Treasures from the Library: What’s Wrong with the World.

As I was wrapping up for the day and waiting for my ride on Saturday, I indulged in a little hunting amoung the incoming books. Spoiler alert: lots of Civil War history, lots of Church history. I was on a mission, however, to find interesting books. Heraldry is nice and all, but it doesn’t necessarily merit its own write up, especially when the books are all mass market volumes.

Among the slim encyclicals and the fatter books about long fought battles, I spied the tell tale spine of an early 20th century hardback. I’ve run across so many in the last few weeks that I can spot them on sight. Not the most useful skill in the wider world but quite useful

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Adding some color to spring up the place, alongside our lovely volume

in my line of work. The thing I love about books from 1890 to about 1920 is the fact that they’re so sturdy. These things stand up better than some of the books I’ve run across from the 1960’s and 1970’s. But I digress.

I was not wrong in identifying the hardback in question. The publication year was 1910, making the book in question another 1st edition Chesterton. The work in question is “What’s Wrong with the World” and no, I did not leave off the question mark at the end. The title is quite declarative. The book is said to have spawned from a letter that Chesterton wrote to a newspaper (generally considered to be The Times). The paper posed the question to a good many writers of the day “What’s Wrong with the World?” and Chesterton wrote to them: “I am.”The book spans a variety of topics, including homelessness, imperialism, and education.

The volume we have is in shockingly good condition– there are no obvious marks or dings, no underlining or marginalia, and the smallest among of shelf wear on the corners. The previous owner clearly took care of his books. Because this book was part of the incoming donations, it is not yet processed into the collection or available for checkout. We do have other copies available for checkout in, located in the Newman Room as part of the Collected Works of Chesterton. Additionally, because the book is out of copyright, there is a free eBook copy available through Project Gutenberg.

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Another hallmark of the early 20th century, there’s always a fun little drawing or imprint on the title page

Saturday Librarian: *coughing*

I have been remiss the last two weeks, leaving you all without my signature charm and wit. All I can say on that score is that I truly hope none of you caught the flu this year, because MAN is it a beast. I can’t say that I’m fully recovered even yet, but recovered enough to go about my business.

It was a bummer for me, not least because it overlapped with spring break for the students, which is a good time to get into the classrooms and get some shelving done. I had also hoped to snag a couple of cool poetry books to highlight for you on Thursdays this month, as it is National Poetry month. Alas and alack, we shall have to do with some Chesterton to kick us off this week (hardly a sacrifice) and I shall find some cool poetry volumes for the rest of the month.

Progress report time: losing two weeks does not do wonders for the numbers, but we are seeing steady progress in the stacks. A total of 685 books have been verified since we started working the stacks, for a respectable 4.13% in 9 working days (Saturdays only at this juncture.) Still have to pick up the pace to get the library where it needs to be, but we’re getting there!

This week’s interesting finds:

Note the publication date…
Remember that publication date?

Treasures from the Library: Hilaire Belloc’s The Crusades

The plus side of spending hours in the stacks is the ability to scope out the shelves– a third of the collection sits at my fingertips, and among it are a few delightful, interesting, and odd finds. This week’s highlighted volume is Hilaire Belloc’s The Crusades: The World’s Debate.

Hilaire Belloc, as you may know, was an Anglo-Frenchman and a contemporary of GK Chesterton. He was a prolific writer, with works spanning history, politics, and verse. There are a number of his works in the collection, though not Cautionary Tales for Children (I detect a theme between the absence of this work and Old Possum…) I am, admittedly, poorly read when it comes to Belloc’s works– his Characters of the Reformation is currently on my shelf but that is it so far.

IMG_20160316_201604966Have you ever had that feeling, as you visually scan a shelf, that you’ve found something
interesting? I was taking a short break on Saturday, walking down the row of books and trying to avoid the temptation to ready my way through World War I when I was stopped by this one. The spine is so interesting, banner standing proud and proclaiming itself The Crusades.

