Today’s picture is appropriate because I went to see the elephants this morning at the Cleveland Zoo — it’s a fantastic habitat and the park is wonderful. Just a reminder to get out and see the wildlife and support your local zoological park’s conservation efforts. The world may be on fire, but animals don’t care about politics (and it’s one of the areas where we can actually make a difference).
Anyway, to the latest project news. First, I haven’t been working as hard as I could have, but I’m also teaching, so… yeah. A girl’s got to be able to play PS5 sometimes, after all. That being said, I have made some progress this month. I have not visited libraries as I’d hoped, but I am making some contacts and working on setting up my categories for the eventual bibliographical data. In the meantime, I’ll keep plinking away at it (I’m almost done with libraries that start with “C”).
Number of libraries confirmed: 93 Number of libraries entered into the database: 2 *Number of extant copies confirmed: 448
Wild white roses from my backyard (which I just learned are invasive). Alas.
Welcome back, gentle readers! Now that the semester is over (or hopefully nearly so) I hope the summer is treating you kindly and providing needed rest and relaxation. As for me, I start teaching an online evening class next week that I am not quite done planning for, but I will be by the time we get to it.
I’m also thrilled to announce that I had my first book review published! I had the pleasure of reviewing Stephen Ramsay’s On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations in ABO: Interactive Journal of Women in the Arts, 1640-1830. It was a relatively painless process, and the staff were communicative and gave excellent feedback — I’d be very happy to work with them again in the future.
As to the LBP, I’m happy to announce that I’m back to it. I’ve been verifying libraries and titles (Cornell’s Rare and Manuscript Collection, we’re going to be spending some time together in the future). I’m debating putting in for the Lewis Walpole Library Fellowship for next year — they don’t have a huge number of books I need, but the ones they have are significant and I should be far enough along by then to make use of it. My goal for the summer is to make some real headway in verifying content and to make some initial rough passes at some local copies and make decisions about how the data is going to work for the actual bibliography portion.
Number of libraries confirmed: 74 Number of libraries entered into the database: 2 Number of extant copies confirmed: 367 (not counting anything at Oxford)
Greetings, Gentle Readers! Welcome to the Lennox Bibliography Project website’s second birthday! *blows noisemaker* I’m thrilled and amazed that I’m still working on this and that I’ve actually made progress, albeit more slowly than I would have liked. Still moving forward, though.
Again, this month has seen a ton of grading and not much in the way of progress. What it has also seen, however, is me prepping my presentation for the upcoming ASECS 2024 conference! Starting later next week (eep) I will be in Toronto, ON with a bunch of other 18th-century scholars and doing my part to further the (small-d) discourse in our field. For those in attendance who might be interested, I’ll be presenting on some of my findings thus far from the LBP.
Specifically, I’m on panel #112, Friday April 5th, from 4:30-6:00pm in the Elgin room. It’s the second of two panels from the Bibliographical Society of America, titled “Bibliography by the Numbers: Meta-Bibliography and the Study of Eighteenth-Century Book Culture.” My paper is titled (not terribly creatively) “The Travels of the Memoirs of the Duke of Sully.” Belatedly I realized I should have named it “So Many Copies: Charlotte Lennox and the Duke of Sully” but alas, inspiration came far too late. Feel free to stop by!
Welcome back, Readers! I have returned from my research “vacation,” for certain values of “returned” anyway. I am still teaching the overload situation this semester, but it’s going well and I feel like I’m mostly not drowning at this point. I am only now resuming work on the project, though. It’s been a good time to take a break and I feel much more able to bring my attention back to it in a positive and constructive way.
One of the things this break brought home to me is how I’ve basically worked on this non-stop for two years at least, prior to the beginning of this past holiday season. It’s so easy to get caught up in the work, particularly when it’s something that we’re interested in and want to see happen, that we can fall victim to our academic training of “never stop working” and forget that sometimes it’s good to let the fields like fallow for a bit.
I’m not saying that everyone is always in a situation where that’s feasible, or necessarily even desirable — we all have our own relationships to our work and research. One of the things I’m discovering on my own career journey, though, is the inexorability of erosion. Time, familiarity, training, and anxiety all wear away at our boundaries, our self-images, our work-life balance, and our storehouses of resolve and empathy. It takes active work to shore up those borders and keep ourselves whole and healthy. Much like the mansions on the hilltops in California now being undermined by landslides and erosion, with the ground beneath them slipping away into the ocean, we’re similarly at risk of being washed out and ground down to nothing. The world, your institution, your research, your students — none of them will tell you to stop when you’re already spread thin.
