Manuscript Curators Research Articles

Recordings in Review

The Yale ReviewVolume 92, Issue 1 p. 188-200 Recordings in Review Vincent Giroud, Vincent Giroud Vincent Giroud is curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Among his most recent publications are the exhibition catalogues William Walton, Composer (2002) and St Petersburg: Portrait of a Great City (2003).Search for more papers by this author Vincent Giroud, Vincent Giroud Vincent Giroud is curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Among his most recent publications are the exhibition catalogues William Walton, Composer (2002) and St Petersburg: Portrait of a Great City (2003).Search for more papers by this author First published: 28 June 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0044-0124.2004.00795.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume92, Issue1January 2004Pages 188-200 RelatedInformation

The Archimedes codex: how a medieval prayer book is revealing the true genius of antiquity's greatest scientist

T his is a fascinating account of the nearly unbelievable ups and downs of the ‘‘Archimedes Palimpsest,’’ a Byzantine codex containing, under the text of a prayer book, a small library of unique ancient texts, including exceptionally important Archimedes treatises. The account is written in alternating chapters by William Noel, Curator of Manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and Reviel Netz, Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Stanford University. The story of the three known codices with works of Archimedes is told in the chapters written by Noel. The story begins with Archimedes, a prominent citizen of Syracuse, a Greek city in Sicily, sending letters with a number of his mathematical works for further distribution to colleagues in Alexandria, such as Conon, Dositheus and Eratosthenes. Archimedes was killed in 212 BC, when Syracuse fell to the invading Romans, but copies of his works, written on papyrus scrolls, continued to circulate. Early in the sixth century A.D., Eutocius wrote commentaries to some of Archimedes’s works: Sphere and Cylinder I-II, Measurement of the Circle and Balancing Planes. At about this time, the texts of some of Archimedes’s treatises that were still around were transferred from papyrus scrolls to a new and less fragile medium with greater capacity, codices made of stacks of folded parchment sheets stitched together. A new change of medium in the ninth century involved the transition from majuscule to minuscule, lowercase script. Manuscripts written in the older script were often destroyed. After centuries of neglect, a revival of interest in Archimedes’s texts in the Byzantine Renaissance in the ninth and tenth centuries may be one of the reasons for the survival of three codices with Archimedes treatises, now called Codices A, B and C. A and B both contain the treatises Balancing Planes and Quadrature of the Parabola, while B also contains On Floating Bodies, and A also contains Sphere and Cylinder, Measurement of the Circle, Spiral Lines, Conoids and Spheroids, and Sand-Reckoner. Today, both A and B are lost, but copies of A still survive, and so does a Latin translation of B, made in 1269 by William of Moerbeke, a Franciscan friar. After being lost for nearly a millennium (as is now known, after having spent several centuries being used as any other prayer book at the monastery of St. Sabas in the Judaean desert), Codex C sensationally resurfaced in 1899, when a few lines of a partially erased text visible under the text of a medieval prayer book were reproduced in a catalog of manuscripts in the library of the Metochion of the Holy Sepulcher in Constantinople. The Dane J. L. Heiberg, a prominent Greek scholar, recognized the lines as being taken from a work of Archimedes. Subsequently he went to Constantinople, where he could verify that the prayer book was a palimpsest, with the text of the prayer book written above

RECORDINGS IN REVIEW

The Yale ReviewVolume 93, Issue 1 p. 175-186 RECORDINGS IN REVIEW PATTY GRIFFIN, CLAIRE MARTIN TIMOTHY YOUNG, TIMOTHY YOUNG TIMOTHY YOUNG is assistant curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. He writes often about ephemeral subjects.Search for more papers by this author TIMOTHY YOUNG, TIMOTHY YOUNG TIMOTHY YOUNG is assistant curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. He writes often about ephemeral subjects.Search for more papers by this author First published: 28 June 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0044-0124.2005.00896.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume93, Issue1January 2005Pages 175-186 RelatedInformation

Documenting Localities: A Practical Model for American Archivists and Manuscript Curators

Documenting Localities: A Practical Model for American Archivists and Manuscript Curators

Archives and memory

Archives are repositories of memory, providing reliable evidence for examining the past. The four types of memory – personal, collective, historical, and archival – interact in complex and sometimes baffling ways to enable one to understand the past and to draw lessons from it. Archival memory is a social construct reflecting power relationships in society. Archivists and manuscripts curators play the important role of mediator in selecting records for preservation and providing research access to such collections. By recognizing and overcoming the bias toward records of powerful groups in society, archivists can provide a more balanced perspective on the past, and enable future generations to examine and evaluate the activities and contributions of all voices in one’s culture. Archives thus serve an important role in identifying and preserving the documentation that forms one’s historical memory.

