Surviving Public Transportation (In Heels!)

So today's the day of my monthly Folger seminar in D.C. I was up at 5 A.M. determined to make it to D.C. without missing a single connection.

I only had to ask for directions 5 times. Bleh, but I hate walking around cities before the sun is even up! The SEPTA trolley was bizarre – it's a trolley, all right, and it kinda looks like a bus (single compartment, driver up front, bus doors, even the little pull cord to let the bus know you want a stop) only... it's underground! What's with that?? And let me tell you, the labels on the station were awful. Signs, people. Please!

The 30th Street Amtrak Station was all pretty with high ceilings and column out front – the kind of place that would look right at home in downtown D.C. – with the natural side effect that it was so echoy you couldn't hear a word of the announcements. Brilliant planning. I miss Paddington station! Especially since "watch the gap" just isn't nearly as catchy as "mind the gap." Sorry. :-)

With all of that, I expected the train to also falter in comparison with my (perhaps now rosy) memory of British trains. THERE I was wrong. Nice clean interior. Not much leg room, and certainly no tables for people to work on – have to go for the snack car for that – BUT it did have power strips for my poor laptop so I was guaranteed power my entire trip. On the whole, I think that stacks up favorably.

We had a beautiful sunrise on the train. Red in the morning, sailors take warning.... If I'd been driving, I would have pulled over to get pix. Alas, one can't just ask the train's conductor to stop for a moment, to satisfy a photographic urge. And my poor camera just can't focus at 90 mph (or however fast we were going to keep up with the traffic on I-95).

To make sure that I haven't come down too harshly on Philly, let me assure you I got completely lost in D.C., too. I came out of Union Station, foolishly went to the sign that said "First Street" and ended up on the WRONG "First Street." Me and numbered streets apparently just don't get along. After walking 15 minutes (in heels!) I figured it out and went back to the station to pick up the right First Street. And finally limped into the Folger 15 minutes later.

Lessons learned:

It doesn't matter how formal an occasion you're going to that evening. Just wear your hiking boots and tell anyone who looks at you funny to deal with it! :-)

Research Library Etiquette

On my last day in the library here at Illinois, I thought I'd take a moment to reflect upon the proper archive/research library behavior. I've seen some absolutely mind-boggling mistakes that make me wonder if that person has any common sense whatsoever - let's drink bottled orange juice and hold a highlighter in our hand while we read the 500-year-old books! (Such actions invariably set off the Attack Librarians, which can be very entertaining.)

Other parts of library/archival behavior code aren't quite so self-evident. Now some places are stricter than others so you should always check each archive/library's website (I've actually seen one that will let you bring your purse into the reading room, as long as it isn't too big) but for the most part here are the rules:

1) Pencils only. No pens, highlighters, crayons, or anything else that might leave a permanent mark on the document.

2) You can bring in your own paper – sometimes – but be prepared to have your pile of papers and/or notebook searched on your way out. It's not that they don't trust you, they just don't trust you with their priceless, irreplaceable and very portable manuscripts!

3) You can bring in your laptop and computer cord, but the computer bag must be left in a locker outside the reading room. Some reading rooms will have laptop-free zones, so be careful where you sit. Also, some places will require you to open up your laptop on the way out to make sure you haven't hidden anything between the screen and the keyboard.

4) Rarely, you will be allowed to bring in a camera to take pictures, but the flash MUST be turned off and don't even think about bringing in your camera bag.

5) In case it isn't already obvious – no bags. Nothing that you can hide stuff in. A few archives actually will hand out clear plastic tote-sized bags for you to pile your junk into, so you can carry it, but even then you will often have to pull everything out of the bag for inspection.

6) Jackets, hooded sweatshirts with big pockets, and other all-concealing clothing is also a no-no. Layers are good (for preservation purposes, the ideal temperature to store books – and hence the ideal temperature for a reading room – is something like 64 degrees!) but make sure they're not big bulky ones. Rule of thumb: if it's what you wear to smuggle your own food into the movie theatres, don't wear it to the archive.

And that's it. Simple!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go drive for sixteen hours. And reflect upon how much cooler H.G. Wells' The Time Machine would have been if he'd kept the hippo scene....

Home Stretch

So today begins my last week in Illinois! I got to the library right on time this morning (okay, I do that most every morning) and stayed almost to closing (you can't stay all the way to closing because that's rude - the staff wants to leave at closing, too, but they've got to put away all your books first).

After all that hard work, I headed over to Panera, where the internet is much faster than my hotel and tried to email pictures into the Saint Mary's College of Maryland 2009 Governor's Cup Photography Competition. Phew, that's a mouthful! But I have some beautiful pictures... if only they weren't such huge files!

