Monday, January 14, 2008

Italian Sigillata in US Libraries


Anyone looking for an introduction to current thinking about Italian Sigillata could do worse than consulting the following four books:

Here's how one would do when looking for these titles at various libraries.











































 Conspectus Cosa OCK Poblome et al.
Berkeley On shelf On shelf On shelf On shelf
Cincinnati On shelf On shelf On shelf On shelf
Columbia Offsite Not held On shelf On shelf
Harvard On shelf On shelf Off site "no online circulation information"
Michigan Not held On shelf On shelf On shelf


Two notes:
1: I chose the libraries somewhat arbitrarily. I use the Columbia library. Harvard is the largest university library system in the US. Cincinnati, Michigan and Berkeley all have strong graduate programs in Classical Archaeology.

2: The table obscures some detail. In particular, only the Burnham Classical Library at Cincinnati houses all these volumes in a single building. The other library systems distribute them between a main library, an art history library, and/or off-site storage.

Despite the fact that moving a volume "off site" is a terrible thing to do, this post isn't really a complaint. In fact, the table suggests that one's ability to study Italian Sigillata isn't half-bad if you live within convenient distance of a major research library. And there's always ILL.

Regular readers of this blog can probably guess that I'm itching to launch into a diatribe about how archaeologists would be better served if all this information were online. Take that as a subtext. For now, I'll just mention that Google Books lists "No preview available" for all these titles. That is a bummer.

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