Librarying

Not quite the same thing as Bunburying, but it will do. Independent research libraries like the Newberry tend to have more developed "personalities" than university libraries, and the Huntington is no exception. Since the core collection developed from one private collector's interests, it has quirks that carry over into the modern acquisitions process. Moreover, like the Newberry (which attracts genealogists), the Huntington has lots of permanent residents in the reading rooms or scattered about the desks located in the stacks themselves. It's a nice place to work: after you're done reading, you can wander about the pretty gardens, look at the museum galleries, and have a bite to eat in the tea room. (It's even nicer now that they've turned the heat up in the main reading room.) I've been going there since '95, when I started work on my dissertation. The collections aren't particularly useful for the project I've got going right now, but shelf-walking can still turn up interesting finds. This time, I came across a couple of volumes from the Protestant Magazine, an early Victorian evangelical journal founded to "protect" Britain from post-Emancipation Catholic interests. Jewish emancipation (still several years off) did not exactly bring them great joy either, which suggests that this magazine was fairly far to the evangelical right. (A number of evangelicals were firmly pro-emancipation.) In any event, there was a lot of interesting historical rhetoric in there, so I photocopied several articles.

After that, I tagged along with my father to his CSU campus. Their library, while small, is still about three or four times the size of my campus' own library. (And unlike my campus, they've got the new periodicals out on the open shelves...) Tomorrow, if all proceeds according to plan, we'll wander down to my alma mater and I'll try out my nice shiny new alumni association card, which in theory allows me to check out books. With any luck, that will hold me until it's time to go back to NY.