Coping in the time of COVID-19

It doesn't quite feel like it, but another semester is in the books, and with that, we say goodbye to another student intern. Lauren Della Piazza Hartke, who has been my graduate assistant this academic year, graduated a couple of days ago (Congratulations!), and is moving on to her next chapter. However, she's leaving us with an important legacy, which we'll be sharing with you in the coming weeks.

I've been so fortunate in having graduate students work with me these last two years. Unfortunately, I won't have a GA in this coming academic year, but I'm going to continue working, and I hope I'll have some undergraduates. This summer, Sadie Ingram joins the Project, taking over the Digital Commons and Instagramming tasks which all of my previous students have contributed to. Her internship starts next week, and she's already started training. When she sends me her bio and photo, I'll post those.

Meanwhile, Rachel Oliver's work on women printers is continuing. We were not able to participate in the undergraduate research symposium which is held annually, because all spring 2020 presentations were cancelled. It's not yet clear whether that will be rescheduled. However, Rachel and I have been working on identifying as many women printers as possible, and in starting a collection of short biographies. Rachel has specifically focused on the Spanish and French women. During the summer, I'll be releasing a new database, identifying the women associated with the printing houses represented in the larger census, and designing the portion of the site which is dedicated to women printers. Stay tuned!

Later today, I'm going to upload an updated version of the census itself--now with almost 4,600 entries.