Not being able to get online while I'm in the library (for some reason, this particular Institute of Teh Highah Learninz does not like my eduroam login based on my connection with the Godless Institution in Gower Street, although I had no problems while I was waiting for my bus to O'Hare in the coolth of the Memorial Union at Madison). This would ( Read more... )

(This is, my dearios, about obtaining images in the course of my ongoing research.)
I was finally obliged to cave in and - o, the horror - order the microfilm of the volume of the journal I wanted to consult at the British Library, as hard copies of that particular volume, in both sets they held, NO.COULD.HAZ.
To look at microfilm at the BL, there ( Read more... )

A fun, well, relatively, afternoon in the British Library once I had reconciled myself to the fact that I thought I had ordered a volume of a periodical that the system didn't think I had (silly me, thinking that ordering a date span will bring up the middle year as well as the years at each end: yes, I am interested in a very narrow period of time ( Read more... )

Another afternoon in the British Library, gathering material (of which I probably already have far too much, but one boils it all down to make a savoury stock) for chapter I have contracted to write.
And while I do not think that the BL will ever become one of my fave places to Do Research, it has actually been going fairly well -
- though, I ( Read more... )

Managed three (shortish) sessions in the British Library this week, in spite of the various tribulations militating against it - i.e. the prescription saga, also had various demands made upon my Expert Knowledge in various fields. And however much I have the facts at my fingertips, I still have to take the time to write them out, and in some cases ( Read more... )

Would it not be more useful to think in a somewhat more granular fashion about what we are thinking about when we are bewailing the declining popularity of literary fiction, and the fact that litfic writers are unable to support themselves by writing litfic:
Literary fiction in crisis as sales drop dramatically.
When one considers that within the ( Read more... )

Maybe it was just me, but in the days long gone when I was a Young Thing, there were a hell of a lot of things that I just took for granted and did not think about and were just the way things were.
(I have probably mentioned my paternal grandmother's occasional remarks upon bodily and health matters that in the light of having had some contact ( Read more... )

That viral Chinese library has turned out to be a bit of a sham.
It already looked to me like one of those endeavours in the world of libraries where the architects and designers have had more say than librarians, conservators, and actual users. I mean, those curling waves of shelving looked spectacular, but how great were they for browsing/ ( Read more... )

Goodness know, my dearios have heard me moan and whinge about people who are not archivists writing about archives, but recently I came across an article that actually gets it pretty well mostly right:
(Okay, I could live without this title) Keepers of the Secrets, which is a bit too much in the 'hidden in the dusty archives' trope, which the ( Read more... )

Went to see The Limehouse Golem last night.
Okay, I can see why the British Museum Reading Room, approached via the well-known Great Russell Street facade, looked nothing whatsoever like the famed Round Room, no longer in existence in its former glory. But I am still a bit 'huh?' about the layout and the rare volumes available on open shelves. (Not ( Read more... )