[DCRM-L] "Old art of cataloguing"

[Donald Farren]

When I read in The Washington Post the review of the exhibition at the
Folger, The Curatorial Eye, I thought that it was distinguished, like so
much that the reviewer, Philip Kennicott, writes, by slovenly research,
flat-out ignorance, pseudo-intellectuality, and unwarranted leaping to
generalization. Here is another extract in illustration:

Are meticulously decorated, hand-colored drawings of famous 19th-century
Shakespearean actors interesting? Absolutely, if only for their suggestion
of Shakespeare's power in an earlier age, and a nascent star-craziness that
predates our celebrity culture. These colorful oddities are uncannily
similar to a notebook made by a Romanian schoolgirl in the 1950s, which has
hand-drawn pictures of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. There's a connection
here you would not likely find in any digital catalogue. It's as if a
thoroughly naive, 19th-century sense of Shakespeare -- the Shakespeare of
Charles and Mary Lamb, who recast the plays as children's storybook tales --
was implanted intact, behind the Iron Curtain, in one of Eastern Europe's
most brutal countries. 

In addition, the review was guilty of tardiness in that the exhibition
closes a mere week after the review was published.

 

Nevertheless, one point was well taken (to rephrase a kernel of a thought in
the extract that Deborah quoted) -- that rare book cataloguers should be
circumspect about subject cataloguing. But rare book catalogers have long
exercised such caution.

 

To continue savaging The Washington Post:

 

The review has the flimsy quality worthy of a blog posting, like so much
that the newspaper publishes (newspaper publishing, another "dying art," to
use the reviewers' term). For instance, we recently were treated to an
article on two persons who had been tinged with scandal, Jason Blair and
Linda Tripp, which invaded their privacy by detailing their after-life and
offended readers' sensibilities by resurrecting these two personalities,
long, blessedly, and deservedly out of the pubic eye. If some cannot now
identify Jason Blair and Linda Tripp: GOOD.

 

As for worthiness, the Folger exhibition eminently deserves the audio tour
that Deborah cited.

 

(Launched in ill humor Saturday morning before coffee, worthy of a blog
posting.)

 

 

Donald Farren

4009 Bradley Lane

Chevy Chase, MD 20815-5238

 <mailto:dfarren at concentric.net> dfarren at concentric.net

voice 301.951.9479

fax 301.951.3898

cellular 301.768.8972

 

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of Deborah J. Leslie
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 7:35 PM
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: [DCRM-L] "Old art of cataloguing"

 

The following is an excerpt of the Washington post review of the Folger's
current exhibit. Put together on an emergency basis (we thought the exhibit
hall would be closed this summer for maintenance, now deferred), The
Curatorial Eye features previously unexhibited personal selections of about
15 Folger Central Library curators, conservators, catalogers, and public
services staff. 

 

It's a really interesting exhibition, and I think a really successful one.
It has an online incarnation, in which selected items are accompanied by
short recordings of their respective curators.  Audio tour:
http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=3230

 

And now, for the review excerpt:

 

Today, readers can delve digitally into millions of books to find quick hits
on what interests them. The old process of cataloguing a book, which meant
summarizing its contents in a way that anticipated how future scholars might
search for the interesting, is a dying art. It required an act of reduction,
an act of exclusion -- this matters, the rest doesn't -- that defined that
book's importance within a canon of knowledge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/20/AR2009082003
860.html

 

Discuss.

 

__________________________________________

Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S.

RBMS chair 2009-2010 | Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library

201 East Capitol St., S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003 | 202.675-0369 (phone)
202.675-0328 (fax) | djleslie at folger.edu  |www.folger.edu

 

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