The more you know

April 25, 2008 — Friday

From Graffiti: A Claremont Colleges Library in the Midwest

A Claremont Colleges Library in the Midwest

One of the Claremont Colleges Libraries’ greatest resources for primary documents is not located any where near Claremont, but lies almost 1800 miles away, in Chicago, the Center For Research Libraries (CRL). CRL is a library cooperative that houses materials held by few other libraries in North America. Such resources as older and current foreign newspapers, dissertations from foreign universities, government documents from around the world, rarer journals and magazines, and microform sets focusing on everything from missionaries to labor organizations in South Africa during apartheid are available to students, faculty, and staff by virtue of the Libraries’ CRL membership. There are two major ways of exploring CRL’s holdings—by clicking on the Center for Research Libraries button after you’ve done a search in Blais or by visiting the CRL website. There you can find the CRL catalog as well as topic guides and databases designed to locate specific types of items among holdings such as foreign and ethnic newspapers. CRL materials can be requested through the Libraries’ Interlibrary Loan. CRL also offers a growing number of digital collections, available from their website.

— Adam Rosenkranz,
Reference Librarian/Bibliographer

From Graffiti, Volume 2, Issue 3, April 15-May 31, 2005 (pdf), from the Graffiti Archives.

— michael | 12:57 PM

April 21, 2008 — Monday

Honnold Library Record: Honnold Library

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 5, Number 1. Spring 1962:

The First Days of the Honnold Library

On July 1 of this year the Honnold Library will have been open ten years. On that date in 1952 the Library was indeed open, but there were as yet no doors on the building. In order to close the library at night, large panel boards were placed in the doorway. On the second floor in front of the loan desk the carpenters doing the finishing woodwork operated a power saw. This activity, although making the normal routine of checking out books somewhat difficult, was of extraordinary interest to the students.

At the same time that the carpenters were finishing the woodwork, the last coat of paint was being put on the outside of the building. This operation brought out the fact, hitherto unsuspected, that of two hundred members of the Claremont Colleges faculties, one hundred and ninety-five were experts on color. Also, of one hundred and thirty trustees, one hundred and twenty-five were similar experts. The faculty appointed its color committee and the trustees appointed theirs and on one occasion they assembled in joint session; never were such great questions debated by so many so learnedly.

The library was one of the few buildings in Claremont scheduled when construction began to go into operation on a certain day which actually went into operation on that date. The completion of the building, the moving of books from the old libraries, the consolidation of collections, and the opening of the summer session were all so interdependent that the library had to open regardless of the fact that the building was not quite completed.

But even after a building is completed it takes years to so place the counters, tables, lights and bookcases that the library is a comfortable and efficient place in which to work. Now after ten years of use, the Honnold Library, modified and arranged as experience has indicated, is a functional, attractive, and efficient building.

The Size of the Collections Ten Years Ago and Now

When the book collections were moved into the present building, Claremont University College owned in round figures 79,000 volumes; Claremont Men's College 7,000; Pomona College 131,000, and Scripps 42,000.

At the end of the last academic year the colleges possessed a total of 375,000 volumes, an increase of 45%. During the same period the number of United States Government Documents has increased from 157,000 to 242,000, an increase of 54%.

The number of periodicals currently received has risen from 1,745 in 1956 to 3,110 in 1961, an increase of 78%.

These figures reflect nine years’ growth so that almost certainly the library will double in size in twenty years and very probably in less time than that.

The Increased Use of Books in the Last Decade

During the first year of the Library’s operation students and faculty checked out 36,500 books at the circulation desk. In the last academic year they checked out 70,000, an increase in nine years of 92%. This year, our tenth, the increase may well reach 100%.

Part of this increase is due, of course, to a larger student body, but by far the greater part is owing to the simple fact that students and faculty use more books. This increased use is the natural consequence of the steady improvement in the quality of students and the quality of work expected of them.

The duties of a library are two-fold and in part contradictory: to preserve books and to promote their use. We feel that while providing appropriate safeguards for the collections, we have at the same time made it possible for the members of the colleges to use books generously and freely.

The Growth in the Rate of Acquisitions

In the first year in the Honnold Library 8,780 books were added to the collections. Last year 17,945 volumes were added, an acceleration increase of more than 106%.

Certainly the Colleges, the Friends of the Colleges and of the Library may view these statistics with satisfaction. We are frequently overpowered with contemplating the vast numbers of old books we do not have and with the vast numbers of new books pouring from the publishers. It is some satisfaction to recall that we have been aware of the task before us and have constantly increased our rate of acquisitions.

Gifts to the Library from the Honnold Library Society

The Honnold Library Society since its founding has every year consistently provided funds for the purchase of important books and collections. Only a few of these purchases can be singled out here.

In 1955 the Society purchased an extensive collection of materials on George Washington from the library of the late Rupert Hughes. In the following year a collection of 700 books on the languages of Southwest Asia was purchased which contained many rare items. In 1957 the Society provided $5,000 for the purchase of books in Europe by the Librarian, and a similar gift of $3,000 was given in 1961.

Four members of the Society, Edward D. Lyman, Dr. Seeley G. Mudd and Mr. and Mrs. Howard D. Mills, established a biography collection which they add to yearly.

Many individual members of the Society are perennial donors to the Library. A few of these are Dr. and Mrs. Egerton Crispin, H. W. Pittenger, Mrs. Elbert Shirk, Mr. and Mrs. Homer D. Crotty, Garner Beckett, Carl I. Wheat, William Clary, Mrs. Fred Smith, Earl Huntley, Thornton Douglas, Frank R. Seaver, R. J. Wig, and Herbert Rempel.

