Why We Need Non-LC Metadata
April 21, 2007 at 12:21 am | In libraries | 1 CommentOK, I’m still officially in hibernation, but I’m in a cross mood and my library catalog has shown me quite clearly why we need tagging (or something) to allow for additional, non-cataloger-generated access points. So I’m reading the Yale Press Log about the Annals of Communism series, and I quickly check our catalog to make sure we’ve got this to some degree. Thankfully, we do, so I’m browsing the records and come across the record for Enemies within the gates? : the Comintern and the Stalinist repression, 1934-1939 / William J. Chase ; Russian documents translated by Vadim A. Staklo. Take a look at the subject headings for this (I’ve linked to Open WorldCat): none of them give any indication that this is part of a series of documents (that is, primary sources) relating to the Soviet Union. So if I find myself helping students searching for primary sources regarding Stalin and the purges, either I already know about this series and tell them to look for the series specifically and browse through the records; or, more likely, I tell them to do keyword subject searches with terms like Stalin sources or Soviet Union sources, or whatever. These searches would not yield this book. So if my catalog had the ability to add tagging, I could see this and quickly tag it with “primary sources” and “Soviet Union.” Or even tag it with a course number if there is a course offered that would regularly make use of something like this.
Protest Art @ Your Library
April 18, 2007 at 5:31 pm | In libraries | 5 CommentsPoking my head out of my cave for a very special reason: photos of a public art display at my former place of work. A little background – this library is under renovations and parts of the collection have been put into inaccessible storage, things have been moved around, services temporarily out of service, it’s hard to find things, and so on. And so, I present to you what is probably the work of some students protesting the library’s “transformation”:
Hibernation
April 12, 2007 at 7:23 am | In Uncategorized | 2 CommentsI’m going to stop blogging for a while, maybe longer.
Before I head out, I want to share a Louis MacNeice poem. When I took Irish Lit (and for years after), I thought MacNeice rather boring – he was some dude who came after Yeats and before the much more exciting poets of the 60s-80s. Jesus, was I wrong. Reading his work now, I can’t believe that I didn’t notice how rhythmically tight his poems are, or hear the voice of someone stuck between worlds and trying to find his place. MacNeice has written some beautiful love poems (“The Sunlight in the Garden” is oft-collected) and some great political ones (“Neutrality” has these amazing closing lines: “But then look eastward from your heart, there bulks / A continent, close, dark, as archetypal sin, / While to the west off your own shores the mackerel / Are fat – on the flesh of your kin.”). The poem I’ve chosen to share with you is taken from Louis MacNeice: Poems selected by Michael Longley.
Thalassa
Run out the boat, my broken comrades;
Let the old seaweed crack, the surge
Burgeon oblivious of the last
Embarkation of feckless men,
Let every adverse force converge -
Here we must needs embark again.
Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades;
Let each horizon tilt and lurch -
You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church -
But let your poison be your cure.
Put out to sea, ignoble comrades,
Whose record shall be noble yet;
Butting through scarps of moving marble
The narwhal dares us to be free;
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.
University of Georgia Press “White Sale”
April 10, 2007 at 8:00 pm | In history, libraries, literature | Leave a CommentThe University of Georgia Press is having its White Sale 2007: hundreds of titles (in history, anthropology & folklore, literature, and environmental studies) at 75% off. Go forth and multiply your book collections!
April Irish Poetry I: Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
April 6, 2007 at 10:19 pm | In literature | 1 CommentI’ve been reading about Louis MacNeice all week, but decided that it would be more fun to share Nuala’s work instead. It’s gotten quite warm here, the trees are in full bloom … MacNeice just didn’t seem right (maybe another week). First, a quick introduction: Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (b. 1952; prounced something like Newla Nee Honnall [or Gonnall, depending on whom you ask]) is a contemporary poet working in the Irish language; her poems in English are translated by herself or, more frequently, by other Irish poets. The following comes from the 1988 ed. of Anthony Bradley’s Contemporary Irish Poetry anthology (the very edition I used in my undergrad Irish lit class).
Labasheedy (The Silken Bed) [trans. from the Irish by Ni Dhomhnaill]
I’d make a bed for you
in Labasheedy
in the tall grass
under the wrestling trees
where your skin
would be silk upon silk
in the darkness
when the moths are coming down.
Skin which glistens
shining over your limbs
like milk being poured
from jugs at dinnertime;
your hair is a herd of goats
moving over rolling hills,
hills that have high cliffs
and two ravines.
And your damp lips
would be as sweet as sugar
at evening and we walking
by the riverside
with honeyed breezes
blowing over the Shannon
and the fuchsias bowing down to you
one by one.
The fuchsias bending low
their solemn heads
in obeisance to the beauty
in front of them
I would pick a pair of flowers
as pendant earrings
to adorn you
like a bride in shining clothes.
O I’d make a bed for you
in Labasheedy,
in the twilight hour
with evening falling slow
and what a pleasure it would be
to have our limbs entwine
wrestling
while the moths are coming down.
There is an old joke that there’s no word for sex in Irish. Whether that’s true or not (I don’t recall), what Nuala does so well is take traditional Irish idioms and show how terrifically erotic they can be; that is, even if there isn’t a word for sex in Irish, Irish is pretty damn sexy.
Want to read more? Here are a few English-language titles with links to Open WorldCat:
Selected Poems (Dublin, 1988)
The Astrakhan Cloak (Winston-Salem, NC, 1993)
Pharaoh’s Daughter (Winston-Salem, NC, 1993)
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
