Yale University Library Research Articles

The Harvard and Yale university library rowing collections: A checklist evaluation and semi-availability study

After reviewing the historical significance of competitive rowing at Harvard and Yale universities and the literature dealing with rowing as a competitive sport, this article describes and reports the results of a checklist evaluation and simulated semi-availability study of the rowing collections of the Harvard and Yale University library systems. The results indicate, contrary to what might be expected, that major academic libraries can have noteworthy holdings in a specialized sports area. Harvard has a stronger rowing collection with a higher overall availability rate than does Yale. Comparison with a previous evaluation of the Free Library of Philadelphia's (FLP) rowing collection, based on the identical checklist, indicated its holdings are a bit stronger than Harvard's and considerably better than Yale's, but not as strong as the combined holdings of both Harvard and Yale.

VICTORIANS LIVE: WILLIAM MORRIS: “THE BEAUTY OF LIFE”

“THE BEAUTY OF LIFE” : William Morris & the Art of Design was a visual delight. Curated by Dianne Waggoner, the exhibition originated at the Huntington Library and was first shown at the Yale Center for British Art, enriched by additions from the Yale Center for British Art, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Yale University Library. For those who missed this Victorianists' treat at New Haven and San Marino, the fine catalog edited by Waggoner provides illustrations and detailed accounts of the items as well as perceptive critical essays.

ＷＨＯのＨＩＮＡＲＩプロジェクト：途上国への電子ジャーナル提供

This article reviews the current status and challenges of the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI). HINARI, a programme administered by the World Health Organization (WHO), has contributed toward reducing the health information gap between rich and poor countries by providing not-for-profit institutions in developing countries with free or very low-cost online access to major biomedical journals. HINARI was launched in January 2002, shortly after WHO and 6 major publishers realized that the development of information technology presented an opportunity to address the problem of information gaps. Since then, the programme was successfully expanded in November 2005 and now includes over 3, 000 journal titles from 70 publishers. More than 1, 600 institutions have registered from 105 eligible countries (the total number of eligible countries is 113). In addition to providing access to electronic journals, capacity building and outreach are critical components of HINARI. These activities ensure that individuals at registered institutions can use HINARI effectively. The technical support of two libraries (NLM and Yale University Library) and the collaboration with AGORA, a sister programme, are also notable. However, several challenges exist. For example, proving a direct connection between improved access to online journals and concrete improvements in health care is difficult.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library is the largest repository* of special collections in the Yale University library System. ITiose collections include a wide array of European books and manuscripts from the Middle Ages to the present, a major collection of Western Americana, and a vast collection of books and manuscripts relating to American literature. Scholars from all over the world wishing more information on the collections and fellowship program of the Beinecke should consult its website:

Elia Kazan's first testimony to the house committee on Un-American activities, executive session, 14 January 1952

The controversy surrounding Elia Kazan's testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in particular in 1999 when Kazan was awarded a Life Achievement Award at that year's Academy Awa...

A Curious Cross-Reference in Webster's American Dictionary

A Curious Cross-Reference in Webster's American Dictionary i: David Micklethwait 'n April 1859, William Webster, son of the lexicographer, was ^studying his late father's American Dictionary oftheEnglish Language , perhaps in connection with the imminent publication of the Pictorial Edition (1859), and he spotted something very odd indeed: in the entry for the word sovereign, there was a cross-reference "See SUVERAN," but there was no entry in the dictionary for the word suveran. There had been such an entry in the 1841 Royal Octavo edition of the American Dictionary, and therefore, in that edition, the crossreference (Webster 1841, 643) had made sense, but in preparing the first Merriam edition of the dictionary (1848), the editor, Chauncey Allen Goodrich, had taken suveran out. What made the crossreference particularly odd was that it had previously not been in the Goodrich-Webster (see, for instance, a Webster Unabridged printed in 1849). Surely there could be no possible reason to put in a reference to something which had been taken out of the dictionary twelve years earlier? William wrote to the Merriams to seek an explanation. I have not seen William Webster's letter, but its existence and its content are to be inferred from the Merriams' reply, a letter dated April 11th 1859. They wrote, "It is quite singular to us, also, how there came the discrepancy in regard to 'See Suveran,' which you refer to." They said that they had two sets of plates for printing the dictionary: "The 2nd set was sent to London, and a year or two since we exchanged , as ours were worn. We find, in the set that originally went to London, and which is the one we are now working here, 'See Suveran,' Dictionaries:Journal ofthe Dictionary Society ofNorth America 26 (2005) A Curious Cross Reference195 while the books printed from the first set have not this. We think, by some mistake the words were stricken out in the proof but accidentally retained in one set of the plates. We have now ordered them stricken out."1 A closer investigation of these events proves to shed a little light on the Merriams' possible involvement in the great dictionary scandal of the 1850's, the "Gross Literary Fraud" by which a Worcester dictionary was published in London with Webster's name on it. Background The so-called "War of the Dictionaries" (waged intermittently from 1834, roughly until the publication of the Mahn edition of Webster 's Dictionary in 1864) was an unpleasing commercially motivated contest, only loosely based upon the merits of Webster's and Worcester 's works, but there was one continuing thread which ran through the argument from the beginning — a disagreement over spelling. Webster's views on spelling changed greatly during his working life. In the introduction to his first book, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Part I (Webster 1783, 11), he wrote: "In spelling and accenting, I have generally made Dr. Johnson's dictionary my guide." He next became an advocate of more or less phonetic spelling. The preface to his Collection ofEssays and Fugitiv Writings (Webster 1790, [ix] ) begins: "The following Collection consists of Essays and Fugitiv Peeces, ritten at various times, and on different occasions, az wil appeer by their dates and subjects." By the time of his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary ofthe English Language (1806), he had abandoned any attempt at wholesale reform, but was still keen to omit silent letters, most strikingly the final e in such words as disciplin, doctrin, examin, granit, hypocrit, imagin, libertin , and opposit. By 1828, when the quarto American Dictionary ofthe English Language was published, Webster had modified his position yet again. The final e was restored to most of the words listed in the previous paragraph — only granit remained, given as an alternative to granite — but 'This letter is among the Webster Family Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Group 527, Box 2, Folder 36, and is quoted here with permission. 196David Micklethwait similar modifications were manifest in such words as gazel and maiz; he also favored leaving out the silent a from words such asJether, lether, and wether, the silent b from thum, and the...

Borrow Direct: its impact on service quality at Yale University Library

Librarians at three large universities successfully developed a reader‐initiated borrowing model of interlibrary resource sharing, known as Borrow Direct, that now operates among seven major academic libraries in the US. The underlying software allows the reader to perform a virtual broadcast search of members' online catalogs. Automatic electronic notification to readers and elimination of some staff processing has resulted in major service improvements as assessed by both customers and managers. Describes the history of the initiative to reach technical goals of delivering loans within four days of request submission and for less than $10 per transaction. Also summarizes results of a survey of the perceptions of those who use the service.

Drawing the Lines

The article discusses the debate over the validity of a map at a Yale University library which offers depictions of the New World that predate the landing of Columbus by 60 years. The parchment map, about 11 by 16 inches large, was uncovered in a Geneva bookshop in 1957 with no records of prior ownership. In 2002 Jacqueline S. Olin, retired from the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education in Suitland, Md., and her colleagues reported results of carbon dating indicating that the map dates from 1434, give or take 11 years. But since the map's discovery, critics have called it a clever fake. What lies in dispute is not the pre-Columbian age of the parchment but that of the map drawn on it. At the same time Olin and colleagues dated the map's parchment, chemists Katherine Brown and Robin Clark of University College London argued that the map's ink dated from after 1923. Historian Kirsten A. Seaver, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London, states that the map's writing contains historical anachronisms such as mention of Bishop Eirik of Greenland of the early 12th century reporting to superiors, although he would have had none, because Greenland had not yet become part of the Church hierarchy.