Our copy of The Crusades: The World’s Debate was published in 1937, a first edition. In the work, Belloc discusses the history of the Crusades as well as reviewing the reasons why they ultimately failed. Despite the fact that this  book has resided in the stacks for a reasonably long period of time, and resided in another library prior (the stamp is faintly visible below our own), it is in good condition. The cloth on the spine is thin, but not yet broken, and the pages are browned but not overly brittle. The biggest draw back is the remnants of cellophane tape used to hold the first few pages in– not because the tape is failing, but because we need to decide how to address it. The tape did not hold the pages quite where they should have been, and there is wear on the edges as well.

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Still, a handsome edition to the collection. The Crusades is currently held for review (remember the tape?) but other Belloc historical works are available in the Stacks. Verse and fiction can be found in the Newman Room.

 

Paper Google, Index cards, and the evolution of information

Paper Google, Index cards, and the evolution of information

Many of you are fond of the card catalog, so this little find may be of some interest. Poking around on the internet, I came across an article on Popular Mechanics about the history of the index card, and how the advent of the modern index card was due in no small part to the development of the library catalog. As an aside, they referred to the Mundaneum in Brussels which maintained the world’s largest repository of documentation.

Intrigued, I looked it up. Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine started the project , creating the International Office of Sociological Bibliography in 1893. What started as a collection of books branched out to photographs, maps, newspapers and articles– microfiche was created in 1906 to help support the desire to document everything. Information, however, grew and grew and the scope of the project was rapidly expanded to the point where it was simply not possible to document everything. They did what they could, though.

The Mundaneum was more then just a collection of information, hence the nickname Paper Google. If you were to write into the Mundaneum and request information on a subject, sending along your blank index cards, you would receive them back with information. Cool, right?

Vast swaths of this collection of knowledge, however, are gone, lost to World War II. What is left can be fond in Mons, Brussels. Should I ever find myself in Brussels, I would certainly visit. Even so, the glimpse at a particular section of knowledge management is cool. After all, there is data and metadata, and technology to capture it. As one evolves, so do the others to catch up or take advantages of developments, and so it goes on. Index cards were an advantage over big catalog books that had to be reprinted with every change; electronic catalogs are an advantage over card catalogs where a work can only be classified one way (or more than one way but with many cards and man hours to facilitate it). It will be interesting to see what additional changes are in store in the future.

Saturday librarian: Slow and Steady

It is finally turning to spring here in New England, by which I mean one can go out with only 1-2 layers and a light coat, as opposed to being so bundled that only one’s eyes are visible. To be fair, it has been in the 50s the last few days and the trees are certainly budding; snowdrops are making their appearance on campus and the numerous ice cream stands that dot the roadside in New England are open for those willing to brave the occasional nippy breeze to take the stand that yes, this is spring! To be fair to me, I grew up in Southern California; this weather is most assuredly the heart of winter for one such as me.

Another perk of spring is that the stacks warm slightly, so that they are more of a cool cellar temperature as opposed to a meat locker. The temperature fluctuations in this part of the library are not as drastic as those sections of the building that are fully above ground, but none of it is good for the books. Nevertheless, they sit stalwart and keep the time until they are called upon. Perhaps the greatest temptation while working is to sit down and read awhile. As a politics major and a history geek, cataloging those sections of the library is a treat.

The shelf read continues apace; last week’s 2.67% completion has risen to 3.22%. Respectable for Saturdays? Certainly, but with the arrival of longer days I hope to put in more work to get that number increasing far more quickly. Progress is progress, friends, small though the number may be.

The other bit of news is that we now have an Instagram account specifically for the Library: @alibraryforallseasons. Give us a follow if you’d like to follow along in picture form!

Treasures from the Library: The Abolition of Man

This week’s Treasure is another American first edition. Invariably, we have American first editions of English authors, so the monetary value is not present so much as the enjoyment to be received from knowing that you hold in your hands one of the first copies of a work to cross the ocean and arrive on your country’s shores.

