UIS Brookens Library to hold student art exhibit and competition

Brookens Library at the University of Illinois at Springfield will host a juried student art exhibit and competition, based on themes from the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The event is part of the library's participation in the Big Read program and is open to all currently registered students at UIS.

Entries must be received by 4:30 p.m. on Monday, November 3. The grand prize winner will have an opportunity to display his or her work at jimiArt gallery in downtown Springfield.

An opening night reception and awards ceremony will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, November 7, in Mary Jane's Café, located in Brookens' lower level. To accommodate the event, which is free and open to the public, the library will remain open until 7 p.m. that evening.

Artwork will remain on display on the second level of Brookens Library through Saturday, December 20, which is the end of UIS' 2008 fall semester.

Sponsors of the event are Bevande's, The Friends of Brookens Library, jimiArt, Jeffrey Alans, Walmart, and the UIS Bookstore.

Additional information, including a downloadable entry form

UIS Archives is source of materials for PBS documentary

Program on the Handy Writers' Colony will air nationwide

Inside the Handy Writers' Colony, a PBS documentary that will air nationwide on Thursday, October 23, drew extensively on archival materials housed in Brookens Library at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The program will air locally on the HD (High Definition) channels of WILL and WSEC at 9 p.m.

Founded in 1950 by Lowney and Harry Handy in Marshall, Illinois, the Handy Writers' Colony flourished for approximately 15 years. During that time it supported numerous young writers, many of whom subsequently published their work. Its most famous resident was novelist James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity.

The program explores the turbulent years of this literary experiment through flashback sequences and interviews with former colony residents, Marshall townspeople, and scholars. Narrated by Nick Clooney, the film features the voice of Jane Alexander as Lowney Turner Handy.

In 1983, J. Michael Lennon and Jeffrey Van Davis of then-Sangamon State University produced a television documentary titled James Jones: Reveille to Taps, which also aired nationally on PBS. While researching this documentary, Lennon and Van Davis acquired a large collection of material – photographs and hundreds of letters and pages of manuscripts written by Jones and others associated with the Colony – that is now preserved in the UIS Archives as the Handy Colony Collection. This collection is open to researchers, and has been a resource for several books, articles, and papers.

For the new documentary, UIS Archivist Thomas Wood assisted writer/director/producer Dawn Shapiro of Chicago-based Woodlawn Avenue Productions in selecting materials from the Handy Colony Collection. Some interview footage from the earlier documentary is also featured in Inside the Handy Writers' Colony.

For more information, go to www.pbs.org/insidethehandywriterscolony/ or www.insidethehandywriterscolony.com, or contact Thomas Wood at 217/206-6520.

Nominations open for I Love My Librarian Awards

Members of the campus community can place the name of their favorite librarians in nomination for a Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award now through October 15.

The award encourages library users to recognize the accomplishments of librarians in public, school, college, community college, and university libraries for their efforts to improve the lives of people in their community.

Up to 10 librarians will be selected. Winners will receive a $5,000 cash award and will be honored at a ceremony and reception hosted by The New York Times.

For more information, including nominating criteria, visit www.ilovelibraries.org/ilovemylibrarian.