IU East Library Blog

IU East Library Blog
As the Spring Semester draws to a close, papers, projects, and finals loom closer.  These can be intimidating, particularly if you don’t have your research started yet (or even if you are nearly there, and just need one or two more sources to flesh out your argument), but the library is here to help you prepare for them all.  There’s plenty you can do to ensure that you have a great finals week and don’t get overwhelmed in the process.
Image from AdobeStock, #280690412
First, note that it isn’t the last minute.  Even if you haven’t started researching yet, you’re still well positioned – you have plenty of time to use
interlibrary loan
for materials we don’t have, and can take the time to read through your material carefully and deliberately.  So when you search, consider casting a broad net.  For books, you can search the
entire IU catalog
instead of just the
IU East catalog
, having books sent from other libraries with the ‘Request Delivery’ button.  Databases like
Ebook Central
and
EBSCO eBooks
have a lot of great e-book titles across the academic disciplines, as well.  In searching major academic databases like
EBSCO
JSTOR
, and
ProQuest
, you can leave off the ‘full text only’ restriction, getting a broader sense of what the scholarly conversation is on your topic.
Still, your time is valuable and shouldn’t be sacrificed needlessly.  Pay attention to the requirements of your paper, so you don’t waste time with material you can’t use.  Need peer-reviewed sources (that is, articles vetted by other professionals before publication)?  Be sure to click the ‘peer reviewed’ button when you search.  Can you only use material from the last five or ten years?  Click the date limit option, and make that part of your search right away.  Are you being asked to find primary sources (that is, material made by a person who was involved in the events that are described)?  Try a database that specializes in them, like
Gale Primary Sources
.  Don’t gather a lot of great-sounding information only to discover later that it doesn’t quite meet the requirements.
In reading what you’ve found, preview a resource before you commit to it.  If you’re using a book, make heavy use of its index or the keyword search function. There’s no sense in reading the whole book if only ten pages are relevant to your research.  For articles, read the abstract to verify the article says what you expect it to (titles can sometimes be misleading).  The abstract is to be preferred over an AI summary, as they are often written by the authors themselves.  But again, two minutes with the abstract could save you reading a twenty-page paper that doesn’t quite meet your needs.
You can also speed up your research with judicious selection of a topic.  For example, if you pick a topic you already know a lot about, you won’t be starting from scratch – you’ll already know what some of the good sources are, and be able to vet author claims more quickly with what you already know.  Barring that, consider picking something popular, that a lot of people get excited about. If you choose a thesis that’s too original or esoteric, good resources will be harder to find. Things that were major innovations, historical events, or controversies – those will all have plenty of sources readily available to you.
Additionally, in the weeks before finals, the Library will be open late to accommodate students’ increased study needs.  On April 27-30 and May 4-7, we’ll be open until 7:00 pm.  Please come in if you’d like a quiet place to study!  Regardless, the
Library
is always available for you, in-person and online. If you need help, Ask Us at
iueref@iu.edu
Wrapping Up Maker Madness
Savannah B., 1st place winner
This spring semester, the Campus Library launched the inaugural Maker Madness Competition, a campus-wide creative competition inspired by March Madness. Participants were encouraged to get creative or innovative and to submit images of a physical creation (3D object) that they made either at home, at a workshop, in class, or in a Makerspace.
We had a total of
12 submissions
for our first year, with items ranging from a hydroponics fish tank, an antebellum period costume, to several 3D printed works, a retro-inspired blanket, K-pop Demon Hunter game pieces, and more! All submissions competed in a bracket-style tournament where the campus community voted for their favorites each round. There was no limit to the number of times people could vote, making this competition easily anyone’s game!
Cam F., 2nd place winner
We started the competition on March 9
th
and held three rounds. The competition finished on Friday, April 3
rd
and it was a close race between our three finalists, Cam, Brooke, and Evan. Brooke pulled away towards the end of the day to be our top winner with over 15,000 votes! Cam and Evan won second and third respectively. All three of our top winners will receive a gift card of their choice.
Evan H., 3rd place winner
The goal of this event was to showcase the creativity of members in our campus community, promote
the MakerSpace
, and build engagement across the IU East community. The Makerspace opened in August of 2025, and we’ve slowly gained interest amongst students and faculty on campus. We’ve also been able to expand the space by adding more tools like a Brother Sewing machine and a new 3D printer (a Flashforge Adventurer 5M Pro). The Makerspace also includes access to a podcast room, which has been one of the more popular resources used by students this school year.
On top of Maker Madness, the library has been busy planning other programming to support not only our campus but our local community as well!
Community Poetry Workshop April 16th
April is Poetry Month, so join us for a
Spring Poetry Workshop
in
collaboration with Wayne County Writes is on Thursday, April 16
th
at 12 pm in HY 142. Refresh your creative spirit with two poetry prompts and a writing cooldown exercise. The workshop will be led by Associate Librarian, and published poet, KT Lowe.