More Vinland maps and texts. Discovering the New World in Higden’s Polychronicon

Over four decades have passed since an antiquarian bookseller brought a medieval map to Yale University Library and set into motion a series of events that would end in a controversy that continues to this day: is the so-called Vinland Map real and, if so, what is its significance? This present essay seeks to contribute to the debates over the early mapping of America by investigating the possibility that the Vinland Map (regardless of authenticity) is not the sole visual representation of Norse America, and certainly not the earliest. Rather, the earliest surviving maps of America appear to be a series of T--O derivative maps produced roughly 150 years before the voyages of Columbus as illustrations to Ranulf Higden's Polychronicon. Further, largely ignored descriptions of Vinland can be found not only in Higden's text, but in four additional texts as well, two of them in the vernacular. These various appearances of Vinland indicate the continuing remembrance or rumour of another land to the west, a record of the New World that demands additional study.

Usage Statistics at Yale University Library

Usage Statistics at Yale University Library

Digitization of Book Arts Ephemera in the Arts of the Book Collection, Yale University Library

Digitization of Book Arts Ephemera in the Arts of the Book Collection, Yale University Library

International Coalition of Library Consortia Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information: “Update No. 1” and Reactions from the Scholarly Community

In December 2001, the International Coalition of Library Consortia issued an update to its March 1998 “Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information.” New developments in e-journal licensing reflect issues that either encourage or hinder growth in e-journal access. Pricing and purchasing models, usage statistics, usability of electronic journals, and archiving concerns are the major points addressed in the statement and in reactions from the serials community. This article reprints the December 2001 update, with commentary first from Ann Okerson, Yale University Library, “Is It the Price, or Is It the Pricing Model?” From HARRASSOWITZ, Knut Dorn, Danny Jones, and Katharina Klemperer share “A Subscription Agent's View” and remind us of key services that agencies provide. “A Middleman's View to ICOLC's Update No. 1” is the concluding response by Dan Tonkery (EBSCO), who adds to the agency perspective by issuing challenges for communication and provides a reality check for libraries, intermediaries, and publishers. Serials Review 2003; 29:3–10.

International Coalition of Library Consortia Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information

In December 2001, the International Coalition of Library Consortia issued an update to its March 1998 “Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information.” New developments in e-journal licensing reflect issues that either encourage or hinder growth in e-journal access. Pricing and purchasing models, usage statistics, usability of electronic journals, and archiving concerns are the major points addressed in the statement and in reactions from the serials community. This article reprints the December 2001 update, with commentary first from Ann Okerson, Yale University Library, “Is It the Price, or Is It the Pricing Model?” From HARRASSOWITZ, Knut Dorn, Danny Jones, and Katharina Klemperer share “A Subscription Agent's View” and remind us of key services that agencies provide. “A Middleman's View to ICOLC's Update No. 1” is the concluding response by Dan Tonkery (EBSCO), who adds to the agency perspective by issuing challenges for communication and provides a reality check for libraries, intermediaries, and publishers. Serials Review 2003; 29:3–10.

''A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas'': President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan

Research Article| February 01 2003 ''A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas'': President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan D. M. Giangreco D. M. Giangreco Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2003) 72 (1): 93–132. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2003.72.1.93 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation D. M. Giangreco; ''A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas'': President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan. Pacific Historical Review 1 February 2003; 72 (1): 93–132. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2003.72.1.93 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. © Pacific Coast Branch of the AMerican Historical Association Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

"Though This Be Madness, yet There Is Method in 't": Assessing the Value of Faculty Papers and Defining a Collecting Policy

This article describes a project undertaken in Manuscripts and Archives in the Yale University Library to develop a rational approach for the selection and appraisal of collections of faculty papers. The project developed a policy for identifying collections to actively pursue and for evaluating collections offered. To develop the policy, the authors adapted the Minnesota Method, an appraisal methodology developed by the Minnesota Historical Society to appraise business records. The article serves as a case study of the application of the Minnesota Method to a collecting repository within an academic setting.

