“R.A.I.L.S. Receives Grant from Illinois State Library to Refresh L2” by S.M. O’Connor

The Reaching Across Illinois Library System (R.A.I.L.S.) has received a grant from the Illinois State Library (I.S.L.) to restructure and “refresh” Library Learning (L2), a R.A.I.L.S. spokeswoman announced on Wednesday, May 1, 2019. The changes should make it more “robust and flexible.” In 2008, the Illinois Regional Library Systems then existent created L2 as a collaborative effort as a continuing education calendar and it rapidly expanded into a directory of public libraries, school libraries, academic libraries, and special libraries that were system members.

Overtime, it has become tool uses by staff at system member libraries, library systems, Local Library System Automation Projects (L.L.S.A.P.s),[1] and the Illinois State Library as it evolved into a statewide calendar for continuing education, networking meetings, catalog consortium training, and other events. Library staff members search for and register for these events and track attendance via L2. They can use L2 to find colleagues of like mind for networking purposes and create e-mail lists based on staffing positions. Public libraries event use L2 to keep track of non-resident card participation, as required by state law. L2 provides data on system member libraries such as contact information for staff members; building information; delivery data for interlibrary loans (e.g., codes, routes, and delivery frequency); and Integrated Library System (I.L.S.) types (e.g., standalone, shared catalog consortium). Since 2011, after the merger of five of the Illinois Regional Library Systems in Northern Illinois and Central Illinois into R.A.I.L.S.,[2] it has been R.A.I.L.S. that maintained L2.

The R.A.I.L.S. will issue a Request for Proposal (R.F.P.) and choose a consultant to work on the project. The grant period will be eighteen months. The R.A.I.L.S. will keep system member libraries apprised of developments and give members opportunities to share how they use L2.

ENDNOTES

[1] In Illinois, a Local Library System Automation Project (L.L.S.A.P.) maintains a union catalog for a catalog consortium. Each consortium is financed by member libraries and a system grant from the I.S.L. The R.A.I.L.S. gives financial and in-kind services to three L.L.S.A.P.s: PrairieCat, the Resource Sharing Alliance (R.S.A.), and the System Wide Automated Network (S.W.A.N.). In addition, there are three consortia that receive only core services from R.A.I.L.S.: Cooperative Computer Services, the Pinnacle Library Cooperative, and the Rock River Library Consortium.

[2] Effective Friday, July 1, 2011, the Metropolitan Library System (M.L.S.), DuPage Library System (D.L.S.), North Suburban Library System (N.S.L.S.), Alliance Library System (A.L.S.), and Prairie Area Library System (P.A.L.S.) merged into the R.A.I.L.S. On that same date, the Lewis & Clark Library System (LSLS), Lincoln Trail Library System (L.T.L.S.), Rolling Prairie Library System (R.P.L.S.), and Shawnee Library System (S.L.S.) merged into the Illinois Heartland Library System (I.H.L.S.).

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.