An Immodest Proposal

Does anyone remember what happened to summer? Or September for that matter? Your Bookcharmer zoomed through Fall Semester with few spare moments. It is true that whatever spare moments that happened were snapped up with a new bit of digital wizardry. Yes, I joined Twitter. If you'd like to see what I say in 140 words or less, I'm @Bookcharmer on that service. I caution you, it is an addictive little website, one that constantly updates, presenting your computer or phone screen with tidbits of info, links to larger sites, photos from all over the world.

Meanwhile, whilst my personal libraries, home and work, are in disarray from the usual daily discombobulations, I have no trouble listing the books I'd like to add to my personal haul! I am motivated to be immodest in listing my desires, because a very good cause might benefit! One of my favorite publishers, San Francisco's own Chronicle Books, if offering a generous giveaway:

http://www.chroniclebooks.com/happyhaulidays

So, if I'm reading the page correctly, I list 500 dollars worth of Chronicle titles I would like to have; I entice people to read my blog and comment on this post, enabling said lucky reader to also get the haul from Chronicle, AND a charity I designate gets the loot as well!

So, let's make ourselves winners! The charity I would support is the much deserving Partners In Reading at the San Jose Public Library, a fine organization that is in fact holding a book drive for its learners.

One of the hallmarks of my childhood memories is that books were like air in my home, they were everywhere. Parents who unstintingly read to me and my sister and gave us that intangible and miraculous gift: a love of reading. We had books at home, at school, at the library. We talked about books and went to places we had read about. I don't like to imagine a home without books, or try to imagine a life where books are an unaffordable luxury, but that is the reality for many.

Have a look at the Partners in Reading website to learn more about this organization: http://www.sjpl.org/par

Now, let's get serious about winning me, you, and PAR a fine load of books!

1. PANTONE: The 20th Century in Color. Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker. 2011
ISBN 9780811877565. $40 I'm certainly more aware of the powers of color lately, and even more interested in how people have used and perceived color at different points in time. Will this tome pantone for Harvest Gold?

2. The Art of Instruction: Vintage Educational Charts from the 19th and 20th Centuries. Katrien Van der Schueren. 2011. ISBN 9781452101118 35.00
Doesn't this sound interesting? Reproductions of 100 vintage posters? Yes, please!

3. Practice Makes Perfect: Sketching and Drawing. Matt Pagett. 2011. ISBN 9780811877527 25.95. Oh, how I would love to be able to draw. I never got past learning more than the few scribbly figures I was able to master. Even casual doodlers, I envy. Could this be the text that teaches me how to capture shapes and scenes?

4. The Book as Art: Artists' Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Krystyna Wasserman. 2011. ISBN 9781568989921 $34.95
This is not simply recreational, this would count as professional reading, as my very next conference is the College Book Arts Association in January. How could I present myself there without being well acquainted with this title?

5. 1000 Designs for the Garden And Where to Find Them. Geraldine and Ian Rudge. 2011. ISBN 9781856697033 30.00 Now that I have a proper space for gardening, garden information is most welcome. And 1000 designs! At 30 dollars, how much is that for 1000? Let's see, divide by 30, carry the one...yup, a bargain!

6. American Trademarks: A Compendium. Eric Baker,and Tyler Blik. 2010.ISBN 9780811872201 29.95
A combination of whimsy and history, all those trademarks pulled together. Which business will be next to each other? Is it organized chronologically or alphabetically?

7. The Mythic City: Photographs of New York by Samuel H. Gottscho, 1925-1940. Donald Albrecht. 2011. ISBN 9781616890155 29.95
Now, this, this book I would really like to see. 1925-1940 are the years when my research subject, Clara Laughlin, was often in New York, and I always eager for glimpses of her world.

8. New York Changing: Revisiting Berenice Abbott's New York. Douglas Levere. 2004. ISBN 9781568984735 40.00 A perfect companion piece to Gottscho's photos.

9. Denyse Schmidt Quilts. Denyse Schmidt. 2005. ISBN 9780811844420 24.95
My beloved heirloom Singer sewing machine is in fine form these days, so new patterns are always welcome!