IU Day Trivia April 22nd
In place of our usual tabletop game day, this month we’re going to celebrate IU Day with a round of trivia. We have experienced trivia host Tony Breitenbach, Lecturer of Biology and as well as a trivia host for Twin City Trivia, to run the game for us.
IU Day Trivia
is on April 22
nd
starting at 2:30 pm in HY 142. There will be some questions about IU East so brush up on your campus FAQs. We’ll be providing IU cookies and punch for the special day, and you will have a chance to win not only bragging rights but a vey cool trophy made in our very own Makerspace!
As we approach IU Day, we hope that community members who love the library, who enjoy all the various activities and programs we support and develop, and actively use our services, from reference help to reserving a room, will consider supporting us by donating to the
IU East Library Foundation Fund
. Donations to our foundation account allows us to support campus programming, such as purchasing books for author events, to provide more supplies and resources for the makerspace, to hire student interns interested in librarianship or scholarly publishing, or to purchase more popular reading materials and games at patrons’ request.
person’s handwriting
is deeply personal.  Whether messy, disjointed or breezily elegant, handwriting is
as distinctive
as the person who writes.  While
entire
fictional works are based on the impact of handwriting on a person’s life, the act of putting pen or pencil to writing surface is often
cited as crucial
to human development.  Yet for something that most people take for granted, handwriting and its utensils share an interesting history.
Perhaps the most famous name in handwriting is Austin Norman Palmer.  In 1901, Palmer produced the highly influential “
The Palmer Method in Business Writing
” handbook, which encouraged the use of
arm and shoulder muscles
to help writers write more clearly for longer periods of time.  But Palmer wasn’t the only person teaching handwriting to business professionals.  Charles Zaner and Elmer Bloser opened the
Zanerian Penmanship College
in 1888 on High Street in Columbus, OH, developing their
own form of handwriting.
Unlike Palmer, the Zaner-Bloser method emphasized print as well as cursive, which ensured its eventual introduction into elementary
school classrooms
The annual sharpening of the Loti pencil.
The tools of the trade, humble as they may be, have changed significantly over time.  The modern pencil, made of two pieces of wood sandwiching a long piece of molded graphite and clay, was
invented in 1795,
although some earlier variants exist.  The #2 pencil, used for a variety of purposes including standardized tests, was developed by the Thoreau family (yes,
that Thoreau family
.)  Some pencils even have strong celebrity
followings,
such as the Blackwing 602, used by animators, writers, songwriters and other creative artists. And don’t forget the
Loti pencil
, a 20-foot long pencil located in Minneapolis, which is sharpened every year as part of an annual festival.
Montblanc, “Let’s Write”, directed by Wes Anderson
While pencils can be defined in rather specific terms, pens are more diverse in construction and writing material. The fountain pen was a 19
th
century invention intended to replace both quills and inkwells.  Users of quills and other “dip” style pens would need to place the tip of their pen into an inkwell in order to re-ink it and keep writing.  A fountain pen, on the other hand, carried a reservoir inside of it, which kept the pen operating for long periods of time.  The
ballpoint pen
was intended to be a cheap, economical pen that did not require refilling at all.  It was invented in 1939 and continues to be the most popular pen style today.  Other variations, such as rollerball and gel pens, also have fans and connoisseurs, such as consumer advocate Ralph Nader and
his fondness
for a specific type of felt-tip pen.
The author’s rather ragged, barely legible handwriting. Photo by KT Lowe
The debate regarding teaching cursive in schools rages on, yet there seems to be at least some evidence that handwriting serves a useful purpose in
developing
reading skills.  Still, many people claim to have inadequate handwriting skills.
10-30%
of children have poor handwriting and the quality of a person’s penmanship
grows steadily worse
as they age.  Physicians, notorious for their poor handwriting, can
write prescriptions
that pharmacists cannot read correctly, a situation so fraught with consequences that some medical
students take handwriting
classes.  For those who wish to work on their handwriting,
guides exist
to help with letter formation, pen grip and
practice
Want to improve your own handwriting?  Interested in the history of penmanship?  Curious about questions regarding writing utensils, syllabaries or other inventions related to writing?  Ask us!
iueref@iu.edu
Coming off Spring Break, the library has full a week of activity!  Come in and join us for one of our programs.
On Tuesday, Dr. Justin Carroll hosts the fourth installment of the Local Expert Lecture Series,
A Panel is Worth a Thousand Footnotes
.  Professor Carroll teaches history at IU East, and is also a cartoonist – his graphic novel
I Am Fail: A Comic
is available to read or check out.  The lecture will investigate mythopoetics, and historiographic meta-fiction and the production of knowledge in the ruins of the American university.  It will be held in room 142 on March 24th, at 12:30 pm.
