AARHMS Launches Online Library of Iberian Resources

LIBRO or the Library of Iberian Resources Online is an initiative of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain, undertaken with institutional support from the University of Central Arkansas and grant assistance from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its director is Dr. James W. Brodman, professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas. The board of editors consists of Paul Freedman of Yale, Remie Constable of Notre Dame, James Powers of Holy Cross, Joseph O'Callaghan of Fordham, Lynn Nelson of Kansas, and Kenneth Wolf of Pomona College.

LIBRO is developing a digital library in the areas of medieval and early modern Iberian history that it makes available to a worldwide audience at its web site: http://libro.uca.edu. The titles in the collection have been major contributions to the field and generally are recent, but now out-of-print university press monographs. The current list of eight is growing by approximately fifteen titles per year. Fifty titles are anticipated within three years. Editions are full text and because copyright remains in force no commercial use is permitted.

LIBRO has several objectives. Believing that the real crisis in academic publishing is more one of dissemination and distribution than of actual publication, it seeks to make books available to unserved and underserved audiences and to provide new ways of incorporating monographic material into classroom teaching. It also seeks to promote the legitimacy of the electronic medium by concentrating on works that have already passed professional scrutiny in more traditional ways. Third, LIBRO wants to test the Internet as a genuine academic resource. Most other demonstration projects provide a scattering of texts, drawn from diverse disciplines and dispersed over a variety of subjects. By developing a resource that is capable of sustaining undergraduate teaching and research in one particular area, LIBRO hopes to discover whether this type of resource is a genuine replacement for the traditional library, and whether the library of the future will be a collection of resources similar to LIBRO. As the project unfolds, various tracking tools will be used to determine the character of use and type of user. Already a relatively small collection is attracting in excess of a 1,000 hits a month.

CLGH 1999 Prizes Announced

The Committee on Gay and Lesbian History awarded its 1999 Boswell Prize to Mark D. Jordan for his book, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (University of Chicago Press, 1997). The undergraduate paper prize was awarded to Laura Ginsberg for her Harvard University honors thesis, "Sexual Identity and Democracy in Spain: Spain's Gay Rights Movement and Poststructural Considerations for its Future."

Nominations for the CLGH prizes for 2000 are due by December 31, 1999. For details, contact Vicki L. Eaklor, Chair, Committee on Lesbian and Gay History, Division of Human Studies, Alfred University, Saxon Dr., Alfred, NY 14802-1205. (607) 871-2217. E-mail: feaklor@king. alfred.edu.

Historians Film Committee Sessions at Annual Meeting

The Historians Film Committee has arranged two sessions on film and popular culture, starting at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 8, 2000 , in the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, Sheraton Ballroom V. The first session is titled "Amistad: Steven Spielberg as Historian" and the second is titled "The American Presidency and Popular Culture: Images in the American Mind."

For details, contact Peter C. Rollins at RollinsPC@aol.com.