10. Amy Butler's In Stitches. Amy Butler. 2006. ISBN 9780811851596 24.95
25 charming projects, could I make them all?

11. Lettering: A Reference Manual of Techniques. Andrew Haslam. 2011. ISBN 9781856696869 50.00
This looks luscious.

12. Bibliographic: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books. Jason Godfrey. 2011. ISBN 9781856697651 29.95
Desirable simply for the title alone! And definitely a title that an Art and Design librarian should know.

13. Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting. Siri Hustvedt. 2005. ISBN 9781568985183 24.95
This is the author of the bestselling novel What I Loved, which is currently on the top of my pile of 'to read' books.

14. My final selection: The Ocean at Home: An Illustrated History of the Aquarium. Bernd Brunner. 2005. ISBN 9781568985022 24.95 Now, the online site says the title is not available, so this one is my "bonus" title if I win and I a. didn't do the math right and I was already over the 500 limit or b. someone has to scratch me up a copy. With any luck, I will be the winner and this tome on aquariums will also discuss terrariums.

So, that's my entry! Comment away, readers, so that you might be a lucky winner too! Or perhaps you'd enjoy making your own list!

Reference Renaissance, more than just a summer fling

Summer greetings, reader(s)!

This summer, my SJSU library colleagues and I are involved in reviewing our reference collection areas. A look over the reference collection is always a good idea, more so now that the tendency to sit at a computer terminal is becoming a chronic condition rather than a novel alternative. As I headed to my "N's", freshly sharpened number two pencil in hand (yes, my hair IS in nicely twisted updo), I noted several old friends on my list of titles: The Dictionary of Art, World Painting Index, and my frequently consulted Guide to the Literature of Art History. Getting hands on with the interfiled collection, books owned by SJSU as well as San Jose Public Library, I rediscovered some old friends and made some new ones as well.

The value of reference books needs to be actively promoted, lest we all spend our time and our patrons' time needlessly digging through fragments of digitized information and piecing together patterns ourselves when experts have gone to much effort to identify patterns for us. While I'm all for constructivist learning, there is a point at which having information compiled for you in a useful way is extremely beneficial. So I have chosen one old friend and one new friend to illustrate this point.

The old friend is The Wilson Chronology of the Arts. (George Ochoa and Melinda Corey. New York : H.W. Wilson Co., 1998.)
Say for example you are researching an American writer who traveled to Europe in 1911. How could you easily and rapidly find out what was happening worldwide in 1911 in the arts? This book will provide that information. Turn to page 221 and you will quickly learn that is the year George Braque painted The Portugese, Matisse painted The Red Studio, and Joseph Conrad published Under Western Eyes. What, you knew all of that already? Fine, well, what about on page 222, which says that in 1912 film attendance in the United States reaches five million patrons daily and Harriet Monroe founded Poetry?


The new friend is the multi-volume Greenwood Encyclopedia of Homes Through American History. (Thomas W. Paradis, general editor. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2008.)
My fingers could hardly wait to grasp a volume of this handsome set. For anyone with a question about American vernacular architecture, this set should be kept in mind. Besides discussions of home layouts and designs, information is also provided on furnishings. The discussion in volume one on page 208-9 on placement of beds in homes in Federal Era is fascinating. There is a very useful piece of information on parlors on page 204.

Volume 4 will take you from 1946 to the present. The discussions presented in this volume would be of use to any student wishing a good preparation for understanding the voluminous amount of literature on topics such as Frank Lloyd Wright, suburbs, and American yards and landscaping. A reference on page 308 to Peter Blake's 1964 God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape will have me seeking that title to read.

The bibliographies in this set are fantastic. A resource guide is provided for specific sections, as well as a general bibliography. I will use this set when assisting students in choosing and narrowing a topic.

Choosing a topic is one of the most challenging parts of writing a paper. Knowing how much information available on a topic is also a challenge. I will be thinking over the summer about ways to promote specific reference tools to students, researchers, and patrons. Your suggestions for doing that are welcome!

Design for Librarian, or, the delights of the used books store

Greetings, patient readers! I hope to recommit to a more frequent blog schedule, a promise all of us once fervent bloggers have made at some point. But I do hope to embark on a more rigorous path of reading now that the summer has reached the point where the idea of summer is more than an idea, it is just a page turn in the planner away. June beckons.