Gifts to the Library

Over the past nine years the Library has received more than twenty-two hundred gifts. Of this number it is only possible here to note a few of the books and collections which have been given.

In the first year of the Honnold Library, Mrs. Adelaide McCormick gave her collection of more than a thousand Korean books to the Library, certainly one of the outstanding collections on this subject in the country.

Mr. Leonard Bell not only gave his Stevenson collection but gave an endowment for its continued growth. Mr. William Clary endowed the Oxford Collection, provided a room for it, and continued to add many volumes to it each year.

One of the finest gifts this Library has received was the collection on the Italian Renaissance given by the late Harold C. Bodman of Santa Barbara. This valuable and extensive collection has attracted Renaissance scholars from the entire country; its excellence is owing to Harold Bodman’s knowledge and discrimination and his years of patient effort in acquiring the books.

Two collections which have been received, those from the estate of Elizabeth McIntyre and from the estate of Professor John Mill McClelland, have contained not only valuable books but also prints and paintings. Most of the pictures now hanging in the Library are from these two gifts.

What may well prove to be one of the most remarkable collections in the Library is the collection on hymnology, given to the Library by the late Dean Robert G. McCutchan and Helen C. McCutchan. This collection actually is broader than it sounds; it contains song books of temperance societies, political parties, Civil War songs, and children's song books from the late eighteenth down to the present century. It is of great value to students of the history of American music generally.

One group of books which Southern California book collectors will look on with great affection is the collection on fine printing gathered by the late Arthur Ellis and given to the Library by his daughter, Mrs. Joseph Fenton. Arthur Ellis was not only one of Los Angeles’ outstanding collectors, but he inspired others to collect books. He was a member of that very select brotherhood, those who have private presses, and he was also one of the founders of the Zamorano Club.

The largest single gift of books that the Library has received has been the private library of Professor Waldemar Westergaard, an extensive scholarly collection on the history of Northern Europe.

The Ralph B. Lloyd Foundation’s unique contribution over the past six years has been funds for the purchase of books in American literature. The library now has an excellent working collection in this field.

Where Shall We Go in the Next Ten Years?

In attempting to plan for books and libraries in Claremont for the next ten years, it must be borne in mind that we are presently acquiring books at the rate of 18,000 per year and that over the last nine years we acquired 85,000 government documents. Thus, if the rate of acquisition does not increase, at the end of the decade we will have nearly 300,000 more volumes than we have now, far more than the present building will hold. As has been shown, the rate of acquisition has been constantly accelerated; hence the Library holdings in 1972 will probably show far more than a 300,000-item increase. If, as may be the case, new colleges are founded, this fact will further accelerate the rate of increase.

Undoubtedly photo-duplication methods will be much more highly developed ten years hence than they are now; but if past experience is a guide, this will not materially decrease the number of conventional books acquired but will simply increase the library’s usefulness by adding on microfilm, microcards, etc., books which it would be hopeless to think of acquiring in the conventional form.

The big library problem ten years hence will then be simply a problem of housing. The problem may be solved in two ways and perhaps by both, by either adding to the present building or constructing new buildings. We are already committed to the idea of a joint science library building to serve Claremont University, Harvey Mudd, Scripps and Claremont Men’s Colleges.

It would also be desirable to have a small building adjacent to Honnold devoted entirely to rare books and special collections. It might also be desirable to have adjacent to these two a third building, well lighted and conveniently arranged, which would house those books most useful to undergraduates.

Some of the materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

What is the Honnold Library Record?
The Honnold Library Record, published from 1958 until 1975, was the publication of the Honnold Library Society, the friends of the library group, founded in 1954. All the issues of the Honnold Library Record are available online in the CCDL in the Honnold Library Record Collection.

— michael | 04:29 PM

April 07, 2008 — Monday

Beyond Wikipedia

Looking for information online? Realizing that Wikipedia was a great starting point, but looking for more? First, you might want to check out our Databases to dig into the hidden web (and this really is a good choice).

Another option, if you’re looking online, is to check out some of the sites listed in College Degree dot com writer Jessica Hupp’s piece: When Wikipedia Won't Cut It: 25 Online Sources for Reliable, Researched Facts.

Some of the sites include Classic Encyclopedia, which Hupp describes as:

Classic Encyclopedia: This online encyclopedia is based on the 1911 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittannica. Although quite old, it offers an in-depth look on more than 40,000 items, and it's widely considered to be the best encyclopedias ever written.

Or maybe Mathematica:

Mathematica: Mathematica, the Wolfram Library Archive, offers research and information on math, science, and more.

For more, When Wikipedia Won't Cut It: 25 Online Sources for Reliable, Researched Facts, or better yet, go check out our Databases.

— michael | 10:16 AM

March 27, 2008 — Thursday

Tech Notes: Gone Phishing

Reporting from the front lines of IT, Sam Kome, Manager of Library Information Technology:

Gone Phishing
The other morning I read a blog entry about a large passenger train company (rhymes with Spamtrak) that was innocently sending out email messages with the intention of making their customer accounts more secure. They were concerned, they said, with customers confusing bogus, scam emails with legitimate company correspondence. So they wanted their customers to verify their account information (Alert!) by sending in some unique pieces of information (Yellow Alert!) by clicking on the included link (Orange Alert!). A brief examination of the link showed that it did not go back to the company’s site at all, but to a third-party (RED ALERT!). The account managers may have had the best intentions, but this was a terrible execution. Let's break it down with a simple mental exercise.

