Month: February 2017

Dissenting Academy Map

by Barnett

We were victims of our own success. Because we were able to generate the printing/publishing map of a text using the British Short Title Catalogue with only moderate pain and a few tears, we were all tasked with generating a map via scraping information from the Dissenting Academies Online website.

Upon beginning this task, I took a deep breath and whispered to myself, “This won’t hurt that much”.  Boy, was I wrong.  When deciding on query to ask of the Dissenting Academies Online website, I settled for the library records spanning from 1843-1844.  There were over 1,000 results from this search.  To keep myself from going mad, I used the first 17 sheets of results.  I know this is only a minor dent in ALL of the data.  However, from what I used one can still see a few interesting trends, such as the same person repeatedly checking out the same book.  As mentioned in class, this possibly happened because many of the academies would not allow their books to physically leave the library.

The art of scraping a website, while not my strong suite, was not terrible.  I was pleasantly surprised.  However, while it was all outlined for us in elaborate walkthroughs, manipulating the data in Google Sheets proved to be an expletive inducing experience. There was a “son of a b*@%#” here, and a “f!&*” there; nothing too out of the normal.

Once I “tamed” the data (or thought I had); it was time to wrestle with Kumu.  In one corner, there was me: an already battle-worn SLOB warrior (who was still having flashbacks about last weeks “bloodshed”).  Then in the other corner was Kumu:  a new, fresh-faced opponent, whose methods and tactics in the ring were still unknown to me.  Unfortunately, to be very anticlimactic, Kumu was fairly simple to use.  The only frustrating part was figuring out what was up with three sections of my Google Sheets data.  While I never exactly figured out what was wrong with the data, I was still able to generate a map.  Is the map beautiful?  No.  Does the map make much sense?  Not really.  However, what I did get out of this is potentially a new skill that I not only can apply for later in this class with our final project, but, it also has the potential to be used in other areas of my academic life.

Making a Map for Good, Ole “Characteristicks”.

by Barnett

For this COPLAC assignment, I’m returning to a dear friend “Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times” by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury. The edition of this book that we have access to at the UVA Wise Library is supposedly a Baskerville book printed in Birmingham, England. I was curious as to where else the book had been printed, and a quick trip to the English Short Titles Catalog did not disappoint. I have confirmations that it was printed in London, Glasgow, and Dublin. I wasn’t surprised at all to see that the book had also been printed in Dublin, because Irish reproduction of books is something that has been mentioned many times during lecture.

Timeline of “The Story of Biology”

by Barnett

When we were presented with this assignment for the COPLAC course, I was initially very excited.  Being a science major, I was hoping to search the library at the college and find a science based book that I could structure this assignment around.  Since UVA Wise as an institution is so young, so small, and is in an area that is part of the bible belt, I was very curious as to what scientific literature would be available in the library.  When I had found “The Story of Biology” and opened the front cover and saw the label indicating that this book was from the collection of C.K. Davenport, a professor at the University of Virginia at one time, I was very excited.  However, as I was searching for information on the book itself and the professor that had owned it, it proved to be very frustrating.  While I did find out that Charles Davenport did have an extensive book collection, unfortunately this was all I was able to find out about him. I was also unable to determine when exactly the book had come into possession of the UVA Wise library.  This left me frustrated, and made me wish that the generations before me had been more meticulous recordkeepers.  Throughout the book, I saw evidence of writing in the margins; I’m not sure if this was the work of Professor Davenport himself, or of one the few that had checked this book out.  As I thumbed through the pages, I saw what was the schedule of a “Devona Powers” from the year 1971, and I was amazed that it had remained there all this time.