Society of the Cincinnati

My next post was going to be about LBSC 690 but since I posted a library-related post in my other journal, I figured I'd cross-post it here as well.

Last Friday was my first day volunteering for the Society of the Cincinnati. I was supposed to have volunteered there at the beginning of February but then Snowmaggedon happened and it was postponed. For those who don't remember my last post, the Society of the Cincinnati was a group founded by Washington and several of his lieutenants, generals and other army compatriots at the end of the Revolutionary War. It seems to have become somewhat obscure after the deaths of Washington, Hamilton and other founders who were connected with it, but the Society survived and still exists to this day. The building in which it's headquartered is quite impressive. Anderson House is located on Embassy Row and was owned by one of the members who was an ambassador (to Japan if I remember correctly). He later bequeathed it to the Society after his death and they've been there ever since. I highly recommend visiting this place if you're ever in DC, if only for the architecture.

My first assignment was very light. As the library collects materials related to the Revolutionary War period, they receive catalogues of materials that might be of interest. My duty was to go through their online and their card catalogue (yes, they still have a physical card catalogue, especially for older materials) to see which items the library possess and to look through the catalogue to see which items they may want to purchase in the future. I hadn't used a card catalogue since I was a little girl...until Friday. Mostly, I liked to find books by browsing through the shelves (and still do). The library already has an extensive collection so there weren't too many gaps in their holdings. I did come across a letter in the catalogue written by the Marquis de Lafayette to du Pont (of du Pont family fame), written in 1828.

Aside from that, I was able to attend a lecture about George Washington's letters which was given on the same day. I found it very interesting; it made me wonder how (and if) future archivists will be able to preserve any materials from this time period as a lot of texts and such are being digitized. I'm a little ambivalent about digitization (which is probably sacrilegious in the information science and information technology profession). It's useful, but on the other hand, technology fails or it becomes obsolete. You'd have to find ways to prevent the files from becoming corrupt, convert the files to a different format, and you would likely need to have someone with knowledge of how older technology works (I'm thinking 100 years from now). Books and other printed materials fall apart, but if you handle them carefully (and print it on acid-free paper or another type of paper that takes a long time to degrade), you're likely to have them around for hundreds of years. However, this is an issue in which I would have to put my personal feelings aside in order to be an effective librarian. Be that as it may, if I ever get my own house/condo/apartment in which I live for the rest of my life, I'm going to have books EVERYWHERE!