We’ll replace the word, “email” with the word, “postcard,” and we’ll call the company, “Bland’s End” (a famous clothing catalog).

It has come to the attention of Bland’s End executives that some of their customers have received letters with Bland’s End letterhead, directing them to write all their billing information, including credit card information onto a postcard and send it to a known flim-flammer’s address. One in ten customer’s complied.

What to do? Bland’s End customers suddenly are losing money and blaming Bland’s End. The executives cook up a plan to give each customer a secret code by which they may recognize official Bland’s End correspondence. Each customer needs to be verified so they can always be matched to the right code and so no secret codes go to the scam artist, who might then figure out how to make all the real codes.

The mass mailing will be a big job, and expensive, so these execs decide to hire an expert, RealID Inc.
To save some cash (and boost their profit) RealID Inc sends a postage-paid post card to all the Bland’s End customers with instructions to fill in the name, address, and some financial details and return it to RealID for processing.

Now catalog retail is very mature in the USA and this scenario would not play out. But this scenario is common in online retail, which is really no different than buying by catalog.

If I were to send a check to Bland's End, I would put it in a sealed envelope and hand address it, carefully writing in the payees name. I would not staple a blank check or credit card number to a postcard.

Postcards are more secure than email messages.
A postcard is obviously an insecure way to transmit secret information. It makes no effort to hide it’s content. An email message is even less secure because in addition to lacking any sort of envelope, there are numerous opportunities for a bad actor (I’m talking about a crook, not Kevin Costner) to intercept and copy it.

All unsolicited email is spam
If a can of luncheon meat appeared unbidden in your mailbox, would you open it and eat it? Probably not even if you were hungry.

All unsolicited nosey email is a scam
We all get phone calls, usually at dinnertime, from very friendly strangers who want to ask us all about product/company/candidate XYZ, and get some details so they can send more information. This practice is an annoying invasion of privacy, and often fraudulent. The best defense is to refuse the conversation. The same is true for unsolicited emails.

How to recognize a phishing message
It’s unsolicited, and it asks you to click on a link in the message, or reply with personal information. Legitimate communication should not ask anyone to click links because of the ease with which bogus links can be disguised.

Some legit messages will look like scams.

— michael | 04:24 PM

March 21, 2008 — Friday

Honnold Library Record: The Harleian Miscellany

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 4, Number 2. Fall 1961:

The Harleian Miscellany

This library possesses, as do most scholarly libraries, a set of the Harleian Miscellany. The Honnold has the ten-volume edition of 1808–1813 rather than the eight-volume first edition of 1744–1746.

In 1742 Thomas Osborne, a London bookseller, purchased the library of the second Earl of Oxford which had in fact been gathered by his more illustrious father, Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford. The library contained more than 20,000 volumes and Osborne paid £13,000 for it. He then began exploiting it for all it was worth, and if he was a rather shabby man in many respects, this bookseller knew how to make money out of books. He conceived the idea of reprinting some of the rare pamphlets contained in the collection, and engaged William Oldys, who had been literary secretary to the Earl of Oxford, to make the selection. He was also successful in inducing that giant of the literary world, Dr. Samuel Johnson, to write the preface. It is not true, by the way, that Dr. Johnson at one time seized a folio in Osborne’s shop, hit him over the head with it, knocked him down, and then stamped on him. “Sir,” said Johnson to Boswell, “he was impertinent to me, and I beat him. But not in his shop: it was in my own chamber.” But Johnson needed work as much as Osborne needed a great man, and the preface to the Harleian Miscellany is one result.

The eight volumes composing the first edition of the Miscellany are a hodge-podge. A sixteenth-century pamphlet will be preceded by one from the eighteenth century and followed by one from the seventeenth. A treatise on the Spanish Armada will be sandwiched between a description of the inhabitants of Madagascar and a short work on the general problem of how to be happy though married. There is design in this choice. As Johnson pointed out at great length and in ponderous language, by reprinting in the first volume, pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects, something would be offered to a wide variety of readers, and thus many readers could be induced to buy the second volume, and so on through all eight volumes.

In the more than 600 items contained in the set in Honnold, certainly all tastes are satisfied. There are reprints of pamphlets on rape, adultery, murder, treason, and international affairs; the love letters of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn are included, and a learned account of tobacco, a description of coffee houses, and a very valuable essay on the herring fishery. As Johnson remarks, these pamphlets “preserve a multitude of particular incidents . . . which are to be considered as sparks of truth, which, when united may afford light in some of the darkest scenes of state.” It is certainly true that for more than two centuries the Harleian Miscellany has proved a mine of valuable information for the historian and can be an unending source of entertainment for the general reader.

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 06:38 PM

February 26, 2008 — Tuesday

Honnold Library Record: The Federalist Papers

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 4, Number 2. Fall 1961:

The Federalist Papers

Mr. Douglass Adair has given the Library a collection of works on The Federalist, the important series of essays in support of the new Constitution, written by Hamilton, Jay and Madison. The collection includes all the important editions of the essays as well as photostats of the numbers of the New York Independent Journal and Daily Advertiser for 1787 and 1788 which contained the original printings of the papers. The collection also includes the important critical works on The Federalist. In 1787 when the work of the Federal Convention was ended and the Constitution was to be submitted to the States for approval, there was a great deal of opposition to the proposed new government, especially in New York.

