Robbins Library Notes

At right: A portrait of Samuel Johnson, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; this portrait is sometimes called “Blinking Sam.”

Greetings to my new readers! I find that traffic to this blog has picked up a bit in the last few weeks — I will permit myself unjustified optimism and hope that this increase in visitors is the result of real persons and not spambots. Thank you for stopping by.

I have decided that the effort of maintaining a list of the most recently arrived periodicals is not worth the time and trouble to update, even on a monthly basis. So, if you’re burning to know if your favorite philosophy journal’s latest issue has arrived, drop me a line or stop by the library. Or, I can show you how to set up e-alerts, so that when the electronic issues come available, you’ll be notified immediately — contact me to arrange for a bibliographic instruction session.

I will keep the Current Periodicals page up for the time being, but with a notation that the page is no longer being updated.

For those of you wondering why Samuel Johnson has made a second appearance on this blog, there are two answers.

The first is that I came down with a cold during the latter part of my vacation last week, and was bedridden. I passed much of the time reading James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and found myself very much liking the good Doctor.

The second is that Harvard is the home of the The Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, a trove of Johnsoniana and other early modern materials. So, it seems apropos to include him on a Harvard-related blog.

I leave you with this thought of his:

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.”

— Samuel Johnson (Boswell, Life of Johnson)