Posts filed under 'Lectures'
Friday, April 28, at 4:30 p.m., Patricia Crane, professor of English at New York University, will give a lecture titled “Spectral Literacy: The Child in the Margin” at the American Antiquarian Society. Crane is the author of The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter–a book that I was drooling over recently at a local bookstore–and her talk will discuss children’s marginalia in 19th-century books.
The lecture is sponsored by AAS, Clark University, and the University of Connecticut and is open to the public. Reservations are recommended for the lecture and required for the dinner afterwards. See the AAS website for seminar location, registration, and further information.
As a side note, now that children’s marginalia is a recognized research topic, perhaps, I can stop feeling so guilty about my own early marginalia.
April 17th, 2006
In celebration of its centenary, the Society of Printers is sponsoring an exhibit and series of lectures and demonstrations highlighting book arts and printing history in Boston. “Boston Ink: A Century of Printing, 1905-2005″ is co-sponsored by the Boston Public Library, and the exhibit and related events will be held at the library from April 5 through June 6. A schedule of events is available at the Society of Printers website (linked above) and on the Boston Public Library’s events page.
March 17th, 2005
Speaking of events on the Cambridge Public Library programs calendar, Katherine Patterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, will be speaking at First Parish tonight (November 18) at 7:30 p.m. Her talk, entitled “Are you there, God? Asking Big Questions in Children’s Literature”, is part of the Cambridge Forum lecture series.
Yesterday, Patterson also spoke at a roundtable on faith and religion in children’s and young adult literature. I did not get a chance to post a reminder notice about that — so much post-worthy news, so little time.
November 18th, 2004
This is a very last minute announcement on my part, but for local readers interested in Coptic bindings and the early history of binding styles, tonight at 7 PM at the Harvard Law School (Langdell North classroom), Dr. John Sharpe will be giving a lecture on this topic. The lecture is sponsored by the New England chapter of the Guild of Book Workers and is free and open to the public.
There is also a seminar with Dr. Sharpe tomorrow at Harvard (Lamont Library). However, the seminar requires pre-registration and payment of the $125 registration fee. At this point, it is probably too late to attend the seminar, but if you are interested, see the New England Guild of Book Workers events page for more information.
December 12th, 2003
Since I had promised to blog about the Ticknor Society meeting for all who could not attend, here are a few thoughts…
The talk by Harvard history professor Ann Blair focused on how scholars in early modern Europe managed information and how, essentially, their methods of coping with information overload parallel our modern methods. She argued that “information overload” is not a new concept–it is simply a difference in form and scale.
The most interesting part of her talk was about note-taking methods and how scholars kept track of what was important. Some copied passages themselves (a time consuming method, especially for the impatient scholar). Others hired copyists (an expensive method). And others preferred the “cut and paste” method of note-taking.
The “cut and paste” method required a scholar to have two copies of a book: one to select and cut verso passages, and the other for recto. Relevant material was cut from the book and pasted into a separate notebook, within another book, etc. Sometimes this method was used to create indexes or to compile reference works.
Of course, listening to Professor Blair discuss this and looking at the slides she presented, my first thought was “Isn’t much of what is happening on the Internet today derived from this?” When I blog, I usually have one browser window open with my blog editing page and another one (or two) open to relevant sites. I copy the links from the sources to paste into my blog. And my blog becomes my index (arranged in a way that works best for me) to what I find useful or interesting on the Internet…How different is this from the 16th c. scholar cutting and pasting from two books? In fact, I am sure that the scholars mentioned in the talk would have delighted in the idea of “Ctrl. + C” and “Ctrl + V” and other wonderful shortcuts.
I really enjoyed the talk, and I also had a chance to spend time with two co-workers. Since the Massachusetts Historical Society is near the Fenway and both of my co-workers are avid gardeners, we took a quick walk over to the Fenway Victory Gardens. I am ashamed to admit this, but I did not know that these gardens (the oldest victory gardens in America) existed so it was quite an adventure for me…It was a nice reminder of why I should stay in the Boston area, just when I was starting to have doubts.
Related links:
- Ticknor Society (It is membership time again. If you have not been attending meetings, you have already missed many good talks and events. More exciting things are planned for the fall, including several “field trips”. Please join and spread the word.)
- Professor Blair’s history of the book course (Many students from this course attended the meeting last night–yea, new people at a Ticknor Society meeting!– so I took a peek at what they were learning. There are lots of good links and resources so check it out.)
- New England Women’s Diaries Project (I picked up a flyer about this yesterday at the MHS. I used to catalogue women’s diaries, among other things, when I worked for a local rare book dealer so I find this very interesting.)
- St. Jerome in his Study (This image from a fresco by Ghirlandaio was the first slide Professor Blair showed during her talk. Oddly enough, a friend sent me a postcard with this image many years ago when I was a grad. student at Harvard–long before I knew I wanted to be a librarian or knew that St. Jerome was the patron saint of librarians and archivists. I keep that postcard on my desk now.)
May 22nd, 2003