The Federalist essays helped secure the adoption of the Constitution by the State of New York. When in May 1788 the first 78 essays had appeared, they were collected and published in book form. The collection has this edition. A second volume was later published containing the remainder of the essays, and the collection has this book also. These two volumes constitute the first edition. The collection also contains the second edition, which was actually a French translation published in 1792. By 1864 The Federalist had gone through twenty-four editions. The collection contains the twenty-fourth edition and a representative number of editions between the second and the twenty-fourth. The Federalist Papers have also been published in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy and England, and the collection contains some of these foreign editions. Nearly all the editions have introductions which are valuable commentaries on the work, and other commentaries are also included in the collection.

The essays have been universally admired. Jefferson called them “the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written.” Charles A. Beard thought The Federalist the most instructive work on political science ever written in the United States. The French historian and statesman, Guizot, said that The Federalist was the greatest work known to him concerning the application of the elementary principles of government to practical administration; and John Stuart Mill considered the work to be “the most instructive treatise we possess on federal government.”

This gift from Mr. Adair, which is given in honor of his mother, is a most valuable and vital addition to the Library.

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 07:25 PM

February 15, 2008 — Friday

The Academic Value of Wikipedia & Digital Literacy

In the ongoing debate about Wikipedia and it’s value/use in the classroom, David Parry, author of the blog academHacK and “professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas” wades in. Writing for science progress, Parry takes a look at: “Wikipedia and the New Curriculum: Digital Literacy Is Knowing How We Store What We Know.”

He doesn’t pull any punches as he explains in his opening graph:

Whenever I read an article about an educational institution “banning” Wikipedia I make a point to add this school to a list for future reference. This list serves two purposes: it gives me a list of schools at which I am not likely to work anytime soon (I am a professor of Emerging Media), and it gives me a list of educational institutions which I advise students to avoid.

To find out the rest of his thoughts, and why he places so much value on Wikipedia: “Wikipedia and the New Curriculum: Digital Literacy Is Knowing How We Store What We Know.”

— michael | 09:50 AM

November 27, 2007 — Tuesday

From Graffiti: From The Archives: Booker T. Washington Visits Claremont

From The Archives: Booker T. Washington Visits Claremont

When Booker T. Washington spoke on January 3, 1903, the Los Angeles Times hailed him as, “one of the greatest... men who have visited Pomona College.” The Pomona College Student Life reported, “[the speech] was attended by a great throng of people such as Pomona College has not witnessed for many a day.” In his address, Washington discussed race relations, the importance of higher education, and the mission of the Tuskegee Institute, which he founded in 1881: “We, of our institute, believe in dignifying every common labor which goes to build up the world; we believe in making work, if well done, nothing less than sublime.”

—Carrie Marsh, Special Collections Librarian

From Graffiti, Volume 2, Issue 2, March 2005 (pdf), from the Graffiti Archives.

— michael | 09:45 AM

October 25, 2007 — Thursday

Honnold Library Record: Hutton’s Theory of the Earth

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 4, Number 2. Fall 1961:

Hutton’s Theory of the Earth

One of the most prized books in Claremont is the first edition of Hutton’s Theory of the Earth. Prior to the time of Hutton, although there were a number of quaint books on fossils and rocks and a few books which were much better, a science of geology did not exist. Hutton's work marks the beginning of scientific geology.

The author had been trained as a physician at the University of Leiden but never actually practiced medicine. Instead, for 13 years he cultivated a small farm which he had inherited from his father. He introduced new methods of agriculture and travelled in England and in the Low Countries investigating farming methods. Inevitably he became interested in soils and geologic formations. After his years as a practical farmer he moved to Edinburgh where his intimate friends were some of the brightest minds in Scotland. He was thus admirably equipped to be the first geologist. He had received scientific training; he had schooled himself to observe the fields, the soils, and geologic formations, and he was stimulated by highly competent scientific friends. All three factors are evident in his work on geology. A graduate in medicine from the best medical school of the age, he was familiar with Harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood. From Harvey and from his predecessor, George Hoggart Toulmin, he derived the idea of perpetual circulation of matter, of a pulsation of life and death, of growth and decay.

“From the top of the mountains to the shores of the sea,” he wrote, “all of the soils are subject to be moved from their places, and to be deposited in a lower situation; thus gradually proceeding from the mountains to the rivers, and from the river step by step into the sea.” Elsewhere he wrote, “From the constitution of these materials which compose the present land, we have reason to conclude that during the time this land was forming, by the collection of its materials at the bottom of the sea, there had been a former land containing minerals similar to those we find at present in examining the earth . . . A habitable earth is made to rise out of the wreck of a former world . . .” The whole spirit of Hutton’s geology is contained in his statement: “The matter of this active world is perpetually moved, in that salutary circulation by which provision is so wisely made for the growth and prosperity of plants, and for the life and comfort of the various animals.”

The first appearance of Hutton’s famous book was in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Library has a copy of the Transactions as well as the first edition in book form. While there were streaks and snatches of scientific geology before Hutton, there was no really systematic science of the subject. Hutton’s work, his concepts and methods mark the beginning of the new science.

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 04:33 PM

September 24, 2007 — Monday

Honnold Library Record: Of the Lending of Books

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 4, Number 1. Spring 1961:

Of the Lending of Books

There has recently been added to the Oxford Collection a little book entitled Remarks on the Practice and Policy of Lending Bodleian Printed Books and Manuscripts (Oxford, 1887) , written by the Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, H. W. Chandler. The author is disturbed about the growing pressure to make the Bodleian a circulating library. The argument had been presented that if professors were allowed to take books out of the library, they would get more work done. On that point the Professor of Moral Philosophy is dubious. “As far as my experience extends,” he observes, “the very notion of work, as opposed to fidgety pottering, is not possessed by fifty men in the place . . . Briefly at the present moment and in this place, all this wretched pretense of ‘work’ is arrant imposture. A few, and only a few, know what it means, and they would never dream of talking about it.”

