From the enterprising Haworth Press comes yet another new journal: Humanities Collections. Good for them! The subject approach to knowledge seems to have been neglected in the contemporary stampede towards IT literacy, service standards and financial management. The Humanities ... . Remember Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Set? Then settle down and read an absorbing account of her correspondence with Lytton Strachey, of what was written, of how it related to their lives, of what happened to the letters, and how they are being cared for in the Frances Hooper Collection in Massachusetts. If your interest is in the history of typography, printing and book illustration, then an account of the Edward Clark Collection at Edinburgh’s Napier University will attract your attention. Ever considered the mystery of the Basque language, and the fact that no one knows where it comes from? Then read about it here, and check your shelves using a nicely annotated bibliography. And what about birds? Consider this:
It’s just a book: binding, pages, index. But doesn’t the mystery of books lie in their ability to transcend their form? My Field Guide to Eastern Birds throbs with the life of the birds listed therein, and ever since his death, I can still feel the pulse of Petersen’s life in the drawings and descriptions.
This delightful testimony to the power of a book is delight indeed.
No, Humanities Collections is not a wallow in literary nostalgia. It is about what we collect and conserve. It is about the humanities and about collections. A perceptive look at the World Wide Web asks “Superhighway to What?” After chronicling the downside of the Internet and the difficulties of using it for research, Byron Anderson reviews various search and meta‐search engines, clarifies the distinctions between site ratings and reviews, and leads us back up through electronic journals, newsletters and discussion lists, and concludes his thoughtful and practical article with a listing of comprehensive literary Web sites. More robust and provocative, if marred by his untidy prose, is Alan Liu’s “Globalizing the Humanities”. Drawing on his experience of creating the successful “Voice of the shuttle: Web page for humanities research”, Liu was forced to reconsider the role of humanities research in the post‐industrial corporatist age. The traditional stratagems no longer apply as “global knowledge” becomes localised.
This post‐Web paradigm shift of humanities research is a long way from the “power of the book”, Basque linguistics and the letters of Virginia Woolf, but these heady accounts of knowledge‐making, whether using search engines or MARC Rare Book fields, are a refreshing reminder of what libraries are about. The editorial introduction promises that the tripartite approach will continue, namely: primary and secondary collections; bibliographies, essays and reviews, works in progress; and issues in the humanities. Forthcoming topics promised include women’s presses, the Kenneth Tynan archive, information seeking in interdisciplinary fields, and multicultural films. Haworth Press are a mite heavy on their self‐promotion in the end‐papers, but the journal is nicely produced, handily pocket‐sized and refreshingly easy to read. I would recommend it even to non‐librarians.
