Class and French Letters

I finished my one and only class for the summer, Collection Development. It was taught by two librarians from JHU. I enjoyed the class very much and learned some valuable information about topics such as budgets, things selectors should be aware of, the cost of materials such as e-books and journals, the impact of the changing nature of scholarly communication upon collection development and collection development issues in the real world. I wish I could describe it all here, but that would mean re-hashing six weeks of materials I learned in class. If a person is interested in librarianship, a collection development course would be highly beneficial.

On Tuesday, a rare book librarian from JHU visited the class and it re-ignited my desire to work with rare books, preferably as a rare-book librarian (how many times can I fit the word "rare" into a sentence?). I still like academic and research librarianship, but I always thought it would be fun to work with old, dusty books, whether as a bookseller or as a librarian. I still want to go to Rare Book School. I asked the manager of reader services at the Society and, because of the work that I'm doing there, I may have a pretty good chance of landing something in rare book librarianship if I try hard enough.

In Society news, the finding aid project continues. Today, I finished the last of the letters for the State of Georgia and am now working on the letters for the French Society of the Cincinnati. Of course, a good portion of them are written in French, but luckily, I have retained enough of the French I learned in college to get the gist of the letters. Plus, some thoughtful souls included translations of a few of the letters. The letters from 1783 mostly concern the set up of the French branch of the Society. General d'Estaing writes to Washington in hopes that some French naval officers can be admitted into the Society. The Marquis de Lafayette and Washington trade letters back and forth concerning the Society. Although the writers were aware that they were writing for posterity, it is still fascinating to read about their concerns (and humorous to read how expressive they were in their gratitude). I think these letters are valuable, not only as a history of the Society, but as a history of the friendship and collaboration between the United States and France.