Melody's Blog

American Taxpayers--Tell Government You Want Open Access

2011-11-19T14:36:00.001-08:00

This sounds pretty high-falutin':

"In accordance with Section 103(b)(6) of the AmericaCOMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (ACRA; Pub. L. 111-358), this Request forInformation (RFI) offers the opportunity for interested individuals andorganizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring long-termstewardship and broad public access to the peer-reviewed scholarly publicationsthat result from federally funded scientific research. The public inputprovided through this Notice will inform deliberations of the National Scienceand Technology Council's Task Force on Public Access to ScholarlyPublications."

However, this is something all Americans, especiallytaxpayers, should care about. Notice that individuals are asked to provideinput to the government. How often does that happen? This is of greatimportance to families and individuals who suffer from rare diseases anddisorders. The research that can be aggregated because of open access hasalready lead to important discoveries that help people who suffer.

One interesting aspect of this movement is that, whilescientists and medical specialists are particularly interested in the advancesthat can be made through the adoption of open access, humanities scholars areas well. A fascinating project on the history of quilts has been advanced becauseof the open access movement.

My baby library!

2011-10-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos of my baby! Yep, at least that is howit feels. My library baby, the new library at the American Islamic College. Ihave been helping to bring this library to some sort of reality and now here itis looking like a real library! It is, it just needs some more work. Everythingneeds to be cataloged, for example. But now, the books are on the donatedshelving and sorted by categories—Arabic books on one side for now, and Englishon the other. The library is applying for membership in the local Illinoislibrary regional group and hopes to be able to apply to CARLI soon. I thinkthey need book ends. But more seriously, they really have no currentscholarship in English about Islam and once cataloging starts, it will beinteresting to find out what kind of primary source material they are missing. Reallyany Islamica would be greatly appreciated.

Guest Blogs--Theological Reflections on Wikipedia

2011-09-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

So I gave my students an assignment to read Wikipedia and the Death of the Expert and to write a short theological reflection as a blog post. Here are a couple of good ones--the first from Paul, an Aussie priest, and the second from Nhien, a Vietnamese SVD student.

WIKIPEDIAAND FIRE

In ten seconds or less, think of 5 THINGSABOUT FIRE…. I bet you included something good and something dire! Hold thatthought. Names like Gutenberg, Edison and Armstrong … and labels like Industrial,Renaissance and Modern all mark human unfolding. But fire, just think of IT. MakingIT unleashed technology, movement andthe SHARING OF STORY, like never before.

Humans now lived out of caves and overmountain and plain, safe from beasts amidst barriers of fire. No more sent tobed by the sun; no more confined by the day. AND SO let story tellers tell in the night ‘round the glow; let the childrenask and jostle to know; let newfound dreams such doings sow.

To glow and know … and so … Wikipedia; thepride of some … the target of others. Good or dire? Amidst the great shiftscreated by fire (yes, IT again) howmany children only learned through scalded fingers to tame and master thisvexed new power? Democratising of capacity and story; is that a way of seeingfire? Democratising of scholarship; that’s the pride of Wiki’s friends and of proponents of democratising scholarshipthrough the collaborative shifts of label internet’s power. You further the fire link, but note, the dire burntfingers didn’t dump the development.

As theology, faith seeking understanding, searches the human story, much aboundsin human ingenuity to mark. Marshall McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ reveals even theological relevance asthe collaborative scholarship of Wikipedia and similar dynamics of doing learning reveal values andcapacity. What scripture scholarship calls a corrective matrix for its interplay of research, speculation andapplication, Wikipedia has remarkably established among its network ofvolunteer minds, tools, administrators and arbitrators. In this is a ground upwards acknowledgement thatexcellence of mind and/or process isn’tthe reserve of an elite. And Wikipedia’s levels of accuracy may imply a widerspread human ethic of seeking the good than often presumed. This so-calleddemocratisation of scholarship is arguably firing a breadth of ordinary human scholarlypotential, a vote for human dignity.

Yesindeed, for the democratisation of scholarship, the shifts enabled by theinternet’s medium invite theology’s principle of subsidiarity. Let those who properly can, do! May burnt fingerslead us well to tame and master, not dump the dignity of such development.

Thetheological implications of Wikipedia and the democratization of scholarship

Nowadays, people from differentparts of the world can get in touch easily, get to learn from each other more conveniently,and understand the surrounding world broadly and profoundly; many mysteriousthings are uncovered by so many available sources of knowledge. It’s notbecause the size of the earth is getting smaller, but because of the enormouscontributions of the technology of communication to the world today.

One of the most recognizableimpacts of technology that Maria Bustillos discussed in her article, Wikipedia and The Death of The Expert,is the usage of Wikipedia as well as its contributions to academic studies andto the spirit of collaboration among good writers. Apparently, Wikipedia not only brings its ownadvantages that offer rich and comprehensive sources of materials for doingresearch or necessary studies, but also plays the role of a bridge to connectoneself to the outside world, of a kind of “machine” to break through the shellof oneself to reach out to others, and also of the public entry, where allvoices are welcome to contribute their thoughts and ideas to enrich the worldof knowledge and information. As DavidLochhead comments on the work of McLuhan in a very spiritual and theologicalsense, “We take our technology into the deepest recesses of our souls. Our viewof reality, our structures of meaning, our sense of identity—all are touchedand transformed by the technologies which we have allowed to mediate betweenourselves and our world.” Experiencingwhat is going on in the surrounding world, deepening the meaning of everything,and knowing the identity of oneself through the technology of Wikipedia are possiblesources of theological implicationsrecognized behind the rich source materials of Wikipedia. Other than that, Wikipedia allows othervoices to be heard in contributing their talents and capability to the progressionof literature in the field. It shows agreat collaboration among writers, who are also greatthinkers. In a similar vein, Melody McMahon contributes an interesting point inher article, Wikipedia andDemocratization of Scholarship that, “The collaboration can go even furtherand maybe the time for rapprochement between ‘professional scholars’ and ‘amateurscholars’ has come.”