Tarnished Idol: William T. G. Morton and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia (review)

This is the definitive study of the introduction of anesthesia to surgery, the characters involved, and the infamous "ether controversy." It is the life's work of Richard Wolfe, who for many years as Harvard's Countway Library Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts studied and preserved documents pertaining to William Thomas Green Morton and the first public demonstration of ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital on 16 October 1846. Wolfe has spent a lifetime researching and reading documents relevant to Morton, Charles Jackson, and Horace Wells. In Tarnished Idol he has set about proving that Morton was not the great man of later legend but a scoundrel who ought to be a footnote to history. Wolfe documents Morton's indiscretions with a passion, and has brought much clarity to the role Morton and others played in the discovery of surgical anesthesia. The comprehensive sources alone make this book a must for students of history and technology.

Subject Access to Archives and Manuscript Collections

Subject access to archives and manuscript collections has evolved rapidly in the past 25 years under the pressures of standardization and computerization. Previously, archivists and manuscript curators refined descriptive practice to emphasize the differences among varying types of collections rather than the common needs of researchers seeking primary sources. Widespread use of the AMC and EAD formats has facilitated standardized description and improved searching capability; continued adherence to these formats will facilitate subject searches by researchers and promote use of collections.

Tarnished Idol: William Thomas Green Morton and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia

Tarnished Idol: William Thomas Green Morton and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia

The SAA as Sisyphus: Education Since the 1960s

Approximately thirty years ago, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) embarked on an effort to standardize and possibly accredit archival education at the graduate level. American archivists and manuscripts curators have traditionally had extensive graduate training in history. In terms of what archival education should be, however, there was simply no consensus on basic matters. Moreover, such consensus was essential to any national education program. Miller's paper examined the various options through 1983 and concluded that in the end, the Society lacked both the will and the resources to accredit graduate programs. Using Camus's Myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor for the Society of American Archivists' efforts to standardize the educational process, Miller suggested that the Society examine alternative means of formalizing graduate-level education. While not suggesting any particular changes, Miller urged the Society to consider the existence of other possibilities.

A War of the People: Vermont Civil War Letters (review)

BOOK REVIEWS69 the Chattahoochie [sic] River, September 4, 1864" (245), Fleharty announces the fall ofthe Southern bastion to the victorious national armies commanded by William T. Sherman. Then quite abruptly, with the apparent close of the campaign , he concluded his series of letters and stopped writing to the newspapers. Fleharty informed his readers that his reasons to discontinue his war dispatches were "weighty and most decidedly confidential" (246). The decision to quit sending newspaper dispatches, however, did not end Fleharty's war experiences, for he continued to serve faithfully to the conclusion of the war, marching with Sherman to the Sea and in the advance through the Carolinas. A number of the impressions Fleharty recorded about the final western campaigns, provided in a number of personal letters, are incorporated by the editors in their detailed and generous introduction. Jottings From Dixie provides a welcome study of Fleharty's entire life— from prewar through postwar experiences. The press dispatches illustrate a remarkably open and perceptive mind. Beyond thoughtful accounts ofregimental activities, Fleharty often informed his readers about the natural history and historic sites of the South—such as a personal investigation of the Stones River battlefield—he took the opportunity to visit when off duty. Extremely Uterate, the descriptions arid insights into soldiering during the turbulent years of civil war are clearly written and helped reveal to his audience a people and a society most of them would never have the opportunity to experience. In recent years, more and more historians have become aware of the great value of wartime letters to newspapers in helping our generation understand the Civil War. The collection of soldier-correspondent letters by Sgt. Maj. Stephen F. Fleharty provides a compelling and interesting narrative ofthe daily challenges facing the common Civil War soldier. It is unfortunate that the young man chose to quit his soldier-correspondent duties with the fall ofAtlanta—but who are we to judge such a personal decision? Rather, the reader should consider it most fortunate that the provocative impressions this entertaining Illinois soldier deemed important to record have finaUy been published for the enjoyment of future generations. Stacy D. Allen Shiloh National Military Park A War ofthe People: Vermont Civil War Letters. Edited by Jeffrey D. Marshall. (Hanover, N.H.: University Press ofNew England, 1999. Pp. xviü, 357. $25.00 paper.) Writing to his son, William Jr., on July 29, 1861, William Young Ripley of Rutland, Vermont, reflected on the results and significance of the first Battle of Bull Run. "This is a war of the people, and the men at Washington—will find that they are only agents int he matter" (40). Jeffrey D. Marshall, university archivist and curator of manuscripts at the University of Vermont, has taken his 70CIVIL WAR HISTORY title and his cues from Ripley's letter. This volume includes over 140 carefully selected letters from Vermont soldiers of every rank and civilians of every economic and social class. Marshall foUows the Civil War from its earliest days through the beginnings of the disbanding of the Union army in June 1865. He drew his sources from an estimated nine thousand extant letters in ten public research institutions and three private collections. Correspondents include Vermont soldiers and officers in the infantry, cavalry , and artillery, musicians, one of the 150 Vermont African American soldiers , a French Canadian who enlisted in a Vermont regiment, chaplains, the parents, siblings, wives, and friends ofsoldiers. The soldiers write on the march, sometimes using a cartridge case or saddle as a writing desk, and form tents and barracks. They write to say that they have survived; to express optimism, discouragement , patriotism, piety, and occasionally their prejudices. They describe details and sometimes the seamier sides of camp life and the dehumanizing viciousness of soldiering. They recount their experiences in battles, comment on what they read in newspapers or letters from home, and quell or report rumors . Often they reveal how little they themselves know of what is happening or has happened in the events in which they participate. They write to request boxes ofprovisions, occasionally to request bottles of Uquor that they can sell at great profit, and most of all to request letters from home...

