Bon Anniversaire, Charles Baudelaire

A furlough day greeting from the Bookcharmer, who finds herself in a rather particular fit of pique at not being in her bibliographic habitat today.

Today, as Garrison Keillor reminded me on Writer's Almanac, is the birthday of one Charles Baudelaire, a poet of singular gifts. I should like to be in my office in King Library today, where I have in my personal collection of books, a very handsome edition of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. I wish to be consulting this particular monograph, my copy in particular.

So readers, since I am keeping holy the furlough today (reference borrowed from a fellow CSU faculty member with a blog, Dr. Free-Ride) I will instead confine myself to a brief comment about subject headings in relationship to locating a biography on Charles Baudelaire.

Should one want to find a biography of Baudelaire, in your library catalog you should set the search option to SUBJECT and type

Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Biography

Ideally, your online public access catalog, once set to search the subject heading field, would provide you with subject browse of subject headings if you simply typed

Baudelaire Charles

My Innovative catalog does this, presenting this fine list:

Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Aesthetics 3
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Bibliography c1968 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Biography 6
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Contemporaries 1980 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Correspondence 3
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Criticism And Interpretation 34
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Criticism And Interpretation Congresses 1995 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Criticism And Interpretation Handbooks Manuals Etc 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Ethics 1977 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Fleurs Du Mal 11
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Fleurs Du Mal Concordances 1975 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Humor c1988 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 In Literature 1979 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Influence 4
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Knowledge Art c1989 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Knowledge Literature 1981 1
Baudelaire Charles 1821 1867 Knowledge Psychology

The numbers that appear to the right of the headings indicate the number of items in that category--for example, the library owns six titles that are classified as biographies of Baudelaire.

When next in my library, before settling in to my habitat with that prized personal copy of Fleurs du Mal, I will make a journey to the 7th floor to find:

Author Richardson, Joanna.
Title Baudelaire / Joanna Richardson.
Publication Information New York : St. Martin's Press, 1994.

At 602 pages, that will hopefully keep me out of trouble for a little while.

Happy Birthday, Baudelaire.