Electronic Journals and the Future of Scholarly Communication

The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music is not found on any bookshelf, but only on World Wide Web. [1] I predict that in year 2030, it will still be publishing on Web, or whatever its cyberspace successor might be, and will have reached its volume thirty-six. And I further predict that by that year every music journal will be published electronically, and that few of them, if any, will be printing on paper. Here in year 2000, 1 stand exactly halfway between that seemingly distant date, 2030, and year in which I received my Ph.D. degree, 1970. I began subscribing to Journal of American Musicological Society as a graduate student in 1968, year that American Musicological Society held its annual meeting in New Haven. My bookshelf is now sagging beneath weight of all those issues of JAMS, most of which I confess I have not read from cover to cover, except for those few years when I served on editorial board. My overcrowded study represents a tiny fraction of problem most libraries face in trying to find space for all those books and journals, and weighing their subscription lists carefully as prices continue to rise. But apart from that, if every music journal were starting fresh today, without any past history, why would anyone want to publish a music journal on paper, which can offer musical sounds only to those readers who can conjure them up in their imaginations from printed music examples? Paper is wonderful for holding and reading text, and a printed music example can often convey an analytical point more quickly than ten hearings. I myself print out nearly everything from Web that I want to read. But paper cannot sing! Most of members of Society for Seventeenth-Century Music did not see it that way in 1994, however, when they authorized their publication committee to produce a prototype electronic journal. We were then a very new society, only two years old, and we wanted to have a journal in order to establish our identity and support our community of scholarly interests. When we began to explore this issue in 1993, virtually everyone automatically assumed that ajournal meant a printed journal. This was avenue that we first investigated, and it was only when we had learned that our membership was too small to support a printed journal without exorbitant cost that society agreed to consider electronic route. Most of us had not even heard of Web in 1994. Three enthusiasts worked together on that prototype issue: John Howard, who had put RISM (Repertoire international des sources musicales) onto Web; [2] Robert Judd, who was then managing Music Theory Online; [3] and I. With their greater technological knowledge, division of labor was clear: I would edit articles, as in a print journal; Bob would mark up text using hypertext markup language (HTML); and John would publish it on Web via RISM server at Harvard. I still remember exhilaration of showing off that first issue in exhibition hall of 1995 American Musicological Society meeting as the journal that sings. John had rented a laptop computer on which we demonstrated Sally Sanford's audio examples for her article comparing French and Italian singing in seventeenth century. The members of Society for Seventeenth-Century Music adopted Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music as their official journal at that meeting, and now we have reached volume six, number one, our first special issue devoted to a single topic, patronage of sacred music in seventeenth-century Italy. Jeffrey Kurtzman served as guest editor, and it contains articles by Noel O'Regan, Edmond Strainchamps, and Kimberlyn Montford, with responses by Robert R. Holzer, Susan Parisi, and Robert Kendrick, respectively. There are many other electronic journals. I am told that Yale University Library has some 7,600 titles on its master list of electronic journals and databases. …

Project Open Book

Project Open Book

Library technology centers and community building: Yale University Library Electronic Text Center

This article discusses the various communities that have contributed to the evolution of the Yale University Library Electronic Text Center (ETC). University groups currently benefiting from the ETC‘s services are discussed, as are those who potentially may benefit from ETC services in the future. Also considered are departments and organizations contributing to or influencing the center‘s services. A central theme of the article is the evolution of the ETC from a center for the support of electronic texts in the humanities, to an electronic resource center providing support in the creation of Web resources.