Besides all theadvantages that the technology of Wikipedia has contributed to the world ofknowledge, the growth of a human person in knowing oneself and the outsideworld, and the “charity” in allowing other voices to be heard are the greattheological implications of Wikipedia and democratization of scholarship.

Teaching MAs and DMins about Scholarly Communication

2011-08-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

This weekend I am working on plans for a course for MA and DMin students in Researching and Writing for Theology. I will begin teaching the course this fall--two hours each week. We did have a PhD student from the Univ. of Chicago teaching, but now that she has gone on her way, I am taking it over. So I started out working from her syllabus, but quickly realized that while I do want to work with the students on these topics and research/writing will be the major part of the course, I also want to cover topics of scholarly (and pastoral) communication. So my current thought is each week to assign a short reading, say from a current blog post (not mine) or article in IHE or Chronicle about issues of scholarly communication. Then we will have spirited (I hope) discussion of the topic in class. Indoctrinate them early, I say! Any other librarians or theological educators having ideas on this, let me know!

My Article on 3 London Catholic Libraries

2011-08-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

You might remember that back sometime I posted about three unique Catholic libraries in or near London. My article which provides more in depth info has been published in the recent issue of Theological Librarianship, along with several other interesting articles about international theological librarianship. I hope you will let me know if the article was informative and helpful!

A Bird's Eye View From My Alcove And More

2011-06-22T14:26:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of the Library itself--the whole thing, residence and all is called the Library, but this is the Library proper! Not very good, I recommend looking all around the website for information and photos, but this page describes the wonderful collections. I have been keeping my nose to the grindstone and working away on Fr. Simeon project, but today I took a few minutes to take note of journals that CTU doesn't purchase, and the reference book collection. I am hoping to get time to take a very close look at the Moorman Collection of Franciscan Books.

What would be fun would be to come here with only a bit of work, be able to go for rambles in the village, and just sit in the common room reading most of the day. Besides the wonderful collection in the Common Room, there is also the Tom West Fiction collection up on the landing, mostly Brit Lit, but very enticing.

The food and company are marvelous! I highly recommend it for a place for scholarly retreat!

A Book Lover's Paradise

2011-06-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Borges would think this place filled the bill for paradise! About 15 years ago, some colleague handed me a photocopy of a paper that read St. Deiniol's (pronounced Dean-ee-uls--all pronunciations thanks to my fabulous Welsh cabbie who gave me Welsh 101 in about 15 minutes) Library and I have carried it around with me all these years and now I am here, in Wales, at the residential library built by Gladstone with his personal library and added to all these years since.

Built in 1906 to house the collection and provide temporary residence for scholars studying or writing here, it is quite lovely and comfy, in a small village where the Gladstone ancestral home is located, Hawarden (pronounced Harden). I am here to write an article which I started planning many years ago about a colleague librarian, Fr. Simeon Daly, and to take a look at the Moorman Franciscan collection here, which is said to be the best in Northern Europe. (We--CTU--say we have the second best in the U.S., so I want to get a good study of this collection.) So, for a small fee they provide a very nice bedroom, breakfast and dinner, use of the library, and so far quite a social life! Here is a photo of the small but VERY interesting collection in the Common Room where we gather for wine before dinner and coffee after, and possibly wine again after a short break to work!

More photos tomorrow when I get down to serious work in the amazing library!

What Happened?

2011-06-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

Most readers of my blog know that in early March I spent three days in the hospital wondering why I had no platelets! Doctor made a really good guess and put me on a really high dose of steroids which made it difficult for me to focus and write. I had a couple of projects that had hard deadlines, so I abandoned my blog for a while and now I am hoping to pick it up again.

One project was a paper on scholarly sustainability and lifelong learning which I presented in May at the Kent State University Conference on Information and Religion. This paper is posted on my Academia.edu site along with a pre-print of my paper on Scholarly Sustainability and Theological Librarianship which was presented at the 2010 ATLA conference. The other project was Never Enough Singing: Essays in Honor of Seth Kasten, a festschrift I edited for the ATLA choirmaster who recently retired.

I also manged to finish an article on "Three London Catholic Libraries" which will be published in July in Theological Librarianship and my colleague, Lorraine, and I managed to finish an article on the Vatican Library conference which we attended in November, which I hope will also be published soon. So, that is what happened. However, now I am in book heaven and almost completely off the steroids, so I am hoping to add almost immediately to my blog a post about book jaunts, research, and vocation! You can read about Scholarly Sustainability on my Academia.com page!

Three Highly Recommended Readings

2011-03-08T16:17:00.000-08:00

Really interesting post Sunday on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics which I recommend to all librarians and teaching faculty--especially my faculty colleagues who so patiently listened to me and asked terrific questions at last months faculty seminar. The question is how do you assess new open access journals. I answered this at faculty seminar, but this blog post does so more thoroughly and eloquently than I did! Just as said though, very important--who are the journals editors, board of advisors; would you allow your name to be used if you didn't think the journal promoted the kind of quality you desire in an academic publication. This article should definitely be read by all faculty serving on tenure and promotion committees. YES, open access journals can be just as scholarly as those that are not open access. In my presentation I mentioned Sopher Press--if you are a theological librarian colleague and do not know about these journals, you must take a look. Take a look at the editorial boards and you will see what I mean!

Another recent post that has me thinking is Fister's post on the HarperCollins ebook debacle. Am thinking about this aspect of scholarly sustainability too, because recently a major publisher in our field has announced a new e-reference venture which could be outstanding, but falls short--way short in my opinion. Librarians need to think long and hard about how much they are willing to pay to license resources they have already paid full price for in print. And keep in mind what the publisher is really offering. Another Catholic publisher has announced 'e-books'--well, only can be opened once; that is far worse than the Harper Collins decision which is limiting to 26! These sorts of publications do not add up to sustainability. I do not want to pay $600 per year to license a few volumes of resources that I have already bought in print. And I couldn't even think about buying an e-book that only one person could possibly ever read.

