Library Blogs

The U-M Library recently added the capability to search across Chinese-language materials in our catalog, regardless of which Chinese character set was used in the query or the record. This improvement expands to our large collection of materials and improves the user experience.

It is with pride and excitement that we announce the acquisition of the Marcelo Mirisola Papers – an archival collection that comprises 5 boxes of materials produced in the Portuguese language by renowned Contemporary Brazilian author Marcelo Mirisola during the first 15 years of his writing career (1989–2004).

This post is by Sumeyra Dursun, 2023 Heid Fellow, from her research in the Islamic Manuscripts Collection. Sumeyra is a doctoral candidate in the history of Islamic arts at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice is an outstanding mystery novel set in 1915-1919, featuring Sherlock Holmes and his new partner in crime-solving, the brilliant teenager Mary Russell. In this first novel in a long-running series, they are faced with a criminal mastermind who is targeting Holmes and everyone associated with him. This year marks the 30th anniversary of this novel, which is one of my favorite books of all time.

Spotlight on food history features prepared by students enrolled in Much Depends on Dinner in Winter 2024. Students worked in groups to research and write captions for food history materials in the Special Collections Research Center's Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive and in the collections of the William L. Clements Library.

In Fall 2023, students enrolled in Dr. Margot Finn's course on the science, culture, and politics of obesity worked in groups to research and write captions for food history materials in the Special Collections Research Center. These were featured on the Shapiro Library Screens in Bert's Study Lounge and are also presented below:

The story of how the Seed Library, housed within the Design-O-Matic on the first floor of the Shapiro Library, sprouted!

Happy Birthday Stefan is an Pinteresque comedy short film following Stefan, an early 20s pre-med student. After a long day, Stefan comes home to find his family and friends have thrown a surprise party for him. The only problem is it’s not his birthday, and he’s never met any of these people in his life.
This work, while standing alone as solely a chaotically psychedelic milieu, further serves as a repurposed trenchant political allegory on the current crisis of democratic backsliding and populist rhetoric in the United States.
Happy Birthday Stefan allows viewers to contemplate the danger of U.S democracy being overturned, and who dictates whether or not this happens. In the age of the “uninformed voter,” and amidst the political regression sweeping the nation, exemplified from insurrection to reproductive rights restriction to rampant civilian onslaught, this message has never been more relevant.

Iphis and Ianthe is a short film that places the Greek myth of the same name in a more contemporary framework.

The original myth of Iphis and Ianthe tells the story of an impoverished couple in ancient Crete who is forced to give up their daughter due to their inability to afford her future dowry price. However, on the evening before the delivery of her daughter, Telethusa prays to the goddess Isis for a solution. Isis gives her word that she will have a daughter but the next day, Telethusa gives birth to a daughter. She hides her child’s gender to her husband and raises the baby as a boy, naming him Iphis. Iphis grows up unaware of his differences from his male friends. One day, he meets a young woman named Ianthe and they instantly fall in love. Iphis quickly asks for her hand in marriage but fears her discovery of his female sex. He begs Isis to make him a biological man and she grants his wish, fulfilling her promise to Telethusa 18 years prior.

Our film updates this story, questioning the idea that all transgender individuals seek surgery to alleviate their dysphoria. Instead, we discuss Iphis’s process of learning how to accept his body and becoming comfortable sharing himself with another human being.

Team PACT stands for “Preventive and Accessible Cervical Cancer Testing” and is an M-HEAL project team. We formed in the Fall of 2021.
Team PACT is partnered with Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana to develop a method for
cervical cancer screening that is effective, non-invasive, and cost-efficient. Our device
accomplishes this by collecting urine to be screened for high-risk HPV strains. Our mission is
to design a cervical cancer screening urine collection device for genotypic females aged
21-65 who are unable or uncomfortable with getting tested by a medical professional.