The University Library’s Sousa Archives and Center for American Music will explore America’s evolving artistic dialogues of race and identity for this month’s Black History Month. The three days of special programming kicks off on February 24, 2019, with a special premier performance of Composer Renée Bakers’ new film score composed for the newly discovered 1930 silent movie, Borderline.
Borderline, Kenneth Macpherson’s visually-compelling movie about interracial and LGBT relationships during the 1920s, stars Paul and Eslanda Robeson. The film’s showing will be accompanied by a live performance of Renée Bakers’ thirty-member Chicago Modern Orchestra Project ensemble. Following the showing of the film there will be a discussion with Renée Baker and the audience about her work on the movie and her continuing interest in reviving historical silent movies with her new film scores.
In addition to the Borderline screening, there are two historic silent movie showings on February 24 and 25, lectures by Renée Baker on her work as a composer and conductor for the University’s cinema studies and music students on February 25 and 26, and children’s educational programming for Urbana’s King Elementary School students on February 26.
For more information about these educational and public engagement programs, please contact the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at (217) 333-4577 or sousa@illinois.edu. Or, visit archives.library.illinois.edu/sousa/.
Chicago—John Price Wilkin, Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Dean of Libraries and University Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been named the 2019 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award. Wilkin will receive a cash award and citation during an ALCTS event at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC.
Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management and has made notable improvements in library services or research.
“John Price Wilkin exemplifies the spirit of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award through leadership, risk taking, and innovation,” said Bruce Johnson, Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award Committee chair and former senior library information systems specialist at the Library of Congress. “John was an early adopter of structured markup languages such as SGML and XML in his work at the University of Michigan as head of the Humanities Text Initiative and head of digital library production service, providing access to digital texts as well as a means for searchability and textual analysis. This work later inspired online publishing efforts at other institutions, including the California Digital Library.”
“John led the Mellon-funded Making of America project, and early groundbreaking effort to digitize 19th-century books, and then built upon this experience to help launch JSTOR,” continued Johnson. “He managed the partnership with Google to digitize the University of Michigan’s collection, eventually leading to the foundation of the HathiTrust. As executive director of the HathiTrust, John established a model for shared governance and large-scale collaboration that secured sharing provisions for member libraries.”
“In his current role as university librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, John continues to lead innovation efforts, particularly in the area of research data curation,” noted Johnson. “All of these achievements have had far-reaching impact in the library profession and beyond, providing a foundation for transformation in publishing, research, and unprecedented access to digital content.”
Wilkin received his B.A. in Literature and English from Antioch College, his M.A. in English from the University of Virginia, and his M.L.S. from the University of Tennessee.
The Hugh C. Atkinson Award is jointly sponsored by four divisions of the American Library Association: the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA). The award is funded from an endowment established to honor Hugh C. Atkinson.
For more information regarding the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award, or a complete list of past recipients, please visit the awards section of the ACRL website.
The University Library invites the campus community to the Library Research Showcase in Room 220 of the Main Library from 1-4 p.m. on Feb 5. The showcase will highlight recently completed and ongoing research within the library, emphasizing its impact on the university, the professional disciplines of our many researchers and beyond.
