During my last week of my history internship, I spent a few hours at the University Archives and Special Collections Office researching the books that I had previously searched on Pegasus. These books were either in the Rare Book room in the Archives Office, Deck E, the Library Storage Facility, or the Main Stacks. I was surprised by how many of the books I was researching were in the Main Stacks. Since all of these books were from the 1870s or earlier, it is a little bizarre to see a decent amount of them in general circulation.

I was surprised by how well organized the Jesuits were in their stamping of the books. In contrast to the location of the Cudahy Library stamp within the books, the Jesuits put all of the St. Ignatius College Library stamps on the title pages of the books. This made them very easy to find, and this seemed to be the case for all of the books that I looked at.

It was cool to see the Library Storage Facility, a place I had never been before. It is a huge storage space, and it was weird to see the contrast between the openness of the storage facility compared to the closed rooms of the library. It seemed like the storage facility actually had more books than the library itself, but I am sure that is probably not true.

Anyway, I have included a few images of the St. Ignatius College library stamps within specific books below. It was interesting to see how well preserved many of the books were, and it was also somewhat of a surprise, especially due to the age of some of these books.

That is all for this blog. I want to thank everyone who has read this blog for their interest in my work. I would also like to thank Dr. Roberts and Kathy Young for this opportunity. Zorian Sasyk has also been helpful to me throughout this semester, and it has been great partnering with him on this project. I had a great time this semester, and I found an area of interest which I did not expect to enjoy nearly as much as I did. I hope whoever chooses to continue the work that Zorian, Kathy, Dr. Roberts and I have done in the fall can build on it and get the catalogue published. 

This past week, I was able to get a lot more done at my history internship than I have in quite a while. I spent 7-8 hours total on my internship this week. I went into the University Archives Office for about 4 hours during the week, and I was able to finish my work on the library course bulletins. Dr. Roberts had asked me to review the course bulletins from the 1870s through 1930, and throughout the course of the semester, I managed to complete this task. This week, I looked through the course bulletins between 1925-1930. 

In my work last week, I learned that Phillip W. Froebes, S.J. became the Librarian in 1923. By 1926, Froebes had become the "Chairman of the Library Board." Kathy and I discussed whether this was because the title of librarian was shared by multiple people or whether the tasks of a librarian were shared between multiple people. In my research, I noticed that each college (Sociology, Downtown Campus, Law, Medicine, Dental, etc.) had its own librarian. As a result, Froebes was likely the Librarian of the College of Arts and Sciences and also the head librarian over all these other librarians. Consequently, he was the "Chairman of the Library Board." 

Also in my work on the course bulletins, I noticed an interesting development in the library. In the 1928-29 academic year course bulletin, the library suddenly dropped from 90000 volumes to 50000. The Chicago Public Library also dropped roughly 150000 volumes. While these numbers had not been updated in a few years, this seems like an extreme drop in both library systems. Kathy, Ashley, and I discussed this, and while the large drop in Loyola's library's # of volumes could be explained by the library moving from one campus to another, we were unable to come up with any explanation for the huge drop in the number of volumes that the Chicago Public Library owned. 

After working on the course bulletins, I was able to find two books in Rare Books that were in St. Ignatius' initial library catalogue. These books are Townsend's 1724 translation of Historia de la Conquista de Mexico and Winstanley's 1684 book England's Worthies: Select Lives of the Most Eminent Persons of the English Nation. 

Dr. Roberts also had Zorian and I working on the subject metadata for the digital catalogue when the library catalogue is uploaded in the Fall. We are also writing subject descriptions for the various headings of the catalogue. Zorian focused on Theology and Philosophy, and I focused on Literature and History. These are just a paragraph or two descriptions of what the library had in each collection in its first library catalogue. These are meant to give a general overview of what topics were considered important by the Jesuits as they built the early library at St. Ignatius College. I should be done with my subject descriptions early this week. 

Anyway, that is all for this week. I will be spending this coming week finding books that I have previously researched on Pegasus and checking if these books have the St. Ignatius College stamp on them. Thanks for reading!

Last week was another abbreviated week, but luckily I actually know I will have free time this coming week. During my work last week, I spent around 2 hours in the University Archives Office reviewing the course bulletins from Loyola from 1918-1925. While little information was provided during this period about the library, and much of the information provided was recycled from previous year's entries, the library did expand from 70000 to 90000 volumes during this period. The library also had a new librarian every year from 1919-1923. This likely shows why the library did not have new information each year, as new librarians might be unable to assess the library in the way that a tenured librarian might. It was also interesting to see how Loyola's librarians also served in a variety of different roles. Some librarians were only the librarian, but most of them served as a professor of a certain subject, such as French, German, History, or Physics, or the librarian served as an advisor to the students. It was interesting for me to see how librarians came from a variety of different fields. 

Also during my time looking at the course bulletins, I was able to find more information on a book, or series of volumes, from the late-sixteenth century. In previous versions of the course bulletin, St. Ignatius College was described as having a copy of the New Testament in 12 languages from 1589. In the years I reviewed, however, it included the new detail of this being in four volumes. With this new detail, Kathy and I were able to find the book in Rare Books. 

