquisition of the archives of stage magician, writer, and actor Ricky Jay. Read more here about this remarkable collection:

The remarkable mind of magician Ricky Jay The Lilly Library invites ne’er-do-wells, magicians, historians, and all who are curious to explore the life, research, and remarkable mind of scholar, actor, and magician Ricky Jay (1946-2018).