an ominous rumble
Mar. 18th, 2022 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacRumor is filtering over from Europe about a new variant virus which hasn't had much of an effect in the US yet. But it might soon, and thereby lies a practical concern for me.
I had been intending to put off compiling the annual bibliography for Tolkien Studies for another month, in favor of more urgent matters. But this task requires going out to the university libraries to search the proprietary databases. For two years I couldn't do that because the libraries were closed, and I had to resort to makeshift solutions.
But now the libraries are open, some of them anyway, and I am looking forward to going. But if the new variant spreads, will they stay open? It would be folly to wait a month and then find I was too late.
But before I visit the libraries I have to do first the even more extensive work in my own collection and in the public online databases, so that I can have as much information already down on my list, maximizing the efficiency of my time in the libraries by being able to pass over many of the listed items with "OK, I already have that one."
And that's going to require several days of perspiring work over a hot computer, and I'm starting that now. If I can get over the hill to Santa Cruz, my library of first resort, before the end of next week, that'll be great.
I had been intending to put off compiling the annual bibliography for Tolkien Studies for another month, in favor of more urgent matters. But this task requires going out to the university libraries to search the proprietary databases. For two years I couldn't do that because the libraries were closed, and I had to resort to makeshift solutions.
But now the libraries are open, some of them anyway, and I am looking forward to going. But if the new variant spreads, will they stay open? It would be folly to wait a month and then find I was too late.
But before I visit the libraries I have to do first the even more extensive work in my own collection and in the public online databases, so that I can have as much information already down on my list, maximizing the efficiency of my time in the libraries by being able to pass over many of the listed items with "OK, I already have that one."
And that's going to require several days of perspiring work over a hot computer, and I'm starting that now. If I can get over the hill to Santa Cruz, my library of first resort, before the end of next week, that'll be great.
