This is your Brain on the Lilly Library

One of the things that the Intensive Freshmen Seminars are designed to do is introduce the new freshmen to wonderful opportunities and facilities here on the IUB campus. For lack of a better word, we take FIELD TRIPS. Now, sometimes these fit nicely with the content of the course. My colleague, Andrew Weaver, is teaching an IFS course on Human Agression. He was able to send his students to the IU Art Museum and ask them to look for examples of violent or agressive behavior represented in art. Great idea!

Other times, the field trips are only tangentially connected. But, they still seem encouraged by the IFS. For my course, some of the connections seemed a stretch...I sent them to the art musuem, and I suppose art is a medium...

But, yesterday, we visited the Lilly Library...a special collections library that I'm sad to say I hadn't yet visited in my 10 years in Bloomington. It was fabulous! And, the students had an engaging time. Check this out:

Here's Brittany and student Jeremy looking at a sample of the library's collection of miniature books.

Sam takes a picture of one of the worlds only Gutenberg Bibles.

My IFS intern Jeremy looks at an Audobon painting.

One of the biggest "hits" of the visit was the Jerry Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection. Here are Stephanie, Adam, Michael and Meg stretching their brains in different ways.

And finally, here's Ross holding one of John Ford's Oscar statues! After all, Ford won 4 of them...more than any other director...so I guess he could donate at least one, 'eh?

Ross is interested in becoming a Telecommunications major...and so I told him there is a fair chance that this won't be the last Oscar gold he'll hold