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Library News

Library North Door closed March 18 -19

Posted on March 8th, 2024


Due to an examination of the library’s north façade and roof by our Facilities team, the north doors, and lobby areas will be inaccessible on March 18th and 19th. Please only use the South entrance on these days.

Open Educational Resources (OER) Funding Opportunity for Faculty

Posted on February 8th, 2024


Booth Library and the FDIC are partnering to extend an opportunity for funding for EIU faculty interested in creating and adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) materials: textbooks and textbook alternatives, and other materials like simulations, case studies, videos, assignments, quiz banks, lecture slides, lab manuals, etc. The use of OER is a proven means for reducing the cost of education and enhancing student success, and an extensive corpus of high-quality materials exists and is readily available – to learn more visit: OER LibGuide at Booth Library

The Illinois State Library has announced a grant program to support the creation of OER content at institutions of higher learning, and academic libraries can apply for project funding.  

To qualify you must begin to use the new OER content in the 2025 academic year. EIU faculty with successful proposals under this State Library program will receive a one-time payment of $4,000, during the Summer 2024 semester, to support OER development and adoption.  

Following the OER implementation, the faculty member will assess the OER content. Refinements and adjustments will be made in Summer 2025. Once that review process is complete and the OER materials finalized, participating faculty will receive another $1,000 at the project’s completion. 

An array of supports will be provided to participating faculty by the FDIC and Booth: instructional design, integration of content into D2L, proofreading, and copyright and accessibility consultations; along with help in discovering existing content. 

  1. Author – Create and adopt a substantially new open textbook or open course where it is possible to demonstrate that quality resources are not currently available to meet learning objectives. 
  1. Revise/Remix – Update existing OER with major revisions or develop custom course content from multiple open educational resources and original open content to support learning objectives not met by existing open resources. 
  1. Ancillaries – Adopt existing OER and create ancillaries such as quiz banks, lecture slides, or lab manuals. 
  1. Update – Update and adopt existing OER that requires minor editing for currency or relevance, without major changes to the content or structure. 

The proposed OER projects have to be specific to a course the faculty member teaches, and funding requires a commitment to use the created OER, at least once by Spring 2026 and for three years following. In addition, the State Library requires an evaluation component focused on the implementation of the OER material, which includes some data collection for enrollment and student outcomes. Participating faculty may have a role in compiling this data for reporting. 

  • available at no cost to students  
  • shared via an online repository, like LibreTexts, OER Commons, or the Open Textbook Library  
  • made available for printing through a printing platform such as XanEdu 
  • available with the license of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International  

Note regarding open content and academic integrity: LibreTexts allows faculty to determine access to materials. In other words, they can be marked Instructor Only and then only someone with a verified instructor account would have access. 

To express interest in participating in OER@EIU, please complete this Expression of Interest questionnaire by no later than February 25, 2024. If you have multiple courses for which you are interested in creating OER for this grant, please make separate submissions if you have multiple courses. The grant proposal from EIU to the Illinois State Library must be submitted by the end of March, so expressions of interest after February 25, might not be considered.  

Virtual information sessions will be held on via Zoom: 

In addition, feel free to email Brian Keith, Dean of Library Services, at bwkeith@eiu.edu and Michael Gillespie, Director of the FDIC, at mgillespie@eiu.edu

Thank you for considering participation in this important new opportunity and for helping spread the word to other faculty colleagues. Open Educational Resources play a crucial role in fostering a more inclusive, accessible, and collaborative education system, aligning with the principles of openness and equity in learning. OER also advances EIU’s various educational, economic, and social goals.  

Expression of Interest questionnaire

15th Annual Awards for Excellence in Research and Creativity.

Posted on February 8th, 2024

The competition is open to all undergraduate and graduate students in any major. Entries may be a research paper or thesis, artistic work, exhibit, musical work, video, podcast, documentary, oral history, performance, data analysis or visualization, or other formats. As long as the student(s) used library resources to complete the project within the last 12 months, it is eligible for the competition. Participants have a chance to win cash prizes up to $300. To be eligible for these awards, participants must submit their entries electronically before the deadline of 11:59 p.m. CST on February 29, 2024. This award is an excellent opportunity for students to showcase their academic expertise and innovative creations! Thank you for announcing this super opportunity for our students to share their scholarly work and become part of the critical conversations in higher education!
Additional info on how to apply: eiu.edu/booth/awardsforexcellence/

Booth Library celebrates Authors@EIU

Posted on February 8th, 2024

Booth Library invites the campus and community to join us for the launch of a new speaker series this Spring semester, Authors@EIU. Six authors will be featured in three Spring 2024 Authors@EIU events to celebrate the research, scholarship and creative success of EIU faculty who have recently achieved publication of a book.