About the same time I read Fister, my colleague Amy posted the really wonderful article by Robert Darnton in the NYReview of Books. Now I should just shut up because he said everything! These jeremiads are the most hopeful things I have read in a long time!

A bit of good news--my paper on scholarly sustainability and lifelong learning has been accepted at the 1st Annual Conference on Religion and Information at Kent State in May.

IHE, HGTV and Me

2011-02-15T11:16:00.000-08:00

Saturday I was catching up on Friday’s Inside Higher Ed (IHE) after a wonderful time at faculty retreat on Thursday and Friday. Lots to think about for a librarian interested in sustainability. A blog post on sustainability, another on tools of the research trade, one on marketing books, and one on why to blog for higher eduction. Each of these had some really helpful comments. I started off with the “Getting to Green” blog on sustainability and had to laugh. I am always quoting “moderation in all things,” which was a motto in our family while I was growing up—shorthand, for “no, you don’t need it and we cannot afford it.” But the blogger points out how if we would just live in moderation, we would be doing a lot toward achieving sustainability. I had just seen a bit of one of those addictive house-hunting shows on HGTV—I had walked away because I felt distressed and I was unsure why, but seeing the last two minutes when the homebuyers announce their choice, I got it. These folks were looking for a green home and tsk, tsking whenever they saw something in a home that didn’t match their idea of “green.” But in the end, they purchased a house that was huge for two people (that blog on sustainability says that US houses have grown by 50% in one generation) AND they ripped out everything and completely put in everything new. Can it really be green to take out perfectly good cabinets, floors, lighting, and put in all new. I totally get energy saving appliances and stuff, but at some point, having to have everything new is not moderation.

In “Library Babel Fish,” Barbara Fister discusses teaching research tools to students who are going on for further study. I am particularly fond of encouraging use of open source applications like Zotero or Mendeley—resources our students can continue to use after they leave CTU. Sustainability is habit forming—you start thinking of each process, task, everything you do in the context of sustainability, large or small. Our wonderful retreat facilitator, Margaret Carney, president of St. Bonaventure, was discussing how to achieve sustainability in universities and seminaries, something many of us are worried about these days—LARGE. I am worried about how to achieve sustainability of my documents! I just cannot seem to manage two computers and and iPhone and have the exact revision I want at the moment. Aha, Dropbox! (I was reminded of this app in the blog on research tools.)—TINY (except to me!) There are lots of in-between things we can do to achieve sustainability of all sorts!

Both Steel and Quicksilver

2011-01-16T11:59:00.000-08:00

Puzzle on his way to redemption

This post clearly falls under the “odd posts” of my blog title. No real bearing on anything important, just random musing from a rather serendipitous experience this long weekend. I was on my comfy sofa finishing Platero and I, a book that had been on my to read list for a long time and I suddenly realized that this was the fourth book I had read in the past couple of weeks with donkeys making a major appearance! The others were Patricia Lynch’s Strangers at the Fair and Other Stories (selected stories from her Turf-Cutter’s Donkey series), May Sarton’s Joanna and Ulysses, and a re-read of Rumer Godden’s Operation Sippacik. Immediately, several other books with donkeys came to mind—one of my favorite Stevenson’s, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and Maureen Daly’s The Private War of Sgt. Donkey. And a couple of donkey characters—Eeyore and Puzzle, the donkey who finds redemption in The Last Battle. And how could I forget Modestine/Neddie, the donkey in the early Angela Thirkell books. I had picked up the Sarton and Jiminez in the books I’ve been weeding at the American Islamic College—not thinking about them both being donkey related—as I said, Platero had been on my to read list and I had never read any May Sarton (as least not that I remember, though possibly I did as an undergrad) and thought it was time that I give her a try.

Eileen with Long-Ears

What is striking is about how loved these donkeys are! Stevenson after twelve hard days of getting little work out of Modestine says, “For twelve days we had been fast companions; we had travelled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a rocky and many a boggy by-road. After the first day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race and sex; her virtues were her own. Farewell, and if for ever—.” Of Platero, Jiminez says, “He is tender and loving as a little boy, as a little girl: but strong and firm as a stone…He is made of steel. Both steel and quicksilver.”

These two donkeys were real and so loved that they have monuments honoring them. Platero in Moguer, and Modestine in the Cevennes.

The tiny Sippacik

Sippacik was also real—Rumer Godden based her book on a true story and the illustrations for it are by a Captain who was a member of the United Nations blue berets who figure in the story. Both Operation Sippacik and Daly’s Small War of Sergeant Donkey are about donkeys rescuing injured doing wartime and how they respond to the demands of the brave, young boys who tend them. In Sarton’s book, the donkey Ulysses rescues the young, despondent, Greek artist.

Ulysses with Joanna's supplies

I used LibraryThing (users can tag books, so I thought I’d find more than just a subject search would turn up) and sure enough, hundreds of books with a search on donkey. Many of them are about biblical donkeys (the donkey at the stable, for example), but I found some other interesting things to put on the to read list. So, some other interesting titles (comment if you’ve read these—comment if you haven’t!!): two women adventurers--Dervla Murphy’s Eight Feet in the Andes and Freya Stark’s The Southern Gates of Arabia (I really liked her A Winter in Arabia and planned to read more of her work). Another May Sarton, The Poet and the Donkey, this time the donkey saves a poet rather than an artist? Paul Gallico’s A Small Miracle (I think I read this in high school?). Two children's and one young adult--Gerald Durrell’s Donkey Rustlers and Lloyd Alexander’s Four Donkeys, plus Jean Morris’ Donkey’s Crusade.

