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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

I appreciate your concern and your writing about it.  One of my purposes 
for the lists I own is to assist researchers who aren't well-located and 
who have trouble getting materials they need.  The/ Serenissima/ members 
have become increasingly thoughtful over the 6 years of the list.  One 
of the Italian members, a librarian in a small town [library in the 
small castle], has a hand-held scanner & is on such good terms with rare 
book librarians over Italy that they will let him scan in their 
libraries, which is how he spends his days off, or he will manage to get 
ILL and then do scans.

Here, the public library system in Seattle makes JSTOR available, as do 
the libraries of the University of Washington.  It is a good start, 
especially as there is a strong contingent of state voters who annually 
try to put bills through the legislature saying why should we pay for 
books we don't use/like/approve of, & that the people who want books 
should buy them.

We all have accomplished what we have because of the generosity of many 
unknown people, and because of members of our lists.  I feel strongly 
that it is our obligation to be generous.

DW




Jo Ann McNamara wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> Sometimes I put notes from the list aside with good intentions and 
> then the mail piles up and I get way behind.  So it is with Catherine 
> Gunn's important reminder that the lack of institutional affiliation 
> (or lack of access to a major research library) is a severe handicap 
> for some of our members.  I have been trying to think of a solution to 
> her plea for a helping system without immediate success.  Back in the 
> 70s when the job market fell apart, the same situation boiled over.  
> At that time, a group of feminist scholars in New York tried to 
> address certain aspects of the situation with some success.  We formed 
> an Institute for Research in History and some of the leaders (not, 
> alas, me) learned how to get it registered as an official 
> grant-eligible institution.  This provided an important umbrella for 
> independent scholars.  Catch-22 is that lots of grants are not open to 
> people not affiliated with an institution that gathers in the 
> overhead.  In our case, the overhead was used to open an office and 
> provide limited employment for a couple of people.  The Institute 
> required members to belong to seminar groups to provide a scholarly 
> community.  Actually, some of those groups are still functioning even 
> though the Institute ultimately faded away as the world of grants got 
> narrower.  Still, I think this is a problem that a community of 
> scholars should still try to solve.  We might also think whether or 
> not it would be possible for larger institutions to create some sort 
> of system for extending JStor or other on-line privileges to eligible 
> scholars.  Some universities offer library privileges to scholars in 
> their immediate community (as does Columbia University) but in the 
> world of the net, this might be extended with profit to all.
>  
> Sometimes identifying a problem is an important step in the direction 
> of solving it, so I hope this communique helps in that direction.
>  
> Jo Ann McNamara

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