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SULAIR NEWS – May 21, 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Reminder!! SAL3 Tours - Summer 2008
- Expert Papyri Conservator, Leyla Lau-Lamb Visits Conservation
- MY 511 Provides Customized Traffic Updates for Commuters
- ***Reference Question of the Week ***
- SULAIR Job Opportunities
1. Reminder!! SAL3 Tours - Summer 2008
SAL3 is hosting tours this summer for staff interested in gaining a better understanding of SULAIR's high-density preservation facility.
Tours will take place at 10:00am on the following Fridays, at SAL3 Livemore:
Please contact your supervisor if you are interested in a tour of SAL3. Carmelita Quiambao, quiambao@stanford.edu, will be organizing the tour groups and furnishing directions. Please note that transportation is not provided so carpooling is recommended. Staff who wish to use their own cars for university business should be aware of insurance requirements. Go to Admin Guide 28.7, section 3d. Here's the link: http://adminguide/28_7.pdf
--submitted by Carmelita Quiambao
2. Expert Papyri Conservator, Leyla Lau-Lamb Visits Conservation
Last month, the Conservation Department welcomed Leyla Lau-Lamb, conservator from the University of Michigan Libraries. Ms. Lamb is one of a handful of experts in the conservation of papyri. She came to Stanford to share her knowledge of papyrus and its treatment with rare book conservators David Brock and Beth Ryan as well as conservation technicians Sarah Newton and Carolee Wheeler.
Stanford University Library’s collection of 310 papyri was built upon a gift in 1953 by Stewart M. Marshall and enhanced by the subsequent transfer of related materials from the Stanford Museum. The collection includes literary texts, legal and business documents, letters, censuses, and other materials. In the words of Joe Manning, Associate Professor of Egyptology and Ancient History in the Department of Classics:
"The papyri housed in Green library constitute a small but significant collection. A few of the pieces have been published and are well known to scholars. Most of the collection, however, has only recently been catalogued and studied as part of the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS) project. The texts range in date from Ptolemaic to late Byzantine, and are written in demotic Egyptian as well as Greek and a few pieces in Arabic and Coptic. Many are worthy of further study and publication. As a whole, though, they form a very valuable study collection with which to introduce students to document typology and scripts."
Once these texts are cleaned and glazed, they will be accessible to students and visiting scholars in a stable format. We hope that many of them will be available for use this summer for the International Papyrology Institute held at Stanford. In the future the collection will be used in the teaching of Papyrology, as well as Greek, demotic, and we hope, Arabic paleography and document history.
Most of the papyri in our collection are very fragile -- too fragile for handling for research or digital imagining. Last year, Cathy Aster of DLSS -- who has had experience working with papyri when she was a conservator at Yale -- performed an assessment of more than 100 fragments and found that all of them required treatment. Cathy's assessment and the approaching Summer Institute prompted us to seek Ms. Lamb's assistance.
During the week of study, Professor Manning visited the lab and enthralled us with information about the fragments we were treating. Many of the fragments in our collection had been used to form cartonnage -- layers of papyri pasted together to make mummy cases. In fact, two of the pieces treated have the distinct shape of the sole of a shoe.
Conservation of papyri -- like all conservation treatment -- requires the interchange between curator and conservator. Both provide valuable information regarding the object being conserved, and together they work to determine the most appropriate treatment strategy. This interchange is always worthwhile and invariably interesting.
Conservation staff enjoyed an intense week with Ms. Lamb who had everyone treating fragments on the very first day of her visit. Ms. Lamb punctuated her treatment sessions with study sessions where she shared her experiences on an archeological dig in Egypt as well as time spent in Saint Petersburg working with collections there. Everyone agreed that her visit was rewarding, thought-provoking, and valuable. We look forward to continuing our work with Professor Manning and our collection of papyri, and expect to treat and stabilize all the fragments over the course of the next few years.
--submitted by Maria Grandinette
3. MY 511 Provides Customized Traffic Updates for Commuters
"MY 511" is now available! Receive customized traffic updates for your key destinations.
Wouldn't it be great to get an email or text message alerting you when there is a traffic jam on your route to work in the morning? Do you find yourself wondering which route would be the fastest as you head home? You're in luck: With the just-released MY 511, users get instant access to their personalized travel information throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
MY 511 allows users to build their own home page as well as bypass the 511 phone menu for up-to-the-minute driving times 24 hours a day. For more information and to create your own “MY 511” for traffic updates, visit http://www.my511.org.
For transit riders, MY 511 Transit will be phased in at the end of this summer. According to a representative with 511, Muni will be available first, with VTA added in late 2009 or early 2010. An estimate for when Caltrain would be added was not available at the time of this eUpdate.
--Source: Parking & Transportation Services
--submitted by Andrew Herkovic
4. ***Reference Question of the Week ***
Question: I could not find a SULAIR subscription to the Saudi Business Directory
marketed by datarabia.com. Can Stanford subscribe to this?
Answer: The Jackson Library
(Graduate School of Business) does not subscribe to "Saudi Business
Directory". However, we have other resources that provide profiles of
businesses in Saudi Arabia with more in-depth information. Following
databases are licensed to all Stanford users:
They can be accessed via the Databases Index and the Jackson Library's Web site.
Another resource with comprehensive business profiles (worldwide
coverage, searchable by country, industry, etc.) is "Orbis" database,
which is available within GSB IP range. You are welcome to explore this
resource at the Jackson Library if you are interested.
You can find more reference questions and answers at the Information Center Web site.
To contribute to the Reference Question of the Week feature of SULAIR News, submit your question and answer through the SULAIR News online submission form at:
http://sulairnews.stanford.edu/issues/submit/submit.jsp.
--submitted by Editorial Staff
5. SULAIR Job Opportunities
SULAIR has no new positions this week:
For a complete description of open positions within SULAIR, go to the Stanford Jobs page and type University Libraries in the Job Search box at the bottom of the page.
--submitted by Editorial Staff
SULAIR News is an electronic publication of Stanford University
Libraries and Academic Information Resources issued weekly. Copy deadline is
12:00 NOON Friday for publication on the following Wednesday. Submit items for
publication via the online submission system.
Editor: Eleanor Brown, Eleanor.Brown@stanford.edu
