The snow has finally melted enough for the library to reopen. I figured it’s high time I actually start working on the Digital Museum Project for my Cleopatra class. My topic is basically Rick Steves’ Guide to Alexandria (I will come up with a more academic-sounding title).
I looked at the class reading list and picked the titles that I thought were most likely to have chapters on Cleopatra’s Alexandria. I went to the Arts and Social Studies Library and searched them in the library database. I put a few books on hold (obviously somebody got an even earlier start than I did on this project and is doing a similar topic, and whose brilliant idea was it to only own one copy of a book that a lecture of forty students need?). I copied down the Library of Congress codes for the books that were available. Then I had to swallow my ego and ask a librarian to explain the LoC shelving system to me.
I tracked down a few of the books on my list—Cities in the Hellenistic World, Hellenistic Egypt, Graeco-Roman Cities—and flipped halfheartedly through them. One of them had Alexandria on a map of Egypt on the frontispiece. That was promising, but I was facing a lot of barely-relevant reading to get to the meat.
Then I was like, wait a minute, why don’t I just forget the reading list and search ‘Alexandria’ in the library database? And I hit the JACKPOT. Alexandria has a LoC code all to itself. I didn’t just find a few Alexandria books—I found the freaking Alexandria shelf. And checked out most of it. I’ve got Alexandria, A History And A Guide; The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria; Ptolemaic Alexandria; Alexandria in Late Antiquity; and Alexandria, Real and Imagined.
I almost definitely just reinvented the wheel, but if my ego gets any bigger it won’t fit through the checkout line.