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The Library's integrated, automated system is eleven years old, and it continues to serve us well. But the trend in libraries, as in most areas that use computer technology, is to take advantage of hyperlinks and web technology. Thus DRA, the Library's automation software vendor, has developed a new generation of web-based library applications. Their first new generation product is the web-based public access catalog which can be used either with their new system, called Taos, or with their existing system, DRA Classic. For now, Drew is upgrading only the public catalog. Library staff will continue to use Classic for all behind-the-scenes work such as cataloging, acquisitions and circulation. The Library was able to purchase the NT server necessary to run this web-based software with grant money from the New Jersey State Library, which seeks to promote state-wide interlibrary loan activities and improved resource sharing. Such activity is facilitated through the widespread existence and use of web-based catalogs.
Early in the summer the new Web2 catalog will replace the existing public access catalog. Additional customization will be done during the summer as we assess users' experiences and reactions. Because the Web2 software consists of a number of interconnected web pages, customization by individual libraries is easy. In addition, the catalog can be integrated with the Library's own home page to create a seamless experience for users as they move around the catalog and home page. When fall semester begins, training and user guides will be ready, and we expect that students, faculty and other users will be as excited about the new age of library catalogs as we in the Library are.
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At the end of 1998, Penn State Press published my study of the collaboration of two theologians, the world-famous Karl Barth, and his secretary and-in his termtheological assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum. Von Kirschbaum lived in his household, consisting of his wife and five children, for more than three decades. Barth said on many occasions that he could not have accomplished all that he did without her. Besides assisting Barth, von Kirschbaum gave, and later published, a series of lectures in 1949 on the need for a Protestant doctrine of woman, proceeding from the Scriptural witness on women to the role of women in the church. Concurrently, Barth was working on the volumes of his Church Dogmatics devoted to a doctrine of "man" (by which he meantor thought he meant-humankind) which dealt recurrently with gender issues in the Christian life. It was certainly clear to me when I began the project that I would be dealing with the history of theology, women's studies, and the often delicate issues of biography.
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This dual background did not produce a perfect, step-by-step research itinerary. Rather, I began the project with an inventory of tools and a repertoire of possibilities. There's a routine-you could call it the reference drillmade up of reviewing different reference or information sources: bibliographies and indexes, specialized encyclopedias and yearbooks, and other compendia of information from the stuff of daily life to high politics. Any of these might be in paper or digitalized forms, the latter in both CD-ROM and web-based venues. You can't tick them off one by one; you need to repeat the process when you hit a dead end, or find a fruitful new path (here it is not so easy to resist just galloping ahead). One of the most interesting parts of the research process, in retrospect, was the number of times that I did not automatically shift into the reference drill. The temptation for me, as (I've found) for many other scholars, is to just keep reading more books or parts of books until a cloud lifts. Or, when a new discovery emerges, to do what a library colleague calls "defensive research"-just making sure no one else has "done" what you want to do. I (the librarian) had to keep reminding myself (the historian) to pull back and think of other kinds of information resources to check for relevant information. When I did, the move was almost always more productive than I expected.
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