Guest classes, 2016-21:

Professor Corey Wronski, McDaniel College, English 2230, "Sir Thomas Malory," Spring 2016

Professor Corey Wronski, McDaniel College, English 2230, "St. Francis Missal (W.75) and Book History," Spring 2020 (cancelled by Covid-19)

Professor April Oettinger, Goucher College, VMC 383 / BKS 383 "Introduction to Medieval Manuscript Leaves, and Terms and Methods for their Study," Fall 2021.

Professor April Oettinger, Goucher College, VMC 383 / BKS 383 "The Berners Hours, a Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Horae (Use of Sarum)," Fall 2021. (stand-alone PowerPoint)

Professor Victoria Van Hyning, University of Maryland-CP, LBSC 731. "Special Collections.  Integrating Special Collections/Archives into Teaching and Research--Advice and Tales from the Wars," Fall 2021

        Because your independent research projects might make use of either the Goucher Library's "Special Collections" or its "Archives," you might wish to consult this short Web page describing the differences between "collections" and "archives" as they affect the researcher. 

         It's possisble that you might want to specialize in working with parchment texts.  To teach yourself more about parchment, look at Clarkson's sources, handle carefully lots of examples of parchment from various regions and eras, and read "Materials and Techniques of Manuscript Production," Medieval Manuscript Manuel (Central European University, Belgrade).  An even better narrative explanation of parchment's invention and history is now available from Longreads in the form of "Hidebound: The Grisly Invention of Parchment," a chapter from Keith Huston's The Book (N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 2016).  Keep in mind that when parchment became Europe's standard material for book production, books' two main purposes were legal and theological, and both functions were expected to last for hundreds, and even thousands of years.  Hence, parchment books. How long will digital books last?  Hint: if you hold your breath long enough, a fair number of them are already winking out of existence or becoming unreliable and difficult to read.

Independent Research Project Materials from  Special Collections at Goucher College--the"libraries within the Library"  Final Research Projects--Fall 2013.    Click here for examples of projects pursued by the Fall 2011 class.    Online Exhibits of Past and Present Research Projects

         If you are interested in Literature/BKS 341, please consider registering for Visual and Material Culture Major.  Other courses in major will allow you to follow your interests in many of the basic elements of bibliographic investigation we explore in 341, such as American readers' use of books from the revolution to the digital age, the art of the book, book binding, Goucher's Burke-Austen Collection, and the many other great rare book libraries of the Baltimore-Washington area.

Internship and Fellowship Opportunities for Qualified English 341 GraduatesThe World-Famous "Medieval Helpdesk" video  Miscellaneous Summer Projects  French 257: Introduction to Research Using Rare Books and Archival Materials Thomas Murray Collection online at the University of British Columbia Library: Bookplate images to help you determine provenance.