Treasures from the Library: Mr. Belloc Objects…

Those who follow over on Instagram are probably familiar with this little volume; I was too amused not to share it right away. The volume is slender, showing wear along the spine, and was tucked up high, almost against the ceiling. I doubt it had been taken down anytime recently, which means its still in pretty good condition.

Often, we lament the slings and arrows of outrageous media in our day; personalities and politicians and everyone with an internet connection feels entitled to defend, attack, and otherwise yell on their digital soapbox. ‘Oh, for the old days!’ — a lament I’m sure you all have heard. There’s this image that we have of the past, sepia toned and quiet, where everyone was always well behaved and no one ever disagreed. How we manage to maintain this image in light of, you know, history boggles the mind.

The advantage, or disadvantage, of the past was that not everyone had a metaphorical soap box (the actual soap boxes were, of course, easier to come by and pitch in a park). Those who ran publishing houses and newspapers chose the voices they magnified. It meant that you had to have enough consequence to be able to have your words published for the masses. Hilaire Belloc certainly possessed that consequence, as did HG Wells.

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Behold, a first edition HG Wells. Not one of great monetary value, perhaps, but isn’t that a cool sentence to be able to type? This particular work is entitled “Mr. Belloc Objects to the Outline of History.” Again, as with most of these that I’ve been able to find, we possess the less illustrious American copy. Clocking in at 96 pages, this book was the result of a battle in the press between Mr. Wells and Mr. Belloc. Wells had published his “Outline of History“; Belloc took umbrage to it and published a series of articles that would become “A Companion to Mr. Wells’s Outline of History”. Wells took umbrage with Belloc’s umbrage, and there you are.

As it happens, we have all three books in the catalog– this one just happened to be the first one based on call number. I’ll be hunting down the other two, never you fear. They may or may not be from the same time period, but its nice to have the whole picture. “Outline of History” is available online and linked above, “A Companion to Mr. Wells’s Outline of History” is not.

Mr. Wells
Mr. Wells
Mr. Belloc
Mr. Belloc

THOMAS.gov is going home…

THOMAS.gov is going home…

Library school was about 8 years ago for me, and one of my classes involved government research. As it happens, that was how I was introduced to Twitter but, more to the point, how I became aware of THOMAS. At the time, THOMAS was a big deal– launched in 1995, it started out as a bleeding edge resource, making Congressional proceedings available for free. Basically, if you were trying to look into anything that Congress did, you went to this website.

Remember, for a moment, what the internet was like in 1995. If you need a refresher, trying viewing some of the internet relics that are out there: Space Jam is a perennial favorite; for something more comparable, check out the Wayback Machine for Yahoo. Compare that to THOMAS, and you were much farther ahead. As with most technology, we’ve reached the end of life for the THOMAS system– its simply not robust enough for modern users or browsers.

Several years ago, the Library of Congress introduced Congress.gov, the successor to THOMAS. Now comes the final word: THOMAS is retiring July 5. (Side note: I have considered and discarded numerous Hamilton related puns. You’re welcome). LOC has a full write up for those interested. In the meantime, if you are looking for any Congressional sessions, resolutions, bills, treaties, or general information make sure you are going to Congress.gov rather than THOMAS.

For Fun: Bodleian Library acquires annotated map of Middle Earth

We are something of a ‘divided’ household when it comes to the Inklings: I’m a CS Lewis fan, my husband is very much a Tolkien fan. That’s not to say that we don’t read both, more to say where preferences lie. Whichever you prefer, the original illustrations for Lord of the Rings and Narnia are in the same style, having been done by the same artist.

The map in question was actually found among the books of the artist, Pauline Baynes. The Guardian has a good write up on the map, which you can find here. You’ll also want to make sure you check out the write up from Bodleian about the acquisition– it includes a picture of the map as well as the post map that Baynes illustrated in 1970.

I was in Oxford once, though it was only for about 2 hours so I wasn’t able to go really anywhere that I wanted to. For those who have been, did you see anything from the Tolkien collection? Or any of the other special collections?

