Thoreau and Walden Pond

If you’re anywhere in the vicinity of campus, you are not so very far from Walden Pond and the many haunts of the New England transcendentalists. Thoreau in particular is in the limelight this year, as it is the bicentennial anniversary of his birth.

Concord, MA is where most of the movement was centered, the “biggest little place in America,” so Henry James once said. Concord is worth wandering for all manner of reasons, but I wanted to highlight the bicentennial events in case anyone wants to explore Thoreau in more detail this year.

There is, of course, Walden Pond. Its a state park these days, with hiking trails and swimming allowed, along with the requisite guided tours. You can check out more info on the Pond here.

The main event is probably the Concord Museum, one of the main locations to find all things Thoreau. They have several exhibits this year on Thoreau, and they’ve got an event for Thoreau’s birthday (July 12th, just around the corner!). The Museum also has exhibits on the other notable events and residents of Concord, and online exhibits as well for those farther afield.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t link to this article in the Paris Review. I must confess, I didn’t remember that this was the bicentennial on my own. The article popped up in my RSS feed, but I’m glad I did. Its an interesting read, whether you are a fan of Thoreau or not.

4th of July in New Hampshire

A Happy 4th of July to you all! I hope you have a day to sit back and relax. Me personally, I’m planning to watch baseball later today with hot dogs for dinner (a grand American tradition to be sure).

If you have a few minutes to spare, you can certainly review the resources from last year. This year I thought it would be fun to see what I could find specific to New Hampshire and the Revolutionary War.

Can you believe not a SINGLE battle occurred in New Hampshire? Seriously, none. There was a patented Paul Revere Midnight Ride to Portsmouth, NH to warm them about a plan to attack the Fort of William and Mary (now Fort Constitution, in the midst of a lovely park in Portsmouth that you can visit), and two of the warships captained by John Paul Jones were built in Portsmouth as well. Beyond that? The militia fought at several battles including Bunker Hill, and there’s General John Stark of course.

Beyond that my favorite little anecdote is one that I learned of because a brewery named themselves after the man who started the riot. No, really. And the beer’s pretty good too. It seems to be a New Hampshire thing. It’s called the Pine Tree Riot, and you can read a bit about it here. (If you follow the College, I’m sure you saw the students who went around NH and toured 30 breweries in 30 days. They started at the one I mentioned, Able Ebenezer.)

Its almost camp time!

Not summer camp (or summer program, if you’re coming to the College), but Camp NaNo! I’m ready to go– new laptop, got my writing program, got a vague idea. For those unfamiliar, Camp NaNo is an extension of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), in which you commit to writing a 50,000 word novel. It can be done (I’ve managed it only twice, granted, but twice! Its not nothing!).

For anyone who’s thought about doing NaNoWriMo in November, think of camp as a good introduction. NaNoWriMo has some fairly strict rules– you’re can write any type of fiction, but you’re writing a novel when all’s said and done and up until the last few years it had to be a completely new work. They now allow you to work on a previous project, but only new words count toward the goal. Camp, on the other hand, can be used for any type of writing or even revising. You set your word goal, but you have a bit of flexibility there.

It’s fun, and you get email reminders as well as pep talks, plus you know you’re not the only crazy out there trying to do this. They also run word sprints on Twitter, and you can engage with your fellow campers on social media. If you’ve been trying to make yourself write, why not give it a shot? Camp starts July 1. Happy writing!

MIT & Internet Archive collaborate on digitization of some titles

Quick note to point you to this article, which details the collaboration between MIT and Internet Archive. Both are just down the road in Boston, and MIT is allowing some of its previous titles to be digitized and made available on Internet Archive, as well as letting libraries who own physical copies of the work lend digital copies. Check out the article for more details!

Summertime, and the reading’s easy…

I know summer reading is seen as something of a threat to students yearning for a summer’s respite. Personally, I adore reading in the summer (though I also love reading in the spring, fall, and winter, so I think its a year round affliction more than seasonal.) Our local public library does a summer reading program– one for kids, one for teens, and even one for adults! I do love a good reading challenge.

What is everyone planning to read this summer? My ‘to be read’ list is long, and probably always will be, but I have a few things that look to be good reading in the short term. I’m currently reading Whose Body, the first Lord Peter Whimsy mystery by Dorothy Sayers. I’m enjoying it so far, though I’m coming off a binge through Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher mysteries (at least the ones the public library had), and those move a touch quicker.

Beyond that? I’ve had Kristen Lavensdatter staring at me since the spring and I think I’m finally ready to read. I also have Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem waiting. In the lighter, quicker reads department I have books a plenty: Nina George’s The Little French Bistro, Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of AJ Fickery, Annie Burrows and Marie Schaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, and Jennifer Ryan’s The Chilbury’s Ladies Choir. I also have a slew of books on housekeeping, homemaking, and hygge that I’m reading on the side.