IMG_20160305_130133031C.S. Lewis presented the material that would become The Abolition of Man in a series of lectures at King’s College (University of Durham) in February 1943. The lectures were presented over the course of three nights, and the book follows suit, falling into three
sections. At its heart, the Abolition of Man is a defense of natural law– a set of beliefs and principles spanning time, religion, and geographical space across the world. Debunking such beliefs sets one up for a dystopian future. Though I doubt Lewis had The Hunger Games in mind when he wrote Abolition of Man, there certainly has been a literary trend toward the dystopian (personal favorites? The Giver by Lois Lowry; bone chillingly banal. Definitely worth a look, pay no mind to the YA label. Its good for everyone.)

A quick Google search shows that, by and large, people consider the work to be prescient when it comes to  predicting the way in which natural law has been discarded and the havoc that can wreak on society. Lewis’ own That Hideous Strength is a fictional take on the logical end of some of these ideas; Brave New World is also generally recommended in the same breath. Both can be found in the library, in the Newman Room.

The copy of The Abolition of Man that the College has, as you can see, was acquired from another institution’s deselection process. It is clearly marked as the first printing from IMG_20160305_130139403the US publisher, Macmillan. In looking around, I could not find a reason why the lectures were published almost immediately in England yet it took 5 years for them to cross the pond. I have my suspicions that the War played a hand in it, though books were certainly published during the war years– we have proof on our library shelves, special imprints and all (more on that next week!)

The copy is in good condition– a little wear on the edges, but no major defects. The circulating copies are all later editions, located in the Helm Room for those interested in checking out this work.

 

Saturday Librarian: Grinding

Back in the summer, before I commenced work on the library, I was putting together my plan. A year one roadmap, if you will. I knew the work on the library would take a while, and after I made my case, I was told to go forth and clean my Augean stables.

I laughed at the time; I knew there was disarray, but I figured I could keep it interesting. To

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So I’m basically Hercules in this scenario. Everything else is the library, but less smelly.

a certain extent, I have been able to do so, but we are rapidly reaching the point where I feel like I’m grinding. Grinding, in a video game context, refers to having to do the same thing over and over in an effort to gain a level/tool/experience/thing you want or need. And man, is that what this feels like. Needing to account for what I had accomplished and get a better idea of how long things might take, I took to each of my spreadsheets and slapped a few formulas in the bottom. Nothing spangly or flashy, just some Countifs, addition, division and a percentage at the bottom.

For context, I have one student tackling the two rooms at the top of the library, and I am fortunate that she like literature because that’s where it’s all housed– the Ps in Library of Congress Classification. I have one student handling the first floor of the library, running through philosophy and religion, the A and B sections of LCC. Everything, and I mean every other letter left over (23 for those keeping track), fall into The Stacks. And yes, it deserves it capitalization. The Stacks are cool, largely left alone, and chock full of interesting thing. Its also full of random not interesting things. Them’s the breaks, after all. I began my work on The Stacks this semester, having spent last semester getting us up and running and catching up on the check ins.

Here we are, rapidly approaching the half way point of semester 2 out of ? and we have made the following progress:

Ballroom and Newman Room: 2.7% complete

Scholars Lounge and Helm Room: 6.58% complete

The Stacks: 2.67% complete

Total completion: 3.8%

And now you know why I drink copious amounts of coffee. Feel free to send more my way. In the meantime, last weekend’s futurists have given way to the Middle Ages (not pictured, the intriguingly named “Life of a Medieval Baron”):

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Saturday Librarian: Once more into the stacks, dear friends, once more!

Having caught up (mostly) on check-ins, I now turn my attention to the section of the library I will be shelf reading. I do like the stacks- they are always quiet, there is never a class held there and they stay cool in the summer. I also happen to love history and politics, which reside down in the stacks as well.

After 2 weekends, I have now completed… 2.5% Did I mention there are roughly 16500 volumes down there?  The layout of the library is such that all P call numbers are housed in the Ballroom and Newman Room. All A and B call numbers (with a handful of exceptions) reside in the Scholar’s lounge and Helm Room. Every other call number calls the stacks home. It’s comforting when you’re a student doing research; it’s daunting when you have to find all of them.