Research accomplished today:

1) Read some more almanacs, including one that had a list of "corrupt jurors" in it. THAT's a helluva way to go down into history!

2) Read some books about mathematical games and how to cheat at cards.

3) Read an Italian arithmetic book. Well, read is perhaps too strong a word, considering I don't read Italian. Although Italian is basically Latin. Which I barely read. But Latin, I mean, it might as well be Spanish. Now THAT I can read...!

P.S. I'm apparently really into my exclamation points today. Must be because I read about this:

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/09/victoria-strauss-vdm-verlag-dr-mueller.html

and am still in !?!?!?

It's Alive!

So I replaced the battery in my watch today. I'd forgotten how... readable... it used to be. Of course, the jewelry shop guy helpfully tried to reprogram it with date and time and gave up about the time he realized he'd turned on the alarm and couldn't get it turned off. Luckily, I have the instructions safely scanned into a jpeg that resides in my good ol' harddrive.

On a totally different note, I think by the end of my tenure I will have stumbled onto just about every single cataloguing problem in UIUC's collection. It's kinda crazy.

Research accomplished today:

1) Learned how to use trigonometry to find the location of a bee's nest.

2) Read several mss account books.

3) Got distracted looking at pretty pictures from British History Online

(a wonderful website - http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ )

4) Helped my co-Velde scholar get set up to take pictures and download them to his Mac

Errr, okay, so that last one wasn't research. Maybe those last two...

If You Hit The Corn Fields, You've Gone Too Far

So I went out to experience some of the local Urbana-Champaign culture this weekend. First I hit up the 34th Annual Urbana Sweet Corn Festival, then I headed a bit south of Champaign to the Curtis Orchards for some apple picking.

Sweet corn eaten: 0.

Apples picked: 0.

Pictures taken: 113.

Um. Yeah. Who's not really surprised?

CQ, CQ

Do you ever get the feeling that the universe is trying to tell you something?

I got into the library today and my book had been misplaced. They kept trying to bring me out the book I had returned (you know, the one I needlessly took pictures of yesterday).

Then, when I did my next set of requests, they only brought me 3 of my 4 books. They'd forgotten to get one.

Then, when I did my NEXT set of requests, they couldn't find any of the books - they brought me something that wasn't even in English - and that set off a whole sequence of "Is this it?" "No." "Is this it?" "No." "I checked the catalogue, is this it?"

::Sighs.::

So instead of reading what I really should have been reading, I let myself get sidetracked reading about chronograms and all sorts of people who thought Rome was going to fall in 1666. London. Rome. Close enough!

What Do Academics Talk About?

So for anyone who's ever wondered what a bunch of academics talk about when they go to dinner, here's your answer:

Everything!

Seriously. I went out to dinner with the folks from Rare Books, as a going away party for one of their number, and conversation ranged from interior decorating to Alaskan serial killers.

Now you know.

Other randomness:

1) My knee was all out of whack this morning and I had to wear a brace into work. Now, this isn't my bad knee, noooo, that would be too logical. It's my good (left) knee!

2) Apparently there's a first edition copy of the Book of Mormon here at UIUC. The Mormons visit all the time to get their picture taken with it. Jane suggested I have my picture taken with the Book of Mormon and I countered with the Principia Mathematica. If it happens, you'll know why!

Research accomplished today:

I read through a few more almanacs and took a ton of pictures of one which was heavily annotated. But then, of course, I find out Alvan already has pictures/transcriptions of it... oops. I'm not an idiot graduate student or anything. No, not me!

Will Everyone Please Exeunt The Building?

I saw some restaurant giving out free breakfasts on my bike ride in this morning. Alas, I had already made myself scrambled eggs and wanted to be on time to the library. Otherwise I'd've been all about the free food.

Once again I beat most of the staff in (oops) and took up my now-usual seat in the glassed in display case that is the reading room part of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library. I feel like a fish in a bowl. Or maybe an ant in an ant colony, because I am a most productive little worker bug: I read through at least a dozen almanacs today.

Entertaining randomness:

1) The light sheet I mentioned yesterday is actually called a "transluminator." Yikes, that's a mouthful.

2) One of the other readers had to climb up onto the table to take a picture with her camera and tripod. I'm so glad other people do that besides me! There are days when I seriously wish I had a booster seat....

3) Said reader used up the battery on her camera, so Alvan came in and took pictures on his camera which he's going to email her. How awesome is that? Have I mentioned I love this place??

4) Last, but not least, I finally noticed the exit sign today. You know, that glowing thing above the doors out that usually reads "Exit"? Well, at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)'s Rare Books & Manuscript Library, that sign actually reads:

"Exeunt."

I laughed out loud. I mean, a Latin exit sign? That's on par with Phil Brontosaurus and the Papers of Manson Nevermore!