Since this was an abbreviated week, I didn't have much time to do much more than this. I decided to do a quick review of the pages of the catalogue that I had looked up to make sure that I had not missed anything. I noticed that a four volume copy of Arthur Helps' The Spanish Conquest of America, a book published in 1855, is in Cudahy's Main Stacks. There are a couple other books like this within the pages I looked up, but this seemed to be the rarest of the books in the Main Stacks. I figured I would talk to Kathy about if these books should be moved to Rare Books. 

That is all for this week. This week will be heavily dedicated to working on the internship, and consequently I should have a ton to post about next week. I will be in Archives at least a few hours this week, and I plan to go in on Monday for at least 2 hours. Thanks for reading. 

Hey! Its Brian checking in again. I had another uneventful week at my internship, but this was mostly due to unforeseen complications. When I posted last week, I did not know that I would have a quiz in one of my classes and that in another class, my professor would ask me to do a couple hours of research for a paper that is not due until finals week. Regardless, these complications kind of put a damper on my plans of doing more work last week, and combined with my moving to a new apartment, I had very little time to do much of anything. All I was able to do last week was spend a couple hours finishing my list of books for the 7 pages of the catalogue that I had previously researched.

After finishing my list last week, I had hoped to go to the library and the University Archives Office and look for each of the books that I believe may have been original St. Ignatius College copies. If they are, I would mark them on the list and this would be a valuable resource for future interns in figuring out which books to scan for the digital publication. Sadly, I did not get to do any of this last week, but hopefully I will have the opportunity to do so this week.

Anyway, since I was not able to finish much last week, I expect to get a significant amount of work done this week. Due to the shortened week, I will have to do most of my work on Thursday, but I should be able to spend 3-4 hours in the library/University Archives Office on Thursday, and I will likely spend the rest of my time this coming week looking up books in Pegasus from an additional few pages that Dr. Roberts sent me a couple weeks back. Hopefully I will have more to discuss next week. I will try to get a few pictures of the books and the St. Ignatius College stamps within them.

Thanks for reading and have a nice week!

This week was a very light week, and I do not have much to say about my work for this week. While I still worked for a few hours this week, I spent the week focusing on that Microsoft Word document (which I mentioned last week) of all the volumes, if they are listed on Pegasus, if I believe the library might own the St. Ignatius College original, and where the book is located within the library if it is on Pegasus and may be the original. This has been an arduous task because I am trying to keep everything concise and yet informative for future interns and other people interested in the catalogue. I have almost finished this, and I just have a few finishing touches which should hopefully be completed by the middle of the week this week.

Since the catalogue was being transcribed last week, and my semester has been periodically stressful and busy (as most students' semesters are), this Microsoft Word file was all I did for the week. I will probably spend more than 5 hours this week on this internship to get a little more progress done. I'm starting to realize that this semester has actually gone by very quickly, and there are only a few weeks left to finish up what I want to get done. I was not necessarily expecting to get a huge chunk of the catalogue done, but I had hoped to get more than I have done thus far, and I am going to try to make significantly greater progress for these last few weeks.

Anyway, sorry for the relatively boring blog post for this week. Hopefully I will have more interesting things to talk about next week when I am able to devote my energy to research instead of Word documents. Thanks for reading!

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!

During this week (3/12-3/16), I focused on finishing the last couple pages of the five pages of the first library catalogue, which I had been working on for the past few weeks. This was a fairly light week in comparison to previous weeks, as I only looked up the various books and volumes listed in the catalogue and then attempted to find them within Pegasus.

A few of the works I found really struck my interest. One of them was a book titled, "Historia de la conquista de México, población y progresos de la América septentrional, conocida por el nombre de Nueva España," although it was only listed as "Historia de la conquista de Mexico" in the catalogue. What made this interesting to me was that it was an account of the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, specifically Hernan Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs, published in 1704. The first publication of the book was in 1684, and although this was over 150 years after Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs, the age of the book and the book's status as a Spanish classic, according to my research on the book, made the book stand out to me. I was unable to find this copy of the book in Pegasus. The catalogue also listed an English translation of the book from 1724, and I was able to find this within Pegasus. It is in the Rare Books collection.


Another of the books that stood out to me was a book called, "The History of the Revolution in the Empire of Morocco upon the Death of the late Emperor Muley Ishmael." This book was written by John Braithwaite and published in 1729. This stood out to me because Braithwaite, an English writer, would likely give an interesting (albeit not necessarily accurate) account of the "revolution in the empire of Morocco." This was also interesting because I was reasonably surprised that there was enough British interest to publish a work on anything going on in Morocco in the 18th century. Morocco at the time was not under the control of the British or any European power, and as an Arab and Muslim country before/at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, I am especially surprised that any English writer would spend his time writing a history of their country. The original publication from 1729, and possibly/likely the copy originally owned by St. Ignatius, was on Pegasus, and it is currently in Deck E. 


Anyway, there were a couple more interesting documents which I might discuss further in future posts, but that is all for now. Thanks for reading and I hope you will continue to keep up with my blog in the future!