Melody's Blog

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/Nedd...

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...

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 Librar...

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. ...

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!

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 ...

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...