Access in the Time of Salinger: Fair Use and the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter

Manuscripts curators who wish to microfilm or otherwise duplicate a collection for preservation and access commonly confront a problem: multiple copyrights represented in a collection. It is practically impossible to obtain permission from the numerous parties who may hold such copyrights. What are the limits of fair use in such a case, particularly considering the restrictive environment after Salinger v. Random House, Inc.? Archival tradition and practice offer some answers more hopeful for preservation and access to materials, but the law still limits. To best serve the research community, archivists must lobby to have more liberal policies codified into law. The Papers of Katherine Anne Porter, a collection held by Archives and Manuscripts at the University of Maryland at College Park Libraries, is used as an example.

Texas Newspapers and Chicana Workers' Activism, 1919-1974

Journal Article Texas Newspapers and Chicana Workers' Activism, 1919–4974 Get access Irene Ledesma Irene Ledesma assistant professor in the Department of History and Philosophy University of Texas—Pan American in Edinburgh, Texas. For their assistance with the citations, thanks are extended to Jane Boley, archivist in the University of Texas at Arlington, Special Collections; Tab Lewis, archivist, Textual Reference Branch of the National Archives; and Gerrianne Schaad, curator of manuscripts, University of Texas at El Paso, Special Collections Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, Issue 3, Autumn 1995, Pages 309–331, https://doi.org/10.2307/970655 Published: 01 August 1995

Alan Gordon Richard Cooke (1933-1989)

Alan Cooke, a person well known to all those interested in the history and development of the subarctic and arctic regions, died in Montreal on 11 July 1989, after an illness of several months. After entering Dartmouth College in 1951, he worked with a geological field party in northern Quebec during the summer of 1953 and soon came under the influence of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who with his famous collection of polar books, pamphlets, and letters had just taken up residence at Dartmouth. These two events set Alan firmly upon a long trail of northern studies, which he followed for the remaining four decades of his life as traveller, researcher, writer, consultant, and editor. By the time Alan graduated from Dartmouth he had already compiled a comprehensive bibliography of northern Quebec, which a decade later, with considerable expansion, was published in two volumes as the Bibliography of the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, co-authored with Fabien Caron. ... [Alan] ... earned a Ph.D. in 1970 with an analysis of the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Chimo operation in the early nineteenth century. During the 1960s and early 1970s he enjoyed a close association with the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge and for three years edited its journal Polar Record. He also served as a research analyst on the staff for the Arctic Bibliography published by the Arctic Institute of North America. In 1975 he moved back to Montreal to undertake freelance editorial work. ... Alan's career included jobs as assistant librarian and/or curator of manuscripts in two of the world's best polar libraries, the Stefansson Collection at Dartmouth College and the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge. ... his knowledge of the North was not gained merely from the printed page ... [but from first hand experience in such places as McGill's Subarctic Research Station at Schefferville, the Mackenzie Delta, Fort Simpson, and the Noatak River region of Alaska.] ... his most significant and enduring scholarly contribution was the book The Exploration of Northern Canada 500 to 1920; a Chronology (1978), co-authored with Clive Holland. This indispensable annotated compendium of subarctic and arctic expeditions and events has already had a positive influence upon northern scholarship and writing, and there is no reason to think that its value will ever diminish. ...

