Research Review for Columbia University Libraries 2014-15 Fellowship: How and why did I pick Columbia University Libraries as a place to do my research?

Abstract

Columbia University Libraries was one of my top five choices to visit for dissertation research, rather than later in my career when I am hopefully scouring smaller libraries that own only a handful of English histories each. Thanks to the combination of libraries available to visit under the grant—Burke and Butler RBML were my aims—I could see twenty-six printed books, two manuscript books, and three commonplace books, and be able to re-check the eight I had found during the four-week NEH seminar I attended in NYC in June/July 2013: Thomas Lanquet and Thomas Cooper, Cooper’s Chronicle (1565); John Stow, Abridgement of the English Chronicle (1618); John Stow, Summarie (1598); two copies of John Stow, Annales (1615); two Plimpton manuscripts of The Brut Chronicle; and the three histories at Burke. The NEH seminar was foundational for exposing me to a variety of resources available on the East coast, but it went by too quickly and was spread across too many locations to see much in detail. Being able to focus entirely on Columbia for a month was exactly what I needed to add many more examples to my research on reader marks within English printed chronicles from 1480-1642, with particular focus for the dissertation on reader marks on queens.