2085 Catching some highlights of history

I was visiting Florida Cracker's blog and discovered that she is a librarian (been reading and linking to her for probably 2 years and don’t recall coming across that item). Now I'll have to move her link. In one of her entries, she mentioned the Romanov photo albums at Yale Beinecke Rare Book Library, so I had to hop on over there and take a look. I was a Russian major, you know. Absolutely charming family photos of the whole family in leisure activities--Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children, their friends, servants, etc. It’s now been about 90 years since they were murdered. A hauntingly beautiful example of the marriage of libraries, donors and the internet. There is also a finding guide

Then I clicked around on the Beinecke site until I came to a data base of Uncatalogued Acquisitions. In my day, we called that "the backlog," and I have many not unpleasant memories of wandering through spooky shelving areas pulling off interesting items. In veterinary medicine an 18th century book was extremely rare, but we did have a few.

The problem when faced with a search window for a database of material unknown to you, is what keyword do you enter? If you know what's in there, it's no problem. But I had no idea what Yale might be leaving uncatalogued. So I returned to my veterinary roots and used “horse,” coming up with some interesting items including the court-martial papers of George Sackville in 1760. Not knowing who that was, I Googled him, and discovered he was Secretary of State for America in Lord North's cabinet during the American Revolution. His ministry received much of the blame for Britain's loss of her American colonies. And there sits his court martial in Yale’s uncatalogued collection. What an ignominious ending for a politician. I can think of a few at the Alito hearings I would wish to have locked up in a library gathering dust.

Call Number
TSIP
Author
Sackville, George Germain, Viscount, 1716-1795
Title
Proceedings of a general court-martial held at the Horse-Guards on Friday the 7th ... to Monday the 24th of March 1760 ... on Tuesday the 25th of March ... to Saturday the 5th of April 1760. Upon the trial of Lord George Sackville
Place
Edinburgh
London
Publisher
Printed for A. Kincaid, J. Bell, R. Fleming, and for A. Millar in the Strand
Date
1760
Physical Description
1 v.

Another interesting keyword to use in this uncatalogued database is "letters." I think it got about 700 matches.

Romanov family
Czar Nicholas II
Beinecke Rare Book Library