I know I’m not saying anything really new here. The thing that really hit me, though, is that although I do want to push forward and I’m excited about where this project is going to go, I don’t have a clock on this or a deadline I have to make. I don’t have to push for some external timeline that’s only in my head and sacrifice myself and my enthusiasm for this project in the process. Pacing myself — taking breaks — is a good thing. So for those following along in the background, I appreciate your patience and hope you bear with me during quieter times. I should have more progress to relate soon.
Happy holidays, gentle readers! I hope this season finds you reasonably well, at least on a local level, given the general setting of GAAAAAH globally at the moment. I myself have been digging deep into work and family and friendship as a sustaining focus for the past two months, hence the lack of distinct November update.
I had the good(?) news that I’m teaching both an extra class in the spring and a class online in the summer (assuming it fills), which on the one hand, yay! My car approves this decision. On the other hand, prep and grading and whatnot have largely eaten my ability to focus on Lennox work, so I’ve decided to let this lie fallow for the holiday season while I work on clearing my plate for the coming year. In January, therefore, I’ll be picking back up with the project work as normal. I hope to have new progress to update next time around.
For now, however, I hope that whatever you celebrate, you are able to take a moment to yourself and acknowledge the dark and light, the turning of the year and the brightness inherent in the human spirit even when things seem hopeless. May we all have a brighter 2024.
Photo by u0410u043bu0435u043au0441u0430u043du0434u0430u0440 u0426u0432u0435u0442u0430u043du043eu0432u0438u045b on Pexels.com
Greetings, gentle readers! And a happy decorative gourd season to all who celebrate. As we reach midterms in the fall semester and all the grading that entails, I have taken a break to update you on this month’s progress.
The process of confirming or eliminating physical copies continues apace. Since the last update, I’ve worked through another 37 libraries*, completing the libraries that begin with the letter “B”. It will likely not be a surprise to anyone to know that there are quite a few libraries that begin with the letter B that have Lennox holdings, and that’s after some elimination of spurious, online access, or deaccessioned copies.
As for the database work, I’ve about decided that I’ll put in the libraries I’ve confirmed as locations for now, but not the individual titles. I may change my mind about that as I move forward, but we’ll see. I go back and forth on the utility of it prior to actually seeing and cataloging the data for a given copy.
In other news, I’m also trying to decide if I want to apply to any fellowships for next summer’s research. I’d been hoping to be further along than I am (though it’s not like every letter will have as many entries). It seems a shame to let a summer go to waste, but I’ve still got so much cataloguing to do. I have a little while more to ponder and see if the pace picks up in this portion of the endeavor.
Number of libraries confirmed: 77 Number of libraries entered into the database: 2 Number of extant copies confirmed: 299 (See Note)
* Note: Those observant readers among you will have noted that the letter “B” also applies to “Bodleian,” as in the famed library (or set thereof) at the University of Oxford. I cannot claim to have completed verification of my list of items at the Bodleian, given the nature of its search engine, the fact that defaults to including all the Oxford libraries, of which there are many, and the fact that it’s by no means uncommon to have multiple copies of the same work at different libraries within the greater institution of Oxford. I started working on it and quickly realized I was just going to need to pull out all the Oxford listings, put them in a big list with a couple of notepads and sticky notes as needed, and just do all of them in one big push. As I’m not planning to be in the UK any time in the near future, this isn’t really a problem per se, but it does mean that all Oxford listings are considered not fully confirmed until I clime that particular molehill.
Greetings, gentle readers! September finds me pushing forward still, albeit a bit more slowly due to general life issues and a lot of time dedicated to sorting through the works housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. Needless to say, we’re going to have to spend some time there in the future, to no one’s surprise.
I currently have 30 libraries verified, having removed two or three so far that ostensibly had only a couple of items at most, and they turned out to either simply not be there, to belong to an affiliated library on the same system, or to be online or microfom versions of the work. I am looking at applying to the Lewis Walpole Library Fellowship this year, along with perhaps a local fellowship that might cover some gas money for libraries near to hand.
Number of libraries confirmed: 34 Number of libraries entered into the database: 2 Number of extant copies confirmed: 148
Greetings, gentle readers! The end of Hot Data Summer is upon us, and I have nearly finished all my class prep for the next semester’s teaching. Around and among and before that, I’ve been busily embarking on Phase 2.2 of the project, which as stated in July’s update, involves breaking out the data by library/institution (it depends on the nature of the organization and its libraries — there’s a system, I promise) and verifying holdings via catalog searches and/or contacting the library directly in some cases.
