BY RON EID Rarely does the term “research library”conjure images of material treasures, but IU’s Lilly Library on East 7th Street, facing Showalter Fountain, allows you to see, and in most cases hold and leaf through, actual treasures in its rare-book collection. Among the 400,000 books are the New Testament of the Gutenberg Bible (printed in 1455), The First Folio of Shakespeare (1623), and “illuminated” Books of Hours—medieval manuscripts illustrated, in some cases, with applied gold and silver. “We very much believe in the books as physical objects as well as intellectual content,” says Rebecca Cape, head of Reference and Public Services for the Library. Not all of their treasures are books. There are also 130,000 pieces of sheet music, about 7 million [...]

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