Review of P.J. Kosmin The Land of the Elephant Kings. Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire. Pp. xvi + 423, figs, maps. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2014. Cased, £36.95, €45, US$49.95. ISBN: 978-0-674-72882-0.

This paper focuses on potential instances of indirect labor mobilization at Pylos, in which workers are retained for palatial projects, but through the agency of named individuals. I will attempt to show that in some cases the palaces supplemented directly-acquired labor with labor obtained through administrative intermediaries, high-level…[Read more]

More detailed syllabus for second term (spring 2016) of the University of Warwick Sexuality and Gender in the Ancient Greek World module.

Course booklet for the Sexuality and Gender course I taught at the University of Warwick in 2015-16.

This dissertation explores the use of ‘ancestral constitution’ arguments in Athenian political theory of the fourth century BCE. It shows how the ‘patrios politeia’ is invoked by authors such as Isocrates and Xenophon as a means of expressing opposition to current democratic practice, and also how the use of such arguments is explored, parodied…[Read more]

This poster reflects on the Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) upcoming inaugural week-long Digital Scholarship Institute for library professionals. Held in June 2017 at Boston College, the Institute introduced librarians and staff who are not currently involved in digital scholarship to the methodologies and considerations of such work. T…[Read more]

This checklist is an offering to the digital humanities community by participants of the Digital Humanities 2017 panel “Copyright, Digital Humanities, and Global Geographies of Knowledge.”* Do you have suggestions for improving it? Please email vzafrin at bu edu. *ht…[Read more]

Makerspaces – workshops openly accessible to the public, where people can create objects or learn about making – are a much talked about subject within the library world. An increasing number of public libraries, as well as school and academic libraries, are establishing, or planning to establish makerspaces within their institutions. Many ent…[Read more]

The Great Parchment Book of the Honourable the Irish Society is a major surviving historical record of the estates of the county of Londonderry (in modern day Northern Ireland). It contains key data about landholding and population in the Irish province of Ulster and the city of Londonderry and its environs in the mid-17th century, at a time of…[Read more]

The Great Parchment Book of the Honourable the Irish Society is a major surviving historical record of the estates of the county of Londonderry (in modern day Northern Ireland). It contains key data about landholding and population in the Irish province of Ulster and the city of Londonderry and its environs in the mid-17th century, at a time of…[Read more]

While we may know well what personal fitness means, the concept
of a fit library is ambiguous. Is it simply a matter of paying attention
to the numbers, not unlike observing metrics such as the Body Mass
Index? Does an increase in circulation or the delivery of more
instruction sessions point to a fit library? Achieving library fitness is
a…[Read more]

Academic libraries are supposed to be places of silence and deep study. Tell that to the students watching a video, talking on cell phones or working on a group assignment. Today’s academic libraries need to accommodate students’ desires for quiet and socialization. This essay offers recommendations for noise management in academic libraries.

Virginia Tech professor Brian Britt presents this far-reaching study on biblical curses and their reception history. Britt’s introduction clearly sets out his goals for the book, especially the importance of distinguishing between the general power of curses in the ancient world and the general profanity of curses in early modern modern Europe and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is to share a classroom teaching technique and pedagogical
style that can alleviate difficulties encountered during information literacy instruction sessions when
students think they already know everything the librarian instructor plans to cover in the session.
Ignoring this situation can result in a poor teaching and…[Read more]

Textbook affordability is a critical issue in higher education. Academic librarians have responded by creating programs to encourage faculty to become aware of the cost of textbooks and using open educational resources as an alternative. Another, less obvious reason to start a campus textbook affordability initiative is to establish a culture of…[Read more]

Librarians have been consciously adopting metaphors to describe library concepts since the nineteenth century, helping us to structure our understanding of new technologies. As a profession, we have drawn extensively on these figurative frameworks to explore issues surrounding the digital library, yet very little has been written to date which…[Read more]

A dictionary length entry on conversion in early Judaism for the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

We suggest a new approach to information literacy for students: let faculty do it. Let librarians concentrate less on educating students directly and more time helping non-librarian faculty to integrate information literacy skill building into their courses, and developing the tools and resources to simplify their ability to achieve that…[Read more]

As libraries increasingly store books in off-site storage facilities or on-site automated retrieval systems, there is less capacity for library users to browse stack collections. This reduces the possibility for serendipitous discovery of books, or what the author refers to as a “collision with the collection”. This article discusses why this is…[Read more]

In this new era of experimentation in higher education, administrators should look to the academic library to adopt the same spirit of experimentation. Library and academic administrators will want to examine how they can collaboratively develop a new culture of experimentation to take risks, achieve new successes and occasional failures. This…[Read more]