Occupation for a Thursday afternoon

[aamcnamara]

Today was more exciting than I had expected.

I went in to work this afternoon assuming I'd be on the reference desk for a couple of hours, maybe work a bit on a side project after that, I might have to answer the telephone once or twice if it turned out to be a busy day...

As it turns out, GEMELA (whose web site I just looked at for the first time) is having a conference here on campus (and at UMass) next weekend. And Special Collections had said they'd get up a display-case-worth of our pre-1800 Spanish books for the library court, except no one got back to them until just today.

At which point, since the rare-books librarian is out until Tuesday and the display has to be up on Monday, the answer became "Well, Alena will be in for three hours this afternoon--she can just put something together!"

I would like to make note of a few things here:
1. I have never put together a display for Special Collections before.
2. I do not speak Spanish. (I really don't speak 1700s Spanish.)
3. I only know about pre-1800s Spanish history indirectly (from my History of the Americas class two years ago in high school).

But I was game to try--as I always am--so despite these facts, I managed to:
a) Take a list of books fitting the criteria in our collection and figure out which ones were vaguely relevant to the conference topic;
b) Go through them and find interesting things to show off--images, something I could write about, etc;
c) Figure out how many (and which) of the things I found would fit in said display case;
d) Lay them out prettily, with wedges under them and book-snakes to make them lie flat (sub-category of figuring out which things could be made to lie prettily with addition of book-snakes and wedges; also, use of huge Cantigas volume which I was instructed to put in the display);
e) Draft info-cards about the books/why all of the things were interesting.

Tomorrow, I will print the info-cards on nicer paper, attempt to get into the display case, put everything in the display case (with luck the estimate of its size is correct and all the things will fit), and then... well, go to class.

My big fear is that I have done something unspeakably stupid, in my selection of books or my description of them on the info-cards (I tried to check information in several places on the Internet, but there weren't always several English sources readily available). Ancillary to that, the fear said stupidity will cause the historians to think I am unintelligent and/or that Mount Holyoke is not a very good place. I kind of doubt any of them will even notice the display's existence, but--you know. I hate turning out any kind of rushed or only-passable product, even if I just had three hours to do it in.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Academic historians are academic. If they see a mistake, they'll tell you because it's painful (and if you're a librarian you know what I mean), not because they think you're an idiot. They know perfectly well that nobody but them speaks Baroque Spanish. Academic-we are a lot like fannish-us.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah. I know/knew that, mostly--I think the last sentence of my post is the truth, really, that I hate being rushed on a project. Anyhow, thank you for being reassuring. Some days I do need that.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

OH YES. Being rushed makes everything worse. Good luck.

[aliseadae]

If you do need any non google translate Spanish translations, I could see what I could do if I got the email in time. I don't speak Baroque Spanish, though, just modern Spanish.

Good luck!

[mapache]

It's quite intelligible, actually. Written Spanish has changed very little in the last several hundred years (although there have been several phonetic shifts in how it's pronounced). It's certainly been much more stable than English, where trying to read the 500-year-old Canterbury Tales is quite trying, and 1000-year-old Beowulf is in an entirely different language, whereas 400-year-old Don Quixote just sounds kind of archaic and the 800-year-old Cantar de Mio Cid is still easier to make out than than the Canterbury Tales, especially if you're also familiar with Portuguese.

[vcmw]

Also, librarians are always throwing displays together at the last minute and sort of hoping that they haven't included something heinously awfully wrong in the mix.

Does thinking of it less like a rushed, imperfect job and more like some kind of strange rite of passage help at all? Something everyone who works in libraries (that have displays) has to do at least once?

Also also - that display sounds extremely cool and I want to come poke at it. *jealous* of your rare books fun.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Thinking of it as a strange rite of passage totally helps. And I went and took pictures of the result, for records/reference, so--not sure what the rules are about posting 'em on the Internet, but I could probably email them to you, if you want! Not that that lets you poke at the books, but anyway.

The worst part about this job is that it has a time-limit. When I graduate there will be no more rare books fun, unless I get my MLIS and go into the field, which... I am considering, admittedly.

[aliseadae]

Email them to meee?

I'm so envious of your job.

[cloudscudding.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you came up with a very sensible approach for a tricky project. Go you!