Last semester, English professor Dr. Rai Peterson called for students from various disciplines across the university student body to assist her in a 33-week immersive learning seminar (to see our original post on this seminar, click here). Her project seeks to reshape and expand the reach of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis via several approaches, including new marketing, expanded advertising, and the preservation of original and rare Vonnegut artifacts. At this point in the semester, the seminar has set its sights on collecting and digitizing many Vonnegut artifacts, and these efforts have begun to gain national attention. The latest example is  from “The Digital Shift,” an extension of Library Journal, which discusses the seminar’s intentions to bring rare and unique documents such as Vonnegut’s letters and manuscripts to the library in digital form. This article, entitled, “Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Tackling Digitation,” also describes some of the future plans of Dr. Peterson and her student interns, which include a film project and “mobile library.” Continue below to read a short blurb from Dr. Peterson and click the link to view the full article from “The Digital Shift.”

Our seminar students will be creating digital manuscript and film/audio archives, re-designing gift shop products, and building a traveling museum for the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.  Because of great publicity like this, we are already receiving requests for the products of our seminar, and we’ve only just begun.  Stay tuned because we have big things to unveil as our seven month-long project unfolds. Click the link below to view the full article from “The Digital Shift.”

“Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Tackling Digitation,” from “The Digital Shift:” http://bit.ly/tUidZD