#harvard library

Today’s post follows up on some unfinished business from a recent post on Dickinson’s use of the word “tea” in her poems. When I checked the archive for “tea,” twelve entries popped up representing five different poems; however, one of the five does not include the word “tea.” Instead, the search picked up the word “tea” in the corresponding notes for the poem, “Not all die early, dying young,” but the lines themself are tea-less.

The odd thing was that the publication notes for the poem made no sense; here’s the statement:

“LH (1951)” refers to the book Emily Dickinson's Letters to Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland, a volume of letters edited by Theodora Van Wagenen Ward and published in 1951. But what the heck does “The tea in” mean?

Here’s a funny bit: I was sitting in a library the morning I discovered this perplexing statement, so I asked a librarian there if “The tea” were some sort of publication jargon with which I was unfamiliar, but she was just as confused as I was – so I emailed the folks at Harvard Library, and just yesterday, I heard back:

“Thanks, as always, for reporting errors in EDA! It appears that a substantial amount of text was dropped for the Publication History. I’ve noted this in my list of future corrections. I can’t figure out exactly where the text was cut to create “tea”, so this is only a guess. The correct text should read: PUBLICATION: Letters (1894), 177, from the Holland copy (B), as though part of a letter; also LL (1924), 261; and Letters (1931), 171. LH (1951), 72, from Letters (1931). Poems (1955), 716-17 (A summarized, B summarized, C principal); CP (1960), 461 (C). MB (1981), 1072 (C), in facsimile. (J990)”

Sooo…as you can see, the info includes all of the publication specifics (albeit in abbreviated form), and there’s really nothing to do with “tea” at all.

By the way, the post about Dickinson’s poems which include “tea” is HERE. On a whim, I thought, “Okay, I’ve checked coffee and tea, so what about juice?” No surprise. Dickinson never used the word “juice” in any of her poems. I then checked “water.” Well, “water” generated sixty-two entries on the archive – and the way the “new and improved” archive works, it will take me some time to figure out exactly how many different poems this represents. For now, let me leave you with this beautiful poem, and ask, “By what are you taught?”

What do you make of all this?

In the past few months, I’ve come across some confusing statements on different websites. In each case, I emailed the organization to ask for clarification. Below is background on each of the instances followed by how each organization responded – and that’s where my opening question comes into play, “what do you make of all this?” (particularly as related to the fourth instance).

INSTANCE 1: Yesterday, I came upon on a site operated by the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, where I read information about the history of the Amherst Cattle Show, an event that began in 1864.  However, Emily Dickinson’s loaf of Indian and Rye won second prize in the show in 1856. I emailed the library to ask for a clarification of the dates.

RESULTS: I emailed the library at 2:15 p.m.  I received a response on the same day at 4:34 p.m.:

“Thank you for your inquiry. The Hampshire Agricultural Society (separate from the three-county agricultural society) was founded in 1850 and took place in Amherst. I believe it ran until 1916. This is the fair that Emily and her family would have attended in 1856 when she placed for her bread. Her father was president and secretary for the Society. The wording on Digital Amherst is a bit confusing so we will go ahead and add a footnote explaining. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.”

INSTANCE 2:  Yesterday, I emailed this to the Emily Dickinson Museum: “In the scope of things going on in the world, this is certainly a very minor issue, but I have a question concerning your page on the museum's site on ‘Emily Dickinson and Cooking.’"  I told them that the opening sentence of the first paragraph began with a double quotation mark, but there was no closing quotation mark. 

RESULTS:  I emailed the museum at 1:53 p.m. Five minutes later, at 1:58 p.m., I received this response:  “Thanks for pointing this out. The page has been updated.”

INSTANCE 3:  I noticed that the online Dickinson archive included an incorrect word in Dickinson’s poem “A train went through a burial gate.”  In line 6 of the poem, the archive showed “And bowed arid sang again.”  The word “arid” should be “and.”

RESULTS:  On September 4, I emailed Harvard Libraries at 9:45 a.m.  At 2:59 p.m. on that day, I received this response, “Forwarding this inquiry to Leslie M, outside of LibAnswers. Leslie, can you assist with this?”

At 4:21 p.m. on that same day I received this:  “Thanks for taking the time to report the error. You’re right, it’s definitely an OCR error. It will eventually get corrected, in the next round of updates.”

INSTANCE 4:  In late August, I came across an essay on poetic theory on the Poetry Foundation’s site called “The Poem as a Field of Action.”

The page states, “By William Carlos Williams,” and “Originally Published: October 13, 2009” -- and so I emailed to ask how this could be since WCW died in 1963.  

RESULTS:  I emailed one person at the Poetry Foundation on August 25th.  No response at all.

I emailed again on September 4th – and this time I added three other email addresses.  No response – except from one of the email addresses, I got this automatic reply, “Please forgive my delayed response in advance. I'm currently out of the office and will not be checking my email until September 9, 2025. I will reply to you as quickly as I can when I return.”

On September 18th, I emailed a third time asking for a response.  Nothing in return.

On Saturday, September 27th, I was in Chicago.  I visited the Poetry Foundation.  I spoke with a receptionist named Kat.  I told her about this.  She agreed that the page included confusing information, and she supposedly emailed someone name Meg to see if that person would get back to me.

I asked her what would be a realistic expectation for me as to when I could expect a response.  She said one week.  A security guard at the desk who heard our conversation spoke up and said “two weeks.”

It was the best of service, it was the worst of service – a tale of two cities, Chicago and Boston – the Poetry Foundation and Harvard University.

I don’t know if this just happens to me, or if others experience this too, but whenever I submit a question or a clarification to the Poetry Foundation, I get nothing in return.  Zilch. Zero. Nada.

It’s not like I bombard them with questions – I’m basically talking about TWO inquiries – but the first one went on for MONTHS. If interested in the details, check out this post, HERE.

Back in August, I submitted a second question.

**crickets**

I followed up today with a second request for help, and I added additional email addresses on the email too.  So far I’ve received one automatic “out of office” reply, but that’s it (BTW, the reply stated, “I'm currently out of the office and will not be checking my email until September 9, 2025. I will reply to you as quickly as I can when I return.”  We’ll see.)

Also, this morning, I sent notification to the online Emily Dickinson Archive – via a Library Technology Services Support form at Harvard University – about an error on the Dickinson site (by the way, the error was the focus on my post today, HERE).

I made my submission at 9:45 a.m. At 2:59 p.m., someone named Julie at LTS forwarded my inquiry to someone named Leslie.  At 4:21, Leslie emailed me:  “Thanks for taking the time to report the error. You’re right, it’s definitely an OCR error. It will eventually get corrected, in the next round of updates.”

Of course, the next thing I did was search, “What does OCR mean?”

Turns out that OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, the technology that converts different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, image files, and PDFs, into editable and searchable machine-readable text. 

Well, that makes sense (considering what I wrote about today).

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Main AuthorWornum, Ralph Nicholson, 1812-1877Language(s)English PublishedLondon, Chapman and Hall, 1867. SubjectsHolbein, Hans, >  Holbein, Hans, / 1497?-1543 Photographically illustrated books. Biographies. albumen prints. Physical Description3 p. ℓ., [3]-426 p. front., illus., plates, ports. 27 cm.

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