medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Jim's helpful citation of Jacques Bouillart's 1724 history of the abbey
of St.-Germain-des-Pres leads to a useful point or two about the
presence in North American libraries of eighteenth-century scholarly
books of western European origin.
First, in this case -- as in quite a few others -- copies are held by
libraries that may be very good in lots of ways but whose collections
are not altogether fabulous. When Jim's message came in, I looked in
the online catalog of my university's library (Univ. of Wisconsin-
Madison) to see whether we had a copy listed and was pleasantly
surprised to discover that we do. I then went to WorldCat, a very
large USA-based union catalog and found that some thirty libraries (not
including that of my university) were listed as owning a copy. Of
these, twenty-three are in North America and not all are among
the "usual suspects" when it comes to having really substantial older
holdings on the history of western Europe. In fact, the copy that
seems second-closest to Cecilia is at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst (not normally considered to have one of the USA's top research
libraries). Another is at St. Meinrad's Abbey and School of Theology
in Indiana. The copy that seems closest to Cecilia is listed as being
at her own institution, Dartmouth College.
Point two is that Wisconsin is not likely to be unique in having a copy
not reported to OCLC Inc., the proprietors of WorldCat. Many
eighteenth-century scholarly books now in North American libraries
arrived there well before the advent of the standardized machine-
readable cataloging that makes WorldCat and similar union catalogs
possible; not a few of these still have catalog records that either are
in analog (i.e., not digital) form only or else (like Wisconsin's) are
bare-bones electronic entries suitable for local use but not for that
of the more demanding WorldCat and its ilk. So there may be times when
it pays to consult directly the catalogs of major university libraries,
etc. that one can get to fairly easily.
Point three is that points one and two are not likely to apply if a)
the book was always a real rarity or b) the book's subject was either
non-canonical or else only of minor interest in the view of North
American university programs of teaching and research during the period
(ending in the late 1960s or early 1970s) when eighteenth-century
scholarly books of European origin were still ordinarily rather
inexpensive. Those of us who work in such areas know all too well what
some of these non- or marginally canonical areas were (and sometimes
are).
Best,
John Dillon
On Sunday, July 3, 2005,at 1:56 pm, Jim Bugslag wrote:
> Cecilia,
> I'm not sure how helpful this reference will be, unless you are
> close to a fabulous
> library (or it is available on Gallica). I have taken it from
> Mary B. Shepard's work on
> the stained glass of St Germain des Pres:
> Dom Jacques Bouillart, Histoire de l'abbaye royale de Saint-
> Germain-des-Pres
> (Paris, 1724).
> Cheers,
> Jim Bugslag
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