A quick update for those of you who have missed my online promotions: I am now in charge of a new blog at work, The Collation: a gathering of scholarship from the Folger Shakespeare Library. It is what it says it is, a blog authored by staff and scholars at the Folger that shares research and resources at the Library in terms that are accessible to the general public and of interest to scholars. If you’re interested in the early modern aspects of what I write here, you’ll like The Collation, too. But it’s not all early modern! We’ll be touching on aspects of librarianship, digital curation, theatre history, and humanities research.
I wrote the introductory post on the word “collation” as well as a later post about my tweeting the @FolgerResearch #wunderkammer series. There are also posts so far from Steve Galbraith, the recently departed Curator of Books, ((“recently departed” here not as in “dead” but as in “moved on to a great new job”)) about the Folger’s official count of 82 First Folios and from Erin Blake, the Curator of Art and Special Collections, on a new acquisition of an artists’ book of The Tempest. Upcoming posts will introduce some of the Library’s digital resources, feature key staff members, highlight items in our collections, and focus on academic programs at the Library. I am, of course, not neutral about this, since it was my brainchild and I’m now spearheading the effort. But if this sounds like the sort of thing that might tickle your fancy, I hope you’ll check The Collation out. There will be posts twice a week and we’ll do our best to entertain and educate you!
I hope that this won’t slow me down more on the slow schedule I’m already posting over here. Some of what I might write here will end up over at The Collation. (There’ll be a post in the next few weeks on a mid-sixteenth-century printer’s specimen sheet, for instance.) But I’ll continue to blog here, too, especially because I have greater flexibility to indulge in my sassiness when I’m not at work and because there’s so much more that I need to spout off about than early modern books!
In the meantime, if you can’t get enough of my craziness, I’m also writing over at The Idler, doing a column on Netflix Instant with Tim Carmody and Sarah Pavis and a rotating cast of other characters. I’m up once a month, on Wednesdays–I think I’m the third Wednesday of the month. It’s got nothing to do with books or libraries and it’s good fun. My first piece was on why Paul Newman is hot. I’m not sure why that’s a question anyone would ask–who cares WHY he’s hot, he’s Paul Newman!!–but it gave me an excuse to catch up on some of his early movies I’d missed. Tim definitely brings the smart to “In the Queue” and Sarah brings the funny. I haven’t figured out my niche yet, but I like to think of myself as the one who connived to get everyone else to provide movie recommendations for my enjoyment.
More soon from me here. I’m thinking about starting an iPad app review series focused on early modern and library stuff, so stay tuned!