Toward a National Collecting Policy for Business History: The View from Baker Library

In this article, the curator of manuscripts and archives at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library discusses the opportunities and difficulties confronting present-day archivists as they seek to establish rational collecting policies for their repositories. Ms. Lathrop first describes the past focus of Baker Library's collection decisions and the strengths to which those emphases have led. She then discusses some areas of less comprehensive coverage, as well as the general problems archivists face in dealing with twentieth-century materials. She points out that collecting gaps tend to be replicated among other repositories, a situation leading her to believe that a national collecting policy, developed by both historians and archivists, is necessary to ensure the widest possible documentation of the varieties of American business history.

Using the MicroMARC:amc Program

For years archivists and manuscript curators have heard their librarian colleagues sing the praises of automation. Online catalogs, bibliographic databases, sophisticated computer searches, and all the other touted benefits of automation seemed to have exciting implications for the archival world. The reality of library automation, though, often fell far short of the promise, as library online catalogs frequently have proven too limited in both record length and search and management capabilities to give archivists the control they need over their unique collections.

The New Social History: Implications for Archivists

According to a recent survey by the Organization of American Historians, the fastest growing field of historical research is social history. Although many social historians use computers, this is not the most significant feature of the New Social History (NSH). More important implications for archivists and manuscripts curators arise from the use of new kinds of source materials and from a new approach to social inquiry and interpretation. Archivists who have attempted to respond to the challenges posed by NSH have tended to attack the problem piecemeal, dealing only with isolated aspects. Recognizing the highly interactive nature of archival functions, this study provides an overview of NSH's impact on all major aspects of archival practice and management. Traditional archival concerns such as solicitation strategies, appraisal criteria, provenance, and arrangement and description options are re-examined to assess the impact of NSH, point out some serious implications for archivists, and provide a starting point for institutional self-assessments and integrated planning.

Business Records at the Harvard Business School

The preservation and study of unpublished business records has long been one of business history's most distinctive contributions to scholarship. To provide a forum for archivists and historians to share their knowledge of specific archival collections, the Review has commissioned a series of essays on archival history and research opportunities. In this essay, the first in the series, Ms. Florence Bartoshesky, curator of manuscripts and archives at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library, reviews the history of this major collection of business records.

That We Shall Truly Deserve the Title Of "Profession"

The founders of the Society of American Archivists faced tremendous challenges as they attempted to standardize archival practices through educational programs. They grappled with problems that still plague us. When the National Archives was founded, standardized training was seriously discussed. Samuel Flagg Bemis was appointed to chair the first SAA Committee on Education and Training. Beginning in 1939, American University offered courses in archival administration, but no attention was paid to the needs of manuscript curators. During the 1950s some archivists questioned their professional status and identity and proposed certification and rigorous SAA membership requirements. Their proposals were not implemented. Since a considerable number of archivists are trained historians, it is surprising that we have neglected to examine our own history before embarking on solutions to the lack of standardized education for archivists.

Corybas.

