Volume 11, Number 4: November/December 2005

Page 2 - The vice provost for University Libraries writes about the many efforts underway to archive electronic resources for future use. • The director of the Tri-Campus Libraries comments on freedom of speech & the academic library. Page 3 - Manuscripts from Archives & Special Collections record the recollections of a Civil War nurse, a Connecticut naturalist, and a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Page 4 - A WPA mural by James Daugherty is rescued and installed in the Jeremy Richard Library. • Access Services finds new ways to improve services for library users. Page 5 - A renovated UConn Health Center Library is transformed from a warehouse for print into an information commons. Page 6 - Staff news

What Happens in the Links? Framing Judgment in Context

Scholars of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have focused much of their research on the interpretation of individual tales in the collection. The meaning behind these tales is clearly important to the work as a whole, as the Tales discuss grand themes that run throughout human life. The choice of themes and arguments in each pilgrim’s tale can also reflect back on the pilgrim’s own motivations and ideas. However, in searching for some greater meaning for Chaucer’s collection, it is important not to leave out the framework within which the tales exist. The links that join the tales to one another, arguably the portions of the piece that are the most original to Chaucer, do not always receive the same kind of attention that is focused on the most popular tales. In a work that is so complex, with its layered narration and interactions between tale and teller, the tales cannot possibly stand on their own, containing all of the meaning behind the work. The links have the potential to be particularly revealing in terms of how the audience should read the entire story of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrimage, because they ground the tales in specific circumstances.