Mission-based management: leading your not-for-profit in the 21st century

Peter C. Brinckerhoff; John Wiley & Sons 2010

WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder

Books on management abound and I have unfortunately had the “pleasure” of reading my share of them. Indeed, there are books on management in just about every conceivable context: business, church, life, personal relationships (yes, really), and the list goes on. This one, however, is in its third edition because it continues to be in demand — and rightly so. Brinckerhoff here gives extremely practical advice on how to lead a non-profit entity. Note: This is not about church leadership. It’s about the practicalities of leading and managing a non-profit corporation, but that is not to say that one will not benefit greatly from this book in matters of both motivation and creativity. This book is to be highly recommended for broad-spectrum libraries, as well as those with an emphasis on management, leadership, and business.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Religion and the book in early modern England: the making of Foxe’s Book of martyrs

Elizabeth Evenden; Cambridge University Press 2010

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Part of the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History, this volume attempts to set Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” in historical context (ch. 1: the printer’s world in early modern Europe — a fascinating chapter for bibliogeeks like me) and subsequently traces two primary trails through the remainder of the book. The relationship between John Foxe and John Day is the focus of three subsequent chapters, and the preparation, illustrations, and history of the Acts and Monuments are the focus of six subsequent chapters. The extremely thorough bibliography is quite well done.

The authors are professional and thorough. This volume is recommended for academic library collections of literary history, English history, Reformation history, and book/printing/publishing history at the university or graduate level. This is a very helpful book that contributes well to the discussion of a much-discussed topic.

Popularity: 1% [?]

About five years ago I thought about doing this.  I even announced it.  Let’s try this again, shall we?

We now have four occasional and recurring featured posts here at CommonPlaces:

1. commonplaces, where I provide a list of sometimes related new books here where I serve as a theological librarian,
2. book provenance,
3. random quotes from stacks,
4. and now chorea scriptorum, a latin phrase which, roughly translated, means “writer’s cramp.”

Given my newly self-imposed deadlines for research and writing over the next few months, I thought I would record the effects of my swotting and write summaries, reviews, and whatever else I may find helpful from the books I am reading or which cross my desk. I will try to make recommendations that would be helpful to libraries discerning the appropriateness of a book for their collections.  You can see the reviews as the accumulate in the Chorea Scriptorum category.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I am attempting to compile a bibliography of materials on the role of books and reading in the Reformation period. Rather than provide such a cumbersome list here on the blog, I have decided to play with WorldCat’s lists feature because of its simple “Citations” view for easy import into Zotero. Any you with a preference for either WorldCat or some other discovery tool like Primo please comment on which you prefer and why.

You may view the still-in-progress bibliography here: http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/paul.commonplaces/lists/2906205

Popularity: 9% [?]

For those of you who might be interested, I am speaking at an upcoming mini-conference being held at Southern Seminary, November 2, 2011. I will be speaking on Pierre Viret from a much-expanded form of a paper I delivered at the Refo500 Research Consortium (RefoRC) in Zürich last June, and will be drawing connections between his ecclesiology, his political writings, and his piety in a way that I hope will be helpful.

The conference is being hosted by The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Many, many, thanks to Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin for the invitation and opportunity.

La Réforme: Celebrating the French Reformation on the Quincentennial of Pierre Viret (1511–71), November 2, 2011 9am – 12pm, Heritage Hall, Southern Seminary.

Schedule: [Online]

• 9:00 am – An Introduction to the French Reformation
  Michael Haykin, Professor of Church History, SBTS,
  and the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies
• 9:15 am – Pierre Viret and the Politics of Piety
  Paul Roberts, Director of Patron Services,
  James P. Boyce Centennial Library
• 10:15 am – Break
• 10:35 am – Calvin and his Prayers
  Dustin Benge, SBTS Student
• 10:50 am – The Pastoral Vision of Theodore Beza (1519-1605)
  Shawn Wright, Professor of Church History, SBTS
• 11:50 am – Concluding Words

Popularity: 10% [?]

