Readers will have noticed the recent addition of a new author at CurEp, Gil Renberg. Gil has brought with him the idea of a refinement to one of our core functions: the distribution of notices about new publications.
Every epigraphist is familiar with the scenario: a note from a colleague or a reference in a footnote or one of the annual bibliographies alerts us to an inscription we’d like to check for one reason or another. Our local library doesn’t have the publication, so we must have recourse to interlibrary loan or even a trip to another library. More often than we would like, the reference publication turns out to be very rare; perhaps it is not even held by a single library on the epigraphist’s continent!
Our goal is to help rectify this problem by inviting epigraphists like Gil (whose research is bringing them into contact with the problem) and classics and history librarians (who make acquisition decisions at the local level) to join the CurEp community and work together to identify problematic works and enhance their library availability and preservation. The editors encourage both existing CurEp authors — and interested parties who would like to join their ranks — to review our new guidance on posting publications notices and join us in achieving this goal.