“It seems to be the notion of some people in the University,” he goes on, “that the Bodleian Library is a fit place for readers of every kind. They have not knowledge enough of books or of libraries to see that a library suitable only to scholars . . . is not a library adapted to learners and schoolboys.”

Professor Chandler is pessimistic about finding many to agree with him for, as he says, “There is no denying that at the present day the public mind, as it is playfully called, and the University mind as well, is in a wonderfully flabby condition.”

Professor Chandler ought to have been a Professor of Librarianship, for he is here struggling with the problem of how to regulate the use of books so that they may be useful not only today, but intact and useful a hundred years from now, and with the even more difficult question of which mechanisms—freer lending, softer seats, larger print, or refreshments served in reading rooms—will best promote reading and scholarship.

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 03:16 PM

July 19, 2007 — Thursday

Honnold Library Record: Economics in the Continental Congress

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 4, Number 1. Spring 1961:

Economics in the Continental Congress

On 24 January 1783 a committee of the Continental Congress recommended that the Congress purchase a collection of books for the use of its members. Under the heading "Politics" are listed a number of works on economics. If one examines the list, one discovers that a copy of every work on economics which it was thought should be readily available for Continental Congressmen can now be found in the Honnold Library.

To anyone who even scans these interesting books, it would appear that a Continental Congressman, if he wished to preserve his peace of mind, would have done well to become a disciple of one or another of the dozen authors whose works are listed, and to ignore all others. It is remarkable with what logic and clarity all economists of those days were able to prove their fellow economists totally misled and mistaken.

It is interesting to note a few of the economic ideas which the bookish Congressman might have absorbed. If a delegate had picked up Sir Josiah Child's A New Discourse of Trade (London, 1738 ), he might have been interested to observe that Sir Josiah believed that prosperity could be restored by an easier money market and advocated that a low rate of interest be fixed by law. Several other writers in the group, such as John Locke, considered this course of action to be utterly nonsensical.

But to return to Sir Josiah. He also advocated that the poor and unemployed be placed under an all-powerful national board which should have authority over the local bodies dealing with such people. He proposed that the unemployed be set at useful work by the public authorities and that State banks be organized, where the poor could secure small loans. He suggested that the members of the all-powerful board, "The Fathers of the Poor" as they were called, ought not to be subjected to oaths, for he says the nonconformists who would be excluded by such oaths might be the very men best fitted for the task.

Going off on a different tack, the author advocated that Jews be admitted freely to trade. Jews, he said, will thereby cease to fear the government; if they do not fear the government, they will not hate it, and if they do not hate it, they will be useful, peaceable citizens. Sir Josiah Child considered crime merely a symptom, like unemployment, of a malfunctioning economy.

John Locke (The Works of John Locke, 1727) among other things is concerned with the fact that if armed forces are maintained abroad or allies abroad are supported with funds, the result is that the country giving the subsidy or maintaining the troops incurs an unfavorable balance of payments. "We have seen," he says, "how Riches and Money are got, kept, or lost in a Country; and that is by consuming less of foreign Commodities than what by Commodities or labor is paid for. This is the ordinary course of Things: but where great Armies and Alliances are to be maintained abroad by Supplies sent out (i.e., money exported) of any Country, thereafter, by a shorter and more sensible Way, the Treasure is diminished."

In Money and Trade (Glasgow, 1750) John Law appears sceptical of hard and fast rules for promoting prosperity. "The measures which have been used to preserve and increase money," he says, "have in some countries been opposite to what has been used in others: and opposite measures have been used in the same countries, without any differing circumstances to occasion them." As a means of increasing trade he proposes that merchants be subsidized. "The true and safe way to encourage the export of such goods, as do not yield great enough profit," he says, "is by a drawback. If serges sent to Holland give only 20 percent profit, 10 percent given as a draw-back will encourage their export: the draw-back given to the merchants is not lost to the nation, and what is got by the manufacture or export of the goods, is gained by the nation."

Law is also greatly concerned about the constantly decreasing value of money. "That money is of much lesser value than it was," he remarks, "will appear by the value of goods, land, and money had 200 years ago. . . . So that what five pounds bought 200 years ago, will not be bought now for 100 pounds."

In A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which respectively attend France and Great Britain with regard to Trade (Dublin, 1757), Josiah Tucker complains that the more workmen are paid, the less they seem to want to work. "The men," he says, "are as bad as can be described; who become more vicious, more indigent and idle, in Proportion to the Advance of Wages." He also discourses on the tendency of those seeking public office to court the favors of workmen, which, he says, has the effect on workmen of placing them "above control, frees them from all restraint, and brings down the Rich to pay their court to them, contrary to the just and proper order of Society."

Such ideas and many more the Continental Congressmen might absorb from the books which were to be provided for them. One news item from Anderson, Historical and Chronological Deduction on the Origin of Commerce (London, 1764) might have been more relished by representatives from New York or Virginia than by Congressmen from Massachusetts. "The consumption of rum in New England is so great," Anderson reports, "that there has been 20,000 hogsheads of French molasses manufactured into rum at Boston in one year, and as one gallon of molasses will make a gallon of rum, this will amount to 1,260,000 gallons of rum in one year; so vast is the demand for that liquor by their fishery and by the Indian trade."

