So I was about 50/50 at the British Library today
I got to see the particular texts I wanted to see, and one of them was actually the originally typescript with ms corrections and emendations of the Play That Was Banned By The Censor in 1907 unless the author agreed to remove all references to something that was, in fact, fairly key a) to the overall action and b) to the symbolism.
Also the published version of the 1920s updated revised version (finally passed for production in the 1930s).
Also a critical study of the playwright in question which had a few useful things to say.
However, I also wanted to look at a couple of volumes of Time and Tide to see if it had anything to say about questions relating to the issues on which I am giving a paper of which all this is part, and I did not want to look at the microfilm, and there were two sets of the printed version which were on 48-hr+ retrieval (on reflection, this would have worked for today, but I was planning on going in yesterday) and there was what appeared to be the hard copy with a rather odd reference and produceable only in Rare Books and Manuscripts, but it was something I could order in reasonable expectation that it would be there on my arrival -
Except this was one of those maddening things when a catalogue or a cataloguer has picked up something - in this case, I am presuming a few odd issues of T&T forming part of some person's papers - and catalogued them as if they were the whole journal: the description certainly did not indicate to the contrary.
This is exactly the sort of thing that made me dubious during former job about the proposition to put everything into one huge searchable catalogue... which can work if you're really clear if something is a manuscript or a file in an archive, etc, in the description. (And even then people get confused.) (People were always getting confused and thinking one file about person or organisation in somebody's else's papers/some institution's archives was the papers/archives of person or organisation, sigh.) This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2914484.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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