Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Discussion Group Minutes - 2008 MidWinter
From Wess
Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Discussion Group
Saturday January 12, 2008
Sofitel, Orleans Ballroom, Philadelphia
4-6PM
The meeting opened at 4 with 30-32 in attendance. Paula Carns ran the meeting and took minutes.
Agenda I. Presentation of Casalini Libri’s online databases. In the first hour Joachim Bartz, Kathryn Paoletti and Colleen Campbell from Casalini Libri gave an overview of Casalini's online databases and e-products. For a number of years Casalini has offered its clients an extensive database—simply called I Libri—of Italian publications accessible through an easy-to-use yet multifunctional search interface. The database, which grows daily, is larger than that of the Italian National Library, making it an important resource for Italian publications and studies. A couple of years ago Casalini expanded its serves to include online databases for Spanish (Iberian only) and French publications. All three databases, known as I Libri internationale—can be searched simultaneously and thus furnish bibliographies working in these languages a powerful selection tool. With the online databases, librarians with approval plans with Casalini have ready access to up-to-date lists of weekly shipments to their libraries, as well as lists of books not included.
Individuals can sign up for free access to Casalini’s online databases at http://www.casalini.com/index.asp.
The three speakers from Casalini Libri also presented EIO - Editoria Italian Online, a full-text database of scholarly Italian e-content in the humanities and social sciences. In particular, the speakers mentioned their plans to launch a new subset of EIO, a Classic Collection featuring a selection of important journals in Classics. Attending classicists were keen to hear of this new development.
II. American Philological Association's capital campaign. Next Jerry Heverly took 10-15 min. to talk about the American Philological Association's capital campaign to keep alive the American Office of L'annee philologique (http://www.apaclassics.org/campaign/campaign.html). The American office is extremely important for research libraries as an index of classical scholarship in English. If the Office closes non-English language materials will be largely invisible to researchers. Jerry stressed that no amount is too small and provided forms to accompany donations. Those considering give a donation should identify themselves as librarians, to show the APA how important this resource is for libraries. For more info, contact Jerry at gerald.heverly@nyu.edu.
III. "Medieval Loeb" Karen Green took 5 minutes to announce that Dr. Jan Ziolkowski, Director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, has gotten Harvard University Press to greenlight a medieval version of the Loeb Classical Library, with facing-page translations. Called the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, the affordable series will premiere in 2010 with ten titles, four more appearing each fall and spring thereafter.
IV.Editing the WESSWeb Wiki. In the last hour CMR teamed up with the Social Science and History DG and the Research & Planning Committee to feature a presentation by Dick Hacken on editing the WESSWeb wiki.
The meeting adjourned at 4:10.
