It may be #PreservationWeek, but we're all about preservation all year long! Rachael Johns, Senior Digital Imaging Specialist, recently presented at digiTIPS on the process of digitizing color negatives.

Here in Champaign, we're celebrating the Day of the Mushroom with some technicolor champignons! While we wouldn't necessarily recommend eating any of those pictured here, April is prime morel season in Illinois.

As Illinois heads to the Final Four this weekend, we celebrate the beginning of National Poetry Month with an unexpected basketball icon: Carl Sandburg.

We're preparing for the @illinoisfunk.bsky.social Invasive Species panel on April 21 by looking at some insects in the Digital Special Collections! Luckily for the entomophobics among us, the ocellated shield bug has not been found in the United States.

Get excited! We'll host our 8th annual panel on April 21, with the theme Invasive Species! If you come in person, you'll also enter a raffle for 2 books related to invasive species. Learn more here: guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=1123...

"In need of some inspiration for National Craft Month? Look no further than the Digital Library! Originally intended for damask weaving and carpets, we're also dreaming up cross stitch and needlepoint projects with these 1828 charts.

We're celebrating Presidents' Day with a look back through the camera lens! In December 2025, we digitized a pop-up card of the Lincoln Memorial in volume XVIII of the Abraham Lincoln scrapbooks created by Henrietta Calhoun Horner held by the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? While we're pretty sure a woodchuck (AKA groundhog) isn't the cause of the damage of this circa 1728 woodblock, we sometimes see evidence of historic insect activity or other damage in the items we digitize.

What changes in a decade? In 2016, we had just changed our name from Digital Content Creation and joined Preservation Services. The beta version of the Digital Library was also being launched! The display might be different (swipe to compare 2016 and 2026), but the content will always be the same!

#ForeedgeFriday or #MarbledMonday? It's the end of our first week back in the office and we're still trying to figure out what day it is! The mid-18th century French binding of the @illinoisrbml.bsky.social Catholicon (1469) features gilt marbled edges.

If you've ever encountered a wavy, distorted, or rainbow-colored pattern when looking at a photograph, that's a-moiré! All punning aside, we've recently been seeing some moiré in our images of halftone illustrations, seen here in the bits of color in the background of this map facsimile (image 1).

Have you ever noticed a strip of colorful squares in an image you downloaded from the Digital Special Collections? That strip is known as a color target, and it helps to make sure we are hitting our mark when it comes to accurately representing content.

Daylight Savings ended for much of the US over the weekend. Did you remember to change your clocks? Find this bookplate from @illinoisrbml.bsky.social in the Digital Special Collections: go.library.illinois.edu/OnderdonkPlate

Our dual capture digitization system might be dressed for The Handmaid's Tale, but we celebrate #BannedBooksWeek every week by increasing access to texts through digitization.

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with the recipes of Maria Luisa Sanchez, a student of the Escuela de pequeñas industrias del estado Puebla in the 1920s. Her handwritten cookbook contains classics like "Adobo de Pollo" and "Budín de Elote."

Pepperoni pizza, anyone? We're not quite sure why, but this week's #MarbledMonday is making us feel a bit hungry! Whet your appetite for knowledge with Das erste Buch für Kinder, die gern bald lesen lernen wollen from @illinoisrbml.bsky.social: go.library.illinois.edu/Marbled1810

Happy first day of classes, Illini! Get back to basics with this 1552 Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum ; protyrunculis Richardo Huloeto exscriptore from @illinoisrbml.bsky.social

All caught up on your summer reading and looking for something different? Look no further than our Exhibits page! This image comes from a deep dive into our quality control metrics that help ensure our images are faithful representations of the physical objects from various special collections.

July is Read an Almanac Month, and appropriately for today's weather, the marbled endpaper from this @illinoisrbml.bsky.social one looks like it has been feeling the heat! Alla Nina lontana : almanacco per l'anno bisestile 1824: go.library.illinois.edu/AllaNina #MarbledMonday

Spot the Difference: Map Edition! Each half of this map from @illinoismaps.bsky.social was photographed with the same lighting and camera settings. The difference? The background! While we usually use black for contrast, some translucent materials require white. Which one would you choose?

Are you feeling the heat? Cool off with this recipe for Helado de Coco! This recently digitized cookbook from @illinoisrbml.bsky.social was compiled by Maria Luisa Sanchez in the 1920s. Find this recipe and more: go.library.illinois.edu/MariaLuisaSa...

Gwendolyn Brooks was born #OnThisDay in 1917. We're celebrating by looking back at her Black Scrapbook, part of the Gwendolyn Brooks Digital Collection from @illinoisrbml.bsky.social Learn more about how we digitized it: go.library.illinois.edu/DigitizingBr...

We showed our experiment with cross-polarization the other week, and now here is the final result! Glossy paper and staples can often result in specular highlights that "blow out" the image, but we were able to account for them through cross-polarization.

Close out Preservation Week by checking out our new video with Senior Digital Imaging Specialist Rachael Johns on creating facsimiles of special collections material and how to edit files for perfect printing: go.library.illinois.edu/FacsimileFil...

To continue the Preservation Week fun, take a look at some images from our recent experiment with gold leaf. An axial light source positioned in different ways with different power levels changes how the gold leaf pops and draws the eye in different directions. Which image would you choose?

We just had to take one last look at the 90 Years of Preservation exhibit for Preservation Week! Our case highlighted some of the tools and techniques we use to digitize special collections materials. Thanks to all the people that made the exhibit possible, and to all who stopped by!

April is National Deaf History Month. In 1644, John Bulwer attempted to record the vocabulary contained in hand gestures through his Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of the Hand. Though the volume is aimed toward orators for use in rhetoric, Bulwer would later advocate for d/Deaf education.

It might be National Poetry Month, but we're not quite ready to give up Women's History Month! These graphite drawings and poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, created nearly ninety years ago this month, are the best of both worlds.

"What a difference 100 years makes! #OnThisDay in 1925, the Main Library was under construction.

Begin Women's History Month with the Women Printers Digital Collection from @illinoisrbml.bsky.social! Anne Griffin, printer, and Anne Boler, bookseller, were frequent collaborators on theological works such as this 1636 Meditations and disquisitions upon the Lord's prayer.