My desire to have an organized office, to subscribe and implement the idea of Office Beautiful, is circumvented by my need to have books about me at all times. I have seen this phenomenon come full circle just recently. In building the collection for San Jose State University Library, I have purchased several titles by author and designer Ellen Lupton. A title unowned by the library caught my eye, and I decided to request it via the amazing and essential consortial borrowing/lending entity, Link+ in order to review it for myself. That title is Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things by Ellen and Julia Lupton. St. Martin's, New York: 2009. I had access to this delightful manifesto for the usual three weeks, then it was summoned for return. Oh, of course I could have renewed it, requested it again, but I placed the book in the book drop on the appointed date, vowing to take in the advice of the authors and be more mindful, while remaining cheerful and whimsical, about the objects in my life. (Aside, books are definitely more than mere objects, but they do have mass.)

A lazy Thursday evening in downtown Mountain View brought the book back into my hands. There are few things more enjoyable in Mountain View than following up your big dinner on Castro street at any number of pleasurable establishments by wandering into BookBuyers. Yes, BookBuyers, which lures you in with the 50% off colorful calendars and the dog-friendly overtures, such as the waterbowl by the front door, if you are lucky enough to a have a dog with you that likes to go to bookstores. Wander further in, and you are treated to everything from childrens' books to graphic novels, art books (good ones!) to music, maps to magazines...it is a browser's heaven.

I was feeling stalwart in my Just Looking outlook, a brief rifle through my usual favorite sections, some mental notes about reading, and then, finishing up my tour of the shop with the section of new arrivals. Waiting for me, yes, the Luptons' 2009 Design Your Life. Obviously, I was meant to own a copy, and having trifled with Fate before and lost, am more mindful of following clues placed in my path.

I hope you'll find a copy in your own favorite bookstore, be it new or used, or perhaps from your favorite library or consortium. Here's the ISBN if you need to go the book-addiction route of amazon dot com: 0312532733

Bibliographic Voyages

Greetings Gentle Readers,

I hasten to brush the virtual dust of this blog and resume my forthright promotion of all things LCSH. Without further ado, the first subject heading of the year that has caught my eye:

Voyages around the world

If you go to http://authorities.loc.gov/ and choose Search Authorities you can type in this heading for yourself and see that the subject heading Voyages around the world is

Used For/See From:
Circumnavigation
Journeys
Tours around the world
Travel books
Travels
Trips around the world
Voyages around the world 1951-1980
Voyages around the world 1981-

and that you will find more information if you
Search Also Under:
International travel
Voyages and travels


You can continue explorations of this concept in your favorite online catalog, or consortial catalog, at your leisure to ponder the subdivided headings. I also recommend typing in this subject heading:

Voyages And Travels

to see where it will take you!

Happy New Year, and may there be many charming books in your path for 2011.

How to Read an Encyclopedia Entry

Greetings! The semester is well under way and at last I can resume my own pace of reading and writing, such as it is, instead of racing around trying to keep up with the always chaotic pace of September.

I have recently resumed work on one of my long term interests, travel writing, having my interest renewed at the always enjoyable conference of the International Society for Travel Writing, held this year in South Carolina. It was my pleasure to be on a panel about 20th Century American women travel writers and an even greater pleasure to hear the presentations during the conference that introduced me to many more writers to explore.

This entry is titled "How to Read an Encyclopedia Entry" because I will in the next few paragraphs show you a delightful technique for uncovering possible scenes for movie scripts. Bear with me.

One of the conference attendees shared with me her interest in translating books by Americans about Germany into German. Of course, my personal research interest, Clara Laughlin, wrote So you're going to Germany and Austria! in 1930, so I shared this information. Curious to see what other titles share the subject heading Germany -- Guidebooks I hopped into Link+. If you're playing along at home in the library catalog of your choice, you might be mildly disappointed in the results. 246 is not enough! So, I tried another similar subject heading: Germany--Description and Travel, which generates 420 results. You might be expecting at this point I am going to launch into a discussion about the difference of these two subject headings, but instead I direct your attention to the works of an author revealed by these searches:

Observations and reflections made in the course of a journey through France, Italy, and Germany

Piozzi, Hester Lynch, 1741-1821.
London : Printed for A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1789.
2 v. ;

This bibliographic record also nicely lends itself as an example of what sets off my Bookcharmer Alert System. 1789, always of interest. But the combination of "Hester" with "Piozzi" is what sends me quickly, quickly to biographical sources!

