"Do what you love, and never work a day in your life" (aka, my summer job)
I am so glad that, despite the minimum wage pay, I decided to take the job working at the library this summer. I am working directly for Susan again, but instead of doing data entry on the Manuscripta database, like the last time I worked there, she's got me doing a bunch of different projects, ALL OF WHICH I'm tickled to death about.
One - Creating material for the Manuscripta journal! PUBLICATION! Hah. Not really the kind I can put on a CV, but short notices and book reviews are part of academia, and I'll be writing them for our journal! I feel like during the course of my education at SLU, I've been glad that I ended up with the topic I've got for my dissertation, but a part of me is sad to have left behind the Anglo-Saxons, historical linguistics, and manuscript studies, my great loves throughout undergrad and my first year of grad school. While I find my current work interesting and important, it lacks that heart-in-my-throat excitement that I always felt while learning about dark age books. ANYWAY, the great thing is, the first work Susan wants me to review is on Anglo-Saxon manuscript history from c.500-1000. YES! I can SO DO THAT, and will love reading and reviewing this book.
Two - Cataloging! When SLU's VFL MSS collection was first properly cataloged, about ten or so years ago, only about 40 manuscripts were described.There are close to 60 manuscripts in the collection now, some were never cataloged in the first place, others are more recent additions. Ashley was working to research and catalog some of these texts, but there are several manuscripts that are still waiting to be properly investigated - especially our Oriental MSS collection. Susan has decided to throw me and my minimal Arabic skills at the problem, to begin investigation our few leaves from Arabic texts. EEK! Obviously, I don't have the expertise to do this properly. But, the fact remains that no one in the library has and of the requisite skills to start this work, and so almost no work has been done on them. We have these Arabic manuscript leaves that we know next to nothing about. So, anything I can find out at all will be helpful and welcome additions to the empty files on these manuscript leaves. My tiny bit of Arabic is more Arabic than anyone else working in the VFL has, so I'll have to do! Plus, what Susan is counting on is that I know people - Arabic lanugage teachers, Hispano-Arabic historians, Islamicists, etc - who might be willing to take a look at it with me and aid in our investigation. How thrilling! And a perfect excuse/motivation to practice my Arabic and learn about codicology.
Three - Exhibit! There's currently a GREAT little exhibit in the VFL display cases called "Recollected Forms" that Ashley put together. It'll be up for awhile, but come Fall, Susan wants something new in the cases, and suggested that I spend time researching and putting together a thematic, didactic exhibit for the display. YAY! I have some experience putting together a display case exhibition - I did one for the Colorado history museum back in the day - and doing another would be a blast. Choosing the theme and the content will require me to become very familiar with the entirety of SLU's MS collection. So basically, I get to play with ANYTHING I want in SLU's collection - Manuscripts, facsimiles, anything cool, until I've got a good idea of what I think would be neat to display. Huzzah! The fun part is that the display will be shown to visiting classes of undergrads, so it should be didactic, visually interesting, and accessible. I LOVE doing that for undergrads!
Basically, this summer my job will be to play around with all the things I LOVE about medieval history, but no longer focus on in my work. I'm thrilled, and hopefully these MS projects will help kindle an excitement for medieval history that will drive my first year of teaching and dissertating.
Also, speaking of manuscripts, how cool is THIS?
http://www.medievalists.net/2013/05/21/reading-the-unreadable-new-x-ray-technology-can-now-read-rolled-up-scrolls/
One - Creating material for the Manuscripta journal! PUBLICATION! Hah. Not really the kind I can put on a CV, but short notices and book reviews are part of academia, and I'll be writing them for our journal! I feel like during the course of my education at SLU, I've been glad that I ended up with the topic I've got for my dissertation, but a part of me is sad to have left behind the Anglo-Saxons, historical linguistics, and manuscript studies, my great loves throughout undergrad and my first year of grad school. While I find my current work interesting and important, it lacks that heart-in-my-throat excitement that I always felt while learning about dark age books. ANYWAY, the great thing is, the first work Susan wants me to review is on Anglo-Saxon manuscript history from c.500-1000. YES! I can SO DO THAT, and will love reading and reviewing this book.
Two - Cataloging! When SLU's VFL MSS collection was first properly cataloged, about ten or so years ago, only about 40 manuscripts were described.There are close to 60 manuscripts in the collection now, some were never cataloged in the first place, others are more recent additions. Ashley was working to research and catalog some of these texts, but there are several manuscripts that are still waiting to be properly investigated - especially our Oriental MSS collection. Susan has decided to throw me and my minimal Arabic skills at the problem, to begin investigation our few leaves from Arabic texts. EEK! Obviously, I don't have the expertise to do this properly. But, the fact remains that no one in the library has and of the requisite skills to start this work, and so almost no work has been done on them. We have these Arabic manuscript leaves that we know next to nothing about. So, anything I can find out at all will be helpful and welcome additions to the empty files on these manuscript leaves. My tiny bit of Arabic is more Arabic than anyone else working in the VFL has, so I'll have to do! Plus, what Susan is counting on is that I know people - Arabic lanugage teachers, Hispano-Arabic historians, Islamicists, etc - who might be willing to take a look at it with me and aid in our investigation. How thrilling! And a perfect excuse/motivation to practice my Arabic and learn about codicology.
Three - Exhibit! There's currently a GREAT little exhibit in the VFL display cases called "Recollected Forms" that Ashley put together. It'll be up for awhile, but come Fall, Susan wants something new in the cases, and suggested that I spend time researching and putting together a thematic, didactic exhibit for the display. YAY! I have some experience putting together a display case exhibition - I did one for the Colorado history museum back in the day - and doing another would be a blast. Choosing the theme and the content will require me to become very familiar with the entirety of SLU's MS collection. So basically, I get to play with ANYTHING I want in SLU's collection - Manuscripts, facsimiles, anything cool, until I've got a good idea of what I think would be neat to display. Huzzah! The fun part is that the display will be shown to visiting classes of undergrads, so it should be didactic, visually interesting, and accessible. I LOVE doing that for undergrads!
Basically, this summer my job will be to play around with all the things I LOVE about medieval history, but no longer focus on in my work. I'm thrilled, and hopefully these MS projects will help kindle an excitement for medieval history that will drive my first year of teaching and dissertating.
Also, speaking of manuscripts, how cool is THIS?
http://www.medievalists.net/2013/05/21/reading-the-unreadable-new-x-ray-technology-can-now-read-rolled-up-scrolls/