What do you have lined up for the summer? Are you participating in summer reading program or going it alone?

Quick year end wrap up

So what did we accomplish this year? A quick rundown for you:

Established Koha as the electronic catalog for the school. Currently available on the library network
We cataloged 3000 books over the course of the year
This is awesome when you consider we were without a network for close to two months, impeding the students and myself from adding any records during that time
We received two very generous donations to the library– between them close to 4000 books! We’re currently going through them to determine what will be a good fit for the collection.
We got Interlibrary Loan up and running, connecting to NHAIS. In addition to being able to get updated holdings into their catalog, we were able to borrow books that our students needed, as well as share books from our collection with neighboring libraries.

I incredibly grateful to the 5 students who rotated through library work study this year (at least one from each class, no less!). They all worked hard and helped get us to this point– we can say we’re truly underway with this catalog, which was not the case 10 months ago.

Special shout out to my “IT department”– my husband and my brother, who helped pull wire and fight the technological imps that threatened to drag us down. Those two are truly a blessing (even when the jokes are gently at my expense :D)

A brief hello

Oh poor blog, lost in the hustle and bustle of life. I unwittingly let the entire academic year go by without pushing publish on the posts I had in mind. Oops! To be fair, I am now on my third computer since the fall, and the technology in the library was also, well… You ever see Chicken Run? When Mr. Tweedy bursts into the house and screams “The chickens are revolting!” Yeah, that was kind of the story of me and computers this year. Good times, good times.

Now, however, it is summer, and my hope is that everything will settle down and let me get updates out for all of you lovely folks.

Cheers!

Area Exhibit: More Shakespeare!

This past weekend, the College hosted the Fall play. Thus year’s production was Love’s Labours Lost, so it’s only fitting to find this exhibit for those wanting more Shakespeare.

Now through the end of March, the Boston Public Library is running an exhibit on Shakespeare highlighting pieces from their collection, including a First Folio. If you missed the First Folio during it’s stop at the Currier earlier this year, you have another chance.

The Battle of Hastings and the Bayeux Tapestry

Today marks the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. To my disappointment, I was obviously not at Battle Abbey to see the reenactment, nor was I in Bayeux looking at the Tapestry. The internet, however, is a magical thing and it can bring a little Hastings into your evening.

Here are some things to know before exploring the links below:

The Battle: The Battle of Hastings is considered the decisive victory that allowed William I (also known as the Conqueror, the Norman, the Duke of Normandy, and the Bastard) to claim the throne of England.
The Opponent: William’s opponent in the battle was Harold Godwinson. Harold was the Earl of Wessex before ascending the throne. He is the last Anglo Saxon King, and had a short reign. He was crowned in January 1066 and lost that crown in October of the same year
The Predecessor: Prior to Harold and William, the throne belonged to St Edward the Confessor– his feast day was yesterday, October 13th. Harold may be the last Anglo Saxon King of England, but Edward is best remembered and considered a successful, strong, energetic king.
The Family: Harold’s sister was married to Edward the Confessor. William was a first cousin once removed of Edward’s. So we’re dealing with claims that have to be enforced at the end of a sword, basically.
The Tapestry: Almost everyone has seen the Bayeux Tapestry, or at least part of it. They may not know it, however. Ever laugh at one of those medieval memes? Yeah, those are figures from the Bayeux Tapestry. I’ll leave most of the explanations to the link below but suffice to say, you should care about the Bayeux Tapestry even if you aren’t into needlework.

Links for your edification

The Bayeux Museum— Located in Bayeux, France the Museum is the home of the Bayeux Tapestry and they have a nice online exhibit regarding the Tapestry, its importance as a historical document, and the history of the piece.
Bayeux Tapestry at the Reading Museum— a digital version of the Tapestry, based on a Victorian Reproduction, the Tapestry is available by section. Wikipedia has a single continuous image of the tapestry.
Battle Abbey— Run by English Heritage, the site of the Battle of Hastings has information for you to peruse.

Finally for those perusing the collection, you’ll want to head to the stacks. The first two rows hold general history and early English history.

For fun: Guess the newest addition to the OED

Language is, among many things, ever evolving. Also fun. I mean, you have to approach it with some fun, don’t you? How many brands of humor involve words, after all?

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED for those of us on a first name/had to haul it out of the stacks into the Cremens room basis) publishes updates once a quarter– language is ever changing after all. This quarter had a fair bit of fun in it, though, as the folks at the OED celebrated the 100th anniversary of Roald Dahl’s birth. So if you ever need to find a definition for frightsome, scrumptious, splendiferousness, or scrumdiddlyumtious, you’ll know where to go

A Library for All Seasons

The Warren Memorial Library at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts