BIBLIO-NOTES
91´«Ã½
#26 -- Fall 1995
Biblio-Notes (ISSN 1076-8947) is published twice a year by the English and American
Literature Section of the Association of College and
Research Libraries, a division of the American Library
Association. Paper subscriptions are free to members of the section.
Editor: Scott Stebelman, Gelman Library,
George Washington University, 2130 H Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20052; telephone
202-994-6049; SCOTTLIB@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU
Copyright © 1995 by the 91´«Ã½.
News from the Chair
This has been an exciting and busy year for EALS in our first full year as a section
within ACRL. The transition from section to discussion group has involved many
bureaucratic details; as we warned ourselves from the beginning, things are a lot more
complicated than in the old days of EALDG. But now most of these initial details are
behind us, and we have been turning our attention more and more to the real business of
EALS. Our new bylaws state that this business is "to represent members of ACRL who
specialize or are otherwise professionally involved in the selection, acquisition,
organization, and use of information resources related to literatures in English, to
enhance those members' professional development, and to promote the improvement of
library resources in support of study and research activities in this field." When we
translate those words from "Bylawese" to plain English, it appears that we have set
ourselves some ambitious tasks.
What has really impressed me is the number of people who have devoted time and energy to
making this possible. It says a lot for our membership that we were able to find a full
complement of members for all of our new committees, each of which has been working hard
to help our fledgling section meet the needs of its members.
Our section bylaws were approved by the ACRL Board in Chicago, and will appear on the
spring 1996 91´«Ã½ ballot. I urge everyone to vote in that election. (Dare I urge you to
vote "yes" on the bylaws?)
Our Chicago program, "The Humanist and the Librarian: Creating a Collaborative
Partnership," was very well attended and received praise from many quarters. ACRL
leadership was particularly impressed that we had a head start on this year's
presidential theme, "Every librarian a leader"! In keeping with the New York venue, next
year's EALS program will concentrate on the theater. We have two co-sponsors for this
program: the ACRL Arts Section and the Theatre Library Association. Unlike many
co-sponsorships which are in name only, all three groups are contributing actively to
the program, and ARTS and TLA have representatives on our Program Planning Committee,
under the able leadership of Susan Peters. TLA's Richard Buck has been instrumental in
rounding up exciting speakers and in arranging for the use of facilities at Lincoln
Center. Our program, entitled "Beyond the Stage Door," will focus on how creative people
in the theater make use of library resources. Speakers will include playwright Edward
Albee, actress Marian Seldes, and a stage designer and a costume designer to be
announced. Be sure to set aside Monday night in New York for this dramatic event! Even
though they did not exist "officially" until after this year's conference, our four new
committees plunged gleefully into their work in Chicago. The Publications Committee is
exploring a number of projects, including a sequel to EALDG's 1987 collection, English
and American Literature: Strategies for Collection Development. The Membership Committee
is looking at ways to increase our number of members, at 251 already quite impressive
for such a young section. In particular, they will be focusing on diversity within our
membership. These two committees will also be collaborating to produce a membership
brochure. And a spin-off group from the Publications Committee is exploring the
possibility of an EALS site on the World Wide Web.
The Planning Committee is starting to draft a strategic plan in order to set some
priorities among the many activities and goals our members have proposed for our
section, and will also help to write some of the required reports for 91´«Ã½ and ACRL.
Lately, the Executive Committee has been discussing the possibility of some sort of
corporate sponsorship, and what uses the section might make of such funds if they were
forthcoming.
Amidst the flurry of new activities and sometimes overwhelming bureaucratic details, we
want to be sure that we maintain those activities for which our members have most valued
EALS and its predecessor, the English and American Literature Discussion Group.
Biblio-Notes continues to flourish under Scott Stebelman's editorship. And
of course, true to our origins as a discussion group, we will continue to make room for
open-forum discussions at our midwinter and annual meetings. This winter in San Antonio
we will try a new twist on our group discussions. Richard Fyffe will lead the first in a
series of informal discussions that might be entitled "Everything Librarians Ever Wanted
to Know About Current Critical Schools But Were Afraid to Ask." Richard will start us
off with a forum on the philosophy of Richard Rorty and its connection with current
critical theory.
A hundred thanks to all of you who have helped get our group rolling--and a special note
of thanks to our past-chair Michaelyn Burnette, who so ably saw us through our first
year as a section. I hope to see many of you in San Antonio.
Timothy Shipe
University of Iowa
Minutes from the General Meeting
The EALS program at 91´«Ã½ 1995 was entitled: "The Humanist and the Librarian: Creating a
Collaborative Partnership," chaired by Michaelyn Burnette (Univ. of California,
Berkeley, and EALS Chair). The three panelists were Stephen Wiberley, associate
professor and bibliographer, University of Illinois-Chicago; J. Paul Hunter, Chester D.
Tripp Professor in Humanities, University of Chicago; and Marcia Pankake, professor and
bibliographer, University of Minnesota.
Stephen Wiberley began the session with his talk, entitled "Types of Humanities
Scholarship: Opportunities for Collaboration between Librarians and Humanists," which
was based upon his research on the typology of humanities research. He described five
different types of humanities research, and the different types of library use common to
humanists in these different categories, and therefore the opportunities presented by
the different kinds of humanities research for collaboration.
