In our 5th assignment we were asked to explore the world of social networking maps. Above is my recreation of Dr. Pauley’s selected data of books and borrower’s of Manchester Academy from January to December of 1845 for better or for worse. Enjoy!

You can imagine that along with the introduction of new research tools one would quickly pick their favorites. This tool has proved to not be included in that short list. After searching through the English Short Title Catalogue, I found 15 entries for Characteristicks by Anthony Ashley Cooper. However, curiously enough, I did not find the entry for the book located at my college which was printed in Birmingham, Alabama. This was exciting news! I plan to further investigate the origin of this book with our archivists in order to explore the curious case of the unaccounted for Baskerville further. Below, I have embedded the map displaying the locations that have known published versions of the book that the English Short Title Catalogue knows about.

In the link above I have provided a Timeline JS for Interpretations of Journalism by Frank Luther Mott and Ralph D. Casey. This book was published in 1937. Although it is fairly new by our terms of printing format and age, I chose this book because it was chalk full of provenance. It seems to me that this book was used in a class for a research project or possibly used a text book/recommended reading source. The basis for this assumption comes from the type of provenance found inside. Another interesting point to keep in mind when reviewing this book and Timeline is that all provenance throughout the book is written in the same handwriting. I assume receiving this book as an upcoming jounalism student must have felt like Harry Potter did when discovering the Half Blood Prince’s potions textbook. Multiple paragraphs and passages are underlined, questioned, noted on, referenced, and checked off in a manner of possible approval or merely checking off a paragraph as a task would be on a to-do list. This book is signed by W. L. Wilson, on whom I could find no genealogical information. There is also a wonderful passage of questions written on the last leaf of the book that comes off to the reader (myself) as an afterthought upon reading the book.

 

Bailey