Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Discussion Group Minutes - 2007 Annual

From WESSWeb

Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Discussion Group

Doubletree Washington Hotel, Director's Room

Washington, D.C.

Saturday June 23, 2007 1:30-3:00

The 2007 annual meeting of CMR Discussion Group was divided into two parts. The first hour and a half was given to two exciting presentations on the topic "Finding Medieval Studies Literature." In the remaining time, the group discussed relevant matters. A record number (at least in recent history) of 31 people attended. Paula Carns moderated and took notes.

Part I: Finding Medieval Studies Literature

Alan Murray, editor of the International Medieval Bibliography,

demonstrated the variety of index tools used in this multidisciplinary online resource for Medieval Studies and the different search possibilities that they enable. The broad distribution of journal articles and essays across disciplines and languages requires special strategies both for the indexer and the researcher. The IMB covers a wide range of journals and targets the best publications in the field. The goal of the IMB’s editorial team is to connect scholars quickly and easily to materials. The unique nature of medieval studies prevents the use of other indexing systems, such as LC. For this reason the IMB’s editors have devised their own unique system of “three-dimensional” general classification with the three areas being: general subjects, geographical areas, and centuries. There are also specific indexes of placenames, persons and texts, specific subjects and manuscripts. Hierarchical indexes of subjects and places are also available, for example: British Isles-England-West Yorkshire-Leeds-Kirkstall Abbey. To date the IMB contains 350,000 records with 10,000 being added per year. Brepols, IMB’s publisher offers free trials of IMB-Online for one month. For information, contact trial@brepols.net. For sales and subscriptions, contact info@brepols.net.

Join the IMB Editorial Team! Alan and his small team of editors are looking for additional individuals to serve as indexers. If you are interested, please contact him at A.V.Murray@leeds.ac.uk. Brepols is able to offer small cash incentives. Serving as an editor of a major online database will not only help Alan and promote medieval studies but may also have professional rewards, such as helping one’s tenure and promotion case.

Margaret Schaus, editor of Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

(open access at http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html), talked about the literature in this active branch of medieval studies and presented the Index. Feminae began as a print source to help students taking a course on medieval women. Since 1990 the database has been indexing articles from roughly 500 journals and essay collections whose primary subject is women from 450-1500 in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Feminae’s indexing complements IMB’s. Noteworthy record enhancements are: subject headings, listing of illustrations, article types by categories, abstracts and primary source material in translation, and links to Project Muse, JSTOR, and Medieval Review. According to Margaret students like to use Feminae because of its added descriptive information and links to full-text. Free online the database is a wonderful tool for everyone. Feminae relies on volunteers to index much of the material selected for inclusion. Like Alan, Margaret is looking for indexers to help her with this important medieval library tool. Interested parties should contact her at mschaus@pop.haverford.edu.

Part II. Other Business

The future of CMR: Paula Carns updated the group on her efforts to host a CMR session on instruction, which will take place at Annual 2008 in Anaheim. Anyone interested in presenting should contact her at pcarns@uiuc.edu.

Gerald Heverly presented his and other WESS members’ concerns over the Library of Congresses’ recent announcement to no longer add subject headings to catalog records. Everyone present supported his efforts to address this issue and want to see LC continue to include subject headings in their records.