The library recognizes and celebrates the diverse, robust community of EIU teaching faculty who are contributing to scholarship or popular learning, through this series and has added the featured publications to the library’s collection.


Please mark your calendars to attend Authors@EIU, 5 p.m. in Booth Library’s West Reading Room:


February 28: Scott Meiners, Ph.D., Biological Sciences
Tree by Tree: Saving North America’s Eastern Forests, by Scott Meiners
Cornell University Press, 2023
Alexis L. Jones, Ph.D., Teaching, Learning and Foundations
Teaching is a Human Interaction: How Thoughtful Educators Respond, are Responsive, and Take Responsibility, by Alexis L. Jones
Information Age Publishing, 2023


March 13: Julie D. Campbell, Ph.D.,
English Women, Entertainment, and Precursors of the French Salon, 1532-1615, by Julie D. Campbell Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Bob Klein, Ph.D., Teaching, Learning and Foundations
The Middle of Somewhere: Rural Education Partnerships and Innovation, ed. by Sara L. Hartman and Bob Klein Harvard
Education Press, 2023


April 11: Stephen Eskilson, Ph.D., Art & Design
Digital Design: A History by Stephen Eskilson
Princeton University Press, 2023
Ryan Burge, Ph.D., Political Science
The Nones, Second Edition: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going by Ryan Burge
Fortress Press, 2023


Events will include a shared reception at 5 p.m. Presentations will begin at 5:30 with introductory remarks, followed by presentations and question & answer sessions for each author.
All members of the Charleston and EIU communities are welcome, including students. Please join your colleagues in recognizing these accomplishments and for stimulating dialogues.

Blind Date with a Book ends February 29

Posted on February 2nd, 2024

Patrons are invited to fall in love with a new book during February by participating in “Blind Date with a Book.”

Through “Blind Date with a Book,” patrons choose from several books wrapped in brown paper with descriptive hints written on the front. Patrons check out the book at the Circulation desk and then take it home to reveal their “blind date.”

Patrons are invited to choose their blind date from the table located on the main floor near the Circulation desk.

Eastern Illinois University’s Digital Archive, The Keep, Reaches Major Milestone

Posted on January 18th, 2024

Booth Library is proud to announce a milestone in the preservation and sharing of the creative and scholarly work of Eastern Illinois University. The Keep, EIU’s digital archive, has just posted its 100,000th object. 

The historic 100,000th object, posted on December 12, 2023, is a photograph from the investiture ceremony of Jay Gatrell. The photograph captures a significant moment in the university’s history, and through serendipity represents a historic accomplishment for The Keep. The 100,000 entry can be viewed at here.  The image was created by Jay Gabriec, the university photographer, who has contributed a remarkable collection of over 1,300 entries to The Keep. 

The Keep is the EIU institutional repository, a digital archive of faculty scholarship, student and professional journals, graduate theses, undergraduate honors papers, EIU historical documents, committee documents and more. The mission of The Keep is to digitize, preserve and promote the scholarly and creative output of EIU, optimizing the content for easy online discovery. 

Todd Bruns, Head of Scholarly Communications, shared appreciation of hitting this milestone, “I am beyond thrilled that we have passed the milestone of 100,000 works posted.  The Keep presents the digital life and history of Eastern Illinois University in a variety of formats, from photo galleries of important events like Commencement and the Investiture of a new president, past editions of The Warbler- EIU Yearbook spanning from the 1920s onward, to collected scholarship like master’s theses and faculty research. Online collections like the historical publications of EIU’s Alumni Services extends the reach of our institution worldwide – Alumni Services publications have been downloaded over 17,000 times to 108 countries around the world, from Athens to Bangkok and Lagos to Shanghai. With the recent record recruitment numbers of international students, the increased digital footprint of EIU via online collections of the Eastern Alumnus, Old Main Line, and ForeverEIU, can only be a boon.” 

We invite you to explore The Keep by visiting https://thekeep.eiu.edu/.  

Eastern Illinois University’s Digital Archive, The Keep, Reaches Major Milestone

Posted on December 18th, 2023

Booth Library is proud to announce a milestone in the preservation and sharing of the creative and scholarly work of Eastern Illinois University. The Keep, EIU’s digital archive, has just posted its 100,000th object.

The historic 100,000th object, posted on December 12, 2023, is a photograph from the investiture ceremony of Jay Gatrell. The photograph captures a significant moment in the university’s history, and through serendipity represents a historic accomplishment for The Keep. The 100,000 entry can be viewed at https://thekeep.eiu.edu/gatrell_investiture/39/. The image was created by Jay Gabriec, the university photographer, who has contributed a remarkable collection of over 1,300 entries to The Keep.

The Keep is the EIU institutional repository, a digital archive of faculty scholarship, student and professional journals, graduate theses, undergraduate honors papers, EIU historical documents, committee documents and more. The mission of The Keep is to digitize, preserve and promote the scholarly and creative output of EIU, optimizing the content for easy online discovery.

