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Iowa's Hidden Gem: Author Ruth Suckow

10/20/2025

Heidi Pettitt

“When people live in Iowa, they are rather apt to like it” according to Ruth Suckow, the author featured in the display that is visiting the library from October 20th to November 16th, and she would know.

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This week we welcome to the blog Garrett Hohmann, Public Services Librarian here at Loras. Garrett is an avid advocate for graphic novels, and has written this blog to encourage people to read graphic novels.Five Reasons to Try a Graphic NovelThey are approachable – If you can read this, you are already equipped to read a graphic novel! Some readers are intimated by the format, but the literacy required doesn’t extend beyond making sense of words and pictures. They are a great way to explore complex stories without overwhelming you with text; graphic novels typically do not take long to read. They are diverse – Graphic novels are comic books, but they don’t all look like Spiderman. If you haven’t felt drawn to the art styles of comics, you may have not found the right book. The styles are as diverse as the stories themselves. You can find memoirs, history, fantasy, mystery, romance, sci-fi, and your favorite literary classic adapted into graphic form. They are immersive - If books are more than words on a page, then graphic novels are more than pictures in a frame. Graphic novels tell you a story but show you that story in a way plain text cannot. Reading a graphic novel is like self-directing a movie that progresses at the pace you determine. You decide how long each shot lasts and how much gravity it has.They are an entry point– If you don’t consider yourself a ‘book reader’, graphic novels could turn you into one. While they aren’t a cure for your diminishing attention span, you might find yourself liking the idea of sitting down and having a solitary, uninterrupted session of quiet reading on the regular. This could be habit forming!They are beautiful and unique – To read a graphic novel is to experience an artistic expression distinct from traditional books. There is a sort of magic that emerges between the frames and pages and your imagination once you ‘get it’. I encourage you to try one from our 2nd floor book display which will be up next week after our Ruth Suckow display. ...

Open Access Week - 2025

Open Access Week is celebrated every year to celebrate and champion open access resources. If you’re unfamiliar with open access resources, check out this blog post from 2023 that gives a history of Open Access Week, and defines open access.Many open access resources are text based, such as open access journals, textbooks, and books. Publishing through an open-access model gives authors more control over their work, and allows more readers to find, and engage with their materials. In academia, open access resources can be great resources for students, as there is no cost barrier to accessing the materials. (If you’re a professor at Loras and interested in using an open educational resources, check out this page. If you’re interested in creating an open educational resource, check out this page)Open-access resources cover more than just text-based materials. Images can also be open access, often through a Creative Commons license, which allows the creator to still retain some rights over their intellectual property, while also allowing others to use it freely. (Interested in learning more about creative commons licenses? Click here for general info!) Creative Commons zero, or CC0, is a license that allows free use, reuse, and remixing of items. Many of the largest museums in the world have begun the process of making items in their collection that are in the public domain available under CC0, which means you can freely make use of those items. You can alter CC0 artwork, use it in your own works of art, sell copies of it, do whatever you’d like with it. (It’s important to check that the item you’re using is in the public domain, and what the license on that item is.) This can be a great way to decorate your home inexpensively, or to add to assignments that need artwork in the public domain. Here’s some of the most prominent museums with open access collections: The Met The Smithsonian The National Gallery of Art The Art Institute of Chicago The Cleveland Museum of ArtThanks to these images being shared under CC0, there are many websites that do creative things with open access artwork. This site is a clock that uses art from the Smithsonian’s open access collections to tell the time. This website, from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum (part of the Smithsonian) has you write on the left side, as it pulls images from the Smithsonian that contain similar words and displays them on the right. The Cleveland Museum of Art lets you view many items in their collection in 3-D, such as this suit of armor for a knight and his charger, or this Hittite statue.For more information, check out our Open Access display on the fourth floor of the library....

Iowa's Hidden Gem: Author Ruth Suckow

American Archives Month 2025

The Society of American Archivists have declared October American Archives Month. American Archives Month is intended to raise public awareness about the importance of historic documents and records, and of archives and archivists to our communities.1930's photo of the library when it was in Keane Hall on the 4th and 5th floorsHere at Loras, our archive is closely associated with the Center for Dubuque History. They are both housed on the first floor of the Loras College Library, and they both preserve documents, photographs, and other items that help tell the history of Dubuque, of Loras College (or Columbia College, Dubuque College, St. Joseph’s College, Mount St. Bernard Seminary, St. Raphael’s Seminary, or whatever name Loras went by at the time), and the rest of the community. In the archives, you can browse through old yearbooks (Purgold, Restrosum, Lorian Year in Review), view old magazines, old photos of campus and Dubuque, look through scrapbooks, and so much more. Heidi Pettitt, the archivist here at Loras College Library (and director for the Center for Dubuque History) recommends looking through the Hoffmann-Schneider Funeral records. While funeral records may at first not seem like the most entertaining records, they are incredibly useful and interesting resources that tell us more about what life was like in the past through rituals around death. Archival collections, here and at other archives, are incredibly important tools for historians, and other scholars. The primary sources found in archives are essential components of historians’ work. Genealogists rely upon archival records as they research family trees. These collections help researchers, regardless of discipline, bring history to life. Archival records go beyond dry old files (though there are plenty of those in archival collections as well) and include documents and photos that allow us to glimpse the past. A picture of a football game in the Rock Bowl before the stands were built.While time travel is impossible, looking through an old diary, examining old photographs, reading letters, all allow us to, if only for a brief moment, glimpse the past. We will never know what it was like to arrive in what is now Dubuque before the city was built, what it was like to witness the crash of the stock market and the ensuing Great Depression, or what it felt like the first year women were allowed to study at Loras, but we can begin to piece together all of those events through archival records. Don’t discount archival records as you research. You can never tell what new discovery you’ll make! To see for yourself, visit this page, and set up an appointment to view archival collections here. ...