Most of the materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 03:02 PM

June 25, 2007 — Monday

Honnold Library Record: Rockets for Napoleon

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 4, Number 1. Spring 1961:

Rockets for Napoleon

One of the less used reference books in the Honnold Library is A New and Enlarged Military Dictionary (London, 1802) by Charles James. The compiler notes that the use of rockets in warfare has recently been discussed. He suggests that rockets might be carried by cavalry [may we not substitute the word “tanks”?] and that they might also be carried aboard ship. Concerning the latter proposal he says, “There would certainly be some danger in the experiment, although in my humble opinion, a little experience would effectually remove that difficulty; in which case ships might run along a coast, and easily destroy the wooden forts that are sometimes erected upon it . . . By means of their natural velocity they [i.e., rockets] would do more execution, in a less space of time, than the most active piece of ordnance would effect; and they would require fewer hands.”

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 11:37 AM

May 03, 2007 — Thursday

Honnold Library Record: The Cloth Trade

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 3, Number 2. Summer 1960:

The Cloth Trade

During the past weeks important additions have been made to the Honnold Library collection of books on textiles and the textile trade and industry. Perhaps the most elegant accession is Calico Painting and Printing in the East Indies in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries by George P. Baker. This folio volume deals with the history and techniques used in making Indian calicos and chintzes. So greatly desired were these handmade products that the United Kingdom had to pass the so-called Calico Act (1720) to protect its woollen industry from the formidable competition of this popular Indian substitute. Baker’s study is supplemented by a portfolio of magnificent colored photographs of Indian prints. After looking at these pictures it is easy to understand why the enforcement of the Calico Act was very difficult. Otto von Falke’s Kunstgeschichte der Seidenweberei is a valuable and beautifully printed volume on silks and silk production. Tissues des XVI^e et XVII^e siècles, by René Chavance, contains beautiful photographs of French and Italian brocades and damasks. These and a large number of other books on textiles have arrived in the Library. More are on their way to Claremont from foreign book dealers.

These additions to our collection promise to be of both aesthetic and historical interest. They make one vividly aware of the great cultural debt of Europe to the Orient. They make one aware of how much the world lost when the distinguished craftsmanship of an earlier period was replaced by the machine products of the nineteenth century. Ruskin may have been wrong when he indicted machine-made products as “cheap and nasty;” but he was right in his admiration of the hand-made textiles of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

These books will be of interest to the political and economic historian. The obscure cloth peddlers who walked from town to town in the late medieval and early modern period did much to foster the growth of European markets and market towns. In these towns merchants and guildsmen became men of power. These urban centers became places of refuge for run-away serfs. The textile trade and manufacture in Europe gave rise to the new and powerful merchant class, and created centers of population favorable to the growth of political and economic freedom.

As textile production increased in Europe in the nineteenth century, the industry in India declined. Long before World War I, it had ceased to be of international importance. But since that date the trend has been reversed. Today Lancashire is unimportant and India is again one of the great textile manufacturing countries. The textile trade has almost completed a full cycle. Unfortunately, the decline and revival of textile production in the Far East was not accomplished without producing feelings of anti-European resentment. The textile industry’s role in the larger aspects of history is not yet ended.

The expanded collection of books so useful to scholars has been made possible by a gift of a generous friend of Honnold. It promises to become a valuable part of an already good collection of materials on history and on the arts.

Some of the materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information on those materials, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 07:53 AM

May 01, 2007 — Tuesday

From Graffiti: Looking for Financial Data on Companies and Industries?

Looking for Financial Data on Companies and Industries?

The Claremont Colleges subscribe to databases that provide access to detailed historical financial information. They include extensive data such as income and balance sheet information and stock market data. Some series have information from as far back as 1950. One database is Standard & Poors’ (S&P) Research Insight, available for use only within the Libraries. The second database includes S&P as well as CRSP (Chicago Research in Securities Prices) data, and is available via the Internet through WRDS, a specialized interface, restricted to Claremont Colleges faculty, staff & students. This database also requires a special personal password issued by a faculty member. In order to use these databases, it is helpful to have an introduction from the Business Librarian, Mary Martin. She can reached by email at mary.martin@libraries.claremont.edu
or ext. 18923.

—Mary Martin, Business Librarian

From Graffiti, Volume 2, Issue 2, March 2005 (pdf), from the Graffiti Archives.

— michael | 07:18 AM

April 20, 2007 — Friday

Working with PDFs

Increasingly academic life means working with PDFs. academHacK has a post up on "Working with Pdfs (Adobe isn't the only option)," that points out some of the other options. The idea is that with an application that allows editing of PDFs, you could do a great number of things:

You could use such an application to take notes directly on those articles you download from JSTOR, Project Muse or other such journal databases.

Many publishers will send you proofs as a .pdf, you could make corrections directly on the proof, rather than writing a separate document.

Many sites allow you to download brochures, maps, fliers, etc. in .pdf form, this way you can make notes straight on the file.

In fact you could require your students to submit everything as a .pdf and comment directly on the papers, sending them back to the students. This would replicate the “writing in the margins effect” while keeping everything digital. One of the authors on The Unofficial Apple Weblog does this, as he outlines in this post.

Specifically, for Macs, a comparison of the pay programs: PdfClerk and PdfPen is pointed out, along with a point to the free Skim. For PC, Scribus. Also, Wikipedia has a list of PDF software for all platforms.