Shakespeare 400 and the First Folio

Shakespeare 400 and the First Folio

Forgive the silence of the last week; even I cannot find away to make reorganizing spreadsheets sound fun. Because Excel doesn’t have a native functionality for sorting by call number, it is up to us to sort the sheets for the shelf read. It’s just as charming and delightful as you might imagine.

But! I return with a quick review of “First Folio! The Book that Gave us Shakespeare” We went last Saturday but I decided to hold the write up until today, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. For those in New Hampshire (or really anywhere in the Boston area), the place to go is the Currier Museum of Art. The Currier is a great little museum on its own, and New Hampshire residents get in free on Saturday mornings until noon.

When you first enter the museum, the exhibit is to your left (there’s plenty of signage). The Currier is also running an exhibit through their library on potion books from the time of Shakespeare, and that is signed as well.

So I freely admit that I could have elbowed people out of the way to take a picture of the folio, but I didn’t. I thought it was more important to read the exhibit, to actually read the folio, and to explain it to my son. What surprised me was how small it is; the fact is that this volume represents the first time that 18 of Shakespeare’s play appeared in print, but its not that big a book.I grant you, its bigger then a book you’d take on an airplane, but it can be easy to forget that the publisher at the time was just concerned with putting out a book, not a historical artifact. Its immensely cool, nonetheless and well worth a trip.

The Currier’s installation is in their European art wing, so we wandered through those pieces as well:

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Most of the art in there can’t have photos taken, so I only snagged two of the medieval pieces, but they’re quite lovely. The Folio is up until May, but the Potion exhibit the library is running will be up a little longer, and you want to make sure not to miss it either:

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The exhibit is made up of medical texts and herbologies from the time of Shakespeare. Its also less crowded then the Folio room so you can spend more time looking things over without feeling guilty that you’re blocking others.

You can find a great deal of information on what is out there for celebrating Shakespeare; a quick search of Twitter for #Shakespeare400 will do the trick. For the locals, consider checking out St. Anselm’s marathon reading of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which takes place Monday.

Treasures from the Library: A Collection of Poems by many hands

As mentioned previously, April is National Poetry Month, so I’ve tried to find a few poetry volumes in the collection for our Thursdays. First up is a book that actually hasn’t been processed into the collection yet!

I was finishing up on Saturday afternoon when I realized I hadn’t set aside a book of poetry for this very post. Not having an abundance of time, I went to my office to see if there was anything of interesting hiding on the shelves among the books awaiting catalog. I found this particular work tucked gently on top of a row of books, I imagine because its incredibly fragile. For those worried about the current disposition of the book, it is safely isolated to help preserve it as best we can.

The poor thing has seen better days, to be sure. The cover is long gone, having not made its way to us, and the spine is pretty much gone as well. I was hesitant to touch it too much, so I’ve only got the one snapshot:

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Take a moment to read that publication date (go ahead, I’ll wait). 1775! People, that book is older than this country. Given that New Hampshire was the first colony to establish a government separate from the Crown, it predates this state as an autonomous governing unit. It does not predate the town of Merrimack, however (Merrimack being incorporated in 1746).

Sadly this is the only volume of the 6 that we have. It was originally published in 1748 by Robert Dodsley. You’ll notice the copy we have is credited to J. Dodsley; that would be his brother James, who took over the publishing house after Robert’s death and published this particular reissue.

As to the poetry inside? Check out Archive.org for all 6 volumes.

Planning for pruning

When at last we have a handle on what we have, what we don’t have, and what has already been acquired, there will come a (likely long needed) pruning of the collection. Pruning sounds so much better than weeding doesn’t it? Call it pruning, weeding, deselection, discarding, collection maintenance, or “throwing out books, you uncivilized lout!” it is a necessary part of collection development and management.

The time is not remotely close, but when it does arrive, the question will be what to do with the books that can no longer call the Warren home sweet home? A number of these books began their lives calling other libraries home. Can a book find a 3rd library home after 2 deselections? I have my doubts but I’m willing to try. On the other hand, we could run a deselection outlet online, selling those books which are too damaged to continue or which no longer fit within the library– if you know anyone who wants an old science textbook we can probably part with a few. But not the actual ancient ones, like Aristotle. Those still have a home.

