Traister, Daniel H.

Disciplines

Library and Information Science

Position

Curator, Research Services

Introduction

Daniel H. Traister is Curator for Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania's Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Bibliographer for Literature in English. He provides reference service and acquires materials for the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and also selects English language materials for general circulation for Penn's main arts and humanities Library. He occasionally teaches classes in the Department of English. His area of specialization is the literature of the English Renaissance. He holds the BA, MA, and PhD in English literature, and an MS in Library Service and publishes in both fields.

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Review of The Oxford Chronology of English Literature
(2003-07-01) Traister, Daniel H
Reference books hide their learning. The reader who opens The Oxford Chronology of English Literature to 1815 may read, inter alia, about "[John Galt (1779)]/F The Majolo / A Tale / FOR H. COLBURN / Anon. 'Introductory Address'dated Apr. 1815. / Repub. in 2 vols with additional text, 1816" (1:354; "F" stands for "fiction"). Nothing about such an entry surprises or perhaps even seems of interest.
Austen in Her Time and Ours
(2004-03-21) Traister, Daniel H
Review of Stephen Parks, ed., The Beinecke Library of Yale University
(2007-07-01) Traister, Daniel H
Review of Illuminating Letters
(2002-10-01) Traister, Daniel H
Illuminating Letters, edited by Paul C. Gutjahr and Megan L. Benton, adds notably to the study of "the relationship between a text's typography and it literary interpretation."
A Peculiarly English "Middle Road"
(2006-03-21) Traister, Daniel H
Published in 1975, Marilyn Butler’s Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press) instantly detached Austen from the constricted world of the "little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with so fine a brush as to produce little effect after much labour." Before Butler, Austen’s critics, whether they valued or despised that world, had agreed in finding it by and large confined to her little bit of ivory. Since Butler, Austen’s readers see that her fictions, and Austen herself, clearly engage with the great world of her revolutionary times.
Sidney's Purposeful Humor: Astrophil and Stella 59 and 83
(1982-10-01) Traister, Daniel H
Sidney's words, as Rosalie has remarked,"can at once triumph, assert and deny the truth of what they say."1 They give to Astrophil a verbal dexterity - or ambidexterity - that is one of his many attractions. Few characters in the literature of the English Renaissance are as engaging as the protean Astrophil who speaks to us from the sonnets and songs of Sidney's sequence.
The Furness Memorial Library
(2000-01-01) Traister, Daniel H
Public Services and Outreach in Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Libraries
(2003-06-01) Traister, Daniel H
Rare book, manuscript, and special collections libraries remain both more difficult and more forbidding to use than any other parts of most libraries. A shift from an ethos that emphasized acquisition, cataloging, and preservation has brought into new prominence issues generally grouped together under the rubric of "promotion." This essay considers some of the ways in which this addition to the ethos of special collections has the potential to change for the better the ways such libraries are perceived and used.
Is There a Future for Special Collections? And Should There Be? A Polemical Essay
(2000-01-01) Traister, Daniel H
OF THE HOLY TRINITY - collecting, preserving, and making accessible precious books, manuscripts, and other special materials - preservation takes precedence. Following are three brief prefatory notes that will be helpful in understanding this essay. First, readers should note that the word polemical appears in the essay's title. I ask the reader's indulgence in understanding that I mean this word literally. The essay is a polemic. Intended to be serious, it is not therefore also intended to be "balanced" or "fair". In addition, it is an essay, not a paper; and its informality of style is intended to reflect a difference between these two genres.
Review of The Future of the Book
(1999) Traister, Daniel H
If reviews in the journal bore titles, this review's title would be "Our Love is Here to Stay." The overall burden of the essays collected by Jeffrey Nunberg in The Future of the Book, despite some scattered sour notes, is, like that of Gershwin's lyrics, reassurance. Not to worry. The book is here to stay.