On Wednesday, attend Game Day – you can play a game provided by the library, or bring your own – traditional board and card games are on offer (
rules for library games can be found here
) as well as videogames, in
partnership with Esports
.  Crush your competition in a competitive game or work with them in a cooperative one!  It will be in the library March 25th, starting at 11:00 am.
Finally, vote on Maker Madness ROUND 2!  The first round of voting is over, and the initial twelve submissions have been reduced to the Spectacular Six – and the winners of these three matchups will compete next week in the Championship head-to-head(-to-head) battle.  Vote for your favorite, online by scanning the following QR code or at
, or in person in the library!  You can vote any time this week – votes will be tallied Friday, and the winners of each match face each other in the final!
We hope to see you this week in the library!  Feel free to contact us, about programming or research, at
iueref@iu.edu
The recipient of the 2026 Course Material Transformation Fellowship is Julee Rosser, Senior Lecturer in Communications. Professor Rosser’s project includes redesigning their Mindfulness-Based Communication Strategies course, taking it from a 3-week intercession course into a full 16-week course. This special topic course has consistently had a high demand from students wanting to take the class over the last five years, and expanding the course will allow more students to engage with course content in-depth.
Julee Rosser
Professor Rosser plans to replace the current textbook that costs $30 with one already available freely through the Creative Commons. The anticipated number of initial students impacted will be 25 students, with class enrollment increasing each semester it’s offered. The estimated textbook savings will be at least $750 a semester. Professor Rosser is exploring other ways to present course content, including creating or adapting additonal OER content. This class is projected to run in its new form in spring 2027 at the earliest.
The Course Material Transformation Fellowship is a partnership between the Center for Faculty Development and the Campus Library. The fellowship aims to support faculty members’ efforts to create zero-cost textbook courses, providing equitable access to all course material from the very first day of classes. Since the fellowship’s inception in 2023, we’ve had 5 professors transform 6 courses in math, science, business, and psychology and the estimated textbook cost savings as of fall 2025 is $39,244.70.
In September 2025, the
Library of Congress
received a donation of ten
nitrate films
dating to the early 20
th
century.  Among those films is a one-minute short likely created in 1897, long presumed to be lost.  For the first time in over a century, Georges Méliès’ “
Gugusse et L’Automate
” (Gugusse and the Automaton) can be viewed the general public.  What makes this film remarkable is that it may be the first ever depiction of what we think of as a robot – 23 years before the
term existed
.  Méliès’ career, however, is full of
creative firsts
, and while he is mostly known for only a handful of films today, he made over 500 movies, of which no more than 300 survive.
Georges Méliès, “Gugusse et L’Automate” (1897.) Public domain.
Georges Méliès
was born in 1861 in Paris and showed an early interest in art and illusion.  Indeed, after a stint in his family’s boot factory, he began a career as
a magician
, working at prestigious stages such as the Theatre de Robert-Houdin (which he later purchased.) In
December 1895
, Méliès saw a film for the first time, one made by pioneering filmmakers the Lumiere brothers.  That night he attempted to purchase their equipment but failed, and eventually bought cameras and film
stock in London
.  By 1896 he was starting to produce his own films, creating short moving images at a rapid pace and improving his technique with every film.
Georges Méliès, “L’ Éclipse du Soleil en Pleine Lune” (1907.) Public domain
What Méliès
is best known for today is his development of the first special effects in filmmaking.  Stop-motion, the use of artificial light, specially designed sets with strategic use of color and even narrative storytelling in film were all either created or improved by Méliès, and all are evident in his most famous film,
A Trip to the Moon
(1902.)  Clocking in at 12 minutes, it tells a complete narrative of an expedition to the moon and also includes one of the most iconic images in all of cinema: The moon with a rocket lodged in its eye.
Georges Méliès, “Le Voyage Dans de Lune” (1902.) Public domain.
While he continued to make films until 1913, when a combination of financial losses, plagiarism and war led to the end of his career, he remains a technical innovator and one of the most respected figures in early cinema.  Films such as
The Impossible Voyage
and
The Astronomer’s Dream
are to this day technically impressive, especially considering that all of the effects are practical in nature.  Many of his films also employ color, a result of hand-tinting the film stock.  He has inspired generations of filmmakers, including
Martin Scorsese
and
Wes Anderson
, and his work continues to be shown throughout the world.
Interested in the history of film?  Want to know more about filmmaking techniques, visual storytelling or nitrate film?  Curious about Méliès and his legacy?  Ask us!
iueref@iu.edu
When conducting research, the types of sources used are important.  Students learn to distinguish between biased and unbiased work; and between scholarly and popular types.  But one vital distinction is whether a source is a primary, or original source; or if it is a secondary source.
