Last week (3/19-3/23) was another slow week. I had heard that the computers in the Archives and Library were being updated to Windows 7, and as a result, I did all my work from my apartment. When Zorian and I met with Dr. Roberts on Monday, he suggested that we consider possible ideas for a paper/article which could be published along with the catalogue online. The idea was that we write about the possible applications of the library catalogue and our research on the books/volumes which were in St. Ignatius' early library. 

I spent a lot longer contemplating this than I expected, and while I had a few fleeting ideas, one idea stuck out to me: 

The information, broken down by subject, could be used to determine how important each of the subjects were at the time to St. Ignatius and possibly Jesuit education as a whole. If the number of books on Theology, for example, is much greater than the number of books on History or English, it says that Theology was a predominant part of the Jesuit education. While this is probably an obvious assumption that many people would make, this could also be compared to our current library. How many books do we have for each subject? How have the areas of focus changed from the 1870s to today? Why have these changed? Is this more a result of the college expanding into a university and gaining a broader curriculum, or has the focus of Jesuit education/education as a whole changed? I think this topic leads to a lot of applications for the catalogue which greatly expand the usefulness of the catalogue beyond a simple list of the volumes within the library at its inception. 

Finally this week, I finished looking up the last few books of the five pages I was given a few weeks ago. After finishing this, I started trying to compile a concise, organized Microsoft Word file of the books, whether they are in Pegasus, and whether I believe these are likely the original copies of the books from St. Ignatius. My original research wasn't particularly organized, and I felt the need to make an organized list both for my own purposes and for future interns in this project so that they might easily look through my work and build upon it. I hope to use the list, once I am done with it (hopefully by next week or the following week), to track down each book I believe might have been in the St. Ignatius library and check to see if they have a St. Ignatius stamp. 

That is all for this week. Thanks for reading!