1) Bibliography. Since bibliographers must look at as many copies of a book as possible
in order to describe it accurately, libraries and librarians are very important to their
work. Bibliographers need print versions, not electronic ones (unless they are
bibliographers of electronic editions, which has another set of complicated issues).
2) Editing. Editors need to look at many copies, editions, witnesses as possible, and, as
with bibliographers, library collections and librarians are central to their work.
Digitized or electronic copies are acceptable, and may be the end product. The Text
Encoding Initiative Guidelines provide a structure for collaboration between libraries
and humanists, through the TEI header that is required for each document.
3) Historical scholarship. Historians look at biography, historical context, genre, and
use original editions and manuscripts a great deal. They spend a good deal of time in
Rare Book collections.
4) Formal criticism. Formal literary critics generally use modern or standard editions
for their work, with not much need for libraries. They could use electronic
editions.
5) Theory. Theorists challenge and orient ways of thinking. Generally, they cite other
theorists or philosophical texts and are idiosyncratic, with no need to be thorough in
finding sources.
Stephen posited that while there is not much room for collaboration in the last two
categories, the first three present many opportunities for collaboration between
humanities scholars and librarians.
J. Paul Hunter began his talk, entitled "New Directions in Faculty Research and the Role
of the Librarian," with a look at current trends in literary studies. There will be
fewer faculty and librarians in the future. Literature faculty are in the libraries more
often now than in the past, and so are students. Modes and fashion change quickly in
literary studies, with current emphases in historicism, cultural studies, and studies of
new cultural areas.
Purely theoretical works are being published less frequently, with new historicism but
one part of this. The rise of American Studies and Feminism has rediscovered and
resuscitated older, neglected texts. Scholars with historicist interests will continue
combing the collections for new materials.
Humanists are interested in introducing a wider range of texts and wider range of
cultures into scholarship and instruction, viewing all texts as cultural documents. This
broadened range has left many scholars ill-equipped for the interdisciplinary work that
is necessary, and they will require collaboration with librarians who have a broader
perspective outside of single disciplines.
Combined with the shrinking faculty size, English departments are covering a wider range
of literatures than previously. Where formerly an English department at a large
university would have five or six medievalists, it now has three or four. They must turn
to colleagues outside of the department, including librarians, for expertise.
Marcia Pankake, in her talk entitled "Librarians and Teachers as Colleagues," looked at
ways in which she collaborates with humanists in her position as English and American
literature subject specialist. Humanists work largely alone, relying on library
collections without consulting librarians. They use other sources for information, such
as footnotes, information from their colleagues, and formal bibliographies. Librarians
must therefore anticipate the needs of scholars, and as a result, use different patterns
of information gathering than humanists.
Marcia uses several channels, some indirect, to provide information to humanities
scholars. She is active in training graduate students in research methods (an activity
no longer done within the department). She is involved in the interviews of candidates
for faculty positions, which she sees as an opportunity to inculcate the value of the
library in prospective faculty members. She works with the technology expert in the
department, providing instruction in new resources. She participates in accreditation
requests for information.
One looming crisis in humanities is in editing and bibliography. Graduate students are
not being instructed in even the basic techniques or principles in these fields. Its
importance is increasing, but developments in the past 40 years have de-emphasized
it.
In closing, Marcia noted that a major form of collaboration will occur as librarians
shape collections. As there is little or no consensus in priorities or directions in
literary studies, librarians will play an important role in developing priorities by
developing collections.
Perry Willett, Secretary
Indiana University
Recent Studies of Interest to English and American Literature Librarians
by Scott
Stebelman
Citations are limited to the period 1994-95. 1994 citations listed in the Fall 1994 issue
of Biblio-Notes are omitted.
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Baker, William and Byron Anderson. "The MLA Database on CD-ROM: Perception and
Reality." Library Review 43 (1994): 30-36.
Barclay, Donald A. and Darcie Reimann Barclay. "The Role of Freshman Writing in
Academic Bibliographic Instruction." Journal of Academic Librarianship 20 (1994):
213-17.
Bates, Marcia J. "The Design of Databases and Other Information Resources for
Humanities Scholars: The Getty Online Searching Project Report No. 4," Online &
CD-ROM Review 18 no. 6 (December 1, 1994): 331-334.
Bates, Marcia J. et al. "Research Practices of Humanities Scholars in An Online
Environment: The Getty Online Searching Project Report No. 3," Library &
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Beghtol, Clare. "Domain Analysis, Literary Warrant, and Consensus: The Case of
Fiction Studies." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 46 (1995):
30-44. [examines subject indexing in the MLAIB)
Belanger, Terry. "The Materiality of The Book: Another Turn of The Screw." Literary
Texts in An Electronic Age: Scholarly Implications and Library Services.
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Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994: 187-195.
Benaud, Claire-Lise and Sever Bordieanu. "Electronic Resources in the Humanities,"
RSR: Reference Services Review 23 no. 2 (1995): 41-50.
Benseler, David P. "MLA Directory of Periodi- cals: A Guide to Journals and Series in
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