It isn’t a matter of one being ‘good’ and the other ‘bad’.  What constitutes a primary source is complex, but in general, it means that the writer – or speaker – was a direct firsthand witness of what is described, possibly even a party to it.  It is a direct record of what happened.  They are often written contemporaneously with the content in them, or at least within the lifetime of the participant.  In contrast, the author of a secondary source has no direct personal connection to the content of the work.  They will often use the primary sources in their writing, though, arranging, explaining, and interpreting them.  This can be extremely useful.  For example, writing secondhand can allow an author a broader contextual picture to interpret from than the limited perspective of someone ‘in the thick of things’.  For example, knowing who won the war will allow a secondary author to know how ‘important’ an individual battle was, whereas for a soldier who lived through that fight, it would always have seemed to be of the highest significance.  But all secondary writers are dependent upon primary authors, and consulting primary sources should be a routine part of research.  In fact, in professional practice, mere reliance on another secondary writer’s interpretations without examining the underlying evidence directly is a recipe for professional failure, censure, and even ridicule.
In general, primary sources include things like
letters, diaries, memoirs, interviews, firsthand newspaper or television reports, speeches, or oral histories
.  They can be intentionally created or collected by authors or historians (like interviews or memoirs) – or incidentally created, and perhaps never originally meant for public consumption (like correspondence or journals).  There are some grey areas – for example, a person writing an autobiography or memoir is generally producing a primary source, as it relates to their experiences.  But if the author deviates into reflecting on the ‘meaning’ of the era, for example, or describing how their actions fit into a larger context; that part of the work is a secondary source.
Most
books and scholarly articles (including all review articles), summaries, reviews, textbooks, dissertations, and documentaries
are secondary sources.  Note that these sources all still have significant academic value.  Most peer-reviewed articles that do not include an experiment are secondary sources, as well.
IU East has many avenues for accessing primary sources.  Numerous scholarly databases include them.  Some, like
North American Immigrant Letters & Diaries
contain only primary source material.  Others, like
Modern World History Online
contain a mix of material, and can be limited to just the primary sources in the same way other databases can limit to peer reviewed or full text items.  There are video sources as well in the
AVON
database, which includes primary interviews in addition to secondary documentaries and television programs.  In our
A-Z list of databases
, ones which include primary sources are marked with a green ‘primary source’ tag.
On campus, our
Archives
also hold a number of
oral histories
.  This collection is particularly strong in documenting the 1968 Richmond explosion and the Starr-Gennett companies, as well as a number of
interviews taken with students, faculty, staff, and administrators
about IU East’s own history, which are included in the
IU Bicentennial Oral History project
Each discipline, though, has other types of materials that qualify as primary sources.  Some even have edge cases, where a document does not fit neatly in one classification or the other.
HISTORY AND THE HUMANITIES
When one thinks of primary sources and their uses, history is the discipline that usually comes to mind first.  For example, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart flew planes and
wrote books
about her experiences; then later historians read those books and her letters and
gave their own theories
about her incredible career and troubling disappearance.  A clear line exists between primary and secondary source.  Numerous history databases are built around these types of materials, like
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
Gale Primary Sources
, or
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives
Despite its ubiquitousness, historical primary sources may have challenges in their use.  One is language – if a scholar doesn’t speak French, for example, primary sources about the French Revolution will be few and difficult to access.  Another is obsolete terminology (or even, by modern standards, offensive terminology).  Knowing what something was called at the time the primary source was created, as well as the slang in use, can be vital for proper searching.  For example, in recent years an old 19
th
century New Zealand whaling song called ‘Soon May the Wellerman Come’ has grown in popularity due to
modern covers
(secondary sources).  However, while the tune is catchy, it is full of archaic language, which may add to its mystique but can be an impediment to understanding.  In addition to whaling jargon, words like ‘billy’ (a pot or container), ‘tonguing’ (slicing strips of blubber out of the whale to render into oil), or even ‘wellerman’ itself (a supply ship operated by the Weller brothers, who employed the whalers and paid them not with money but with the referenced ‘sugar, tea, and rum’) can be confounding to the point of misunderstanding.  Primary sources were created in a context, and need to be understood within that context.  This becomes truer the further back the historical research is.
ANCIENT HISTORY
In particular, researching ancient history intensifies these challenges and adds others.  The language barrier becomes even more extreme, as many sources are in dead or nearly dead languages.  Ancient texts, whether inscriptions on stone monuments or papyrus scrolls, have often suffered damage and are now fragmentary (in particular, many ancient works lack the beginning or the ending, as the top of the stone or the covers and first and last pages are the quickest to be damaged or worn away.  This, added with jargon based on customs and practices lost to time often makes the primary sources ambiguous, and difficult even in the best of circumstances to interpret or analyze.  There are many disagreements between secondary authors in this field, as they are forced to theorize to fill in the gaps of the surviving record.
