This week I’m in Manhattan, on a research grant from the day job, spending my days at the Pierpont Morgan Library. I am in my element here, I have to say. I spent Monday with photocopies of manuscripts and yesterday morning with microfilm, but I worked with a manuscript from around 1440 yesterday afternoon. Later this week, I will look at an early printed book from about 1530–not an incunabulum, like I said in the title, but “early printed book” doesn’t fit in the linky title line very well!
I get these chances to do research very seldom, but they are always revelatory when I get them. Not only do I enjoy doing this research, like a pig in clover, my aunt would have said, but I’m very good at it. It boosts my self-confidence immensely to dust off my paleographic and language skills, immersing myself in the alien cultures of 15th- and 16th-century England and France and finding myself so very much at home.
I find that I am storing up all the experience like photographs of loved ones, to take with me. I can pull them out in low times to remember who I am and where I come from.
I’m not meeting my other goals due to spotty internet, but I will have time to catch up when I return home. I am ecstatic that I could start this Round with such a wonderful sprint, or to follow on my fledgling images from last Round, a breathtaking soar far above the treetops.
Kait’s post about best practices and checking in with others is a very good one. Please add the best practice of encouraging everyone; they are listed here.
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell 