PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 27, No. 4, Aug. 16, 2007

brief notes

University Library

Blog provides door to the past

Blogged your way through the history of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair lately? How about the history of the Spanish American War in Cuba as seen through the eyes of an African-American physician from Illinois?

Now, thanks to the UI Library, anyone who has Web access can blog into some of the past’s most vivid chapters, page by page.

The library has launched a new free public blog that features news of and highlights from its large-scale digitization efforts. Collectively, these efforts electronically scan and upload large amounts of texts and photographs, primarily in the field of history. All the reader has to do is subscribe to the RSS feeds to receive the blog and link to any flipbook or PDF version of the book that is offered. The subscription link is on the new blog page.

The new blog, Digitized Book of the Week, at www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/digitizedbotw/, delivers far more than it promises. The inaugural edition offers 18 complete works of history, all viewable in PDF and flipbook versions – from a Chicago detective’s memoir published in 1906 to an insider’s view of Illinois’ Jacksonville Insane Asylum published in 1868.

The blog began last March as a weekly e-mail to library staff members, “but it generated so much interest in our digitization projects that we decided to turn it into a blog with an RSS feed that anyone could subscribe to,” said Betsy Kruger, the head of digital content creation at the UI Library.

She features books that are representative of the collections being digitized, plus books that are “visually interesting, kind of quirky or recently ‘rediscovered.’ ”

Since February, the digitization team has scanned some 1,500 books. For more information about the library’s new blog, contact Kruger at betsyk@uiuc.edu.

Fun for you and your pet

Allerton hosts ‘Dog Days of Summer’

Allerton Park is hosting a new event for you and your canine friend. “Allerton Dog Days of Summer” will take place from noon to 6 p.m. Aug. 26 at the park. Cost for the event is $2 per person.

The event will provide dog-related fun and information. UI first lady Mary White and first dog Webster are the grand marshals for the event, which includes a pet parade, free doggy gift bags to the first 300 families, canine caricatures, pictures with your pup, educational talks and demonstrations, Ask-a-Vet and more. Fred and Ginger, Allerton’s dogs, will assist with the guided tours.

The even is presented by Allerton Park and the Animal Hospital of Monticello. For more information, including a map, go to www.continuinged.uiuc.edu/oce-sites/allerton/dogdays.cfm.

University YMCA

‘Dump & Run’ garage sale is Aug. 23-25

The University YMCA will host its annual “Dump & Run” garage sale Aug. 23 to 25 at the UI Stock Pavilion. Donations for the sale will be accepted through Aug. 20.

The list of items that will be accepted is on the Web at www.universityymca.org. Items may be dropped off at the UI Stock Pavilion from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Aug. 17, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 18, and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Aug. 20.

The sale will be 2 to 9 p.m. Aug. 23 ($2 admission fee), 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Aug. 24 (free admission), 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 25 ($3 bag sale).

The event is co-sponsored by International Student and Scholar Services at the UI.

‘Life, the Universe, Everything’

Conference focuses on Plato’s ‘Timeaus’

Overwhelmed by all the chaos – personal or planetary? Well then, dust off your Plato and put a little cosmology in your life. That’s what some top thinkers are doing.

In response to a deepening sense of disorder in the universe since the turn of the new millennium – and to some curious trends in academia – professors from the sciences and the humanities are turning to one of Plato’s finest works – “The Timaeus”– for a reality check, and perhaps even some guidance.

Twenty-six scholars from the U.S. and Europe will gather at the UI Sept. 13 to 16 to “resurrect the ‘great book’ as a legitimate object of study.”

“ ‘The Timaeus’ is Plato’s account of the creation of the universe, the nature of the physical world, and peoples’ place in the cosmos. It is the most important book you’ve never heard of,” said Richard Mohr, a professor of philosophy and of the classics at Illinois and co-organizer of the conference, “Life, the Universe, Everything – and More: Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ Today.”

“We see this as a return to substance in the humanities,” Mohr said. “Even post-modernists are getting tired of doctoral theses on Beyoncé videos – with their lack of content and brief shelf lives.”

Other than for Plato’s own “Republic” and Hegel’s “Logic,” “no single work has made more original contributions to more areas of thought than the ‘Timaeus,’ ” Mohr said. “After the Bible, it is the work that has had the longest and strongest influence on Western thought.”

Conference sessions are free and open to the public; most will be held in Room 210 of the Illini Union.

The conference kicks off with a keynote talk on “Love and Beauty in Plato’s ‘Symposium’ ” by Alexander Nehamas, a professor of the humanities and of comparative literature at Princeton University. His talk is a MillerComm Endowment Lecture.  Other keynote speakers are Anthony Leggett, the 2003 Nobel Laureate for Physics and a professor of physics at Illinois, and Anthony Vidler, dean of architecture at The Cooper Union.

Conference topics include God, space, time, color, atoms, knowledge, stars and goodness. A companion exhibit of Platonic incunabula and other Timaeus-related rare books will run with the conference in the campus’ Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Sponsors include 52 campus units and individuals; one-fourth of the funding came from the John Templeton Foundation and the political commentator and UI alumnus Robert D. Novak.

The conference Web site is at. www.timaeus.uiuc.edu. Barbara Sattler, professor of philosophy at Yale University, is the co-organizer.

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