The definition of ‘primary source’ also changes slightly in the context of ancient history.  Archaeologically, an ancient document is sometimes referred to as a primary source if there is simply no known antecedent for its content, regardless of whether there is agreement among historians that the author had firsthand knowledge of the subject.  So, for example, the Roman emperor Tiberius, who ruled from 14-37, was biographized by army officer Velleius Paterculus in his first century
Compendium of Roman History
(which covers several centuries, from the fall of Troy to the then-present).  While parts about earlier Roman history are influenced by other historians like Quintus Hortensius and Cato, the part about Tiberius has no known literary influence and is considered ‘primary’ in this ancient sense.  Later historians, like Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, all integrated Paterculus’s work and are in those areas considered secondary sources.  Similarly, in the Bible, the Gospel of Mark is considered a primary source by most scholars because none of its content comes from any identifiable underlying source while the Gospel of Luke is a secondary source because it draws substantially from the Gospel of Mark, restating about fifty percent of its material.  Mark is not considered by any historian to be an eyewitness of the events described, but it is the oldest extant source for most of the information cited and the closest known thing to an original source.
This use of ‘primary source’ is rarer, but is important to archaeologists, ethnographers, and ancient historians.  It is also fluid.  For example, in the Bible, the First Epistle to the Corinthians is so named because it is the first
surviving
letter Paul wrote to the fledgling church in Corinth.  However, the text clearly references an earlier letter he wrote to the same group.  The rediscovery of that letter would shine additional light on the content of the surviving letters.  In other cases, a source currently seen as primary (in the ancient sense) would be reclassified as secondary if a lost document it referred to was ever rediscovered – this is true in Velleius Paterculus’s case, as well; as some of the original material he cites as coming from Cato or Hortensius is not currently known to have survived.
BUSINESS
The field of business includes many types of primary sources that mirror other fields.  These can include internal memos, letters, public speeches, or interviews composed by agents of a company.  Authorship is not always the act of a single individual, though, but sometimes a committee or group.  This is called ‘corporate authorship’, and many documents in the business world are created in this manner.  The finished documents may list the names of several people who worked on them; or they may have none at all and simply have the name of the business.  Regardless, if they were created by agents of the business, they are still primary documents.  These can include annual reports, press releases, or (usually) SWOT Analyses.  Internal reports not originally intended for public release would also be primary, as would more informal sources like social media postings on an official account.  Data-focused material like financial reports count, too.
By contrast, secondary sources show what others think about the business (or even the whole industry).  These would include articles in journals or newspapers or industry reports in databases like
MarketLine Advantage
.  These can be written by people friendly or critical towards the company.  But they can also include work created at the business’s own invitation – many companies hire outside consultants to review their practices and provide recommendations for the future, and this work – while made with the cooperation of the business’s employees – remains secondary.  Sometimes, SWOT Analyses are prepared by external consultants as well, and in this circumstance, they become secondary sources.
FINE ARTS
As with historical materials, the diary of an artist is a primary source.  A manual or guidebook about art, written by a master about their own technique, is a primary source.  But an artwork itself can be a primary source, as well.  Many of the artworks on exhibition in the Meier Artway or the Whitewater gallery or the statues installed on the grounds at IU East count as primary sources.  But an artwork can also be a secondary source as well, if it copies an earlier one.  For example, if you’ve been to Galo’s restaurant in Richmond, the
walls have paintings of classical artwork
on them.  These are all reproductions (and thus secondary sources) of real artwork, including the
Poseidon of Melos
statue from the second century BCE (now in Athens) and a Roman sarcophagus depicting the
Rape of Persephone
from the first century CE (currently held at Uffizi Gallery in Florence).
On the south wall, near the Poseidon, is a picture of a statue of the
Three Graces
by Antonio Canova.  Canova, an Italian artist working in the 1800s, sculpted it for Empress Joséphine of France, but upon her death, her grandson, Duke Maximilian de Beauharnais, took it to Russia, where it is still on display in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.  British collector Duke John Russell of Bedford begged Canova for the chance to purchase it before it went to Russia, but the artist honored his original contract.  However, he agreed to create a second version of it for Russell, and this copy was installed in his home in 1819.  Now it is co-owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland, who each exhibit it half the time.  An impressive artistic piece in its own right, the Russell Three Graces straddles the line between primary and secondary source – being created by the artist’s own hand makes it original and primary, but it is still a copy and nonetheless as much a secondary source as the painting on Galo’s wall!
Other artistic works, significant in their own right, are also secondary as they are copies of older works.  Famously, Renaissance artist Raphael visited Da Vinci’s studio in 1504-5 and copied the
Mona Lisa
, impressed with it.
His sketch
, worth millions of dollars on its own, is still a secondary source.  Interestingly, like with the Three Graces, Raphael’s sketch shows a different background than the Mona Lisa on display in the Louvre – but it matches what was believed to be another copy of her held by the Museo del Prado.  The
Prado Mona Lisa
has since been authenticated as being from Da Vinci’s studio, and possibly his own hand.  So which is the original, primary work?  Art historians remain divided.