Todd Bruns, Head of Scholarly Communications, shared appreciation of hitting this milestone, “I am beyond thrilled that we have passed the milestone of 100,000 works posted in The Keep, making our institutional repository one of the largest in the state of Illinois, second only to the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana. Since we launched The Keep in the fall of 2010, the content has been wildly popular with over 5.5 million downloads to over 235 countries and over 57,500 institutions from Greenland (54 downloads) to New Zealand (18,915 downloads).As we move into the second decade of The Keep, I’m excited to see the growth of our repository increase exponentially as we transition to empowering faculty, staff, and students to directly and easily add their content to the platform. Additionally, Library Services will soon be providing new digital scholarship tool with a Digital Exhibit platform and a Research portal, a research information management system. These combined resources will tell the story of EIU as a research institution, digitally archiving and preserving institution, digitally archiving andpreserving EIU history, student life, academic scholarship, events, and more for the benefit of current and future scholars. This milestone achievement is one that truly belongs to all of us.”

For further details about The Keep and Booth Library, please visit https://thekeep.eiu.edu/. This milestone achievement is a demonstration of the collective efforts of the entire EIU community.

Image displays a density map of downloads from The Keep by region, since 2010.

Booth Library Now Offers Free Online Access to the New York Times

Posted on December 11th, 2023

EIU students, faculty, and staff now have free online access to the New York Times through Booth Library! We are thrilled to offer this new service to better serve our students and the EIU Community as a whole. 

The complimentary subscription is available to anyone with an eiu.edu email address- including retired employees and emeritus members!

Online access to the New York Times through EIU Library includes:

  • 24/7 Breaking News
  • Archives (dating back to 1851)  timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser 
  • Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality – found in the App; NYT stories told through enhanced technology
  • Daily 360 content – two dimensional, 360° views (with mobile device or using a mouse)
  • Podcasts (including The “Daily” podcast)
  • All multimedia, including videophotographyVR features, and new multimedia to come.
  • Newsletters (there are a variety of topics that you may subscribe to)
  • Spanish and Mandarin Chinese versions of NYTimes.com. 

Activate your access to The New York Times, compliments of Booth Library here.

Booth Library will host NEA Big Read: Reconsidering the American Dream

Posted on November 10th, 2023

Booth Library at Eastern Illinois University is once again hosting the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read. The theme, Reconsidering the American Dream, will be explored by reading and discussing two books: Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh, and Infinite Country by Patricia Engel. A limited number of free copies of the books are available at Booth Library. Discussion groups will be organized and plan to meet in January, February and March. Dates and details will be provided to participants in early January. Additionally, look for announcements of statewide public programs sponsored by Illinois Humanities. Further information about the Big Read can be found on the Illinois Humanities website

  • In support of The Big Read from the National Endowment from the Arts and Arts Midwest, LAB students will team with librarian David Bell to host a student led book club this spring. The theme, “Reconsidering the American Dream,” will be explored through the novel Infinite Country and the memoir Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. Both books are available for checkout at Booth Library. Join members of the LAB at the following times:
    • Thursday, February 1 from 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. for a kick-off book talk event to learn more about the titles, discussion groups and how to get a copy
    • Thursday, February 29 from 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. for book discussion in Edgar Reading Room
    • Thursday, March 28 from 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. for book discussion in Edgar Reading Room
    • All events are open to students, faculty and staff. Questions? Contact David at dsbell@eiu.edu for more info

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.

‘A picture is worth a thousand words’

Posted on March 24th, 2023

Eastern Illinois State Normal School class photo, 1910s or early 1920s.

By Madeline Steiner
University Archives Intern

Among the University Archives at Booth Library are numerous collections of historical documents, objects, and photos – items that carry so much historical information and significance. One such collection is that of Eastern’s all-class photographs, “all-class” meaning everyone involved in the school, including professors, students freshman through senior, and, in most cases, the lab school students, as well.

Today, it sounds like a pretty daunting task just to get one whole class into the same photo, let alone the entire school; however, the collection is a small one, including six panoramic photographs from the late 1910s into the early 1920s, when the class sizes were much smaller. Eastern opened its doors to students on Sept. 12, 1899, with a starting faculty of 18 and with around 125 students. As the years went on, the numbers grew and were up to around 450 in the 1919 school year and in 1924, students, faculty, and lab school students made equaled about 600, which was still rather manageable for a photograph.

Item #1 in the collection is not dated but is from around the late 1910s into the early 1920s, notable by the fact that the school is still titled Eastern Illinois State Normal School, which was Eastern’s name upon being approved in 1895. The name then changed in 1921 to Eastern Illinois State Teachers College. This change can be noted through the timeline created by the photos.

