BGC Library Blog

The BGC Library participated in the International Edible Book Festival for the second year in a row by hosting a very decorative arts and design –centric celebration of the event at the BGC on Wednesday, April 3.

Started in 2000 by an artist and a librarian, the International Edible Book Festival falls on or around April 1st each year and pays homage to the French gastronomer Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826). Bibliophiles and food lovers around the world gather locally and virtually to celebrate the book arts and the (literal) ingestion of culture by constructing books made entirely of edible materials. Their work is displayed, judged, and subsequently eaten, and photographs are submitted to the International Edible Book Festival website.

All members of the BGC community were encouraged to participate in the BGC Library’s second annual festival. Participants brought foods based on book titles, authors, and cover designs, and many contestants chose to represent books from the BGC Library’s collection. It was a pleasure to see on display the playful pride and affection our community feels for particular books in the collection.

BGC students, faculty, and staff from all departments arrived throughout the day to view and judge the submissions. They cast votes for the most appetizing entry, the best play on words, the best interpretation of the theme (i.e. the best “book”), and finally the best in show.

A blackberry cream cake by Karyn Hinkle representing Bee Wilson’s new book “Consider the Fork” was deemed “most appetizing,” while a clever group project by Christine Griffiths, Andrew Goodman, and Nicole Pulichene was “best play on words.” They used Alfred Gell’s classic anthropology text, “Art and Agency,” to create an apple TART and Agency with apricot “Gelly”!

Janis Ekdahl’s “Book of Tea,” hand-bound with packaged tea bags as the “pages,” was runner up in the “best book / best interpretation of the theme” category, but the winner of that award as well as winner of “best in show” by an overwhelming margin was Corrine Brandt’s incredible submission based on the late eighteenth century tract “American Cookery.” Corrine’s tidy and impossibly tiny hand-piping in toothpick-thin chocolate letters  awed all who saw it, and truly embodied the spirit of Edible Books.

Further pictures of the event and more tasty, creative “books” are posted on the BGC’s website here.

On Wednesday March 27, a research session for graduate students co-sponsored by the CUNY Graduate Center library and led by two NYPL librarians will focus on primary source materials available at the NYPL including archives and newspapers.

Brooke Watkins, Bibliographer for German, and Thomas Lannon, Assistant Curator in the Manuscripts and Archives Division, will offer a one-hour instructional course aimed at graduate research focusing on fulltext databases such as America’s Historical Imprints and Readex and Proquest Historical Newspapers. This short session will help researchers locate items across the Library’s special collections, begin more specific research in archives, and learn how to navigate the NYPL’s research centers.

“Archives, Books and Databases for Scholarly Research” will be offered Wednesday, March 27 from 6 to 7 p.m. in the South Court Classrooms (1st floor) of the NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

To attend, RSVP Brooke Watkins at brookewatkins@nypl.org or 212-930-0033 and include your name, institution, and your subject interest.

The BGC Library now offers an A-Z periodicals list on our website, via the electronic resource management system, True Serials.

Through this periodical list, researchers can now browse or search a list of 5000+ journal titles, including those held in print by the BGC, those subscribed to electronically by the BGC, and a selection of open-access resources that are relevant to the needs of BGC students and faculty.

The short video below offers guidance and tips on how to utilize this new resource.

If you have any questions about using True Serials, or any of the resources offered by the library, please contact the reference desk.

Posted on behalf of the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale:

Lewis Walpole Library Fellowships and Travel Grants for Eighteenth-Century Studies Applications Invited

The Lewis Walpole Library, a department of Yale University Library, invites applications to its 2012 – 2013 fellowship and travel grant program.

Located in Farmington, Connecticut, the Library offers short-term residential fellowships and travel grants to support research in the Library’s rich collections of eighteenth century—mainly British—materials, including important holdings of prints, drawings, manuscripts, rare books, and paintings, as well as a growing collection of sources for the study of New England Native Americans.

Scholars undertaking post-doctoral or equivalent research, and doctoral candidates at work on a dissertation, are encouraged to apply. Recipients are expected to be in residence at the Library, to be free of other significant professional obligations during their stay, and to focus their research on the Lewis Walpole Library’s collections. Fellows also have access to additional resources at Yale, including those in the Sterling Memorial Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Yale Center for British Art.

Lewis Walpole Library fellowships, usually for one month, include the cost of travel to and from Farmington, accommodation in an eighteenth-century house on the Library’s campus, and a $2,100 living allowance stipend. The Library’s travel grants typically cover transportation costs for research trips of shorter duration and also include on-site accommodation.

To apply for a fellowship or travel grant, candidates should send a curriculum vitae, including educational background, professional experience and publications, and a brief outline of the research proposal (not to exceed three pages) to:

Margaret K. Powell

W.S. Lewis Librarian and Executive Director

The Lewis Walpole Library

P.O. Box 1408

Farmington, CT 06034

USA

Fax: 860-677-6369

Application materials may also be submitted electronically to margaret.powell@yale.edu.

Two confidential letters of recommendation are also required by the application deadline. Letters should specifically address the merits of the candidate’s project and application for the Lewis Walpole Library fellowship or travel grant. General letters of recommendation or dossier letters are not appropriate.

The application deadline is January 23, 2012. Awards will be announced in March and are expected to be taken up between July 2012 and June 2013.

Additional information about the Library may be found at http://www.library.yale.edu/walpole.

The Frick Art Reference Library will hold an open house especially for new student researchers at the library next Thursday, October 13 — a great way to register at the library and begin conducting research there.

Many thanks to BGC first-year MA Christine Griffiths for bringing us the flyer!

Reposting!  From the BGC’s Graduate Symposium Committe:

“We are pleased to announce the topic for the Bard Graduate Center’s spring symposium, Material Networks / Networked Materials, and would like to invite our masters, thesis, and PhD students to submit abstracts for review.

The conference will take place on May 6, 2011. Students currently enrolled in a graduate program (at the BGC or elsewhere) are invited to submit an abstract not to exceed 500 words (eventually for a 20-minute paper) to bgc.symposium.2011@gmail.com. Bard Graduate Center students are not required to submit a CV. Please send your submission before Friday, February 4, 2011. Accepted speakers will be notified via email by the end of February.

Please see the attached call for papers [on their website, here] for more information regarding the topic and submission requirements.

Sincerely,
The Graduate Symposium Committee”