— michael | 09:28 AM

April 17, 2007 — Tuesday

Honnold Library Record: Drawings and Photographs of Edward Vischer

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 3, Number 2. Summer 1960:

The Drawings and Photographs of Edward Vischer
Edward Vischer, one of whose crayon drawings is reproduced above, was a native of Regensberg, Germany. As a young man of 19 he emigrated to Mexico, where he was one of the industrious Germans who had connections with or were employed by the powerful Mexican commercial house of Heinrich Virmond. In the employ of Virmond, or other German-Latin American companies, he acted as supercargo on many trading voyages to west-coast ports of the Americas and to the Orient. He lived for fourteen years at Acapulco, put in at Mazatlan a number of times, and once at Valparaiso, Chile, had as a house guest a promising young member of a British scientific expedition, Charles Darwin.

In 1842, he became interested in California. "The isolated location of California," he explained, "alone is sufficient to stimulate curiosity. Therefore I accepted with pleasure Mr. Virmond's proposal to take a trip there for the purpose of inspecting his business." It was in this way that Vischer first came to know our remote region. He anchored at Monterey, which he found homelike and prettily built. He made an excursion northwest to "the port of Yerba Buena, a town of about a dozen houses." Santa Barbara he found to be a friendly city with an atmosphere of pious individualism. Continuing down the coast, he visited the southern capital, Los Angeles, where he was particularly struck by the clear, brisk atmosphere.

On this visit he fell in love with California; at the time of the Gold Rush, he gladly returned to San Francisco, where he was active in currency exchange operations, acted as agent for German-Mexican firms, as marine forwarding agent, as real estate agent, and as a mortgage banker.

At about the age of 50, Vischer became intensely interested in sketching and painting. He combined with these interests a skill in photography. It was his practice to make rapid sketches on the spot of scenes which interested him, the big trees, the ruins of Missions, or mining operations, and later to work up these sketches in water colour, pencil, pen or crayon. Subsequently he reproduced his drawings, first by lithography and later by photography. Using these techniques, Vischer published portfolios of drawings, The Mammoth Tree Grove (1862), The Washoe Mining Region (1862), Pictorial of California Landscape (1870), and Missions of Upper California (1872). A generous donor, Mrs. Frederick Hellman, has presented all these portfolios to the Library, together with a number of photographs and drawings which were never published.

From the materials presented by Mrs. Hellman, it is now possible to extend our knowledge of Vischer bibliography, as well as our understanding of his techniques as an artist.

The materials mentioned here are physically located in Special Collections. For more information, contact Special Collections.

A significant and growing proportion of these materials are also available online in the CCDL. You can find more by visiting the Visher collection home page. You can also browse items in the Vischer collection. Or, to view all collections in the CCDL visit the collections page.

— michael | 05:12 PM

March 12, 2007 — Monday

Free Online Full-Text Articles

Although you should always be checking the Libraries databases listings, or maybe the Electronic Journal list, another potential choice might be: HighWire Press - Free Online Full-Text Articles. Most of the content is at least 12 months old, and sometimes older, but it's still an impressive collection.

HighWire Press explains that:

HighWire Press is the largest archive of free full-text science on Earth! As of 3/12/07, we are assisting in the online publication of 1,591,401 free full-text articles and 4,139,594 total articles. There are 15 sites with free trial periods, and 37 completely free sites. 235 sites have free back issues, and 937 sites have pay per view!

So, while the databases listings is the best place to start, particularly for current information, this might not be a bad place to fall back on. Of course, rather than pay for those 937 sites, you might want to try ILL.

— michael | 05:54 PM

March 05, 2007 — Monday

New CCDL Collection: Edward Vischer Drawings and Photographs

Newly published in the CCDL:

The Edward Vischer Drawings, Photographs and Other Material is a collection of pencil drawings, loose albumen and lithograph prints of his drawings, and bound volumes of his prints. Vischer is best known for his pencil sketches of California landscapes throughout the 1860s and 1870s. He sketched a wide variety of scenes and objects, but most commonly the California missions, trees, mountains, and rural scenes. Of special interest are his drawings of the ruins of the missions, the Washoe mining region, horses and wagons, including the Pony Express, and even camels which were part of a short lived military experiment to import them into California.
Particularly unusual was Edward Vischer's technique for reproducing his artwork. He began with the conventional method of lithography. However Vischer became frustrated with the lack of detail and print quality, the expenses involved, and, eventually, the breaking of a stone mid production. At this point, Vischer began exploring the use of photography to reproduce his artwork. After briefly experimenting with the medium himself, Vischer soon employed George H. Johnson, a professional photographer, to photograph his artwork for his publications. These albumen prints of his artwork were used to create bound publications that were primarily sold through subscriptions.

The Edward Vischer collection came to Honnold/Mudd Library as the generous gift of Mrs. Frederick Hellman. The digitization of this collection was funded by the John Haskell Kemble Endowment. The digital project staff for this project includes Stefanie Crump and Kelley Wolfe Bachli. Fact checking and editorial assistance with the descriptions and other content for the collection was kindly provided by Bob Bothamley.

Brief Biography of Edward Vischer

Edward Vischer (1809-1878) as a young man of nineteen emigrated from Germany to Mexico where he was associated with the commercial house of Heinrich Virmond. In the employ of Virmond, or other German-Latin American companies, he acted as supercargo on many trading voyages to west-coast ports of the Americas and to the Orient.

In 1842, he became interested in California and agreed to travel there for Virmond. It was in this way that Vischer first came to know the region, anchoring at Monterey, taking an excursion northwest to the port of Yerba Buena, and visiting Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. On this visit he fell in love with California. He gladly returned to San Francisco where he was active in currency exchange operations, acted as agent for German-Mexican firms, as marine forwarding agent, as real estate agent, and as a mortgage banker.

