Catching up . . .
December 6, 2006
The autumn has seen me sprinting to keep up with everything, with the unfortunate result that my nascent blog has been neglected. One highlight, then, from each month . . . .
October
From October 9-13 I had the privilege of studying codicology with Albert Derolez, perhaps the greatest living codicologist. The course was offered at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore through Rare Book School. As is typical with RBS offerings, an enormous amount of information and experience was gained in a mere five days. Perhaps the best for me was simply watching Mr. Derolez at work – seeing him leaf through a manuscript that he had never seen before and descirbe to the class everything he observes is quite an inspiration. The content learned was put to use immediately in my work on the Roman de la Rose project when I wrote a description for a Rose manuscript that had never been described aside from some brief catalog records.
November
I traveled to Boston November 8-10 for the Digital Library Federation’s Fall Forum 2006. The trip was made possible through the DLF’s Forum Fellowships program, which, as DLF director David Seaman put it, is “a shameless attempt to seduce” new folks into the digital library world. The splendor of the Farimont Copley, the great food, the intellectual exchange among friendly folks, and the quality of the panels all did their part in accomplishing this. To top it off, Boston was experiencing unseasonably warm weather, meaning I didn’t even need a jacket when I hit the Freedom Trail to see some of the many great sites the city has to offer. Standouts among the many presentations (which are archived here) were those on Collex and The Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI) and the keynote address by Anurag Acharya, founder of Google Scholar. The Boston Public Library was just across the street and was the site of the opening reception. It’s a wonderful old building as well as a vibrant 21st-century library. Stop in and see it if you’re in town.
December
To kick off December, I’m just back from the Coalition for Networked Information’s Fall 2006 Task Force Meeting, which was held December 4-5 in Washington, D.C. Elliott Shore, our CLIR mentor and guru, arranged for current CLIR fellows to attend the meeting. The quality of the panelists at this meeting was exceptional – perhaps the best for any conference I’ve attended. Two tips to pass along from sessions I attended – First, digital humanities folks will want to take note of the new digital programs being rolled out byt the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Digital Humanities Initiative. And if you haven’t yet checked out Zotero, do so – it’s terrific.