Finding Books at the AIC

2011-01-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

I recently started a new gig as volunteer library advisor for the American Islamic College. When my former student worker, Romana, called up and asked if I could talk with them about their library, I thought I'd go over, check it out, give them some ideas, and call it a day. But I really like their mission, I liked the folks who are working hard to get this going, and so now I am deep in dirty work of sorting books to make a decent library for them. It's all unclear to me how they happen to have thousands and thousands of old books, but 99% of them are not appropriate for their collection, so it is weeding and boxing time. Yesterday I had a couple of volunteers, my friend, Beth and a AIC volunteer. That was so helpful! This exercise is forcing me to think about how important it is to have a collection development policy and stick to it! Since I need to revise the CTU collection development policy, this is useful. It also has provided the reminder of how valued books are. When I explained that most of these books would have to go, you could see the mouths gape open. What would happen to these books? Never mind that the books have no use for a library with a very specific purpose! Haven't contacted them yet, but I am hoping that Theological Book Network will come for them. It is really interesting to open random boxes of books! One box had textbook after textbook of geometry, physics, or sociology and one fabulous book of Persian art! A real gem. Another box, the same, and two volumes on Turkish ethnography! I've turned up probably two boxes of children's books, most in terrible shape, but found a couple that I brought home to read; a Ruth Sawyer that was wonderful (A Cottage for Betsy) and Phyllis McGinley's Plain Princess which I read years ago and loved. And a complete anomaly--a huge stack of R. F. Delderfield paperbacks! Let's just say that how books wind up being in particular places is something that never ceases to amaze!

On Finding Books on Via della Conciliazione

2010-11-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

A Catholic book lover’s heaven, Via della Conciliazione is the street that leads directly up to the piazza and then St. Peter’s Basilica. The street, though relatively short (about four blocks) is filled with bookstores, souvenir shops, religious goods shops, and gelaterias (which very annoyingly close early in November).

I am confessing that I am not a numismatic fanatic. Lorraine has numismatics that she needs to catalog and the Vatican Library has very nicely cataloged numismatics collection, so she did need to hang around for those sessions. So, I decided to ditch the long session on coins and head off to get some material for a blog post on books on the Via della Conciliazione. Lorraine and I stayed at the Hotel Columbus which is on the street at number 33, and from our side balcony we could see out to a tiny sliver of the street.

St Peter's is, of course, at the end of Via della Conciliazione and the conference was held at number 5 in the Vatican School of Library Service, so we did not have much time to venture away from this very important street!

Books are everywhere. So when I decided to go out for a real book trek, I started out the hotel door

and turned left where we had already hit souvenir shops for postcards. Kiosks like these have travel books for Vatican sightseers, both inside and out.

One of the closest to St. Peter's is the Ancora Libreria which was totally being rebuilt and reorganized, but one could still enter and even in Italy see Christmas marketing before Advent!

Then I headed across the square to the LEV, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the publishing arm of the Vatican whose web pages now have Flash, but no Inglese.

Lorraine and I spent some time browsing the collection--

this Ratzinger is a recent addition (in German) to our collection from the LEV and I wanted to see what else they might have (especially liturgical books) that I might be needing. We both brought home the LEV's hefty 350 page catalog which needs some serious attention on my part!

Missals, lectionaries, sacramentaries in all languages

Continuing away from St. Peter's, the next big bookstore is Libreria Don Bosco. This is the bookstore of Elledici, the publishing arm of the Salesian order.

Practically next door is the familiar sign of the Paulines, which are everywhere in the world! This is a really huge, probably the biggest of all, bookstore with every theological book in Italian you could imagine. I don't collect much Italian at CTU, but I definitely made a list of things that we should have--very prominently displayed in most of these stores was the new translation of the Bible in Italian.

After strolling around the Pauline bookstore jotting down title after title, I next entered the Libreria A V E. I couldn't quite figure it out and still am a bit confused, but it seems to have started as a Catholic publishing house and bookstore prior to the war and has expanded to also publish literature, a wide array of translations of childrens books, and more. I was intrigued by the small English corner and was sorely disappointed when I found only a few books: Twilight series, Ken Follett and Nick Hornby. What was that about?

The Coletti Bookstore has existed for over a hundred years, ran by Colettis from the start along with a publishing arm. They have long had some photography and other non-religious, all the while focusing on Catholic books. In here, I FINALLY picked up the new Eco novel (which has not been translated into English yet). I had been seeing it everywhere I went--Il cimitero di Praga. I've read all Eco's novels but 1 1/2 (in the middle of that 1/2), though I really prefer his essays. I was interested in the new one, and discovered that it has been scathingly reviewed in L'Osservatore Romano for a perceived anti-semitism which Eco refutes. Anyway, Eco fans who only read in English will have to wait a while to judge for themselves!

Besides the Eco and the new Italian Bibles, everywhere were books about Newman, both new books in Italian and translations and several new books about Chiara Badano, the young Focolare who has recently been beatified and of course, more huge displays of Natale--Christmas books everywhere. If this had been an English speaking mall of theology books, I never would have emerged, so thank goodness it is not a language I have pots of money for! The only way to describe it is--say that on one four block street you had a Borders, Barnes and Noble, Pauline, the Sem Coop, and a couple of other huge bookstores AND that most of the stock was Catholic books, with a smattering of others, this is what you would have. Amazing.

Vatican Library Conference

2010-11-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

Here I am in Rome at the Vatican Library conference with my colleague from Mundelein, Lorraine. This is not working out the way we thought at all, but we are hanging in there (well, I should only speak for myself--Lorraine is doing much better and understands loads of it). The conference was held to analyze the period of the last sixty years, both in terms of the studies undertaken in the Library and its contacts with external institutions, and the life and activities of the Library and the experience it has acquired in its various departments, according to Msgr Pasini, the prefect of the Library. So far, yesterday all the presentations were in Italian except one in French and only one has shown any slides. It seems very odd to me that a scholar would discuss a collection of medieval manuscripts without slides, but it is so. (An aside, for those who are on the no powerpoint bandwagon--if you think you might have non-native speakers at your presentation, kindly use some slides. I was able to read about 95 percent but could not understand anything anyone said!) We did meet Msgr Kosanke, rector at the Polish seminary in Orchard Lake) who is the head of the American Friends of the Vatican Library and Sr Jacinta who is from Connecticut and a secretary at the library. She was able to introduce me to Msgr Canart who was one of the librarians I wanted to meet about my Fr Simeon research. Otherwise, no other Norte-Americanos and there are no name tags so one has no way of knowing who the folks are who might be possible collaborators on the Catholic Reference wiki or who might want to write an article for Theological Librarianship.