The Whorf theory complex: A critical reconstruction by Penny Lee (review)

634LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 3 (1998) The Whorf theory complex: A critical reconstruction. By Penny Lee. (Studies in the history of the language sciences, 81.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996. Pp. xix, 373. Reviewed by John E. Joseph, University of Edinburgh When the balance sheet is drawn on American linguistics of the twentieth century, there may be some dispute about who was its greatest figure but not about its most intriguing. That distinction belongs to Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), who is also in the running for most controversial —and most influential, particularly when one looks beyond linguistics to the impact on other fields of study and on general culture.1 Yet our knowledge of him has been limited, for several reasons. Those closest to him, fearing that his brilliance might be overshadowed by his unconventionality, have been selective about which aspects of his thought would be put on public display. Whorf's diaries and many other papers were withheld from the materials donated to the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the Yale University Library, and only now, following the death of Whorf's widow in July 1997, is there some possibility of them becoming available to scholars. Even the bulk of the material heretofore open to public view has gone unpublished—surprisingly, seeing how well the 1956 collection of papers has sold and continues to sell. As a result his influence has tended to proceed from severe reductions of his thought, on the lines of the definition of 'Whorfian hypothesis' given in the New shorter Oxford English dictionary (1993): 'the theory that one's perception of the world is determined by the structure of one's native language'. His centenary has coincided with a spate of renewed interest in his work, and at long last the first serious attempt has been made to move beyond the handful of his well-known papers to reconstruct his system ofideas in its totality. Penny Lee's book, however, is more than an exercise in archaeology. Her critical reconstruction of the Whorf theory complex is accompanied at every step by a réévaluation of work done explicitly or implicitly in a neo-Whorfian vein through the 1990's. Besides contributing a much fuller sense of what Whorf was about, the book establishes the existence of a vivid Whorfian research paradigm of decades' standing, with more strands and more coherence than even those involved in it might suspect. L begins with an introductory chapter outlining Whorf's life and work from 1924 until his premature death from cancer, tracing how his work would subsequently be 'misread, unread, and superficially treated' (14) and giving an overview ofthe theory complex which it is impossible to summarize further without repeating past reductionism. I shall therefore limit myself to one important point. L emphasizes that Whorf's theorizing is 'only by extension about language in general . . . and thought in general'; rather, it is aimed at the intersection of the two, 'linguistic thinking' (30). Whorf considered that socially generated and sustained patterns of language use become physically entrenched in cognition and in doing so condition physiological (including neurological) structures, processes, or associated energy fields and bring about adjustments to the overall patterning of mental behavior. He did not claim that all conceptual activity is linguistic in origin or character nor did he claim that the sole function of language is to facilitate conceptual activity. He did, however, claim that it is the species specific ability to talk that characterizes what is distinctive about human cognition. (30-31) The idea that patterns of language use condition neurological structures foreshadows connectionism by half a century, as L discusses at length, just as human cognition being distinguished by species-specific language ability foreshadows the opposite cognitivist trend. While the lines connecting Whorf to contemporary work like that of Lakoff (1987), Langacker (1989-92), Lucy (1992, on which see Lee 1994) and the contributors to Gumperz and Levinson (1996) are obvious enough, nothing in the book is more surprising than the links drawn to Chomsky, especially with regard to Whorf's notions of 'cryptotypes' (a link already noted by Ogle 1973, as L points 1 See for example Joseph (1995: 380n.) on the...

Implementing EAD in the Yale University Library

In 1995 the Yale University Library agreed to serve as an "early implementer" site for the FindAid DTD, now EAD. Three Yale manuscript repositories—the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Special Collections in the Divinity School Library, and the Manuscripts and Archives Department of Sterling Memorial Library, agreed to participate in this test phase by creating an integrated database of SGML-encoded finding aids, accessible via the World Wide Web. This case study describes the basic configuration of the Yale finding aid site, reviews the project's history and accomplishments since its inception in 1995, discusses the methods employed by the participating units to mark up legacy files and to integrate EAD into their routines for creating new finding aids, and suggests issues to be considered by others contemplating an SGML/EAD encoding project of their own.