Melody's Blog

This sounds pretty high-falutin':  "In accordance with Section 103(b)(6) of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (ACRA; Pub. L. 111-358), this Request forInformation (RFI) offers the opportunity for interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and broad public access to the peer-reviewed scholarly publications that result from federally funded scientific research. The public input provided through this Notice will inform deliberations of the National Science and Technology Council's Task Force on Public Access to Scholarly Publications." However, this is something all Americans, especially taxpayers , should care about. Notice that individuals are asked to provide input to the government. How often does that happen? This is of great importance to families and individuals who suffer from rare diseases anddisorders . The research that can be aggregated because of open access h...

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!

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!

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 wor...