Also, last night we went to the exhibit which celebrates the reopening of the library. That is the best we can do; only Msgr Kosanke has the clout to get a real tour of the library itself. The mindset here is just so different from libraries in the states. I think everyone who knows me knows that my theology of librarianship espouses hospitality as a primary virtue. Not here.

Even the exhibit was not hospitable and Lorraine and I practically had to harass the guide to get her to let us take a few minutes to look at the conservation exhibit (which I realize was likely not so interesting to the others in our group, but Lorraine, the preservationist, and I did want to get all the info we could from it). I was the straggler the entire tour and I wanted her to just leave me alone so I could LOOK at the incunabula and other rare works. Another odd thing about the exhibit was the number of facsimiles instead of the actual manuscript or printed book.

What has been useful is the trip to the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Sometimes nothing can compare to a simple trip to actually see the books available for sale. (I will blog more on book shopping on Via della Conciliazione soon.)

Finishing up on conference...

The rest of the conference was much better--though I could not say for sure, the presenters seemed more like practical librarians! The first part of the conference was on the Vatican Library as a place of research and most of the presenters discussed how the collections began and some highlights of the collections that researchers would find useful (at least I think that was it!). The second part was the institution as a place serving scholars--I find it rather difficult how one would sort out the difference between the two, but the second part covered conservation and restoration, preservation (a lot about the old Vatican microfilm collection) and about how they are going about meshing all the catalogs which was very interesting for me. Well, we read this day that we are two of 350 "experts" attending the conference!

Open Access Week coming up

2010-10-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

Next week is Open Access Week. Better sign up now. More education is needed so badly. I had a discussion with an editor of two journals last week and every time I mentioned open access he immediately went to the gold model (see news of gold model in today's IHE) which is not necessary for humanities journals. Who gives these people there information? Why don't they know about models which are much more suitable for the types of journals that theological schools subscribe to? Why did I have to find out today that yet another journal I subscribe to has gone up 300Euros? That is one more cancellation. I hope more of you will sign up to follow Open Access Week!

A Little Bit about Scholarly Sustainability Conference in NYC

2010-10-09T09:48:00.000-07:00

Here I am at LaGuardia (well, I was when I started this—two weeks ago!), just having left the ITHAKA Scholarly Sustainability conference. The topic this year was discovery. I find new ways of discovery very interesting and realize that for scholarly material to be sustainable, it must be discoverable, but I have to say that is not where my interest really lies. However, I did learn several really cool new things. JSTOR is working on mobile that looks like it will have great functionality; and also, of high interest to me, they are piloting Alumni access. I am totally pumped about this—our student body and alums are so global—they work in places where they really do not have other recourse to access (JSTOR is becoming available at more public libraries, so many alums can get access that way). Further, JSTOR will be adding search notifications soon! For my theological librarian colleagues, in case you missed the announcement, JSTOR has made special arrangements for ATLA members and it is way more affordable than it used to be. Take a look!

Stephen Rhind-Tutt of Alexander Street Press spoke about how their products give added value by providing so much metadata and other bonuses, such as transcriptions of videos, so that they are full-text searchable. I have been impressed with their databases each time I have heard him speak, and we might think about getting the Ethnographic Video Collection. A really interesting session focused on ‘start-ups,’ three ‘reader referral’ projects that are relatively new—Goodreads (which I use), Mendeley, and Eigenfactor. Mendeley is a fascinating project that seems to me to step on the toes of Zotero (we are heavy users and fans of Zotero here), but the Mendeley website seems to indicate that one might want to use both and can sync with it. I need to spend more time with both because listening to Jan Reichelt, a founder of Mendeley, I could see how it could outdo Zotero in no time.

One thing that I really admire about Google—they change all the time. Today I am feeling so frustrated at the pace of change with catalogs, resources moving to open access and the like. Google makes changes constantly. They don’t test an idea for two years, then let a couple of libraries check it out to see if it works, then cautiously let a few more know. They make the change and see what happens. People don’t even often recognize the changes because they are so incremental. Why don’t we do that as libraries!I just read a post on NGC4LIB that VuFind has created a new "roadmap." One of the items on roadmap is this: "Establish periodic 2-3 week rapid build or sprint cycles (e.g. every six months) focused on specific new features and functions and recruit developers to portion out this work and collaborate to deliver enhanced software by the cycle end date." Sounds good to me.

Research Trip to Marquette

2010-09-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

After getting a late start due to car rental issues, I made it to the Raynor Library at Marquette University, which houses the Catholic Library Association archives. I arrived there to research the life and work of Fr. Simeon Daly, a Benedictine monk who has been one of the most influential Catholic librarians in the U.S. The nice archivists had pulled about fifteen boxes of correspondence, conference programs, and other material that might contain references to the work of Fr. Simeon in CLA. My research will (I hope) be published sometime in the next year or so. So about that I will just put in a plug for archives. If you belong to an organization that generates documentation--consider finding an appropriate archival home for it. I believe archival material will just keep becoming more and more important for research in the coming years. If you are unsure if your possible archive is important, consult a librarian or archivist.

I managed to get in a couple of hours of work before the archive closed and headed off to my dorm room. A tip--Dorm rooms are often available in the summer for much less than hotels. Just be prepared for spartan surroundings, though likely to get free wifi.

I like to write about finding books when one is not necessarily expecting them. But this one is about the sad fate of not finding them. My poor dorm room I'm sure looks different when inhabited by students. I sure hope so. But six empty bookcases made me long for time for bookstore trip. Loved this arrangement though of bookshelves on dressers. I was never lucky enough to have those in my dorm rooms back in the old days.

The other sad-making thing from my room--the view. I did have nice direct view of the Pabst Mansion which I would like to visit when I return.