Thus far I’ve completed a mere twenty libraries, but that’s still served to provide some interesting insights. I have eliminated some prospective holdings (either they don’t exist or were online access only), but I’ve uncovered at least as many that simply weren’t in ESTC or Worldcat when I used it, for whatever reason. I knew there would be missed volumes, so that isn’t that surprising, but the number and type of them is still intriguing. As an example, an early data point (we’ll see if it holds) is that out of those 20, six libraries have multiple pre-1850 editions of the Memoirs of the Duke of Sully. What does that mean? I’m not sure, but it’s something to ponder and look into further if it holds up.
As far as the database design goes, I’ve put it aside for the moment. I could, in theory, enter holdings in as I confirm them (almost certainly a good idea, now that I think about it) but I would like to get a bit more done in confirmation first, and then perhaps have phases of entering data as opposed to a more constant back and forth.
Number of libraries confirmed: 20 Number of libraries entered into the database: 2 Number of extant copies confirmed: 77
Marbling from the end papers of a fantastic book at the Library Company of Philadelphia
Greetings, gentle readers. I am thrilled to share the news that I’ve finished Phase 2.1! I’ve finally completed* aggregating all the map location data into one huge Excel workbook. Now I can pull it all together into a single worksheet and create some pivot tables to help me cross reference locations. I have also added all the rest of the maps into the Maps page here on the site, for anyone who’s interested in seeing them. Just as a note, the maps are cleared of duplicates, but do not yet represent verified holdings.
The next step is Phase 2.2, wherein I put all the data in a single sheet, create a massive pivot table, and break out the results by library/institution so I can see which institutions have what books and start planning the in-person gathering of bibliographic data, as well as the applications to fund the travel required to visit those collections. I’m not sure how long that portion of the project will take, but I think it should be considerably less than the previous phase if only due to the relative lack of data entry.
I also need, while this process continues, to start finalizing some decisions about the Heurist database I’m using. I’ve started working on importing some data and creating the structure and relations based on the data I have. I’m still very much in the mess-around stage of making the database — there are no permanent decisions in place yet. I’m happy with how things are shaping up, though.
Finally, as a few data points:
The last title I put into the workbook was The History of Eliza.
Since June’s update, i’ve entered 472 entries across four titles, including the most famous of Lennox’s works, The Female Quixote (which had 309 entries).
2612 records total at the end of Phase 2.1.
*I fully expect to find material that I’ve accidentally left out or overlooked. No process is perfect, after all.
Greetings, gentle readers! The summer has almost returned, and I’m managing to make this post mid-month as opposed to nearly-done-month. Overall I’m quite pleased with my industry.
Insofar as the project goes, finishing the semester has done wonders for my ability to keep working on my data. I completed working on the Marquis de Sully finally and was able to likewise finish Old City Manners, Philander, Poems Upon Several Occasions*, and Shakespear Illustrated, the latter just this evening. I’m very happy with the rate of progress I’m making.
In addition to working through the data and cleaning it up, I’m currently trying to work through two different problems. The first thing I’m trying to sort out is regarding periodical reprints of Lennox’s work. I want to catalog not simply the stand-alone volumes of her works, but also the various reprints, both partial and complete, of her work in periodicals of the time. The problem is, how do I track them? Using the Lennox bibliography in Susan Carlile’s book, Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind, I have a list of excerpts in various publications.
The question, though is this: 1) is that actually all of them? and 2) (and this is a big one) how do I treat these periodicals within the same project as more traditional codex books? Lennox even had her own periodical, The Lady’s Museum. The same periodical may have (and in some cases does have) multiple samples from her various works across time. How do I record that data so that nothing is lost and yet I’m also not doubling my own effort? It’s not that this is a particularly complicated problem; it’s just that the solution I pick will necessarily inform the shape of the project as it goes, so I’d rather do my best to choose something that won’t cause problems later if I can.
The next issue, mostly unrelated to the above procedural quandary, is how to set up my database so that different records can have the same title without it being a gigantic mess. This is actually the easier one to answer, most likely, as I’m sure I’m not the first person building a relational data structure to have multiple entries with the same name, for example, but different data attached to each one. I’m working on doing some reading and I’ve got some feelers out with some data-oriented DBA people I know, and I’ll likely have an answer to this later this month. Once I do, I can keep working on the structure on my Heurist database and importing the material I’ve currently got in spreadsheets. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the organization and getting the location data sorted, with the goal of being finished with it and organizing the next phase of the project by the fall, aka library fellowship application season.
Current Data Category:Shakespear Illustrated # of entries in this category to date: 126 # of entries in the worksheet so far: 2140 and counting
Lennox Bibliography Project 