Ben Anderson
My goal for the summer has been to pull the college's collections of Islamic art into some sort of order, and to prepare an exhibition for Carpenter Library. It's been a productive week on both counts. On Monday I was able to identify a bowl that was gifted to us in the 1990s. It is, as it turns out, a fine example of a medieval Iranian ware produced under the Seljuqs (probably in the 12th century C.E.). A white ceramic body, composed mostly of crushed quartz, was molded, pierced, and painted with blue streaks before being covered with a transparent alkaline glaze. At the time of its manufacture this would have been a humble piece of tableware, but to a modern of my aesthetic sensibilities it's a fine work of art. On Tuesday I had a look at a number of our ceramics under a UV light to assess their condition and to detect repairs. This was particularly revealing in the case of a Safavid (16th century) tile decorated with the bust of a woman - under the UV, modern overpainting was clearly visible. On Wednesday I looked at manuscripts with my colleague Yael Rice (who is, unlike myself, literate in Persian). Yael was able to read the colophon on a Sufi manuscript which, as we now know, was produced in 1527 in Tabriz. Thursday was carpets, and today Tamara Johnston and I met with the librarians in Carpenter to discuss improving the exhibition space for the fall.
As with any exhibition, the intellectual challenge of this project lies in accommodating the arbitrary. It's never possible, whether at Bryn Mawr or the British Museum, to manufacture a complete image of a past era. Instead we're presented with fragments, and must find some way to weave them into a narrative that is both honest and compelling. Thus every well-conceived exhibit is simultaneously a critique and a defense of the practice of history.
Linda Leeuwrik
My project is to prepare a descriptive online guide to the extensive collection of books on London held in the College’s Special Collections. Many of these books are only partially catalogued and thus difficult to find, which suggested the usefulness of a website introducing this rich resource to scholars and researchers interested in London’s multi-faceted and colorful history. Accumulated over the 
years through purchases as well as generous gifts from collectors—J. Hampton Barnes and Seymour Adelman among them—the collection ranges in date from the sixteenth to the twentieth century and contains works dealing with the development of the city as an urban area, many illustrated and descriptive works by important artists and illustrious literary figures, and all the various editions of the standard histories of the city. One of the collection’s major strengths and a particular research and teaching interest of mine is the city’s architecture, beautifully rendered in every manner, from seventeenth-century engravings to nineteenth-century lithographs to twentieth-century photographs.
I began my work this summer with an exhaustive search of Tripod and Special Collections’ files to compile a comprehensive list of the London books. My next task has been to develop and define categories, under which the many books could be grouped, with these groupings to provide the basic organizational structure of the website. I have also begun the most pleasurable process of looking at the books themselves, thinking about which images to use for the website, which would best illustrate the collection’s highlights—always an exciting endeavor for an art historian—and researching the many different aspects of the collection in preparation for writing the introductory essays to the various sections of the website.
Sarah Hafner
My first week here (June 6) was spent working with Collections Manager Tamara Johnston to get the coin collection and its corresponding files all together and house them in the museum. I began to look through the files and coin boxes to acquaint myself with the collection. I also spent some time preparing for the conservator coming the next week by reviewing the condition of the coins and writing detailed notes in the conservation log, especially to assess if coins needed conserving.
The following week (June 13) an objects conservator was on hand to work on several pieces in our collection, including the newly-housed coins. Because of the large amount of coins in the collection, the conservator could not look at each to determine if it needed conservation, so he and I went through the notes I had written up to see if my assessment had been accurate. We borrowed a microscope from the biology department and looked in detail at coins I had flagged as potentially problematic. The conservator told me I had a good 
eye, and while we worked together I learned a lot about the different chemical reactions that occur with the metals of ancient coins, in the ground and in the museum. Also while the conservator was in-house, fellow intern Ben and I learned about object numbering, an essential part of working in museum. We had the opportunity to practice on several objects using several techniques, and though I will not have to number my collection in this way, it was a useful experience to have as a museum intern. Last week (June 20) I took our conservator's advice and made sure every coin was housed in Mylar flips to help preserve it. Then I began the necessary task of entering the collection into the BMC Collections database. The Collections staff often gets requests from researchers around the world regarding different coins, and to be able to find that information at the click of a button rather than poring through boxes and files will be invaluable. As I catalogue each coin, I do basic research on it to determine the meaning of its symbols. As I am currently cataloging the Boyce Collection of Roman Republican Coins, I am learning a lot about the history and mores of the Republic as I do so.
Jessica Sisk
As the Friends of the Library graduate intern in Special Collections, I’ve
been finishing the endeavor to piece together the various poetry drafts of
the poet, translator, and classical scholar Richmond Lattimore, who taught
Greek at Bryn Mawr until 1971 and who is perhaps best known for his
translations of Homer.
I’ve also been polishing and proofing the nearly
completed online guide to the collection of his papers and sifting through
splendid old Bryn Mawr photographs in search of images to complement the
text of the guide. The most exciting adventure of the week was tracking
down an oral history recording of a Lattimore interview done shortly
before his death - it was an unexpected pleasure to be able to connect an
audible voice with the written words of his letters and poems. Meanwhile,
I’ve also begun to work with the papers of another Bryn Mawr classicist,
namely the archaeologist Lucy Shoe Meritt. The newly acquired collection
is brimming with heaps of unsorted correspondence, diaries, and
photographs which provide a valuable glimpse of Bryn Mawr life from
1923-35. Thus far her extensive personal correspondence is starting to
reveal multiple letters to other scholars such as Lucy Talcott and Dorothy
Burr Thompson, a pattern which is encouraging for the study of early
female archaeologists.