Happily, our Hester Lynch Piozzi is well represented in the Dictionary of National Biography, or as it is known in its online incarnation: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. You should read this entry for yourself, whether your library has print or online access, as it is worth the effort to locate this essay to read about this remarkable woman and wonder, as I did, why her name is not mentioned as frequently as Samuel Johnson's. Here's the citation: Michael J. Franklin, ‘Piozzi , Hester Lynch (1741–1821)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22309, accessed 6 Oct 2010]

As I say to students in library instruction opportunities, encyclopedia authors use neutral language as encyclopedia publishers do not wish to be sued. Encyclopedia entries are intended to give the upshot of a topic and provide useful citations to further reading. DNB does this very well. However, sometimes the language is SO neutral that a bookcharmer must raise her eyebrows and provide an alternative version sotte voce.

For example, DNB writes of Hester Lynch's marriage to one Henry Thrale, "When not actively seeking a male heir, Thrale was distant, somewhat severe, and prone to womanizing if his wife was not available; a man about town, he valued his wife primarily as a woman who did not object to his town house in Deadman's Place, Southwark, and ultimately as a vivacious and ornamental hostess at his Streatham Park estate."

Loosely translated: he was a pig.

Grieve not dear reader, for Hester had her day, once Thrale departed this life and she was also relieved of having Samuel Johnson as a house-guest for sixteen years. The DNB goes on to tell us, as neutrally as possible:

"three years after the death of Thrale, she made a love match of her own. Against the advice of her forceful eldest daughter, Hester Maria [see Elphinstone, Hester Maria]—aptly nicknamed Queeney—and the violent opposition of Johnson, whose ill health increased his self-absorption, and to the dismay of almost all her fashionable and bluestocking friends, she married the Italian musician Gabriel Mario Piozzi (1740–1809)."

Reader response: "What! Where, when did she meet Piozzi?!? She married him even though Johnson was hateful about it and so was her eldest daughter ("forceful" is loosely translated as "bitchy")!

Are there not several scenes ripe for cinema in this entry? This has costume drama written all over it! Who would you cast as a bloated, selfish Johnson? As the long suffering and finally happy Hester? (Meryl Streep of course). And as the apparently imperious daughter? (Scarlett Johannson).

I now exit stage left to determine if I will begin reading about her with the early editions of Hester's Letters, the re-edited writings, or the attempts at biography that have been published about her.

A Back to School Blog entry about the Library Catalog and Journals, with extra huffiness.

Greetings! Summer is Over, the Fall Semester has begun! I know I'm a sucker for pageantry and ceremony, especially those involving long black robes on sunny days, but I can't help it. In what other job do you get to officially welcome the semester?

But I digress. Today's post is about the tricky relationship between the Library Catalog and those messy, out of control, name changing, renumbering, format jumping things known as Periodicals.

Journals, Newspapers, Magazines...whatever the particular item, they are the challenge of catalogers everywhere. I have fond memories of the Serials Catalog that was once part of the landscape of Ellis Library at University of Missouri. So orderly, each journal had a card, and each card had a little box where a check mark could be placed to indicate an issue had been RECEIVED.

In today's frenetic world, the Library Catalog will indicate if the library SUBSCRIBES to a journal. One must look closely at the record to determine if the issue you want is OWNED, in hard copy or via electronic subscription, by the library.

What makes this complicated is that there is not a rhyme or reason or rule of thumb that can be applied. One might be likely to think, "New journals are online, old journals are not." Not so. While some recent journals may be online, publishers have found a new use for an old word, "Embargoed," in order to keep the very newest information offline, available online in print, so that libraries are forced to maintain subscriptions to both formats.

