News

An Infamous 50th Anniversary Just Passed

Posted on by Kimberly Lerch

 

I think she’s definitely a textbook narcissist; maybe even a psychopath. I’d have to have some concrete examples to fill in the Machiavellian part of the Dark Triad equation though. But I’m just armchair quarterbacking on the psychology here, informally trained by watching several YouTube videos on personality disorders.

Even the experts brought in to assess her, with little cooperation from Sara herself, couldn’t come to an agreement on a diagnosis. Histrionic, borderline, and/or bipolar personality disorders were listed on various reports written after meeting with her after her arrest but before her trial—before she could even be considered competent to stand for trial. Sara would not let her lawyer claim insanity or diminished mental capacity at the time of her alleged crime. Continue reading “An Infamous 50th Anniversary Just Passed” →

AI in Historical Research

Posted on by Rachel Sudbeck

This probably is not the post you would expect on Halloween. My defense for this, however, is that AI is a bit of a scary topic to broach in this day and age.

I mostly mean this as a joke, but in all seriousness using AI makes me…uneasy despite the fact that I am part of the generation who should be embracing it.

As part of our work at the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library, staff and graduate assistants often lead classes on conducting historical research. In my first year of instruction, I generally stayed away from the topic of AI. Now that it has become obvious to me that more and more students are using AI in a variety of ways for research, it is more and more important that we address it as part of the research process.

Continue reading “AI in Historical Research” →

Digital Newspaper Dive: The Flying Saucer Phenomena of Post-war America

Posted on by Jessie Knoles

Using the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections

Each year, the Illinois Newspaper Project (INP)—a joint project of the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library (HPNL) and the Preservation Services Unit of the University Library—participates in the Archives Bazaar, which highlights special collections, museums, archives, and other cultural heritage organizations in Champaign County and is hosted by the Champaign County Historical Archives at The Urbana Free Library.  

Clipping from the Day Book, October 12, 1916, p.20

This year’s theme was the “bizarre Bazaar,” and the event was held at The Urbana Free Library on Saturday, September 20. While brainstorming newspaper content for the INP table, I initially considered conducting a deep dive of search results in the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections for the keyword “bizarre” and highlighting how historical newspapers can be resources for mapping language evolution and trends. I eventually ruled this idea out…perhaps too boring, too academic, and not easily digestible in an open-house format.

I then considered highlighting a newspaper preserved and digitized by the Illinois Newspaper Project, The Day Book, conceived by newspaper mogul Edward Willis Scripps as an experiment in advertisement-free newspaper publishing. The Day Book often published sensational stories and wacky tabloid-like facts about people around the world. It also published many images and sketches, and visual imagery is good for newspaper outreach events. However, I ultimately decided this wasn’t bizarre enough, plus, I wanted to highlight the richness of the IDNC and its cross-search capability across all titles in the digital collection and not just highlight one specific newspaper.

So, I did what anyone would do—I pivoted to UFOs (unidentified flying objects, flying saucers, flying disks, flying discs, etc.). 

Continue reading “Digital Newspaper Dive: The Flying Saucer Phenomena of Post-war America” →

The Story of the “Farmer’s Wife” (Part 1)

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

Beclouded Beginnings and Suspicious Name Games

Little is known about the origins of the Farmer’s Wife. It might have begun publication in 1897, but more likely 1900, in Winona, Minnesota. Its first publisher was John Halvor Johnson, who went by “J.H.” just about everywhere except his gravestone. The son of Norwegian immigrants, Johnson was a traveling salesman turned investor: he began with buying-and-selling newspapers and ended with real estate. His first big investment was the Winona Daily Herald, which he purchased in 1890 and sold ten years later.1 He then began launching new publications under the names of recently-abandoned titles. For example, in 1892 Farm, Field and Stockman changed its name to Farm, Field and Fireside, and that same year Johnson began publishing a monthly under the title Farm, Field and Stockman, which he later sold to the Model Farmer Publishing Company of Chicago. Similarly, in 1900 the weekly American Stock Farm changed its name, shortly after which Johnson began a monthly using that title as well.2

Continue reading “The Story of the “Farmer’s Wife” (Part 1)” →

Call for applications: 2025-2026 Research Travel Grant

Posted on by Celestina Savonius-Wroth

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library and the Department of History are pleased to announce a Research Travel Grant to support scholars conducting research in any of the Library’s collections.