A handful of interesting finds and pictures:

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Treasures from the Library: Murder in the Cathedral

TS Eliot is well known to many; The Waste Land and The Four Quartets are well loved and well studied, and even those not given to poetry have at least a passing familiarity with an homage to his work in the form of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats (Fun fact: Cats is derived from Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats). Eliot also wrote plays; Sweeney Agonistes was written in 1926, The Rock in 1934, and Murder in the Cathedral in 1935.

The Collection holds a number of Eliot’s works (sadly, or not depending on your point of view, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is not among them.) Hunting through the collection, I made a point of tracking down volumes which were listed as being produced during the publication year. This was back in the fall, when the heat had just broken and the thought of prowling around the library in search of volumes held a certain appeal, so long as one could escape to go apple picking right after.

I distinctly remember finding Murder in the Cathedral in the Newman room; it was right after I had been able to relax, knowing that an original Charles Dickens was not sitting on the shelf for all and sundry (how happy I was for the catalog to be wrong on that score!) IMG_20160206_132814908The Eliot works were newer, less than 100 years old, so there was no concern that the book would be hanging on by the threads that made up the paper. Sure enough, there on the shelf stood a slim black volume, stamped Murder in the Cathedral. It was a wholly unassuming volume, as so many are from that time. There was not detail work or embossing on the cover, nothing to make you think this book was anything other than a text book. And yet…

For those unfamiliar with the work, the titular murder is that of Thomas Becket in 1170; the Cathedral in question is Canterbury Cathedral in England. Even without being turned into a play, the incident is dramatic. Henry II, the King of England and founder of the Plantagenet dynasty clashed with his archbishop early and often once Thomas stopped being the King’s friend and started being the archbishop he was appointed to be. Famously (and inaccurately) Henry is said to have shouted “Will someone not rid me of this troublesome priest?” Some say turbulent, some say meddlesome. Edward Grim, a contemporary and witness of the assassination, is generally trusted when he records Henry’s utterance as “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?” Several knights took the statement to heart, rode out, and murdered Becket within the Cathedral itself.

The play was first performed in Canterbury; not just in the town, but in the Chapter House of the Cathedral itself. It has been performed many times, as well as being made into a film and turned into an opera. Portions of the original play were scrapped in the editing process; they later became the basis for Burnt Norton, the first of The Four Quartets. Copies of Murder in the Cathedral, as well as The Four Quartets, can be found in the Newman Room.

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Highlights from the Collection: Harper Lee and Umberto Eco

Highlights from the Collection: Harper Lee and Umberto Eco

Two authors passed at the end of last week, as I’m sure you all have heard. Both Harper Lee and Umberto Eco are represented in the College’s catalog, which I imagine comes as no surprise.

Harper Lee was an American author, born and raised in the deep South. Her work, To Kill a Mockingbird, is considered an American classic, and has been on summer reading lists and in curricula in high schools across the country for quite some time. I still have vivid memories of clutching that purple paperback at La Jolla Shores, trying desperately to focus on my summer reading instead of the ocean in front of me. Interestingly, To Kill a Mockingbird was not just Lee’s most famous work until recently, it was her only published work. Go Set a Watchman was released earlier this year to a fair bit of consternation. Having not read it myself, I can’t say whether it is good, bad, or just different. Those looking for To Kill a Mockingbird in the library should visit the Newman Room.

Eco’s works span both fiction and non fiction; his day job was as a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna. He was somewhat polarizing, too highbrow for some and too lowbrow for others. Nevertheless, his works gained attention, particularly his first novel, The Name of the Rose. I must confess, The Name of the Rose is currently in my “to be read” pile, and so I cannot recommend a particular work of Eco’s. The collection contains quite a few. Eco’s nonfictional works can be found in the Ballroom (including Kant and the Platypus, shown in the image attached to this entry), his fictional works in the Newman Room. A single work of his, on Art in the Middle Ages, can be found in the Scholar’s lounge.