Rapid Fire Post 1: 19th Century British Pamphlets

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It occurs to me, having gone through a blog-post drought, of sorts, that I approach the world of blogging incorrectly--or at least, I don't utilize best practices of blogging. I've tried to read all the material at hand, and then come up with some all-encompassing post that would bring all the elements together.

Sounds great.

Only problem: way too much information, way too little time.

So I propose my new approach: rapid fire posting. I'm going to shoot out little blurbs about each work I read, each website I peruse, each listserve email I open up. (The last one might be a little much, so we'll see).

Let's rock and roll.
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Post 1: 19 Century British Pamphlets.

Second thing I did at this site, after looking through the homepage's major tabs ("Home," "About," Collections," etc.), was to follow the resources linked on the right side of the page.

"For Researchers," the Post-graduate pdf, I did not find to be that revolutionary--it was more of a "how-to-use-JSTOR" than anything else.

"Scanning Specifications" pdf, on the other hand, was something really interesting. Nothing more than a "This-is-how-we-did-what-we-did" explanation sheet, it functions in the same way a methodology section in a research paper. Ideally, I could reconstruct the scanning myself. It also reveals some of the behind-the-scenes work done by the scanners.

What I REALLY liked/appreciated/found fascinating, was the "Project Plan" pdf--the 54 page proposal/description of the entire digitization project. THIS is what I'm looking for (now, after discussions in class) when I go to a website: how they did what they did, why they did what they did, and what they hope to accomplish. Directly contrast this with the GALE sites, that give off a "for profit" vibe. . . . cause I'm pretty sure they charge for memberships? (JSTOR also charges for memberships, especially when the 19th Century British Pamphlets are available to the British universities, and might require new subscriptions for other universities . . . but I digress.)

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