Dear Members of the Consortium for Hellenic Studies listserv:
This is to give you all an update on the plans for the Modern Greek
Resources meeting at the Gennadius Library in Athens Greece, December
7-10, 2006.
Maria Georgopoulou was at Yale this past month and she, Tony Oddo and I
were able to get together to try to come up with a tentative
agenda/itinerary. The programme is still in process as we have learned
that summer is a difficult time to organize any meeting. However,
time is passing and people need to make travel arrangements. I wanted to
let you all know that the meeting is confirmed. The Greek contingent has
been invited--the major academic libraries and institutions will be
present as well as the Library of the Parliament. In addition representatives from Oxford
University and the University of Vienna will be there.
In order to give you context for the Modern Greek Resources Project
and for this meeting I am "pasting" below the letter of invitation that we
sent to the Greek and European contingent. This information might help you
as you apply to your respective institutions for funding for this trip:
***********************************************************************
Dear X:
On behalf of the Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA) Library Committee
and the Consortium of Hellenic Studies Librarians (CoHSL)
http://www.cohsl.net/, I cordially invite you, or a selected
representative from your institution, to a Modern Greek Resources Project
meeting to be held at the Gennadius Library of the American School of
Classical Studies at Athens (Cotsen Hall, 9 Anapiron Polemou Street). The
meeting dates are December 7-10, 2006.
The meeting in Athens is a follow-up to the Symposium held November 5,
2005, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The theme of the panel was "Research
Collections in Hellenic Studies: Challenges and Possibilities." Presenters
focused on library collections in Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies and
innovative methods for preserving and disseminating them.
At the Symposium, attendees revisited the recommendations of the 1999
conference "Strengthening Modern Greek Collections: Building U.S.-Greek
Library partnerships"
(http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/GrkColl/GrkConf.html). The interest of
Modern Greek librarians in the U.S. in collaborating with their Greek
counterparts is strong, and advancements in technology allow us to explore
innovative techniques to facilitate resource sharing and cooperative
action.
The meeting in Athens will focus on five broad categories: (1) collection
development/acquisitions, (2) bibliographic control (including cataloging,
adherence to standards, transliteration issues, and Unicode), (3)
Reformatting/microfilming and digitization (4) indexing contents of
periodicals and (5) resource sharing/document delivery.
Other suggestions for topics are welcome. Please send them, in either
Greek or English, to: Rhea Karabelas Lesage (karabel(a)fas.harvard.edu)
Modern Greek Section,
Collection Development Department, Widener Library, Harvard College
Library
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Representatives will include subject bibliographers responsible for Modern
Greek resources from the major Modern Greek collections in the United
States, including: California State University (Sacramento), Columbia,
Harvard, Library of Congress, New York University, Princeton, Yale, and
the University of Cincinnati. The intent of the meeting is to explore the
viability of effective transnational cooperation among libraries in Greece
and North America. We welcome concrete proposals for action and will
explore the interest, capacity, and feasibility of participation from each
side. Please return the enclosed reply card as soon as possible to:
Maria Georgopoulou (mgeorgopoulou(a)ascsa.edu.gr), Director of the Gennadius
Library,
61, Souidias street, GR 10676 Athens. Professor Georgopoulou is directing
local coordination and logistics of the meeting and is also available to
answer any questions you might have.
Sincerely,
Rhea Karabelas Lesage
Chair, 2006-2007 MGSA Library Committee
*************************************************************************
We are working the programme around the 5 topics illustrated above.
Local arrangemnts are being scoped out. We have it narrowed down to the
following hotels, all of which include breakfast:
A selection of two hotels very near to the Gennadius and another
two less expensive that are near the Acropolis metro stop. We will need
to decide which one so that they can block off the rooms for us. Please
give me your feedback and we will make the decision based on the majority.
Near Gennadius:
St. George Lycabettus Boutique Hotel. http://www.sglycabettus.gr/ 113
E/night single; 119 E double
Andromeda Athens
Hotel.
http://www.hotelclub.net/hotel.reservations/Andromeda_hotel_Athems.htm
115 E single, 130 E double
Near the Acropolis:
Herodion Hotel. http://www.herodion.gr/ 73 E single, 90 E double, 110 E
triple
Philippos Hotel. http://www.philipposhotel.gr/ 54 E single, 69 E
double; 81 E triple
**********************************************
The committee has decided that a reasonable registration fee of $50.00
would be necessary to help defray the costs of hosting the meeting. Oionos
Bookservices from Greece has been kind enough to offer to underwrite this
event as well. We are very grateful to Kostas Papadopoulos!
I apologize for this lengthy e-mail but I need to get a sense of who from
the American side is planning to attend. It is my hope that the original
"founding" members of the CoHSL are going to be present.
Our goal for this meeting is to walk away with a concrete plan of
cooperation between the Greek and American institutions. We
hope to change the fact that Modern Greek resources tend to fall below the
radar screen of many institutions. By working together, we would like to
ensure that these valuable resources become accessible to the
international scholarly community.
I hope you all can be there in December! Please write directly to the
list, or to me directly (karabel(a)fas.harvard.edu) if you have any
questions or concerns. Also, please do confirm with me whether you are
planning to attend.
With best regards,
Rhea
ROFL at this quote :
"Perhaps the most delightfully named branch of the federal bureaucracy
is the Library of Congress Cataloging Directorate, which sounds oddly like
an
office of totalitarian librarians."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Where the Books Are
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/opinion/22tue4.html?th&emc=th
Published: August 22, 2006
Knowledge, Samuel Johnson once said, "is of two kinds. We know a
subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
The point behind every scheme for cataloging books ? and there are
more schemes than you'd imagine ? is to make the second kind of
knowledge easier to come by. Most experienced library users know the
Library of Congress classification system, at least in its outlines.
But the reference collection in the Main Reading Room at the New York
Public Library follows the Billings system, created by a former
director of the library and used nowhere else. It is a map on which
you recognize none of the symbols.
That is all changing, at last. The reference collection is being
reshelved according to the Library of Congress system. In the overall
history of information science, this may seem like a leap from the
1890's to the late 1890's. But a classification system is like a
shark. If it isn't moving forward, it's probably dead. Perhaps the
most delightfully named branch of the federal bureaucracy is the
Library of Congress Cataloging Directorate, which sounds oddly like an
office of totalitarian librarians. One division of the Cataloging
Directorate does nothing but keep the classification system up to
date. The same cannot be said of the Billings system, which suffered
obsolescence long ago.
This change may seem like a trivial matter to you who Google
everything. But the Reading Room at the New York Public Library is one
of those places so common in this city where the clientele is both
passionate and knowledgeable. Sooner or later, everyone who loves a
library broods about how the books are arranged. Thomas Jefferson did.
He sent 18 or 20 wagonloads of his books to the nascent Library of
Congress. He wrote a long letter about the problems of classification
and prepared a detailed catalog of his books on a system of his own
devising. He loved books and loved arranging them. But that letter is
easily his driest piece of writing.
---------------------------------------------
June Samaras
KALAMOS BOOKS
(For Books about Greece)
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : kalamosbooks(a)gmail.com
(or) kalamosbks(a)aol.com
www.kalamosbooks.com
