As the semester turns... (4/27/2019)

It's been quite an exciting semester for us at the EJLPP. Rudy has just about finished her non-thesis MA project, and it's going to be excellent: not only did she do great work this past year while also juggling other classes, but she wrote a very good paper on it. I've said before how lucky I felt to have her on the project, so you can imagine that I'm sad she'll be moving on.

Meanwhile, Jasmine's semester is almost over, and she will be moving on as well. I haven't said as much about her contributions, but now that her internship hours are coming to a close, we need to cheer her accomplishments as well. Please take a moment to look at https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/jesuit-lib-images/, to see what will become our permanent digital archive. We will continue to use this web page, Flickr, Instagram, and Facebook, but with the help of Georgia Southern University Libraries (in particular, Jennifer Gerald), we now have a stable place for all of the photos. The ones on social media are highlights, designed to promote the project, but also to introduce people to the history of the book and of libraries.

I've been terribly fortunate to have these exceptional students working for me, and I thank the Georgia Southern Department of History, and Michael van Wagenen, Internship Coordinator, for their help.

Monday starts the last week of classes. The week after that, I'm having a project team meeting, and once we're ready, I'll post photos of the summer undergraduate interns (I have three of them--talk about exciting!) and give a brief overview of what they're going to be doing. I will also introduce followers to the new graduate student who will be working with me during the academic year. I hope I'll be able to get some undergrad interns for the fall too, but I don't currently have any volunteers. Meanwhile, check out the latest version of the spreadsheet on the "Data" page; it now has over 3,400 entries. I've learned a valuable lesson here about procrastination. I have spent the better part of my research time since January following up on things I tagged "for later"--searching for online versions (in Google books, Hathitrust, Archive.org, and the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek digital) of books I'd seen in person or found in a printed catalogue somewhere. I wasn't paying attention, and that list had grown to over 1,200 titles. As of today, I've gotten that number down to 255--and in the process, have added about 800 lines to the database. My mid-year resolution is to avoid such a rabbit hole again by making sure that when add new books, I will look for digital versions as soon as is practical (immediately if I'm at home, but within a week if it's on a research trip).