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.

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!