If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Research and the Internet
The purpose of this recitation is to share a recent research experience using
the internet. I have been working hard to create an author database for the works in my collection. As I come to each author, I have been putting in birth and death dates, nationality (as far as possible) and important biographical comments (for instance, the George W. Peck - author of "Peck's Bad Boy" had served as Governor of Wisconsin). Finding biographical data has been an interesting effort. For almost every author I have encountered, someone has a website devoted to that author. This is true even of obscure ones, such as Maria Louise Pool, an early feminist writer from Massachusetts who lived in an openly gay relationship in the last half of the 19th century. But, there are a few for whom information is hard to find. For those I go first to the Library of Congress website, which often provides at least years of birth and death - but not always. For three authors all I could find from an initial Google search and review of the Library of Congress records was the following: Grace Blanchard, ???? - 1944 New Hampshire resident, wrote children's books Julie M. Lippmann 1864 - ???? apparently American wrote novels and plays Evelyn Whitaker 18?? - 19?? wrote children's stories My next step was to check out the major US libraries linked by the Library of Congress, especially those near any known locale of the author. In these cases, that yielded nothing. So then I decided to go to the KVK [Karlsruhe Virtueller Katalog] and check out world libraries. Entering the name Julie Lippmann gave me a number of catalog entries from the Union Catalog of Canada, from which I learned her year of death was 1952. Entering Evelyn Whitaker's name I came up with a large number of catalog entries in the British Union Catalog. The older ones proved fruitless, but I found that there were some entries made in the 1960s and 70s. Checking these out, I found one was done by a cataloger with the same mania for completeness that I have. He or she had found the years of birth (1857) and death (1903). A search for Grace Blanchard yielded nothing. So I went back to Google. Searching the name Blanchard I came up with an extensive genealogy of a Blanchard family that lived (mostly) in New Hampshire. Finally I found her, a librarian in Concord, New Hampshire, who was born in 1859. Admittedly, all of this yielded less information than I desired, but I suppose it is premature to expect that the lives of all earthlings can be found laid out on the Internet. But it is surprising how many people's lives can be found there. Francis A. Miniter |
Ads |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Thank you for the further information. The book I have is, in fact, Martha
By-The-Day. I suppose I should make the effort to try a college or university library for some of these authors. There is my own alma mater (Trinity College) not far from where I work in Hartford. One thing that did surprise me, is that the Library of Congress does not have some of the 19th C. books that I have, though it may have others by the same author. Francis A. Miniter paghat wrote: In article , wrote: [clip] Julie M. Lippmann 1864 - ???? apparently American wrote novels and plays [clip] Julie M. Lippmann wouldn't fall into the obscure category as her Martha By-the-Day is still to be spotted in dollar-bins as common cast-offs in old book stocks, & her rarer items in fine condition are sought by collectors of ornate bindings. Most of the authors you mention, if not all, you'd've found plenty about in one hour at any half-decent university libarary, if you know how to use the two main index series' for biographical info. A hour in a good library remains for me a lot more profitable than five hours klicking all over the gawdamn web. And you could click all over the web all day long & probably never light on the fact that there were TWO authors named George Washington Peck, so could easily come away combining information about two different gents, much harder to do if one values actual reference books instead of the little dab that's on the web. Julie Lippmann was the great-aunt of my old friend Kits Filipi who ran Filipi's Books in Seattle for two-thirds of my life. She told me lovely tales of visits to New York, hanging out in cafes with her famous maiden aunt, meeting authors, attending art events, & Aunt Julie left her with a lifelong love of books. Kits has been dead some years now & I have often wished I'd gotten a tape-recorder on her stories. -paghat the ratgirl |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|