Month: February 2014
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Reflections on the Richard Bartlett Gregg Papers
Written by Kevin Lee, archival processor Salvete, fellow libronauts! As the old hymn goes, “the strife is o’er, the battle done.” The Culture Class Collection has been successfully cataloged, and so off we all go to new pastures. I was originally hired to help get the Culture Class Collection cataloged on time, but Regan has…
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If John Mauchly was a superhero …
… he would have been called DATAMAN! What he did with data (collecting, creating, analyzing, and saving) certainly required skills that are beyond the typical human. To provide a little background, Mauchly was the co-inventer of the first computer, ENIAC, which was developed here at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering in 1946. …
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Reading Chaucer through Dryden’s Eyes
[Ed. Note: Today’s post is by Simran Thadani who received her Ph.D. in 2013 from Penn’s Department of English with a specialization in book history and special collections] John Dryden, perhaps the most prolific seventeenth-century English poet, playwright, and commentator, is well known for his adaptations of older texts. In his last work, Fables Ancient…
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What I am Thankful For from My RBC Experience
Written by Kevin Lee, archival processor As I move into the spring semester of my second and final (at least that’s the plan!) post-baccalaureate year here at Penn, and thus my final months at the Van Pelt Library, I cannot help but look towards the future and consider the gifts rare book cataloging has given…
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Found: One Incunable!
As a rare books cataloger, I have learned to trust my predecessors. (Or, as one of my instructors in the art of bibliography put it, to cheat.) The notes they have left about an item are usually correct; the habit of checking for such indications has spared me many times from reinventing the wheel. But…