2007 – The Year To Date

It’s been a busy start to 2007 here at Hopkins. The following is an account of some of the many things I’ve been working on during the first two months:

Mellon Meeting in NYC

After returning from the holidays, the Rose team got together to continue our planning for the new site, and I began preparing for a trip to New York City to present our work to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at the Mellon All-Projects Meeting for Medieval Studies. Stephen Nichols and I each presented on different aspects of the project, and we heard from a number of other medievalists working on a fascinating array of projects, including medieval manuscripts, music, and architecture. The meeting was hosted in the ArtStor buildings on 61st Street. The discussions held between presentations were particularly fruitful; topics included ways that medieval projects, particularly manuscript projects, can share tasks and expertise and the need for an increased regard for digital scholarship in peer review and academic promotion. I arrived in New York a few days early and visited the Pierpont Morgan Library to write a codicological description of MS Morgan 948, a Rose manuscript currently available on our site, and to consult two other Rose manuscripts that we are hoping to add to the site in the near future. I also made it up to Columbia University for the Thirteenth Annual Book Arts Lecture, part of Bibliography Week 2007, with a reception following in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

West Coast Trip: CLIR, UCLA, and the Getty

I left NYC and headed directly to L.A., where the CLIR fellows were gathered for a meeting at UCLA. Each fellow presented his/her work to date. It was great to see the variety and depth of the projects fellows are engaged in across the country and to catch up with friends made in Bryn Mawr over the summer. I stayed for a few days after my colleagues had departed to write descriptions of two Rose manuscripts held at the Getty Center, one of which, Ludwig XV 7, is already on our site, and the other of which is on loan from a private collector and due to be photographed for inclusion on the new site. Medieval manuscripts, world class art, stunning architecture, and views of the Pacifc and surrounding mountains made this a wonderful experience. I was able to finish my work on the Getty manuscripts in time to make a quick visit to the Huntington Library as well, where I viewed yet another Rose manuscript and met with curator Mary Robertson.

Home, DC, Knoxville

After two weeks on the road, I returned home tired but inspired by the experiences, people, and books I had encountered on my trip. But I was home for less than a week before it was time to hit the road again – first a quick trip to Washington, D.C., and then on to Knoxville, Tennessee. I accompanied Sayeed Choudhury, director of the Digital Knowledge Center here at Hopkins, to a conference in D.C. organized by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) division of the Association of American Publishers. Sayeed chaired a panel on Web 2.0 technologies, and I served as a panelist and delivered comments on the emerging role of these technologies in pedagogy, research, and the library world. I then left for Knoxville to attend the Marco Institute at the University of Tennessee, where I gave a presentation entitled ““Voices From the Edge: Marginalia and Marginalization in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts” that focused on those features of manuscripts traditionally marginalized in print editions of medieval texts, whether these are things we’d traditionally label as “marginalia” or, for example, images that were intended to be experienced with the text in an integrated fashion.

That’s it for now!