H03015 "TTHA CHECKLIST UPDATE" 3/27/03 HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 14:48:59 -0500
From: Robert Schweik <schweikr@localnet.com>
Subject: The TTHA Checklist
To members of the TTHA Forum, and, particularly, to TTHA members--
As present coordinator of the TTHA Checklist team, I recently made what I thought would be an embarrassing comparison. I went to the online version of the *Victorian Studies* edition of its "Victorian Bibliography" for the year 2001--the latest it provides--and compared its coverage with
that of the TTHA Checklist which, as you may know, provides scholars with information updated every two weeks and with major updates every two months. The TTHA Checklist for 2001 has now long been archived, and I thought that a major bibliography employing slower--but I assumed more thorough--means would provide many citations which the TTHA Checklist team would unfortunately have missed in its concern for currency.
For example, the TTHA Checklist is now providing records of many publications for the year 2003, and in July or so will begin to record advance notices of publications for 2004. As its disclaimer asserts, it is *not* a complete bibliography but a provisional checklist intended to provide information about Hardy publications as soon as possible.
My purpose was to write a cautionary note emphasizing how incomplete the TTHA Checklist was and to warn users of its incompleteness, with examples of what the TTHA Checklist had overlooked. I assumed that the highly-regarded "Victorian Bibliography" of *Victorian Studies* would include many items that the TTHA Checklist had overlooked.
To my astonishment, I found that exactly the opposite was the fact. To give but one example, in the case of editions of Hardy's works, the "Victorian Bibliography" for 2001 included only two citations, and one of those was published in 1999. The TTHA Checklist, on the other hand, provided 21 citations to "Editions, Reprints, and Translations" as well as another 9 citations to "Readings, Retellings, Dramatizations, and Musical Settings" of Hardy's works all published in 2001.
And so it went throughout the "Victorian Bibliography" Hardy section (which, I emphasize, has the benefit of a couple of years time for its compilation). There were a few reviews that the Checklist overlooked--and as anyone on the Checklist team would say, it's of course necessary to check *all* the available bibliographic sources to assure as much thoroughness as possible.
But the result of my comparison was for me eye-opening. And I was considering *only* the difference in the *number *of citations. Add to that the practice of the TTHA Checklist to include *descriptive annotations* with most of its article and book citations, and the value for Hardy scholars--even for "archived" sections of the Checklist--is outstanding.
So I want to use this message as an occasion to express the thanks of the members of the TTHA--the beneficiaries of their dedication--to the TTHA Checklist team: Suleiman Ahmad , Philip Allingham, Betty Cortus, W. Eugene Davis, Shanta Dutta, Suzanne Keen, Sumiko Inoue, J.K. Lloyd Jones, William W. Morgan, Rosemarie Morgan, Richard Nemesvari, Birgit Plietzsch, Martin Ray, Jeanie Smith, Dennis Taylor, and Keith Wilson. And, to those, thanks should be added for so many other TTHA Forum members who have contributed essential information for the Checklist and whose contributions are recognized in the Checklist itself.
What a remarkably current--*and thorough*--resource for Hardy scholarship they have provided and continue to provide!
Bob Schweik
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 16:24:18 -0500
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: The TTHA Checklist
BOB-- as ever you have worked miracles!
I doubt anyone could "embarrass" you when it comes to scholarship -- impossible to imagine.
Thank you so much for doing such a splendid job co-ordinating the reports from TTHA the world over.
Admiringly, as ever,
Rosemarie