May 2010 Archives

May 6, 2010

May 13: "Once Again to Zelda": The Dedications Behind the Classics

Marlene Wagman-Geller
Thursday, May 13, 3:30 p.m.
Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall, 128 Wall Street
Free and open to the public

Mary Shelley dedicated Frankenstein to her father, her greatest champion. Charlotte Brönte eventually dedicated Jane Eyre to William Makepeace Thackeray for his enthusiastic review of the book’s first edition. Dostoyevsky dedicated The Brothers Karamazov to his typist-turned-lover Anna Grigoyevna. And, as this talk's title indicates, F. Scott Fitzgerald dedicated his masterpiece The Great Gatsby to his wife Zelda.

A book's dedication says so much about an author's relationship to the person to whom the book was dedicated. In "Once Again to Zelda": The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications (Perigee 2008) Marlene Wagman-Geller explores the dedications in fifty iconic books that are an intrinsic part of literary and pop culture, shedding light on the author's psyche, as well as the social and historical context in which the book was first published. The New York Times praised the book, writing that "Once Again to Zelda" helps "untangle densely knotted lives."

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Posted by Yale University Library on May 6, 2010 2:47 PM

May 10, 2010

Yale University Library Celebrates 150 Years as a Government Documents Depository

Yale University Library is celebrating its 150th anniversary as a depository for United States federal government documents. John Woodruff (1826-1868), U.S. Representative from Connecticut, designated Yale College a repository for public documents in 1859 and the records of the second session of the 35th Congress of the United States were sent to New Haven in July, 1860.

Over the succeeding fifteen decades, Yale has continued to build its collection of federal government documents by participating in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), administered by the U.S. Government Printing Office. The FDLP provides government documents at no cost to designated depository libraries across the country and in American territories, as well as to selected libraries overseas. In turn, these libraries provide free public access to their depository collections.

The Library is marking this anniversary year with a major accomplishment: the cataloging of the entire federal depository collection in Orbis, the Library’s online catalog. Until now, only documents from 1976 onwards were cataloged, meaning that much of the collection was accessible only through complicated print indexes.

“Yale’s U.S. federal depository collection is used by students and faculty studying a wide range of subjects including history, political science, art and architecture, science, and medicine,” said Frank M. Turner, the John Hay Whitney Professor of History and Interim University Librarian. “The completion of an ambitious project to catalog the entire collection has made many thousands of items available to researchers and will greatly enhance access and benefit scholarship.”

All items in the depository collection, which number nearly a half-million volumes, can now be found in the online catalog and requested for delivery to libraries across the campus. Yale will also share these online records with other libraries so that they can identify and catalog items in their own collections. Senior essays based on research done in the federal depository collection are also eligible for consideration for the Harvey M. Applebaum '59 Award, which has been given since 2008.

For more information about the U.S. federal documents depository collection at Yale, contact Julie Linden, Government Information Librarian, at julie.linden@yale.edu or (203) 432-3310.

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Link: Government Documents and Information Center:
http://www.library.yale.edu/govdocs/index.html

Posted by Yale University Library on May 10, 2010 10:01 AM >

May 18, 2010

Sterling Memorial Library Hours on May 23 and 24

Sterling Memorial Library will be open on a modified schedule over the Yale Commencement period (May 23 and 24). The library will be open for study hours only on Sunday, May 23 (Baccalaureate Day) from 12 noon until 2:45 p.m. On May 24 (Commencement Day) the library will be closed to the public until 3:00 p.m., opening only between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. Bass Library will be open its usual hours on May 24 from 8:30 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. Readers who wish to return Library materials on May 24 are welcome to do so at Bass Library.

Yale University Library congratulates all graduating seniors, professional and graduate students, and their families.

Posted by Yale University Library on May 18, 2010 11:41 AM >

May 24, 2010

Nota Bene Spring/Summer 2010 Issue Now Online

Just in time for Commencement, the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of Nota Bene: News from the Yale Library is now available here: http://www.library.yale.edu/notabene/.

This issue also marks Nota Bene's transition from print and online versions to online-only. Previous volumes to 1997 are also available on the newly-designed Nota Bene web site.

To receive automatic updates when new issues are published, visit the web site and sign-up for the RSS feed.

Posted by Yale University Library on May 24, 2010 12:34 PM