Barry Murphy has recently shared with us some beautiful examples of just a few of the 2 million reasons he loves his job, and I surely appreciate them! Such beautiful coins! I can't match any of his wonderful perks, but I want to share a little something that illustrates why I enjoy my job. The University of Cincinnati library where I work holds books on all aspects of ancient Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and modern Greece. Not just books on ancient coins, of which we have thousands, but our collection covers all areas of antiquity/Byzantium, and modern Greece - art, architecture, material culture, history, religion, philology, philosophy, everything. At over 270,000 volumes, it is arguably one of the best libraries in our discipline in the world. And for decades I've been privileged to select the books for this wonderful collection and watch them as they come in. But today, as I entered the reading room from my office I saw the staff had removed our Justinian portrait from its usual place of honor and used it to commemorate today's tragic day in 1453!
That's a nice memorial for Constantinople. May not be politically correct these days, but I was never a PC person...so I'll say it: It sure is a sad day. We lost so much in the west with the fall of Constantinople.
Still using the card catalog system? I missed the boat on those... i remember them in elementary school though. Very cool display!
A wonderful mosaic. Must a great job. I know it would be the dream job for many who frequent this site.
If it wasn't for the fall of Constantinople, the age of exploration (and subsequent colonization) would probably not have occurred, at least, not until several hundred years later. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is open to discussion, of course, and probably has a lot to do with your ancestry.
That's very true. The past is what brought us here, in all its events and happenings. Either way, the Roman Civilization definitely outlived it's shell.
Oh, no. We're online. The card catalog is a joke; it's sits in our circulation area with a sign above it that reads "Offline catalog".
