"Maggs says he enjoys the process of discovery behind letters and books. 'I'm a frustrated historian or novelist,' he says. 'Books and manuscripts are the greatest repositories of history and history, maybe, is the most important thing of all for giving meaning to our lives.'"
Today was one of the most fascinating and educational days of my LIS career. I needed to observe a library for not one, but two projects, and had spent some time looking for a library that would fit with my interests. After sending e-mails around about the possibility of there being an archives in Denver with an Asian bent and getting nothing, it was serendipitous that during a completely unrelated meeting of a publishing group I mentioned wanting to work with Asian collections and someone mentioned that UC Boulder actually had an Asian special collection. After a few e-mail exchanges I was in contact with the librarian in charge of the Japanese/Korean portion of the collection, and arranged to meet him. That happened today. The interview I had with him, and subsequently UC Boulder's Archivist down in the library basement, was worth an entire semester of classes.
The only downside to this facinating education was that it took twice as long as I had been anticipating, and I had expected to be able to finish to projects before class that evening. Instead I got to enjoy a leisurely ride through 20 some miles of rush hour traffic, and banged out a somewhat unprofessional bibliography in the hour I had before class. The assignment didn't carry too much weight though, and what I gained today was more than worth it. I am absolutely exhausted, so I'll have to go into more detail tomorrow (but not too much. I don't kiss and tell.)
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