And many past issues have been successfully scanned in to digital format, such as the titles that are archived by our once best friends at JSTOR.

Oh, JSTOR, how you have let me and many of my library brethren down. (See Meredith Farkas' excellent editorial here: http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2010/08/24/whats-the-deal-jstor/

When journals first burst onto the full text scene, libraries were then forced to keep up by creating mechanisms for identifying which journals were available in specific digital archives. Bring in the proxy servers, cue the patron passwords, and voila, you've got a whole new set of questions to answer, just to get your patron to a resource. Sure, once everyone has got the pattern down, the research can commerce across campus, across town, across the country.

And then, the interface changes. Many times this is for the good, enhanced search options, improved displays, and so forth.

But the latest change to JSTOR is going to have a big impact on individual researchers, students in particular, who are being lured towards paying for pieces of information that the library has probably already paid for. By opening up the entire JSTOR collections, and not providing a method for linking to holdings, JSTOR is setting up my students to see purchasing information as the most expedient way to access it.

Dirty pool, JSTOR. Students are already hooked on you because of your delectable full-text nature. Your decent full-text searching makes it easy to find things in your journal collection. But not allowing libraries to embed a local hook to holdings (here we call it GetText) makes it that much harder for our patrons to know where to actually find the journal being cited.

So the fur is flying in library land just now and Interlibrary Loan requests for items we own are probably going to skyrocket, but most maddening of all, is that the earnest undergraduate, tempted by a delicious abstract, might not know that a quick journal title search in the library catalog may turn up that desired article in a competitor's database and will instead feel obliged, in our consumer culture, to pay for access to that article.

If Wilson, Proquest, and EBSCO can handle embedding a link to local holdings, so can you JSTOR.

In the meanwhile, readers, remember:

Search for the name of the journal (not the article title) in the Library Catalog! And if we don't have it, put in your Interlibrary Loan request so the library can borrow it for you.

And now, back to celebrating the beginning of Fall Semester!

Titles vs. Subject Headings

Greetings, gentle reader(s)! Today's puzzle is about charming titles vs. broad subject headings, and how both of them lend difficulty to researching.

Part of my journey towards locating correspondence between Clara E. Laughlin and Little, Brown and Company has been spent in looking at general works about American publishing houses. Our good friends at the Dictionary of Literary Biography have some very nice titles, such as:

Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series — The House of Scribner,1846-1904. Volume 13.
Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series — The House of Scribner,1905-1930. Volume 16.
Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series — The House of Scribner, 1931-1984. Volume 17.

Volume 49 of the DLB (as librarians are wont to refer to this set) is titled: American literary publishing houses, 1638-1899.

So, what LCSH do these titles have in common? They should all have in common:

Publishers and publishing -- United States

at a minimum, hopefully also subdivided:

--History

If you have read a few other posts, you are probably anticipating my next comments: that any book that is about more than three subjects gets a broader heading, such as the Publishers and publishing heading, vs. a book like Volume 13 of the DLB, which focuses more specifically on the House of Scribner.

Now, let's talk a little about titles. I am deliberately avoiding a rant about the House of Bruccoli Clark Layman being obscured by the ridiculous name of "Gale Cengage", the current dealer of all things DLB. (Pausing to fondly reflect on when the biggest argument used to be about whether to shelve the DLB volumes in volume order in Reference or subject classification, which chopped up the set unattractively.)

If one is browsing on the general subject heading:

Publishers and publishing -- United States

in your library catalog of choice, you have likely noticed the subdivision of

--biography

I did, and upon selecting that subdivided subheading, was rewarded with this title:

Author Cerf, Bennett, 1898-1971
Title At Random : the reminiscences of Bennett Cerf / [with a new introduction by Christopher Cerf]
Imprint New York : Random House Trade Paperbacks, c2002

Well played, Mr. Cerf, well played. Just this once, I will nod in approval at a pun. If you were a co-founder of Random House, you are indeed entitled to title your autobiography "At Random."

But what of other titles that share the subject heading:

Publishers and publishing -- United States -- Biography

After all, the Link+ catalog lists 168 items that share this LCSH!

Give this subject heading a try in your catalog!