In honor of Valentine's Day...a day late

If you didn't know how nerdy I am already, you'll understand now.

So Cupid--remember him? The little guy with the bow? Well if you're not into Roman mythology then you may not remember that he's actually a god. If you're more a fan of the Greek's (or Plato) you may know him as Eros. Now imagine being from a time when you actually had to read Latin and study ancient history (I'm sure most of you don't remember that). And imagine being a college student then.

 Right so no I'm going to guess your idea of fun would not include writing pamphlets about Cupid would they? And especially not in the format of an epic poem. Because that would take a lot of work and thought and creativity. But that is what "Hercules Samson Fressmarkle" and "Jupiter Tonans Donnerhagel" did (what great pseudonyms!). We have two pamphlets by these young gentlemen and they are quite funny. I especially love that one of them is dedicated to the ladies, because this obviously how men should woo women. Unfortunately only one of them is currently digitized by HathiTrust, but please do enjoy taking a glace at it:

1."Cupid Abroad," Arrested: Or, a Random Bolt at Hercules Samson Fressmarkle, by Jupiter Tonans Donnerhagel
  http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/7601474.html

2. Cupid Abroad. An Epic Poem

 PS Does anyone use the phrase barmie noodle? I'm rather fond of it now that I've discovered it.

And it feels like home

I feel like I've gotten really far looking at the 19th century pamphlets we have, but then I remember I am only in the B's...less than 150 in. So many more discoveries lie ahead of me!

As I was working through one box of B's the other afternoon I found one that struck me simply because the name (again). The pamphlet from 1867 is simply titled "Bowdoin in the War." I immediately knew it meant Bowdoin College, located in Brunswick, Maine. The town I grew up in. The famous civil war general, Joshua Chamberlain, used to be president of the college so it is easy to see why there was a pamphlet about this particular college in the war. The pamphlet lists names and small bio's of grads and undergrads that served during the war, including Joshua Chamberlain on page 10. His brother, John, is also on page 19 for his service with the U.S. Christian Commission. What interests me even more are the other people. Every time I read a last name I recognize I wonder if they're related to my friend from home. Or names like "Albert W. Bradbury"--is he the guy Bradbury Mountain is named after? No answers yet, but it is still interesting to look at.

Here's a link to a digitized copy in case you want to "find your friends relatives" ;)
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/scd0001.00022796409

New use for old books?

Check out this artful use of old books:

http://www.visualnews.com/2011/12/22/mountains-of-books-become-mountains/

A Favorite So Far

Even though I've new spent several hours sitting with the pamphlets I feel like I haven't gotten very far. I have a pretty good process down though so I can chug through at a moderate rate. First I look at the information about the pamphlet if it's been cataloged--make sure the record is right. I then add some information to our spreadsheet--pages, number of copies, subject, condition. The last thing I do is search for a digital copy of the exact pamphlet we have. This tends to be the most time consuming part, but I have come across a fair number so I have my hopes up.

http://www.archive.org/details/aboutwar00huntez
This pamphlet "About the war: Plain words to plain people by a plain man" is one of my favorites so far. The title is witty, and there's an illustration so I'm excited by just that. What the "plain man" on the cover is saying to the boys in 1863 is very compelling. "'So long as you remain UNITED,' said the old man (pointing the attention of his boys to the bundle of sticks,) 'you are a match for all your enemies; but SEPARATE, and you are UNDONE." I think these words are convincing even now, especially since it is an election year. The pamphlet is attributed to Ezra Mundy Hunt, who I can only seem to find was a "physician, writer, humanitarian." I don't know anything more and I kind of am attracted to the anonymity. This pamphlet seems just as wise to me as I hope it was almost 150 years ago.

The Beginning....

I haven't been working with Special Collections long, but I've learned a lot of things and foresee lots of work ahead of me and my colleagues. Here is a list of things I can think of right now:

1. We don't wear white gloves. It turns out they can do as much damage as our hands can. We just have to be gentile and clean.

2. Everything is priceless. Even if an item was purchased for the collection--it is priceless. Once I thought about that it makes sense. And really it is true.

3. Pamphlets have THE LONGEST TITLES EVER. It is ridiculous how long some of them are. Sometimes it takes so long to read the title and it's so descriptive that I feel like there's no point on reading the actual pamphlet. I know that's not true, but geez! Leave some surprise!

4. Everything is inconsistent. Some of this has to do with how things were cataloged (or not) in the past, but it also has to do with the way things on the pamphlet were printed. Some of them have really descriptive covers/title pages. Some have almost nothing. Sometimes a publisher writes their name one way, yet on another pamphlet the same publisher may print their name differently. What a nightmare!

5. When cataloging you always need a ruler. And they use the metric system like a normal system! Yay! We discovered a disparity from our OCLC record of a pamphlet and the pamphlet in front of us. We could plainly see we had 38 pages, but the record (that was cataloged by the Library of Congress) said 36 pages. It turned out ours was not as tall, hence the slightly longer pamphlet. That was really interesting! This also showed me that it is important to have the pamphlet in front of me when I check the cataloging and check for a digitized version. While a different digitized version may have the same content, we're only interested in digital copies that are the same as the pamphlets we have.

So I have barely started this project, but there's already lots of things I've learned to look at.


Until next time, Kait

Expensive book on Amazon

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/25/amazon.price.algorithm/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Interesting article about 3rd party companies making the prices for books sold on Amazon, and this case getting out of hand

We're just not WHOLE anymore...

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134531653/we-are-just-not-digging-the-whole-anymore?sc=emaf

Thought this article from NPR was interesting (and ture). Someone at work shared it with me and I thought I'd do the same...