Attention students of the Reformation: I just learned that Zwingli’s Werke (Works) and Briefe (Letters) are now available online, fully searchable, for free, thanks to the Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte (IRG) at the Universität Zürich. They are both linked via this announcement from the IRG. I presented a paper there at a conference back in June (2011) and remain impressed, challenged, and grateful for their work.

• Huldrych Zwingli Werke: Digitale Texte:
  Volltexte von Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Bd. 1-6.5 (Corpus Reformatorum 88-93.5)
• Huldrych Zwingli Briefe: Digitale Texte:
  Volltexte von Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Bd. 7-9 (Corpus Reformatorum 94-96)

Popularity: 10% [?]

Here is a presentation on using Google hacks when searching.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I have abandoned word processors. A recent post at TeleRead quoted an editor as blaming word processors for making authors “lazier and stupider.” Perhaps, then, there remains some hope for me.

Enter LaTeX. I now typeset my words rather than processing them, and am convinced that the learning curve for the markup language is well worth it — and even enjoyable for geeks like me. The occasional post on overcoming LaTeX and BibTeX obstacles will therefore likely find its way here in hopes that it may be helpful to other humanities-oriented *TeX users.

Obstacle number one: how to use multiple bibliographies. I am attempting to write a dissertation using TeX and obviously have a need to produce a divided bibliography.

Solution: the multibib package.

In the preamble, I included the following:
% For a divided bibliography
\usepackage{multibib}
\newcites{pri}{Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources}
\newcites{mss}{Manuscript Sources}
\newcites{diss}{Dissertations and Theses}
\newcites{books}{Books}
\newcites{art}{Articles}

This, of course, reflects the bibtex files in my project: pri.bib, mss.bib, diss.bib, books.bib, and art.bib. They are in the same directory as my tex file.

Then, I included the following where I wanted the bibliographies to appear. For me, this was after the chapter includes. Note that the bibliography style for the annotated bibliography of primary sources is different, so as to include the information in the annote field of the bibtex records.

% For multibib
\nocitepri*
\bibliographystylepri{plain-annote}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources}
\bibliographypri{pri}

\renewcommand{\refname}{Articles}
\nociteart*
\bibliographystyleart{plain}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Bibliography of Articles}
\bibliographyart{art}

I have not found a way to automatically typeset and process the document using the multibib package from within TextMate. Rather, it must be done from the command line. Navigate to the directory, then typeset the master .tex document but leave off the .tex extension (my document was viretdissertation.tex):

pdflatex viretdissertation
bibtex pri
bibtex mss
bibtex books
bibtex diss
bibtex art
pdflatex viretdissertation
pdflatex viretdissertation

Voila.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Perhaps it’s the historian in me, but I love marginalia — when it is done well, at least.  I recently found this phrase written on the title page of a 1573 English copy of Pierre Viret’s Christian Instruction. 

As it turns out, “non est mortale quod opto,” which according to my very weak Latin skills is something akin to “what I desire is not mortal,” was a common phrase used in a variety of inscriptions on chairs, doorposts, and even inserted into books by book collectors. It originates from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Liber II, line 56, which actually reads: “sors tua mortalis, non est mortale, quod optas.”

It comes as Phoebus (the Sun) replies to his son Phaethon’s request to have control of his father’s chariot and wing-footed horses for a day.  Phoebus replied that he was asking too great a favor, one that is unfitting for his strength and youth.  Not even Jupiter, the mighty lord of Olympus can can drive this team of horses. He continues, “sors tua mortalis, non est mortale, quod optas,” that is, “your fate is mortal, what you desire is not mortal.”

So it appears that this quote has for centuries been reappropriated to express the human desire for the divine.  I wonder what the writer of this phrase onto the title page of Viret’s magnum opus intended to convey by this.  Was he commenting on the text, or just following a common practice?

Popularity: 38% [?]

This is a basic introduction to identifying information resources that I am developing to help increase basic information competencies among our undergraduate students. It is most definitely still a work in progress. Use the arrow keys to navigate through the slides.

Popularity: 33% [?]