Item #4 was taken March 31, 1921, near the end of the school’s time as Eastern Illinois State Normal School. Item #3 was taken Dec. 8, 1921, and is titled Eastern Illinois State Teachers College. The name change was made between March and December in 1921. Item #4 is also not dated on the physical photograph but can be found in the school’s 1921 edition of the Warbler (they used to print fairly detailed schedules of the entire year in the Warbler), which also includes numerous photos of classes, faculty, and campus.

Of the six photographs, five were taken by Kansas City, Missouri photographer Verne O. Williams, who was evidently well-versed in panoramic photographs. His 1917 Camp Funston series is proof of this. The seven panoramic style photos document the year of construction on Fort Riley’s Camp Funston in Kansas, including construction progress of the entire camp, staff members, and even the crowds of the 1917 football game against the University of Illinois.

Eastern Illinois State Teachers College class photo, 1921

The panoramic photo was quick to be experimented with upon the invention of the camera in 1839. Early panoramas were produced by placing two or more daguerreotype panels (the first commercialized photographic process) next to each other and they began appearing as early as 1851. Because of the desire for panoramic photos, in the late 19th century, cameras were mass produced specifically for panoramas.

The first mass-produced American panoramic camera was in 1898. These mass-produced cameras were easy to develop but could only create small panoramas that could be no longer than 12 inches and only had a field of vision of about 180 degrees, so, in 1904, the Cirkut Camera was patented. This panoramic camera was capable of producing a 360 degree photograph measuring up to 20 feet long. We can infer from the Eastern Illinois prints that Williams might have used a Cirkut Camera because these cameras were commonly used for group photographs and landscapes. Plus, every photo in the collection is well over 12 inches long, with the shortest in length being 32 inches and the longest at 46 inches.

Studying these photos could easily lead the researcher down a rabbit hole of information about Eastern’s past. For example, most of us probably know that Pemberton is one of the oldest buildings on campus, but the greenhouse seen in one of the collection’s photos was the second oldest structure, next to Old Main. Built in 1902, it was designed to provide decorative greenery for the main building. This greenhouse can be seen in the oldest of the collection’s photos, which was taken behind Old Main, in just about the middle of what would be the North Quad today.

Pemberton, only barely noticeable in the same photo, was the third building approved in 1907 and named after Senator and Eastern supporter Stanton C. Pemberton in 1909. Built as an all-female dorm, it was Illinois’s first college dormitory built for the purpose of creating a real campus community. Lord “wanted it to be more than a boarding house; he wanted to provide a family atmosphere for the students” (Otta, 58). Because it was the first of its kind in Illinois, it took a lot of work on the part of President Lord and Senator Pemberton, but it was finally approved, along with a “cracker box” gymnasium, in 1907 and was formally opened in January of 1909.

Blair Hall, seen behind students and faculty in photograph #3, was the fourth building on campus. Blair, originally named the Training School Building, was built for the purpose of training future teachers through the Model School, which was moved there upon the building’s completion in 1913. Later it was referred to as the “lab” school, and was attended by the children of Charleston as well as university faculty. The Training School Building was renamed Blair Hall in 1958.

The details of history can be found anywhere if you look hard enough and do the research. The 1920s all-class photo collection is just one example of many that packs so much information into a few images.

Madeline Steiner is a senior majoring in English from Lincoln, Illinois.

Works Cited

“Barnhart, Terry. “That ‘Noble Project:’ The Founding of Eastern Illinois University and the Origins of Old Main, 1895-1899.” Eastern Illinois University, https://www.eiu.edu/localite/oldmainnobleproject.php. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.

“A Brief History of Panoramic Photography.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/panoramic-photographs/articles-and-essays/a-brief-history-of-panoramic-photography/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2023.

Eastern Illinois University, “1918-1968 Warbler: ‘On the Road to Somewhere,’” 1968. The Warbler, 2. http://thekeep.eiu.edu/warbler/2.

Otta Sherri, “Still Going Strong,” 1990. The Warbler, 63, p58-59. http://thekeep.eiu.edu/warbler/6.

Williams, Verne O. and Charles A. Stead. Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. 25 Jul. 1917, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/archives/218831.

—. Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. 29 Aug. 1917, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/archives/218834.

—. Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. 19 Sep. 1917, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/archives/218840.

—. Camp Funston, 14th National Army Cantonment, Fort Riley, Kansas. 1917, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/archives/226933.

—. Engineers, Sanitary Train, Fort Riley, Kansas. 28 Sep. 1917, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/archives/226891.

—. Field Auditor’s Staff, 14th National Cantonment, Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. 3 Oct. 1917, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/archives/226887.

—. Football Crowd at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas, Thanksgiving Day. 29 Nov. 1917, Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/archives/226921.

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