There is an argument that is made that everything should be held because it has some historical value, however slight. Certainly there are books that, if held onto long enough, begin to have value on the other side. The question then is whether you can afford the maintenance and physical plant costs? Given the number of books awaiting processing, the answer is likely no. There will be a number of deselections in the future, and that is for the health of the collection. Never fear, I will not be taking this on alone. There is certainly be faculty input. In the meantime, I wonder how large an audience I’d have for those books we do eventually part ways with. Is there an audience? It would be a good bump to the library budget, for sure, and that is a practical consideration to be sure.

Digital Resources: Online Library of Liberty

The Library received a donation several years ago comprising a large portion of the Liberty Fund catalog. Poli sci major and history lover that I am, I could happily spend months reading my way through. I remember seeing their booth on the exhibit floor of ALA annual the year I was able to go. They had a beautiful 2 volume set of the works of James Wilson and I bought it as fast as humanly possible (And who is James Wilson? The most important founding father you’ve never heard of, and I swear I will write his biography one of these days).

At the time, they were happy to sell a set that must have accounted for a decent chunk of the shipping bill. They threw a few CDs into my bag as well, telling me it was a large portion of their collection in eBook form. I was still very much in the print only realm, so I thanked them and moved on. When I finally started to get into eBooks, I messed around with the digital library but never found a good way to get a handle on eBooks and PDFs.

Fast forward to now: Google books is my go to reader, with a heavy assist from Overdrive and the public library collection. Google, of course, will allow you to sideload PDFs into the app and there you are. Sadly, my Wilson and my CD are a country away with the rest of my book collection (to the everlasting delight of my parents, who are graciously storing said book collection.) I decided to poke around, as my cyclical interest in the American founding is picking up steam.

To my everlasting delight, the whole thing is online! And now I share it with you: The Online Library of Liberty. Don’t let my love of politics scare you away; the works available span Ancient Asia, Greece, and Rome to modern day thinkers across a variety of disciplines. You can download works in a variety of formats, including PDFs, ePubs, and Kindle format. I like the ePubs a bit better than Project Gutenberg; they’re cleaner and neater, as you’d expect from a larger organization. Project Gutenberg has, of course, a much larger range and is worth your time as well.

Saturday Librarian: Small victories

Small victories are important; they keep you going. Those into gamification might explain the little squirt of dopamine and the science behind the reward centers of the brain. Me, I like to see that progress bar go tick, tick, tick. The stacks are coming along, at a total of 775 records verified, which is nearly the total I was able to process over last semester. With good luck (and no flu relapses) I should beat that number handily.

The titular small victory, though, is not the pace of the shelf read. Rather, I have finished the review of all C books! If you’ve followed along on Instagram, the last few weeks have shown books dealing with futurist, history, heraldry, modern takes on history, and a smattering of philosophy of history.The C category of the Library of Congress encompasses “The Auxiliary Sciences of History.” Should you want to view the breakdown, the Library of Congress has the information available online.

Hopefully you enjoy history as much as I do, because we’re now moving into history proper in the form of the D section, which encompasses “World History and the History of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.” The break down is also available online, in case you have a burning curiosity about who was relegated to “etc” Don’t expect to hear about the end of the D section for a while yet– there are at least 3775 records to verify, and books have an odd way of sneaking onto the shelves with call numbers and barcodes without ever creating a record.

I leave you today with some humorous history:

The Libraries of Herculaneum

A quick note to point you to the following article: The libraries of Herculaneum: Not quite destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius? The news came out a week or so ago so some of you may have already seen it, but its worth another highlight.

There are really two things worth noting. First, prior to this discovery, the first known usage of leaded ink was the 4th century. Herculaneum, of course, was destroyed in 79 AD, well before that benchmark. Second, there is the technique for reading the scrolls. Obviously you don’t try to unfold burnt paper; you really don’t try to unfold it when it was burned over 1900 years ago. Having the ability to read these scrolls would be important to our understanding of these communities as well as the Roman world at the time. Paper being a natural fiber, it doesn’t last very long. I wonder what the scrolls hold…