Of course, writings by historians about artists or artwork are also secondary works, as in other disciplines.
LEGAL AND GOVERNMENTAL
Many politicians create primary material as in other fields when they write autobiographies, send letters to other dignitaries, or post on social media about their voting records.  But most governmental primary sources will be things like constitutions, laws, bills, and judicial decisions, as well as diplomatic documents like treaties or charters.  Many of these will have corporate authorship, as do business sources, although some will have a discrete personal author (for example, U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions are written by one Justice, with the others writing either concurring or dissenting addendums).  Not all primary sources are originally meant for public access, such as tax records, census reports, or birth registers.  Process documents like Congressional committee papers and raw data sets, collected by organizations such as the Census Bureau, are also primary.
Secondary sources include law reviews and other legal journals, and databases like
CQ Researcher
that analyze the legal landscape.  Political journalists also produce numerous articles analyzing and interpreting governmental activity.  Some elements of even the primary sources can be secondary – for example, the headnotes published in legal cases are added after the fact as a finding aid, and do not count as primary in the way that the body of the decisions do.
As in other disciplines, there are grey areas.  President Abraham Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address
is one of the most famous speeches in history, but there is some contention regarding the specific wording he used.  There are five known copies of the speech in Lincon’s handwriting, all with minor differences, which also differ in small ways from contemporary newspaper reports of the speech.  So which is the primary source – the one that matches the words that were actually spoken on November 19, 1863?  One might assume the earliest copy, although most scholars regard this as just a draft.  There is no agreement which is the copy he actually read from, if it survived.  The generally accepted text comes from the fifth copy Lincoln personally wrote, in part because it is the only one he signed (and this is seen as Lincoln expressing his approval that it most closely mirrors what he wanted to convey).  It is the version that was carved onto the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.  More definitively, though, all of the books and articles that have come since which analyze President Lincoln’s masterful prose are secondary sources.
SCIENCES
The scientific fields (from ‘hard’ sciences like Chemistry to ‘soft’ sciences like Psychology) include the usual types of primary sources – for example, journals written by scientists, like the
Codex Leicester
, which includes observations on stars and the movement of water.  But more important to the modern discipline are records of experiments and their results.  These are typically published as articles in professional journals.  Original research studies, which the author of the article personally took part in administering, are the most common type of scientific primary source.
This is not to say that all articles published in scientific journals are primary sources.  If the author is doing a meta-analysis of a lot of other studies, for example, it is a secondary source.  Only articles which present original findings would qualify as primary.  These can typically be identified by clearly labelled sections describing both the methods used and the results.  If you see headings like ‘Methods’, ‘Methodology’, ‘Procedure’, ‘The Present Study’, ‘Analysis’ or ‘Results’ that is a good sign.  For example,
this paper
is a primary source and
this paper
is not.
In a way, primary sources in the sciences are easier to find, because they’re included in the same major databases one would already be using to find secondary sources, like
Wiley Online Library
or
ProQuest Science
.  The downside is there isn’t a single button to press to limit to this type of material.
Finding and engaging with primary material can be both challenging and rewarding; and will be different depending on the discipline being explored.  If you need help finding what you need, Ask Us at
iueref@iu.edu
It’s February, the month of love.  Aside from
Love Data Week
and
Random Acts of Kindness Day,
February also hosts the most famous love-themed holiday of them all.  While Valentine’s Day is the most popular day to
buy roses
and
chocolate
, it’s probably best known for its mascot, Cupid of the love-tipped arrows.  But just who is he, anyway?
Cupid is the Roman name for Eros, the
Greek god
of love.  As disorderly and intense as love can feel, Eros is sometimes credited with
creating light
and kickstarting the process of order on Earth. Other myths depict him as the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Ares, the god of war.  In Hesiod’s
Theogony
he is portrayed as a
personification of desire
, one of the earliest beings created in Greek mythology.  Cupid is rarely a main character, but often features in myths where love (or lust) is a component.
The Tale of Cupid and Psyche, TED Animation
The most famous myth of Eros is a Roman story by Apuleius dated to the 2
nd
century CE.
The tale
of
Cupid and Psyche
, found in the book
The Golden Ass
, depicts a princess who, according to an oracle, will be married off to a horrid, fearsome being for offending Venus.  However, upon seeing Psyche for the first time, Cupid accidentally scratches himself with his own arrow and moves her to a beautiful palace where she is waited on hand and foot.  She is permitted to stay as long as she never tries to look at her devoted lover, who visits her every night.  Her jealous sisters scheme to ruin her good fortune by convincing her she is actually married to a monster, and the only way to find out is by looking at him.  One night, Psyche lights an oil lamp to look at her husband while he is sleeping, only to discover she is married to Cupid.  In her excitement a drop of oil falls on him.  Venus banishes her from the palace while taking in the injured Cupid.  After four trials assigned by Venus, Psyche is deemed fit to be the wife of a god, is granted immortality and is married in grand fashion to Cupid.
Image from Roman de la Rose, a 14th century illuminated manuscript. Wikimedia Commons/National Library of Wales
Cupid’s appearance has changed over the millennia.  Originally he was depicted in Greek art as a young man with wings; the arrows were an early component of his image as well. However, as early as the first century CE, Roman artists began to emphasize Cupid’s youth, portraying
him as a child
.  By the 15
th
century he was usually depicted as a baby with wings, similar to Italian putti and cherubs.  In 18
th
century Paris, there was renewed interest in the Latin phrase “
omnia vincit amor
”, which meant “love conquers all.”  Cupid appeared in art and literature alongside this slogan, and by this point Cupid’s impetuousness was a common feature.
“Cupid”, written and performed by Sam Cooke (1961)
Today, Cupid is depicted in music and film.  Consider the Sam Cooke classic “Cupid,” which hit #17 in 1961.  It has been covered numerous times by the likes of The Spinners, Johnny Nash and Amy Winehouse, making is a multigenerational single.  In it, Cooke pleads to the god of love to make his beloved fall for him.  He places all of his faith in the god of love to solve his romantic woes, and the song’s message has proven timeless.  Cupid has also inspired two
television series
of the same name, and he is still featured prominently on images describing true love.
Want to know more about winter holidays?  Interested in the connections between Greek and Roman mythology to today’s popular culture?  Curious about how figures in art change over time?  Ask us!
iueref@iu.edu
Examples of things made by IU East staff, students, and faculty, such as a birdhouse, an origami crane, a library button, a 3D printed book, or leather purse.
The Campus Library is hosting a new event this March and we invite the entire IU East community to take part! Maker Madness is a campus-wide creative competition inspired by March Madness. Participants are encouraged to get creative or innovative and to submit images of a physical creation (3D object) that they made either at home, at a workshop, in class, or in a Makerspace. Submissions will compete in a bracket-style tournament where the campus community votes for their favorites each round. The goal is to showcase creativity, promote
the MakerSpace
, and build engagement across the IU East community.
The winner of the bracket will win a $50 Amazon gift card. The library may award other smaller $25 gift cards to other submissions, such as most creative, most useful, most adorable, or librarians’ choice for any submissions made in the Campus Library Makerspace.
Rules
Eligibility:
Open to all students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
Submission Requirements
One image per item (JPEG or PNG).
Description (100–150 words).
Item must be physical and 3D (e.g., sculpture, prototype, fiber art, metalwork).
Created within the last 12 months.
Voting Rules:
Vote as many times as you want! Share with your friends and family to vote for your submission!
Voting platform: campus portal at https://iue.libguides.com/MakerMadness/voting.
Content Restrictions:
No offensive or unsafe items.
Deadline:
All submissions due March 5th at midnight.
Most importantly: HAVE FUN!
This is an example of the voting bracket.
How It Works and Timeline
Submissions Due March 5th at midnight
Participants
submit
a JPEG or PNG image of their item plus a short description (100–150 words) explaining:
What the item is
How it was made (tools, techniques, materials, location)
Its purpose or inspiration
Items can be made in the MakerSpace or other creative workshops, classes, or home.
Must be physical and 3D (not purely digital art).
Bracket Creation
After submissions close, items are seeded into a bracket (similar to March Madness).
Each matchup features two items; the community votes for their favorite.
Voting Phase (Weeks 1–3)
Voting occurs in three rounds:
Round 1, March 9-13: All entries compete (Sweet 16 or 32 depending on submissions)
No voting takes place during spring break (March 17-21)
Round 2, March 23-27: Quarterfinals
Round 3, March 30-April 3: Semifinals & Finals
Voting is done online
here in this libguide
Winner Announcement
The champion is announced Monday, April 6th and winners will be notified by email.
Want to Participate?
Enter Submission
Support
Even if you don’t participate as a creator, we hope you will participate as a voter and champion for the library! We welcome any support to help
fund
the Campus Library and all its programs and services, but more importantly, we love your participation in our programs. Supporting us helps us to support the IU East Campus in a variety of ways such as author visits, voting registration, faculty lectures, games, and podcasting. The Campus Library Team works hard to bring innovative services and engaging programs to the IU East campus and we welcome partnerships and collaboration to make these opportunities happen. We want to thank the Center for Entrepreneurship for working with us in get the Makerspace started and for the inspiration to start a friendly competition. We hope everyone will enjoy Maker Madness 2026!
If you need any research assistance, have questions about Maker Madness or our services, or interested in collaborating with the Campus Library, just Ask Us! at iueref@iu.edu.
