Authors:Richard Saunders First page: 52 Abstract: This issue’s editorial reflection is sparked by the two articles selected for this issue of RBM. As a professional librarian I’ve worked in Carnegie classification R1, R2, and M2 institutions. As a practicing historian I’ve done site-specific research in academic libraries between St. Paul and Austin, from Berkeley to New Haven, and a lot of places in between. Over the past thirty years I’ve talked with hundreds of librarians and archivists in scores of different places, from local “treasure” rooms of small, isolated public libraries to the research rooms of the nation’s largest institutions. As I’ve listened to the thumping heart of working libraries I am consistently impressed by the good graces of people from small places, and often frustrated by the sometimes inexplicably pedantic assumptions and requirements made by large research institutions. These articles have prompted me to reflect what best practice really means. I’ve concluded that on the whole, librarians have been far too easily impressed by what other librarians are doing. As a result librarians have failed to equate “best practice” with evidence-based practice. PubDate: 2022-11-11 DOI: 10.5860/rbm.23.2.52 Issue No:Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Sigrid Anderson, Kristine Greive, Juli McLoone, Jo Angela Oehrli First page: 55 Abstract: As college and university special collections become more invested and successful in campus outreach, the demand for intensive instruction services, particularly student-curated exhibits, has increased. Supporting this type of experiential learning for large classes is particularly challenging. The authors of this paper suggest specific, practical steps for best practices in implementing student-curated exhibits with large classes by drawing on their experiences with four such exhibits at the University of Michigan, curated by classes ranging from twenty-five to one hundred students. Crucial elements include advance communication, collaboration across library units, the use of scaffolded instruction sessions, pre-selection of materials, and integration of assessment into the learning experience. PubDate: 2022-11-11 DOI: 10.5860/rbm.23.2.55 Issue No:Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Lynne M. Thomas First page: 75 Abstract: This article reports the first national survey that creates a baseline for documenting the experience of working with rare books in libraries without Association of Research Libraries (ARL) membership: a group of libraries that make up about half the field of librarians working with rare books. Scarcely studied despite decades of comparable studies of their ARL library colleagues, librarians working in non-ARL rare book collections have comparable demographics, professional training, and standards for their work as their peers in ARL libraries. Their experiences doing the work in non-ARL libraries demonstrate a significant disparity in resources for acquisitions, security, staffing, and fundraising. These experiences of half of the special collections professionals in the field require further study, reintroducing their narratives into our understanding of “what rare books librarianship looks like.” PubDate: 2022-11-11 DOI: 10.5860/rbm.23.2.75 Issue No:Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Erika Hosselkus First page: 98 Abstract: On the Road Again: Developing and Managing Traveling Exhibitions, 2nd edition, provides a useful and practical introduction to planning, preparing, and successfully circulating a traveling exhibition. The title is directed especially to small and midsized museums, but its content may also benefit special collections, archives, and other cultural heritage practitioners interested in the topic. In addition to outlining and describing the considerations and work integral to mounting a traveling exhibition, editors Rebecca A. Buck, Jean A. Gilmore, and Irene Taurins provide sample forms, from checklists to contracts, for each step of the process. This updated edition accounts for some developments in digital technologies as well as updated laws and regulations relevant to lending cultural objects. For this second edition of the widely used 2003 text, Taurins, Director of Registration at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, joins Gilmore and Buck, who both retired from long careers as museum registrars in 2013. PubDate: 2022-11-11 DOI: 10.5860/rbm.23.2.98 Issue No:Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Lena Newman First page: 100 Abstract: Mathematics in print was not a good business proposition, at least not for printers in London in the seventeenth century. In his chapter, “‘A Design Inchoate’: Edward Bernard’s Planned Edition of Euclid and Its Scholarly Afterlife in Late Seventeenth-Century Oxford,” Philip Beeley details the winding path of a proposed edition of Euclid’s Elements, showing just how many hands, how many years, and how much convincing it took for a project of clear academic importance to be realized in a final, printed form. Beeley, along with Benjamin Wardaugh and Yelda Nasifoglu, is one of the editors of Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe: Studies in the Production, Collection, and Use of Mathematical Books, an engrossing new book published last year by Routledge. The editors write, “By defining and illuminating the distinctive world of early modern mathematical reading, this volume seeks to close the gap between the history of mathematics as a history of texts and history of mathematics as part of the broader history of human culture” (i)—an ambitious academic project, and one that is realized quite successfully here. Each of the 11 chapters in the book is an essay that supports that argument from a different angle. Some focus on the history of specific mathematical concepts and on their textual transmission, and evolution, over time. Others zoom in on historic figures in the field and the textual artifacts they left behind. All of the chapters engage with the transmission of mathematics at the material level in some way and are grounded in the analysis of early modern texts, diagrams, and the material evidence of readers’ interactions with them. PubDate: 2022-11-11 DOI: 10.5860/rbm.23.2.100 Issue No:Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Alison Reynolds First page: 104 Abstract: Curating Under Pressure: International Perspectives on Negotiating Conflict and Upholding Integrity examines the delicate route curators must negotiate between supporting artistic freedom of expression while managing the expectations of systems of government, stakeholders providing financial support, communities represented in the art, and the potential audience for their exhibitions. It suggests that curators must balance their autonomy with respect to the diversity of their local, regional, or national environments. Both private and public entities may force curators into a position where they must choose between prioritizing freedom of expression and artistic creativity or protecting the reputation of their institutions or safety of their colleagues. PubDate: 2022-11-11 DOI: 10.5860/rbm.23.2.104 Issue No:Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Nicole Topich First page: 108 Abstract: Adam Gordon’s Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites: Antebellum Print Culture and the Rise of the Critic examines the role of the critic and criticism in early nineteenth-century America using a wide variety of sources to show how critical forms shaped arguments. This deliberate inclusion of a range of source types allows the author to compare and study criticism with a unique perspective. As Gordon argues, the definition of literary criticism should be expansive enough to include different forms because of how criticism is inextricably linked to the forms in which it circulated. In defining these forms, he states, “By ‘critical form,’ I mean two intertwined and overlapping structures: the print media through which criticism circulated (monthly magazines, daily newspapers, anthology, pamphlet, etc.) and the critical genres through which it expressed itself (brief notice, lengthy review essay, tabloid literary gossip, etc.)” (6). A strong case is made that studying these different forms can also bring a new perspective to the current debates over the value of criticism. PubDate: 2022-11-11 DOI: 10.5860/rbm.23.2.108 Issue No:Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022)
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