You are invited to attend the exhibit, "A Cabinet of Curiosity: The Library's Dead Time," by Julia Pollack and GSLIS Assistant Professor Bonnie Mak. The exhibit will be held at Figure One Gallery, 116 N. Walnut, in downtown Champaign on February 17-18 from 5:00-9:00pm.

For over two millennia, librarians have played a critical role in the production and transmission of knowledge. They have helped to collect, catalogue, and curate a vast range of materials that constitute much of our cultural heritage—from epic poetry on papyrus scrolls to PDFs of scholarly articles. We seek to examine and interrogate these practices by building a cabinet of curiosity, and populating it with examples of the library’s “dead time,” that is, activities in the library that routinely pass by, unmarked and unmeasured. A guided tour of the cabinet and its contents will bring to light how the librarian is key in crafting the paths by which people may come upon information. The discussion will furthermore emphasize the increasing significance of the relationship between the librarian and the public, given the proliferation of commercially-mediated “data” on the Internet. By foregrounding and problematizing the everyday practices of the librarian, the exhibition reveals the ways in which information continues to be carefully formulated and prepared for consumption—not only in the library, but also elsewhere.

This exhibit is free and open to the public.

Julia Pollack is an artist, a GSLIS master’s student, and a graduate assistant in reference instruction at the University of Illinois. Her work, “The Universal Standard Encyclopedia,” was recently featured in Accepted Knowing: Peer Review at the Figure One Gallery. Bonnie Mak is assistant professor of library and information science at the University of Illinois, and holds a joint appointment in the Program for Medieval Studies. Her book, How the Page Matters, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2011.