Remember how once upon a time I used to find weird old printing things and get excited about them and then blog about them? That was fun. I’m going to try doing that again, only this time in newsletter form. The tl;dr version is that you can head over to sarahwerner.substack.com and sign up for Early Printed Fun to get periodic (twice a month?) emails from me about some bit of early printed nerdery. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’ll replicate some of what I used to do here and at The Collation. The longer version is that I decided to do a Substack newsletter because I’m hoping, if I can build up enough momentum, to introduce paid subscriptions. There will always be free posts, I promise, because I can’t bear the thought of not providing some free excitement about books. But I also am shelling out money to run…
Tag: blogging
how to destroy special collections with social media
I just got back from a wonderful trip to Rare Book School to deliver a talk in their 2015 lecture series. It was the last week of their summer season in Charlottesville, the week when the Descriptive Bibliography course (aka “boot camp”) was in full swing, and the weather was in all its hot, glorious humidity. I wanted to keep things light as well as make some points I feel very strongly about: the importance of librarians and researchers using social media to help sustain special collections libraries. Below are the slides and my notes for my July 29th talk. Since RBS records and shares the audio of their talks (go browse through past RBS lectures and listen!) I have, with their permission, also embedded the audio of my talk here so that you can listen and read along if you’d like (there are some variations between the two, though nothing substantive—I’ll leave…
Carnivalesque 103
Welcome to Carnivalesque 103! Carnivalesque is, in its own words, “an interdisciplinary blog carnival dedicated to pre-modern history (to c. 1800 C.E.)” and I’m delighted to play host for this issue. If you’ve spent any time doing research into the past, you know the frustrations of not being able to find what you’re looking for. If you’re lucky, you’re as smart and interesting as Alun Withey and you can use that experience to strengthen your sense of possibilities. In “The Agony and the Ecstasy: Hunting for 17th-century medics with few sources!” (a post on his eponymous blog), Withey tells us about the difficulties in tracking down early modern Welsh medics. For many reasons, as he explains, it’s hard to pin down specific practitioners, even though he’s quite sure they must have existed. The question, he writes, is “how far the deficiencies of the sources are masking what could well have…
A look back at our 2013
Here on The Collation, it’s been a busy 2013. Today’s post will be our 68th of the year, and as of December 15th, we’d racked up 46,012 visits from 33,411 unique visitors, producing 67,361 pageviews this year. phew It’s gratifying that we have readers who enjoy our posts and that come to us repeatedly to learn what we have to share. But what’s even more important is that The Collation continues to be a place where Folger staff can share with readers information about our collections, where readers can share with others what they’ve learned from our materials, and where readers can help staff learn more about what we have. The first aspect of the blog is probably what most people think of if they think of what social media at specials collections libraries can do—our blog posts highlight the great work done by folks at the Library and help draw attention to acquisitions…
Learning from readers
Sometimes the beauty of our blog is that we can share with you items in our collections: new acquisitions, recently restored works, or long-held pieces worth a closer look. Sometimes its beauty is that it makes it easy to share information with you: details of a new finding aid, tips on using on of our digital resources, or insight into the workings of the Library. And sometimes, when we’re lucky, its beauty is that you, our readers, tell us things we don’t know.