I attended the American Library Association annual conference in New Orleans this past weekend, after being invited to speak at the meeting of the discussion group for Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies Librarians, a sub-group (WESS-CMR) of the Western European Studies Section (WESS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). (Got all that? Phew!) I was able to attend thanks in part to some funding from the UGA Department of Classics as well as my own employers, and Colin McCaffrey of Yale University, who convenes the discussion group, did the inviting – I am grateful to them all!
I had a wonderful time meeting other librarians who work closely with Classics departments. That aspect of my work is not shared with many of my existing librarian friends, so it was exciting to make connections with those who know exactly what it’s like to be the only person at your library who really kinda actually does understand L’Annee Philologique.
My talk, on the Ancient World Open Bibliographies project, has been put online; I’ve put up my slides, alternating with slides incorporating the text I spoke from. Our other speaker was Elizabeth Hahn of the American Numismatic Society library, who showed off their new online catalog (which includes offprints as well as books and so can be a very useful bibliographic resource for numismatics) and various other open-access publications of theirs.
And also, I can report that New Orleans has a large number of streets with classical names in the Garden District – I saw Erato and Melpomene, and I stood at the corner of Polymnia and Prytania, and I’d bet that all the muses are included, plus more!
Becoming a Classics Librarian 