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Adam Matthew's Medieval Travel Writing database begs to be browsed. 

It’s filled with manuscripts, maps, and travel texts, mostly from journeys to central Asia and the Far East, but also accounts of travels to the Holy Land.   Included are influential prose written in the late Middle Ages, such as the books of Marco Polo and ‘Sir John Mandeville’, but also works of relatively unknown Medieval missionaries and merchants.  Scholars may well choose to use this database as tool to gain context (social, cultural, political, economic), rather than to just locate a specific primary source.

And that is OK.   

Exploring a paper topic on pilgrimage, the origins of global trade, travels to the Holy Land, the Silk Road, or the representation of the ‘East’ or the ‘Other’ in the Middle Age? Then, browsing the essays, bibliography or chronology presented in the Medieval Travel Writing database might be a good first step.   

The brief biographies of the main 'travellers' include variant name spellings, which will help with future searches in other sources.

The original documents are in a range of languages, including French, Latin, German, Spanish, Dutch and English, so the secondary texts of translations and editions are very helpful.   Click on the Documents TAB and you see a list of items with uninspiring titles, such as MS 632  or  MS.e.Mus.124.  Follow a title link and you can view the entire manuscript as a pdf or as page-images.  You will also see all the document details and a sidebar of links to secondary material.

Don’t give up; keep clicking.   Lots of goodies are hidden under TABS with inconspicuous titles, like ‘Further Resources.’  If you take the time to browse, you are sure to find something unexpected.   

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This spring, the Emory Libraries' electronic book collection continues to grow larger with the addition of e-books published from 2011 through 2013 by Harvard University Press as part of a package distributed by De Gruyter.

Once you have logged in with your Emory ID and password, you may download titles from the De Gruyter catalog by chapter in PDF format. You may print them or transfer them to an e-reader or tablet to use as you need to. Books are added after they have been published in print, though not necessarily simultaneously.

The new e-books database is just one of many new electronic databases acquired this year by the Emory Libraries. In February, the libraries announced the availability of a series of primary-resource databases from Adam Matthew Digital, focusing on the humanities and social sciences.

Emory subscribes to a number of electronic book collections. For more information on finding and using e-books at Emory, visit our e-books research guide.

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The Robert W. Woodruff Library announces the winners of the 2013 Undergraduate Research Award.

From an impressive array of submissions by Emory undergraduate students, judges have selected three projects to be honored with this year's Undergraduate Research Award:

Megan Corbat—“Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons in Connecticut’s Legislature: Single-Axis, Intersectional, and Qualitative Approach”
Faculty sponsor: Beth Reingold

Elizabeth Graham—“Cultural Relativism versus Human Rights: US Foreign Policy on Female Genital Circumcision”
Faculty sponsor: Carol Anderson

James Zainaldin—“Asclepius at Epidaurus: An Interpretation of the Sacred Space of Healing”
Faculty sponsor: Philippa Lang

Each winning entry will receive a prize of $500, supported by the Elizabeth Long Atwood Fund.

The judges also selected one project for an Honorable Mention:
Sweta Maturu—“United States Involvement in International Conflicts and Civil Uprisings: American Human Rights Policy towards Egypt during the Arab Spring”
Faculty sponsor: Carol Anderson

The awards will be presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium on Wednesday, April 24 at the Dobbs University Center. The winners will share their work with the Emory community via poster presentations from 3 to 6 p.m.

Judges for this year’s research award were:
Tanya Molodtsova, Department of Economics
Daphne Norton, Department of Chemistry
Rob O’Reilly, Electronic Data Center
Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Department of English
Stewart Varner, DiSC

Dooley and his entourage visit MARBL during Dooley's Week 2013

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This week, MARBL was fortunate enough to have a surprise visit from Dooley and his entourage. Dooley came to MARBL and asked to see some University Archives materials relating to him and his time at Emory. The obvious first choice was to show him the Dooley Collection, which contains Dooley memorabilia and correspondence written by Dooley from the 1980s and 1990s.

Dooley and his entourage in MARBL

But beyond theses archival materials, there are plenty of publications that feature Dooley as well. One such publication is, Dooley's Rib, a guide for female students that was created just after women were allowed to enroll at Emory. The pamphlet features a female-incarnation of Dooley and advises students about dress-code and dorm life, among other things. Dooley and his entourage definitely enjoyed seeing this glimpse into what student life was like in the 1950s.

Dooley's Rib

What we weren't able to pull in time for Dooley was the original article about Dooley from 1899 entitled "Reflections of a Skeleton," which was published in the student literary magazine The Emory Phoenix. Written from the perspective of a skeleton living in one of the classrooms on campus, this article can be traced back as the origin of Dooley as we know him today. This article and other publications featuring Dooley are available for anyone to request and come view in MARBL.

A view of the now-empty shelves which previously held MARBL's book collections

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We at MARBL would like to thank everyone for their patience while we created a new space for our books and technical services teams. From the loud, sometimes disruptive, construction, to the recent, hectic book move, we appreciate everyone who came on board and made this whole process a great success! While this new area will remain unaccessible by the public, we wanted to include some during and after images to show you what an undertaking it was completely transforming a floor and making it a new, secure space for our important collections.

The very early stages of construction

You may be happy to learn that all of our books are now located on-site and we no longer have to make use of our off-site storage facility when it comes to our rare book collection. You also may not have known that previously the books which were located here were housed on two separate floors, and that our staff had offices scattered throughout the Woodruff Library. This new construction has given us the opportunity to bring all of our behind-the-scenes staff, as well as our book collection, to one unified space. We hope this process helps to make MARBL a more efficient, collaborative machine from which our patrons reap the benefits.

Sledgehammer used to demolish a concrete wall.

As you can see from the below image, we've upgraded to electronic compact shelving similar to that which is used throughout the stacks in the rest of the Woodruff Library.

Installation of the wiring for the compact shelving.

While our collections highlight the past, modern improvements to preserving and securing them are always positive steps forward. We hope these changes will help us to continue to guide our collections well into the future.

A newly occupied book shelf in MARBL's new space