I recently added this 1848 library ticket (card) for the Boston Athenaeum to my collection of librariana. The ticket is signed by Athenaeum Librarian Charles Folsom. Folsom was librarian of the Harvard College Library from 1823 to 1826 and librarian of the Boston Athenaeum from 1845 to 1856. The Boston Athenaeum which was founded in 1807 was a type of membership library which initially required an annual subscription of $10. In the beginning, the Athenaeum emphasized its reading room which was "furnished with all the celebrated political literary, and commercial journals of the day, foreign and domestic." Among its rules and regulations was "no book, pamphlet, or newspaper is ever to be permitted to be taken from the room by subscribers; so that patrons of the institution may be certain at all times of finding any publications which they may have occasion to read or refer to." The Athenaeum changed from an annual subscription library to one which required the purchase of shares which were limited in number to 1,049 by its charter. Purchasers of shares were called "Proprietors". In the ticket above Proprietor Alvan Lamson (who held share # 189) has authorized use of the library by his son Artemas Ward Lamson who inherited his father's share in 1865. Athenaeums in the United States were mostly institutions for the elite and were very different from the free public libraries that evolved in this country in the second half of the 19th century. A good article in the New York Times on the remaining athenaeums including the Boston Athenaeum is located here.

(confession/disclaimer/warning: five and a half weeks into parenting, i am quickly becoming aware of what a beyond full-time job it is. how do people have more than one child? these days, time, which i used to hunt and gather efficiently and in abundance, is hard to come by. i mention this to say that the once-noble nine-part syllabus-building series has lately, by necessity, suffered from a lack of attention. as such, these posts in pixels hardly match my best ideas and intentions in my head.)

now that you have collected and compiled your course readings, you are ready for assignments.

in a perfect world, students (and professors) would come to class fully prepared and wildly curious, seeking knowledge not grades, fostering community not competition. and although this sometimes happens, it's all to rare. enter assignments.

assignments come in all forms and sizes. there's reading assignments to encourage students to do the readings, making subsequent class discussions more interesting and participatory. there's homework assignments that require students to take what they learn in class and apply it outside of class. there's major assignments that require students to wrestle with class themes and topics and synthesize them into the form of tests, papers, and projects. and there's extra credit assignments, little nuggets that reward (or pamper?) students for taking the course topic a few steps farther.

once you have your assignments, add them to your syllabus, save the document, shut down your computer, and celebrate your progress.