tinue to receive funding for automation projects. trivial, the expectation of success is much greater While 65 % of respondents at research universi­ than a few years ago. ties reported the existence of an online catalog of Conclusion part or all of the collection, only 23 % at colleges so reported. While this finding is not a surprise, it The ACLS survey of scholars in relation to pub­ demonstrates a strong opportunity for college li­ lishing, computers, and libraries provides implica­ braries at this time. According to Richard Boss, tions for librarians both in research and in action. who recently spoke to college librarians at the Such studies provide valuable material needed by Oberlin Conference for College Librarians, the librarians in order to direct them toward improved time is ripe for development of online catalogs. collections and service. Much development by vendors in creating catalogs The authors are grateful to ACLS for providing for larger libraries has placed such agents in a posi­ us with useful insights about our relationships with tion to provide at this time integrated systems for one of our user communities and would welcome smaller academic libraries. While costs are not further dialogue on these issues. ■ ■ William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism By Linda G. Schulze Assistant Director, Wordsworth Project Rutgers University Rediscovering the Romantics. B eginning in November of 1987, libraries across the crucial role of Romanticism in shaping human America will have the opportunity to join in a ma­ thought. jor humanities project that promises to have a last­ Politically, historically, philosophically—the ing impact on the teaching of humanities in this changes wrought during this era transformed the country. The project, “William Wordsworth and world and inevitably our conception of how we re­ the Age of English Romanticism,” will provide a late to it. The aim of this project, then, is to engen­ chance for people throughout the country to ex­ der a reassessment of the role of Romanticism in the plore the topic of Romanticism from its 18th- modern world: in high school and college curricula century roots to its 19th-century triumphs, and im­ and, even more significantly, on the life of the indi­ plicitly invites the spectator to consider the 20th vidual and the culture as a whole. century’s debt to the Romantics by making clear Funded by a grant from the National Endow- February 1987 / 69 ment for the Humanities and organized by Rutgers set, will be available to circulate through every University-Newark and the Wordsworth Trust, state. These poster panel sets are at the heart of the Grasmere, England, the project has four interre­ entire project because they create an opportunity lated elements. A museum exhibition, containing for a geographically wide and intellectually diverse more than 300 manuscripts, paintings, books, wa­ audience, one not limited to the sites of the major tercolors, and other objects borrowed from almost museum exhibit but extended out into communi­ one hundred museums, libraries, and private col­ ties perhaps as isolated as the Lake District was in lections in England, France, and the United States, Wordsworth’s time. will be on display at the New York Public Library Displaying these sets in libraries, classrooms, (Fall 1987), the Indiana University Art Museum public buildings, and other suitable places makes it (Winter 1988), and the Chicago Historical Society possible to reach a much less traditional audience (Spring 1988). The exhibition will not only present than would be likely to view a museum exhibition. an outstanding collection of cultural treasures— Attractively designed and clearly written but cer­ including paintings by such artists as William tainly not simplistic or reductive, the poster panels Blake, John Constable, John Sell Cotman, Thomas invite attention and reward the reader, enabling Girtin, Samuel Palmer, Francis Towne, and the discovery of something elemental about the self J.M.W. Turner; books, letters, and manuscripts by and the world. such writers as the Wordsworths and the Shelleys, These poster panels will be widely available. Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Each State Humanities Council will have two sets Keats, Charles Lamb, Sir Walter Scott, and Mary to loan throughout the state, but additional sets can Wollstonecraft; and other objects of historical and be purchased from the Wordsworth Project. The biographical interest. It will also provide a cohe­ poster panels can be obtained either unmounted, sive argument enumerating those ideas and forces for groups which have their own display systems, which combined to create and to sustain the Ro­ or mounted on easily assembled cardboard display mantic vision. kiosks. Also available for purchase from the Feder­ Many of these items have never been seen in this ation of State Humanities Councils is a travelling country before and may never be shown here display system for mounting this and similar ex­ again. The exhibition has been planned in conjunc­ hibits. tion with the Wordsworth Trust, and more than Along with these two exhibitions will be series of eighty treasures from Dove Cottage in Grasmere, wide-ranging public programs centered around once Wordsworth’s home and now a museum, will the theme of Romanticism—lectures, poetry read­ be brought to the United States for the first—and ings, teacher’s workshops, conferences, musical probably the only—time. These treasures do not and dramatic performances—which, taken all to­ merely chronicle Wordsworth’s life in the Lake gether, should produce a dazzling year of Romanti­ District but the life of the age, illuminating the cism. The possibilities for public programming are people and their world in an engaging and compre­ limited only by the imagination of the program­ hensive way. Manuscripts, journals, and letters mer. Several programs are already being organized map out the literary and political revolutions oc­ in cities throughout the country: many academics curring during that era, but also chart the psycho­ are planning campus-wide celebrations of Roman­ logical development of the individual in unsettled, ticism, and many local groups—literary, theatri­ often turbulent, times. Personal mementos— cal, and musical organizations, ethnic and histori­ Wordsworth’s spectacles and ice skates, locks of cal organizations, even garden clubs—are joining hair, sketches of family members—touchingly re­ in with plans for related projects. veal and make real the private man behind the lit­ Most libraries could run complementary ex­ erary radical and add new dimensions to the land­ hibits, displaying objects from their collections that scape of the poetry. relate to any of the myriad aspects of Romanticism. Never before have so many of the central manu­ The museum and poster panel exhibitions will ex­ scripts, books, paintings, and watercolors of the plore six crucial Romantic subjects: the age of revo­ Romantic period been gathered together in such lutions, Wordsworth’s contemporaries, the chang­ richness and plenitude. Thus, at the climax to the ing view of childhood, the discovery of nature, exhibit, the central documents of the Romantic simplicity and the commonplace, and memory, vision—Blake’s Four Zoas, Coleridge’s Kuhla imagination and the sublime. Clearly, no one of Khan, Keats’s To Autum n, Byron’s Childe Harold, these themes could be exhausted by a single exhibit, and Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, plus of course, and, of course, the programs need not be limited to Wordsworth’s The Prelude— will be displayed to­ English Romanticism alone—many libraries and gether, an astonishing tribute to the powers of the museums house rich treasures of American and Eu­ creative imagination. ropean Romanticism in their collections. So that this unique assembly of Romantic trea­ The Age of Romanticism was a period of tremen­ sures and the impelling argument they convey will dous vitality, curiosity, spirit, and diversity, and reach as large an audience as possible, a multiple the people whose lives define and illustrate this era copy poster panel exhibit based on the museum are still of immense interest today. To examine the show, with twenty-four full-color poster panels per life of even one of the minor figures leads inevitably 70 / C&RL News MS. A, DC MS. 52, p. 324v + 325r, manuscript book, William Wordsworth, “The Ascent of Snowdon” passage, The Prelude, from The Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, Grasmere, England. to all the major issues and movements of the day that emerge between the Romantics and modern and generates questions about the entire age. In the thought. same way, the wide variety of public programs, all All aspects of this project are envisioned as work­ separate yet connected, can generate questions ing together to transform potentially passive mu­ about this modern world. The inevitable recogni­ seum audiences into participating spectators who tion of the complicated network of connections will consider those questions posed by the Roman­ binding the modern viewer to the Romantics leads tics, and who, like the Romantics, can enter into to the exploration of those specific shared beliefs and be held enthralled by such ideas as liberty, fra­ and issues which still affect the thoughts and ternity, and the essential dignity of man. It need actions of man today, replicating, in a way, the not take large sums of money to plan a successful questing and catholic spirit of that age. exhibit or program; most libraries will already Finally,