TORREYA BOOK REVIEWS Sidney Parkinson, Artist of Cook's En- deavour Voyage. Ed. by D. V. CaIT. xv + 300 pages, illustrated, bibliog- raphy, and index. British Museum (Nat- ural History) in association with Univer- sity of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. 1984. zoological material, together with items of ethnographic and technological interest. Most important, however, is the generous supply of well annotated illustrations, 286 of them, from the British Museum (Nat- ural History), and the British Library. Many of these are reproduced in full color di- rectl y from Parkinson's original drawings, and are generally arranged in systematic order according to Bentham and Hooker's Genera Plantarum, 1862- 1883. Each of the ten sections that comprise the book was written by an expert in that particular area, and the sum equals a new insight into a partially unexplored page of botanical his- tory. In view of the fact that relatively few botanists will ever have the leisure to ex- amine the originals, nor be able to afford the necessarily expensive set of reproduc- tions, this work offers an acceptable digest of the riches to be found in Banhs' Florile- gium. And in an era of astronomical book prices $45 is a rather modest price to pay for a volume of high quality brimming over with matter of scientific and historical in- terest of the first order.-FRANK ]. AN- DERSON, Hon. Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, N.Y. 10458. It is only now, slightly more than 200 years after the event, that we are coming into a position to properly appreciate the accomplishments of the eighteenth century explorers of the Pacific regions. During the course of the first Cook expedition some 952 drawings of plants were made but, ow- ing to human perversity and untimely deaths, were never published although some 740 plates were ready for printing as early as 1785. Luckily Alecto Historical Editions of London began publication of the Banks' Florilegium in 1981; a project still being car- ried on at this date, and which will shortly give us a complete view of the genera and species then discovered. Aside from the inherently interesting biographical and anecdotal materials relat- ing to Parkinson, such as his indefatigable energy, his ability to cope with cramped conditions (85 people in a space only 98 feet long by 30 feet wide), and his persist- ence in the face of insects that devoured his colors almost as fast as he applied them, there are matters of considerable impor- Corybas. By P. Van Royen. 175 pages, 49 figures. ]. Cramer, Vaduz, West Ger- tance to taxonomists. For instance many of the plant names assigned by Daniel Solan- many. DM 100 der were left unpublished or ignored (much the same fate as befell those ofRafinesque), A number of years ago I walked up and his provisional designations were left Mount Salak near Bogar, Indonesia in the company of colleagues and students from to stand without being followed up as he had intended and indicated. There is, for the famed Bogor Botanical Gardens and example, an Ipomoea to which no specific Dr. Charles Lamoureux of the University name has been given even as yet. The bot- of Hawaii. Along the way we saw several any of the Endeavour voyage is still, to a orchid species, some well known and others considerable extent, lerra incognita to many more obscure. None of the flowers we saw students of the floras of the South Pacific were more attractive than those on a Cor- and Australia. ybas plant. The plant was hidden under a There is much more presented in this bush and I would have missed it if it were book than the title indicates, for in addition not for the fact that we sat down to rest to botanical data about Madeira, Brazil, near by. On seeing it I started to crawl un- Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, New Zealand, der the bush for a closer look but was Australia, and Java, there is a wealth of stopped by my Indonesian friends with the

Sir Edward Dering's Milton

Between May 1630, when he posted an original of the Magna Carta to Sir Robert Cotton (I have closed King John in a box and sent him away),1 and February 1642, when he lost his seat in the Long Parliament and thereafter his fortune by committing to print his own book of speeches, Sir Edward Dering, Bart., 15991644, amassed a great collection of books, manuscripts, and legal documents. This collection has been dispersed.2 A hint of its original value remains in the Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.b. 297, a catalog of Dering's books compiled circa 1635-1642, which consists of eighteen leaves, not in order, listing hundreds of volumes, most of them on religious subjects. This manuscript, autograph in part, gives the date, place of publication, cost, location by classis and volume number, and, usually, the size of each volume. Dering and his scribe were conservative catalogers, generally including only information that could be obtained by perusing the item. I should like to concentrate on an exception to this policy. On folio 17v, call number 49.21 (i.e., vol. 21 in classis 49) refers to fourteen quarto pamphlets bound together, for which Dering paid seven shillings. The first item in this volume, whose contents Dering's scribe has entered in the catalog, is De emendatione Ecclesiae [libellus], by Petrus de Aliaco, Cardinaliso Cameracensis [Valentin Curio, Basle, 1525], undated in the catalog. The last title in the volume, an edition of Abraham Ortell's Deorum dearumque capita e veteribus numismatibus, dated Antwerp, 1612, is the only nontheological item, except insofar as it provides accounts of divinities represented on coins. Twelve of the pamphlets deal with current affairs in the church of Archbishop Laud, whom Dering vigorously opposed. The place and date of publication of eleven of these, including Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnnuus, are correctly given as London, 1641. The remaining item, the seventh pamphlet in the volume, is identified as Milton: the plott discovered. London 1640. Mrs. Laetitia Yeandle, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger, first showed me this item; and the Columbia edition of works, which lists The Plot Discovered among the prose works erroneously ascribed to Milton, led me to a letter in the London TLS, dated October 24, 1936, and headed Milton's Library.3 In this letter, Mr. Kenneth W. Cameron announced his discovery of eleven tracts bound in one volume in the rare book room of the General Theological Seminary, Chelsea Square, New York City. Claiming to have found an unrecorded Milton