But the rest of the view displayed the sad demise of the ProBuColls. Don't you feel if this place had some other name it might have survived. It was right next to PCUSA offices for Milwaukee so I'm guessing had something to do with the Presbyterians?

I headed back to archives in the spitting rain the next morning, barely making it before storms hit. I found lots of interesting things in the folders and got a few new ideas for possible research. I talked a bit about this phenomena at the recent panel I participated in with my colleagues on the Editorial Board of Theological Librarianship for writing wannabes. When I wanted to start writing (mostly for tenure track reasons) I felt I had no ideas. But once I started writing, ideas just started to come naturally. So I encourage all wannabe writers to just start and see what happens.

Earlier, I had emailed my American Theological Library Association colleague who works at Marquette--one of my first friends in ATLA. She and I had in common being at Jesuit libraries and had both been influenced by Jesuit spirituality. It was really great to catch up with her at lunch. But work remained to be done, so I took a quick look at the tech services area of the library (as big as my entire library!) and returned to my research. If I had had time, I could have seen all the books I wanted—I WAS in a library!

Wikipedia and democratization of scholarship

2010-09-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

I have given a tiny bit of thought to democratization of scholarship and how it fits into the concept of scholarly sustainability, just enough to realize that I'd like to give a lot more attention to the thought (but it is the first week of classes!). Yesterday's article in IHE on Wikipedia for Credit demonstrates so many of the narrow views that are holding up the forward movement of scholarship and need to be debunked.

Some people have an overly romanticized view of print encyclopedias. Just go hear a couple of encyclopedia editors talk about the process and you will lose that view forever. Yes, some encyclopedia articles are written by the great thinkers in the field, others are sloughed off to any student they can get to work on it. Sometimes writers for encyclopedias show extreme bias; sometimes they cannot be bothered with doing any updating of the subject they are assigned. Print encyclopedia articles need to be evaluated just as much as Wikipedia!Librarians teach this all the time.

Profs sometimes seem to think it is Wikipedia's fault that students use Wikipedia as a source in their bibliographies. No, if profs do not allow the use of encyclopedias as a source then Wikipedia should be excluded also. Using an encyclopedia is a time-honored way of finding preliminary information about a topic one knows little about, then using that information to move onto the research in books and journal articles. It's what librarians teach all the time! As long as it is evaluated, Wikipedia can be a great resource for this preliminary work, often having a short bibliography leading to major works depending on the topic the article covers.

Several quotes from Alan Liu, an English prof at Univ of Calif and blogger set my teeth on edge, though I agree with most of what he says.

Much remains to be hashed out between academics and the general public as far as working out such "standards of collaboration," he said, to resolve the tension between the academic value of peer review and the social media value of crowd-sourcing.

However, in his words, "experts"="academics"; "crowd"="non-academics." No, again, no matter who is writing, the work needs to be evaluated! I have a personal story of belonging to an organization for the promotion of a certain British writer's works. The British writer wrote over 30 works in a series and most members of the organization have read the entire series several times. (I don't want to admit how many times I have read them!) Once an academic gave a presentation about the British writer (in my opinion AS IF she were an expert) and she had not even read all the books once. Who is the "expert?"

The ability of crowd-sourcing technology is so beneficial to many disciplines; think of research doctors who now have the ability to survey groups of patients around the world with rare diseases, or ornithologists who can now track migration patterns with the help of sightings from birders! However, the collaboration can go even further and maybe the time for rapprochement between "professional scholars" and "amateur scholars" has come.

A Theological Librarian's Trip to London--Part 2

2010-09-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

Back to London and another day. Well, every librarian likes to stumble on books where they least expect them and it was a surprise to me to find books at the Wallace Collection, “a family collection, and national museum.” I chanced on this small museum which is the collection of five generations of collectors, four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, housed in their family home near Oxford Street. Not only was it rather a surprise to see Hals’ The Laughing Cavalier and Watteau’s The Swing, but there were really books in the bookcases in the library of the home.

I am guessing that some of the books have been changed over the years, well, I know it—the 1911 Britannica and the Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie were in the cabinets, along with the Mémoires secrets of Bachaumont. The Wallace Collection has an amazing collection of furniture and other objects that being to Marie-Antoinette. Apparently one of the Marquess of Hertford’s had the forethought to buy this stuff up when it was auctioned off. It would be interesting to think that these books were part of that, but their provenance is not mentioned in the catalog record, so I’m guessing they were not and they were published in London. (If you wonder how I know about the Bachaumont-- well, I emailed the librarian of the Wallace Collection Library—that is the way to find out things you want to know about! She very graciously answered all my questions, but prefers that folks find other libraries if they want to do research with these books.)

I became interested in looking at paintings with books after I overheard a docent mistakenly telling a group of women that one woman in a painting had finished her housework and was reading, but it is clear that the woman was lacemaking! I have a couple of postcard books of The Reading Woman and it is a genre (paintings of women reading I mean) I like, so I did find a few who were reading or had a book, rather than working away at lacemaking. At the last minute, I discovered they had a small collection of illuminated manuscript pages—hidden in cabinets covered in leather to keep the sun out. I had thought they were just miniatures such as cameos and had passed them by. There were some beautiful examples and this one of St. John reading from his book while at the dormition of Mary jumped out at me.

I popped into John Lewis, a huge department store on Oxford Street and I am sad to say when I asked if they had books, I was questioned: “what kind?” I said I was looking for travel books and he said, “Yep, upstairs with the suitcases.” Well, I don’t really consider having about fifteen books as having books. But they did have this.

Later, my daughter and I were walking down the street and saw this sign,

but we already had lunch plans, so we passed by the opportunity to see what kind of books were on offer.