January 1
st
is most famous as New Year’s Day, but perhaps more consequentially, it is also Public Domain Day!  That is the time when creative works – books, movies, songs, or characters – lose their copyrighted status and become free to use and adapt for anyone, without needing to clear rights or pay royalties. This year, books, films, plays, musical compositions, artwork, and characters copyrighted in 1930 are now public property, as are audio recordings first copyrighted in 1925.  You may have heard of copyrights retiring on early versions of characters like Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, and Popeye; and more join them this year.
Books that are now free to use, in whole or in part, include William Faulkner’s “
As I Lay Dying
” and Dashiell Hammett’s “
The Maltese Falcon
” and poems like T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday”.   In children’s literature, the first Elson-Gray “Dick and Jane” books and Watty Paiper’s “The Little Engine That Could” have become public property.  Also of interest are several mysteries, not as much for the books themselves as for the characters that are now in public hands – Agatha Christie’s “
The Murder at the Vicarage
” puts her legendary sleuth Miss Marple in the public domain, and detective Nancy Drew also is free to the public, with her
first four novels
having been published in 1930.
Nancy Drew – image created by Matthew Dilworth
Use of a formerly copyrighted work is broad.  You could republish “As I Lay Dying” in its entirety and sell it for profit (and you could add illustrations or commentary, or add nothing at all when you do so).  You could write a Sam Spade novel as a sequel to “The Maltese Falcon”.  You can write a new work using Miss Marple or Nancy Drew as your protagonist – but only the character as depicted in the newly free-to-use works.  For example, today, Nancy Drew is known as a quick-thinking but sweet redhead who solves crimes with the help of friends Bess, George, and Ned.  But in her first four adventures, she was a blonde sixteen-year-old with a sharp wit and who delighted as much in seeing her enemies humiliated as she was in seeing justice done for victims; and the only familiar secondary character was her father, lawyer Carson Drew.
You are not locked into writing a microcosm of the original novels – your Nancy doesn’t have to still be sixteen; you could write a story about an older Nancy who had become a mother and then returned to solving mysteries.  You could even write a Miss Marple mystery, where, through flashbacks, it was revealed that she was really an elderly Nancy Drew who had experienced tragedy, moved to England, and changed her name!  But whatever you do, she’d better be blonde, because elements of later iterations are still protected by copyrights that owners would love to enforce.  Her red hair, George and Bess, and specific plot points from later novels are all still off-limits without permission.  Moreover, those first four Nancy Drew novels were re-written in 1959 and 1960, to bring them in line with the then-current depictions of Nancy and eliminate confusing Prohibition-era plot points.  Nothing in the rewrites is in the public domain, and cannot be used freely.
Beyond books, movies now free to use, remix, and profit from include Best Picture winner “All Quiet on the Western Front”, the Marx Brothers comedy “Animal Crackers”, and the Laurel and Hardy comedy “Another Fine Mess”, as well as Greta Garbo’s first film with sound, “Anna Christie”.  Songs include the original version of “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and “Georgia on My Mind” by Hoagy Carmichael (his “
Stardust
”, recorded here in Richmond at Starr Gennett, came into the public domain a few years ago).  In fact,
a number of Starr Gennett recordings
are now free to use.
Frame depicting Betty Boop from ‘Dizzy Dishes’ – now in the public domain
There are other characters, as well; Betty Boop’s first cartoon, “
Dizzy Dishes
” puts her earliest incarnation in the people’s hands (note that at this point she is an anthropomorphic poodle with a black nose and floppy ears, albeit still drawn similarly to her later human appearance) and the Disney film “
The Picnic
” gives us an early version of Pluto the dog (although here he is Minnie Mouse’s pet rather than Mickey’s, and is named ‘Rover’ – next year, the name ‘Pluto’ and the relationship to Mickey will be usable).  Newspaper comic mainstays Blondie and Dagwood are now public domain, as their first strips were published in 1930 – although Blondie the ditzy flapper and Dagwood the rich railroad heir are all but unrecognizable to modern audiences.
If you are interested in browsing through what all is now available to you for your own creative or for-profit use, the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain offers a great
list of the most significant
works entering the public domain this year, and online repositories such as the
Internet Archive
and the
HathiTrust
also make texts and films available to read and watch.  These things belong to everyone, now, to use as you see fit – even if you want to put Nancy Drew in a low budget horror film, an indignity
Winnie the Pooh
Popeye
, and
Mickey Mouse
have all also suffered in recent years.
Interested in learning more about the public domain?  Ask Us at
iueref@iu.edu
Additional Content
Recent Posts
Ending the Semester Strong
Maker Madness Winners and April Events
A few (written) words about handwriting
Goings-On this Week in the Library
2026 Course Material Transformation Fellowship Recepient
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