Originally known as the IU vs. Purdue Blood Donor Challenge, Indiana University continues saving lives this year in the renamed 13th annual IU Blood Donor Challenge. The nationwide challenge will run through Nov. 13.

As part of a nationwide campaign to recognize the importance of archives to teaching and research, in October the IU Libraries will present a month-long series of events that documents the Great Depression. The celebration features exhibitions, film showings, a sing-along of popular music from the 1930s, and discussions. Keynote speaker and author Mildred Kalish will talk about her book Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, acclaimed by The New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2007.

Carolyn Walters, who has served as executive associate dean of the libraries at Indiana University Bloomington since June 2005, has been named interim dean of the IU Libraries. Walters will assume the duties of former dean Patricia Steele, who will begin a position as dean of the University of Maryland Libraries on Sept. 1.

Patricia Steele, Indiana University's dean of University Libraries, has accepted a position as dean of University Libraries at the University of Maryland, Provost Karen Hanson announced today (July 6). Steele was scheduled to retire from Indiana University this fall. Hanson said that an interim dean will be appointed soon and that a search committee, which was convened during the spring semester, will continue its work to find a new dean.

Online ballots for the election of an alumni representative to the 2009 Indiana University Board of Trustees are currently available to Indiana University alumni. Complete information about the election, including the online ballot and profiles of the 2009 candidates, may be found on the Trustee Election Web site.

The Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music has been awarded a third grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, valued at $347,682, to continue its collaborative research and development project that will digitally preserve critically endangered sound recordings.

The Lilly Library at Indiana University will mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth by showcasing highlights from its vast collections of materials pertaining to the president. As the most extensive exhibition of such items ever displayed at the library, "Remembering Lincoln" traces Lincoln's life from his Indiana boyhood through his celebrated presidency. The exhibition runs through May 9 and is free and open to the public.

Twenty-eight faculty from various Indiana University campuses have been awarded New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities grants. The grants have been funded by the Lilly Endowment with the intent of encouraging faculty to expand their work into new disciplinary or interdisciplinary areas.

Family and friends of a 75-year-old California grandmother beaten and kidnapped from her home last week might have known of the crime within moments if a device patented by an IU researcher had been in use. If Sandy Vinge had been using The Portal Monitor, developed by Indiana University professor L. Jean Camp, when kidnapped from her home, photographs taken at the victim's front door step would have been forwarded instantaneously to a pre-selected group of her closest friends and family members.

The Lilly Library announced today (Nov. 17) that Deborah Meier, considered the founder of the small schools movement in the U.S., will donate her personal papers to the library's collection. The announcement came during today's commemoration ceremony for the Indiana University School of Education's 100th anniversary. Meier gave the keynote address during a dinner celebration Sunday night.

Classicist James O'Donnell, provost at Georgetown University, will lecture on "Two Hundred Years Is a Long Time (for a historian), or, What Should Historians Write About?" on Tuesday, Oct. 28, and "Ten Years Is a Long Time (on the Internet), or, What Will Cyberspace Make of the Humanities?" on Thursday, Oct. 30, as part of the William T. Patten Lecture Series. Both lectures will take place in Ballantine Hall room 109 at 7:30 p.m., at Indiana University Bloomington.

A group of the nation's largest research libraries are collaborating to create a repository of their vast digital collections, including millions of books, organizers announced today. These holdings will be archived and preserved in a single repository called the HathiTrust. Materials in the public domain will be available for reading online.

Indiana University's first-ever "Celebrate IU Week" in 2007 was so successful, university officials will continue the new tradition with a monthlong tribute to all eight of IU's campuses. Highlights of the October celebration will include IU President Michael McRobbie's first State of the University address (Oct. 14); Homecoming (Oct. 17-25); the music of Hoagy Carmichael, for whom a bronze statue was dedicated last week at IU Bloomington; performances of La Traviata marking IU Opera Theater's 60th anniversary season and its 400th performance; groundbreakings; dedications and even a student video contest on YouTube.

Indiana University's Digital Library Program received a federal grant of $481,987 to demonstrate the benefits of an emerging form of cataloging using IU's vast collections of sound recordings and scores at the Cook Music Library. The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the primary source of federal support for the nation's libraries and museums, announced the National Leadership Grant Wednesday.

More than a century's worth of scholarship on Indiana history is now available on a free, searchable Web site created by the Indiana University Digital Library Program and the Indiana Magazine of History.

Music archives and libraries around the country are using new standards developed at Indiana University to digitally preserve endangered sound recordings.

IU Bloomington Libraries are one of only 20 public, academic and state libraries nationwide to provide an online reference service to the public through a new federal service launched by the U.S. Government Printing Office. Launched this month as a free, Web-based service, "Government Information Online: Ask a Librarian" gives the American public the opportunity to ask librarians questions about government resources.

Indiana University's Lilly Library has acquired an extremely rare copy of a book detailing the origins of the well known Bavarian tradition of Oktoberfest. One of only a few copies worldwide, the book was published in 1811 and describes the harvest festival first held to celebrate the 1810 wedding of the crown prince Ludwig to princess Theresa von Sachsen-Hildurghausen.

Exhibits of art, sculpture and photography will be featured on Indiana University's campuses throughout Celebrate IU week, which will take place Oct. 13-21. The exhibits, which are all free and open to the public, emphasize one of IU's most important missions.

Indiana University announced it has selected the Connect-ED communication service by the NTI Group Inc. (NTI) to provide a notification system that will be capable of reaching faculty, students and staff on all eight campuses within minutes. The service, part of the broader "IU-Notify" initiative, will be implemented with limited capabilities in October, tested in phases through fall, and should be fully functional by the end of the calendar year.

Indiana University faculty in the 2006-07 fiscal year received $433 million in sponsored awards to support their research and service activities. The total, announced today (Sept. 21) by President Michael A. McRobbie, represents the second highest yearly amount in the university's history and an increase of 2.9 percent over the prior fiscal year total of $421 million.

Indiana University President Michael McRobbie announced today (Sept. 19) that Patricia A. Steele will continue in her role as Ruth Lilly Interim Dean of University Libraries for up to two years. She has been serving as interim dean since 2005 when Suzanne Thorin, the former dean, accepted a position at Syracuse University.

Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie and Scott A. Jones, co-founder and chief executive officer of ChaCha, an Indiana company that is creating a new and more focused way of providing Internet searches, today (Aug. 2) announced they have entered into a strategic alliance for research, development and services for the next generation of Internet search tools and practices.

The national 12-university consortium called the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) announced a collective agreement today to digitize the most distinctive collections across all its libraries, up to 10 million volumes, as part of the Google Book Search project.