A quick trip to Daunt Books, my new favorite bookstore (please take a virtual tour), proved nearly too much too handle. That bookstore has a way of making me want to read things I’ve never heard of and wished I had, and another way of putting books I’ve always wanted to read (and buy) right in front of my eyes. Specializing in travel, a lot of their books are grouped by country and some novels and other literature from the country are mixed right in with the basic travel books—genius (or “brilliant,” as the English say) idea. But they feature interesting publishers such as Persephone Classics, all the various series being put out now by Penguin and Vintage, and just generally make every single book in the store look interesting! And in case you had not heard, Penguin is re-issuing the novels of Nancy Mitford and if you go to London you can get them sooner than you can in US !

I have to strictly discipline myself to only buy two books at a time when I go to Daunt’s and it takes a solomonic choice to leave there without more than my bags can handle. The Oxfam nearby Daunt’s also has a great selection of used books—I recommend looking there first for classics. And if you go to the Marylebone Street Daunt’s, you can stop into Patisserie Valerie, a really stupendous place to pop into for a cappuccino and pain au chocolat. (You can tell what else I love besides books!)

Journal Prices and Seminaries

2010-09-02T07:28:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I read with interest, Meredith Farkas' blog on "Is Ebsco the New Evil Empire?" I think this week, Sage Publications has maybe topped Ebsco for this prize position for theological librarians. A thread on the ATLANTIS listserv, which is comprised of theological librarians, has lamented the takeover (note: the Sage envelope containing the bad news to each of us actually says "takeover letter") of two journals this week by Sage resulting in prices being raised--double for one and triple for another. I not only lament the raising of prices, but a certain lack of understanding of mission. (This is not Sage's fault--their mission is to make money.) In my paper at ATLA (which, btw, is available if you are a member as a pre-print on the ATLA Sharepoint site) I said that journal prices rising in all disciplines is unsustainable, but for theology and religion there is another dimension--if we are supposed to be bringing the reign of God (and I think scholars do that in one way by their writing activities), then can it be bringing that reign to sell out to publishers like Sage which make their publications completely unaffordable to many institutions that would love to have access to these publications? It seems to me like hiding one's light under a bushel!

A Theological Librarian's Trip to London--Part 1

2010-08-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

(The first half of a blog post that was written as a guest post for my friend Anthony's blog, On Books and Biblios.)

What does a theological librarian and book lover do when spending a few days in London? Obviously, Charing Cross Road would be a good choice, but not this trip, so make a plan to see some interesting libraries AND find some astonishing places where books are hiding out! As a Catholic theological librarian, I was interested in seeing three Catholic libraries in or near London—the library at Heythrop College, the library at Allen Hall, and the Catholic National Library. As I am hoping to soon publish an article on these libraries and their collections, I will just mention how these fit on my tour. Heythrop College, the specialist philosophy and theological school of the University of London is just off Kensington High Street on Kensington Square. It started life in the 1600s as a Jesuit school and has moved several times due to Jesuit suppressions. Its fascinating history can be found here. After getting great pastry and cappuccino at a wonderful French patisserie just down the block, I went to meet Fr. Chris Pedley, SJ who gave me an informative tour, showing me several incunabula that were rescued from the wharf during one move a few hundred years ago!

The next stop on my Catholic library tour was Allen Hall, the diocesan seminary of the Westminster diocese. I might have been transgressing, but as the custodian of a collection of Moreana (books by and about St. Thomas More), the library at Allen Hall was a must-see.

In Chelsea, it is in the home where St. Thomas More lived with his family when he arrested prior to his beheading. The library has a small collection of St. Thomas More art, including this roundel of him and St. John Fisher.

The third library I visited was outside London, about a forty minute pleasant train ride, to Farnborough, the home of the Catholic National Library. What an enjoyable visit! The folks there gave me such a welcome though they had just gotten my email about visiting that very morning. The CNL is a populist lending library and the all-volunteer staff answer queries by email and send off books to people throughout the UK upon request. They, too, have a nice collection of Moreana and what seemed to be a pretty good collection of English recusant literature, along with a collection of Catholic fiction (seeing that and needing space has provided the impetus for me to do a bit of weeding in our collection to make our Catholic fiction collection just that and not a mishmash of classics that all well-read persons have on their personal shelves). They also have Mission Registers, which list baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths etc. dating back as early as 1694. These are heavily used for genealogy which accounts for much of their reference work. A fascinating thing about this library is that it has recently moved to St. Michael’s Abbey, which has its own very interesting history. It was founded by Empress Eugenie as an abbey and Imperial Mausoleum. She was crushed by the deaths of Napoleon III and their son, and on the site is the crypt of the royal family. It is a beautiful abbey with about five monks now working the abbey land.

Letter to Unsustainable Journal

2010-08-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

Today I received a notice from a journal asking me to subscribe. Here is my response:

I received your notice of the journal XXXX. I would love to subscribe to it, but I will not be doing so. Currently, I have NO plans for adding subscriptions with models of pricing which I believe are not sustainable. I do not believe that scholarly societies that have sold their journals to for-profit publishers are generally operating in a model which supports their own mission. If you do truly believe that no minister or theologian “can be adequately educated who is not acquainted with the debates this journal compasses,” you would charge a price for it that was sustainable for theological schools like my own and most of the other small seminaries that cannot afford to add journals at this price. I notice from the publisher's website that most of your board comes from large institutions that may be able to support prices such as these, but the large majority of seminaries are like my own that have 250 FTE or smaller. It simply is not feasible to continue to purchase all the journals we would like to have, nor even the ones we feel we need. I hope you will consider a model of publication that contributes to supporting our compatible missions of education, but until then, I cannot subscribe. I hope you will share this with your board and give it some thought.

I hope I receive a considered response.

I also had an interesting email conversation with a colleague at CTU about the book he has recently published with a publisher included in all the recent announcements about university presses going under. The publisher had not contacted him to say they were shutting down even though his book seems to have just come out this week. He is unsure about rights--he has a potential translation into Italian he is pursuing and now has to try to get all this in order. This is one of the outcomes if publishers do not use sustainable practices. Up until now, I tend to have tried to get my faculty colleagues to focus on the impact on the library, but now have a concrete example of what happens to the faculty member! In the announcement in IHE, one Rice UP board member gave a good summation. "Universities should focus on the role of disseminating scholarship, not pure sales. 'We're moving to a different era of scholarly communication where it's more accessible to more people, and where we don't have to worry about the commercial viability,' the board member said. The reality, the board member added, is that 'there is no commercial viability' in academic publishing and that the emphasis on such questions 'is killing humanities publishing.'" The IHE report on university press closures offers a few interesting non-traditional models that deserve experimentation.

