Rant of the Day: Manuscript Catalogues

[highlyeccentric]

My somewhat obsessive friend MrsBacon, who has spent much of the last couple of months chasing down crusader letters by haphazard chains of catalogue searches, word of mouth, the history of french libraries after the Revolution, and midnight telephone calls to confused non-english speaking librarians who just might have something in a 'little box' downstairs, assures me that I am blessed in my choice of field, because the English generally and Anglo-Saxonists in particular are obsessed with cataloguing and record-keeping, and that I should be overjoyed to have access to big fat manuscript catalogues and so forth.

Nevertheless, having finally laid hands on Helmut Gneuss' Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, i found it immensely frustrating. It didn't take much to discover that 'Cotton Nero' wouldn't be in the list, and that it would be found headed by its location. After peering at the index for some time, wondering why 'British Library' doesn't appear before 'Cambridge University Library', i noticed the neat little comma: 'Cambridge, University Library'. Deft use of the index took me through the various manuscripts containing "Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: homilies" and brought me at last to 'London, British Library, Cotton Nero A.i". So far so good- all inconveniences at the feet of my own incompetence.

Gneuss turns out to contain a very short paragraph and no more information than I could have rattled off from the top of my head, save for the size of the MS itself. Perhaps useful for cross-referencing across manuscripts, it was quite disapointing for my current purposes. (What are they? I'm not sure... )

Next i turned to Neil Ker's Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, which DID contain useful- if barely comprehensible- information, several pages of it. This, however, took me another half an hour to find, as I stared at the gap between Lincoln, Cathedral 298 no. 2 and London, British Museum, Additional 9381, wondering where the British Library had got to. I checked at the other end of British Museum, and L had not been mysteriously moved to after M. To the indexes i returned, and sifted through manuscripts containing the handwriting of Wulfstan- which was at least a vaugely relevant tour- only to end up at London, British Museum, Cotton Nero A.i.

Why has no one told me that the British Museum and the British Library are the same thing? Furthermore, how does one figure out which to refer to?

Comments

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

erm, this might seem like a silly question- but have you asked her where she sees the theory as standing, in terms of your thesis? does she know the angle you want to take- and if she's not a THEORY person herself, can you convince her that you can do it systematically and without fluffifying the whole thing?

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

yeah... as i rode home i thought i should really ask her what the deal is with this. probably a good idea. usually i just grumble to myself and figure that once i've done this, she'll be happy, and i'll be free to develop it in the way i want to.
i wonder if that's another way in which i'm kind of passive-aggressive. have been trying to work out how to overcome that. i think it means confronting things more openly rather than trying to accommodate them but actually being bitter about it.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*nods* i understand the impulse though. 'm not looking forward to figuring out how working with Dan works, so to speak... i don't *TRUST* him like i trust Awesome. Quite frankly i don't trust dan to remember my NAME from week to week :P

i want to march in to him and say 'this is what i'm doing and how', for fear that he'll sidle me sideways into something less adventurous and more boring... but i don't KNOW what i'm doing (really) or how (at all).

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

yeah! i hear you! i hope he understands what you try to say you're doing and how, and can actually help you be more clear on what *you* want :)

ahhh supervisors.