When, as a graduate student, I first went to the British Library to use their holdings, at the dawn of time about twenty-odd years ago, I prepared for the trip by consulting the old hardcopy edition of their catalog.  Moreover, I came equipped with what, in retrospect, was an extremely primitive portable computer.  (As that was in the days of the old Reading Room, getting an outlet for said computer meant showing up at the break of dawn and running [not altogether figuratively] for one of the few modernized desks.)  In some ways, things are now much easier: the Library has digitized their catalog, despite some weird search constraints (what do you mean, you can't search books by date range?!); you can order books in advance; all the desks have outlets, so you're only competing with the people who...don't actually appear to be using the library...for a seat; and (oh frabjous day) they're now letting readers photograph lots of stuff, thereby reducing the amount of transcribing and increasing accuracy.  

Digitization, though, does have some interesting effects on one's plans.  It's now easier to map out one's textual plan of attack; however, it's also necessary to double-check if it's simpler to just read the book online, lest one waste precious grant-funded hours in the library.  And, of course, just because GoogleBooks doesn't have the book (or has yanked it out of public access, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone except Google) doesn't mean that it's missing from archive.org.  Or HathiTrust.  Or maybe Project Gutenberg.  On the flip side, all of this double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking also reveals weird gaps in online access.  For example, Mme. de Genlis was extremely popular in the first half of the nineteenth century--but there's this really weird shortage of her translated works online.  (Mme. de Genlis in the original French is everywhere, but I'm interested in what was circulating en Anglais.)  Obviously, the gaps are an artifact of which libraries have opted to participate in various digitization projects, which usefully reminds us that what may look like an unbounded (free) resource remains very dependent on the vagaries of material collections.  

Where would we be without more complaints about conferences? I've moaned about conferences more than once on this blog, myself, so I fully understand the temptation. But I wonder to what extent the ongoing funding crash in higher ed will force changes to the conference scene.  Everyone gripes about the $1K costs involved in going to the MLA...yet, really, just about every conference costs $1K or more to attend, depending on location.  One can scrimp and pinch in order to lower the prices--eat at McD's, share a room, drive (yikes), etc.--but for many faculty, the cost in doesn't necessarily equal value out.  My campus, which is relatively generous with travel funding, nevertheless only gives us enough to support part of any given conference jaunt; moreover, as we can use that funding for research purposes as well, we have to make some hardnosed calculations.  (This year, I needed my funds to partly subsidize plane fare to the UK, so no conference travel at all.)  For adjuncts and t-t faculty at cash-strapped universities, the conference routine is even more difficult.  

• The promised thunderstorms did not materialize.  Hooray!
• Needless to say, the book I most wanted to read has vanished into the ether, or at least into the murky, unfathomable depths of the Regenstein stacks.  (Insert various unprintable words here.)
• Nevertheless, I did read two Irish novels, George Brittaine's Irishmen and Irishwomen (2nd ed., 1831) and Cecilia Mary Caddell's Nellie Netterville (1867). Caddell's novel has the least manifest theological content of any novel I've read so far, even though the subject--the Cromwellian Settlement and the transplantation of landowners--involves considerable sectarian violence.  The novel proves conciliatory to Protestants: while it links Puritanism with the worst form of fanaticism, particularly in a long set-piece featuring Puritan soldiers torching a secret church with the congregation still inside, it also features virtuous and heroic Protestants who renounce extremism.  Nor does Caddell give any sign that these Protestants need to convert in order to be redeemed.  While the novel clearly links the settlement to contemporary Irish unrest, it also implies that Protestants and Catholics might be able to achieve some sort of harmony...at a future date.  Brittaine's novel addresses the Rockite rebellion (negatively), "New Light" Presbyterianism (positively),  the implosion of Protestant-Catholic relations (confusedly), Protestant Sunday Schools (positively again), and conversion to Protestantism (very positively).  This was all a bit too much for one 200+ page novel, especially because Brittaine pushes a strong anti-Catholic line while almost grudgingly admitting that Protestants and Catholics had been co-existing perfectly well before the "New Light" movement got going.  (Eyre Evans Crowe's novella Old Light and New Light harshly indicts the New Light movement for sparking sectarian conflict.)  That being said, I can't think of any other novel in which the evangelical heroine escapes assassination because some teenage scamp dumps a bucket of mud over her.
• I also came across this novel (first published in the 1850s) and its sequel.  They both look delightfully awful.
• There's another take on the Mystery of Edwin Drood just out?