Intute and Scholarly Sustainability

2010-08-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, Lorcan Dempsey posted about the decision of JISC to stop funding Intute. I don't regularly use Intute myself, but now that I have looked at it again, I wish I thought of it more often! I have never been quite sure what I think about "subject gateways" to the web. I maintained a Reference Resources page at a Jesuit college for many years and we have a few things on our website here at CTU (but haven't developed any kind of massive lists of resources--instead usually pointing our students to the Wabash guide and a couple of other selected resources). I've always been intrigued by the ATSRW project of ATLA; not a subject gateway, it is designed to get bib records for websites into the catalog. I thought this might be a better way to curate the web, but it hasn't gathered huge momentum. All this to say, the FAQ at the Intute website is really a mini-primer on scholarly sustainability--it outlines some of the funding problems they have and various routes they have (and are) considering to continue its viability.

Open Access and Library Mission in IHE

2010-08-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

Barbara Fister has a great post on why libraries are sometimes loath to embrace open access; why they keep deepening the hole by continuing to go for Big Deals in periodical subscriptions. I am starting this blog because I want to keep preaching the gospel of open access, but I also think there are other sustainable models. I attended the JSTOR/Portico Forum this past Tuesday and I am really excited by the possibilities which seem to be coming along with JSTOR. With the Current Scholarship Program, a library will be able to purchase one (1) title. It seems likely that by purchasing that one title, the library will gain search capability of the entire JSTOR archive--delivering lots of discoverability to their users. I am sold on the JSTOR collections as a way to gain access to multi-and interdisciplinary journals (and other material) and have no plans to discontinue any collections, but the ability to add specific journals in addition to the collections is an awesome idea. Theological librarians, if you missed the announcement in the ATLA June/July newsletter, there is a new pricing model for seminary libraries.

Back to open access, though. In the Portico part of the session, David Fritsch, Asst. Director, Outreach and Participation Services of JSTOR/Portico, mentioned that Portico has already brought live two scholarly society journal titles because they were "abandoned" by the huge for-profit publisher they had sold to. All of us who know people who run journals for scholarly societies need to encourage them to use an open access model.

Why I Am Starting This Blog, or, Why Am I Starting This Blog?

2010-08-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

From description of blog: An eclectic blog on sustainable scholarship and libraries, book jaunts and research, and odd interests like vocation, children's lit, and ???

So, why? And why these topics?

OK, lots of reasons. I've been thinking about it for quite a while. I wrote a couple of guest blogs for my good friend Anthony's blog, On Books and Biblios, which I highly recommend, and it began to become clear that Anthony would NEVER run out of ideas on his own and publish mine! My daughter started a blog. I gave a presentation at the American Theological Library Association conference in June and some colleagues asked if I had plans for continuing the conversation I had started there on scholarly sustainability, then one emailed to ask if I blog. I had been feeling the need to figure out a way to keep track of some of my research and ongoing thoughts about my work. I don't consider myself an expert and I am always hoping to learn. So I decided to go for it.

So, why these topics?

Sustainable scholarship--I think this is a crucial topic that all librarians must pay attention to. In my mind, it encompasses many different sub-topics, some of which I have had an interest in for years. The world of libraries is changing--the photo at the top of my blog shows the old notion of the library--from the Mission of San Buenaventura in Ventura, California. The label at the top of the bookcase reads "Bibliotheca Sancti Bonaventurae" and it seems I remember that two bookcases made up this bibliotheca. These books are something of a metaphor for scholarly sustainability for me. They did not appear to be taken care of and were not accessible, though I hope if someone contacted the community there, they would be allowed to look at them for an appropriate reason. Believe me, I need to work on the metaphor a lot! My paper will be published soon in the proceedings of the conference (I'll try to make the bibliography available sooner), but my article already published in Theological Librarianship 3.1, "Librarians, Publishers and Theological Reference Resources: A Way Forward" considers some of the issues I perceive to be part of the whole scholarly sustainability conversation.

So, why write on libraries and research? And book jaunts? Well, these have a lot to do with scholarly sustainability and I've been traveling a lot and it seems useful to me to write a bit about these. I think it is going to become increasingly useful for librarians to know about other libraries and their strengths and if possible, to have a personal contact. My students and faculty often need unusual things that I might have an easier time getting with such a personal contact. Doing my own research for publication and presentation helps me know first-hand the trials and tribulations (and enjoyment and fun) involved. Book jaunts--it helps to keep our mind open to various places where we might find material of use to our patrons, and since I've been thinking in the observant manner Anthony has taught me, I have discovered a whole new way of seeing the world, or at least a part of it I am very tantalized by! Also, writing about the joy of finding books is just fun and offers a different style of writing than the scholarly style.

Vocation and children's lit? Those that know me know that my work is highly influenced by my belief that I have a vocation, or calling, to this work. My own interest in scholarly sustainability is affected by this and my current research is occupied by this (I am currently researching an article on the life and work of Fr. Simeon Daly, a Benedictine who is sort of a spiritual father to many Catholic theological librarians. I am also participating in a Lilly grant project with seminary faculty and librarians to find ways to help our students be able to help their future congregations discover their own vocations). Another part of my research is a possible project on using children's lit for religious formation.

??? I do want to keep this blog on the main topic. But doesn't your mind occasionally stray to things like Arsenal football and will Cesc remain as captain, will Leon Russell continue to tour when he turns 100, the eschatology of Angela Thirkell (and will I ever finish that article), are kale chips really delicious, and would a trip on a narrowboat on the canals of England be really fun or pure hell?

I hope you will learn something, enjoy much, and have a lot to think about! Please, please comment.