At the age of fifty, Vischer became intensely interested in sketching and painting. He combined with these interests a skill in photography. It was his practice to make rapid sketches on the spot of scenes which interested him, the big trees, the ruins of Missions, or mining operations, and later to work up these sketches in water color, pencil, pen or crayon. Subsequently he reproduced his drawing, first by lithography and later by photography. Using these techniques, Vischer published portfolios of drawings: The Mammoth Tree Grove (1862), The Washoe Mining Region (1862), Pictorial of California Landscape (1870), and Missions of Upper California (1872).

You can find more by visiting the Visher collection home page. You can also browse items in the Vischer collection. Or, to view all collections in the CCDL visit the collections page.

— michael | 01:23 PM

March 02, 2007 — Friday

Honnold Library Record: Nineteenth Century Religious Pamphlets

From the Honnold Library Record, Volume 3, Number 1. Spring 1960:

Nineteenth Century Religious Pamphlets

During his recent visit to Oxford, Mr. William W. Clary visited the Pusey House Library, the principal theological library in Oxford, and there he purchased as a gift for the Honnold Library 1600 pamphlets on religious questions which were duplicates of items in Pusey House. These pamphlets constitute a very rich collection of material on English nineteenth century religious questions, many of which relate to Oxford and will be placed in the Oxford Collection and others which are of general religious interest will be placed in the main library.

There are a very large number of pamphlets defending or attacking "Tract 90," the tract written by John Henry Newman, which caused such a furor in the Church of England and led to Newman's break with Oxford and his "secession" to Catholicism. It would certainly be possible with the material now in the library for a student to write a thesis on "Tract 90" alone.

Numerous pamphlets deal with questions which were agitating the University during the 19th century, such as whether professors and tutors should be required to subscribe to the 39 Articles of the Church of England. This "test" was not repealed until 1871. There are pamphlets dealing with curriculum problems caused by the developments of modern science and others dealing with various aspects of University life.

There are also pamphlets relating to the need for a university museum. One of these is a plea for a university museum which would be a useful tool in the education of students in modern science. This tract (1846) deprecates the Ashmolean Museum as it then was and gives this description of the objects on view : "There you have a glove which was worn by Mary Queen of Scots, and the uncomfortable shoe which belonged to John Bigge, the hermit of Dynton; the state-sword which the Pope gave to Henry the Eighth, and a lock of Edward the Fourth's hair; King Alfred's jewel, and a pair of bellows that belonged to Charles the Second; an ancient peg-tankard (presented by Sir C. Pegge), and a pair of nutcrackers dated 1574." This and other similar criticisms resulted in the building of the present university museum, which was completed in 1860. It was both a museum and a scientific laboratory and it marked the beginning of the 19th-century renaissance of science in Oxford.

Among the pamphlets of general religious interest are many on the questions raised by Newman, Pusey, and others about the use of vestments in the Anglican Church, about questions of ritual, and the use of the term "catholic" in describing the Anglican Church. A rather surprising number of pamphlets deal with the possibility of communion between the Anglican and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and an equally large number deal with that question which Matthew Arnold lamented showed the infinite littleness of mankind, "Can a man marry a deceased wife's sister?"

There are attacks on abuses which have now disappeared. Thus a pamphlet of 1874 thinks it shameful that the Ecclesiastical Gazette should carry so many "for sale" advertisements of advousans and next presentation. That is, the author thought it inappropriate that the landowners, nobility and others who had the right to name clergymen to office should be willing to sell the office to the highest bidder. The writer lamented that in these advertisements such allurements were stressed as "gardens and greenhouses, coach houses and stables, a comfortable parsonage, and well-kept grounds, with a good trout stream and grammer school for the sons; and with the sea not far off for the wife and daughters, . . . good society and a railway station within a mile, and an income of £800 a year."

Several pamphlets argue against the practice of setting aside pews in churches for well-to-do families. The chief argument against having the church pews free to all seems to have been that "the admission of the poor to a position of equality, in our churches, with the rich would make them arrogant, or aspiring, or dissatisfied with their station."

Included in the collection are a limited number of tracts on civil affairs. Some of these in the years 1860-1880 are for or against free schools. Some contended that if students were freely educated they would not appreciate it. Lord Randolph Churchill was of the opinion that the payment of school fees did not bother the laboring classes, but that "it is the compulsory attendance which is the hardship, and deprives many a struggling cottage home of the earnings which might be afforded to it by the labour of a healthy boy or girl."

There is a speech by Gladstone in favor of allowing Jews to become members of Parliament; there is a small work which shows the evils which will follow if the work-day is reduced to eight hours, and a treatise (1874) against modern apartment-house buildings. It is the contention of the author of the latter work that "the loftiness of the buildings is a preventive (to those who live high up) of out-door exercise, and will be a cause productive of much stunted growth to the children who are reared there. . . ."

The pamphlets comprising the collection rarely, if ever, come on the market even as individual items, and that Mr. Clary had the good fortune to purchase the whole collection en bloc is fortunate for the library indeed.

The materials mentioned here are located in Special Collections. For more information, contact Special Collections.

— michael | 02:42 PM

February 26, 2007 — Monday

OpenCongress

OpenCongress "brings together official government data with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind each bill." Open congress is still in beta, so some things might change, but at this point they list the latest votes, most viewed bills and most covered bills in the news. They also provide information on bills, senators, representatives, committees, industries, and issues. They also maintain a congress gossip blog.

In more detail, OpenCongress is:

OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress. Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists know what's really going on in Congress. Now, everyone can be an insider. OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation.

So if you're interested in the latest government action... or what's going on in Congress... or about a particular bill... OpenCongress might be the place to check out.

— michael | 09:59 AM