The University Library is one of the largest research libraries in the U.S., holding more than 15 million volumes and 24 million other items and materials in all formats, languages, and subjects. Special collections include the papers of literary figures such as Marcel Proust, H.G. Wells, Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, extensive collections of Slavic and East European materials and of materials documenting the history of science, technology, international agricultural programs, and librarianship, the premier collection on international amateur sports and the Olympics, and a unique collection of sub-Saharan African research materials. Travel grant recipients will also have access to the Library’s digital collections (including journal subscriptions and licensed databases) during their stay. Continue reading “Call for applications: 2025-2026 Research Travel Grant” →

Library Fadeout

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

A Time Capsule

At the beginning of this school year, the Library celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the Main Library building. Part of the celebration was the opening of a time capsule that had been placed inside the cornerstone of the building. I have, for fun, assembled a time capsule of my own: objects, documents, and memories that record what the Library was like when I was a student here, not a hundred years ago but thirty. Continue reading “Library Fadeout” →

More new books by Illinois faculty

Posted on by Celestina Savonius-Wroth

The academic year 2024-2025 has been a splendid year for publications by Illinois faculty in the the subject areas we support in the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library (African American Studies, History, Jewish Studies, Philosophy, and Religious Studies). Here is Part II of the already impressive list I started last November. Among other fascinating new publications, I was delighted (but not surprised!) to see another posthumous title by the late, much-missed Winton Solberg. Continue reading “More new books by Illinois faculty” →

Microfiche in HPNL

Posted on by Kimberly Lerch

 

Microform workstation
Microform workstation

HPNL is home to a large number (> 26,000 separate bibliographic records) of the library’s microfiche. It should be noted that one microfiche bibliographic record may represent 1 microfiche, it may represent 10,000 (with the same call number but are differentiated by year, volume, etc.), so the number of microfiche titles is not the same as the number of actual sheets of microfiche. Microfiche comes in one of two sizes, 3.5”x 4.25” and 4” x 5.5”. Both are stored in 6” x 4” acid free envelopes and, if more than one sheet is stored in the same envelope, separated by an acid-free slip sheet matching the size of the microfiche. Microfiche vary in thickness. Their contents are accessed using a microform (microfilm/microfiche) reader.

Anything in print can be microphotographed to create microfiche; not only books, but also large collections of serials/journals/magazines (from philosophical societies to Ladies’ Home Journal), newspapers, government documents, musical scores… you get the idea. Continue reading “Microfiche in HPNL” →

AI and (Mis)Information: A New Book Review

Posted on by Rachel Sudbeck

AI has been a hot topic around the world lately. And rightfully so. Artificial intelligence is a technological development that we have all heard about and has been rapidly growing for the last decade. It was only a few years ago that my class’s syllabi started including statements on the use of AI for classes as students were continually caught submitting work they had not completed themselves. Since then, AI has become more and more and more integrated into every part of our lives. Most major search engines have AI built in and you cannot expect to interact with social media without seeing some kind of strange, AI generated content. As AI has become an unavoidable part of our day-to-day lives, debates have sprung up in multiple circles about how and when AI should be used. 

Image of the cover of Truth Seeking in an Age of (Mis)Information Overload.
Image provided by the SUNY Press

As a library and information science student I have seen how, regardless of if they are dealing with seasoned researchers, students, or the public, information professionals are seeing more and more people starting to rely on AI as a research tool. In many cases, this can be a detriment to critical research skills and encourage a spread of misinformation as people start to trust the information that AI produces more and more. Although I have been warned to expect misinformation spread by AI and seen it first hand in the form of fake citations and quotes, I know I am not an authority on the subject. So to further inform myself on this issue, I picked up a good ol’ book and got to reading.

For this blog post, I will be engaging primarily with the first part of a new book from our collection, Truth-Seeking in an  Age of (Mis)Information Overload (2024) entitled “Misinformation and Artificial Intelligence.” This section is composed of two essays: “It Is Artificial, But Is It Intelligent?” by E. Bruce Pitman and “Disinformation, Power, and the Automation of Judgments: Notes on the Algorithmic Harms to Democracy“ by Ewa Płonowska Ziarek.  Continue reading “AI and (Mis)Information: A New Book Review” →

Snapshot in Time: Campus During Covid

Posted on by Michelle Self-Ballard

Daily Illini Editorial entitled "Heed Travel Warnings" published in March 2020. It is hard to believe but it has been five years since the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus essentially closed after spring break. During the spring 2020 semester, spring break was officially from March 14th-22nd but campus did not fully re-open for the rest of the spring semester. Reviewing the Daily Illini, the concerns about Covid-19 before break were primarily about traveling abroad. In March 2020, the Daily Illini was still a physical newspaper and with the closing of campus, its publication was halted from March 15th through June 2020.

I was working at the Undergraduate Library in March 2020 and took the spring break week off on vacation. I never could have guessed that the libraries would close, and work and classes would move online for the rest of the semester. I remember even stating that there is no way the libraries would close, because at the time, they were considered an essential unit and were very rarely closed. Continue reading “Snapshot in Time: Campus During Covid” →