In reading more of Hester Blum’s very interesting The View from the Masthead (2008), I came across another list of books a 19th-c whaler read. His name was James C. Osborn of Edgartown, Mass., second mate aboard the Charles W. Morgan whaling ship. From 1841–45, the ship whaled in the Pacific under Master Thomas A. Norton. [...]
archives
Whalers, sailors, and libraries at sea [part 2]
Yesterday, I wrote about sailors who were also readers in the 19th century, and their economy of book exchanges at sea. Today, let’s look at what a few mariners were actually reading! Both lists were written by the masters of their ships, so presumably they would have been more educated and more privileged than the [...]
Whalers, sailors, and libraries at sea [part 1]
In the whaling days of Moby-Dick, splashy scenes like the above could be infrequent. Many long days could pass between whales, and indeed any long sea journey was marked by tedium. While ship-masters always had an unending list of chores for the sailors to complete aboard the ship, some of the men passed their free [...]
Archivists as creators
“Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” … The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records [...]
Archive vs. archives, Internet vs. internet
It’s been a week of learning new words and word forms! For your edification, should you not already know these differences, I present some lexical tidbits of interest: archive vs. archives The OED definition of archive begins: “ 1. A place in which public records or other important historic documents are kept. Now only in pl.” [...]
