The Bryn Mawr Experience: CLIR orientation report

The incoming class of CLIR postdoctoral fellows (minus two members who could not attend due to scheduling conflicts) met from July23-August 3 at Bryn Mawr College. The sessions were cheerfully and ably run by Elliott Shore, Constance A. Jones Director of Libraries and Professor of History at Bryn Mawr, and Christa Williford, a former CLIR postdoc who now works as a librarian at nearby Haverford College. The goal of the session was to prepare the recently-graduated PhD’s, most of whom hold degrees in humanities disciplines, for careers in libraries. Although a couple of the fellows had experience working in libraries, the majority were familiar with them primarily from having spent years using them intensely as undergraduate and graduate students. Evenings were spent reading in and writing about a variety of topics, including the history of the library, the future of the monograph, institutional repositories, the library’s role in pedagogy, challenges and opportunities presented by digital technologies, the impact of Google on libraries (and particularly the so-called “Google Five”), and the reception of the CLIR postdoctoral program itself in the library world. These topics were then discussed in detail during the following day’s seminars.

Highlights of the experience included sessions with Don Waters, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Program Officer for Scholarly Communications, and Mary Patterson McPherson, President Emeritus of Bryn Mawr College and Vice President of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a wonderful trip to the Library of Congress. At the LOC, we had behind-the-scenes tours of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division, the African and Middle Eastern Division, the Performing Arts Division, and the Manuscript Division. We saw a wide variety of wonderful materials, including early printed materials from the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, the Bible used Lincoln swearing-in ceremony, presidential papers, Ethiopian manuscripts, and scores by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. We concluded with a session with Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services.

No account of the session would be complete without mentioning the food. We began with an introductory dinner, and Elliott Shore informed us that the library world was one where eating and drinking were important. This meal was the first of many indulgences. The dining services at Bryn Mawr are of unusually high quality, and we enjoyed both the quality and the unlimited quantity that our dining hall offered. Enormous breakfasts were followed immediately by the daily baskets of local delicacies that Elliott brought to class, which included local pastries, soft pretzels that are one of the culinary trademarks of the Philadelphia area, and Tastykakes. (Be forewarned – should it ever occur to you to compare Tastykakes to Hostess cakes, DO NOT do so in a 200-mile radius of Philadelphia. These baked goods are a matter of local pride not to be sullied through association with that national conglomerate.) The Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes (despite the unexplained affinity of the Tastykake company for the letter k) is terrific.

Finally, we had a weekend during which we could tour Philadelphia, a great place to visit. I saw a Phillies game, toured the Eastern State Penitentiary, which I recommend highly, and of course saw the Liberty Bell and ate a (chicken) cheesesteak. All in all, it was an informative and enjoyable experience that left us all both inspired and exhausted.