This is a real job?

Ah, what a wonderful day in Special Collections. Today I got to play with . . . *Ahem* I mean, I got to seriously study and evaluate . . . the double folio portion of the Rare Books. They're wonderful. Just what makes them so different from the rest of the collection, I cannot actually say. They have something special, though. The duodecimos do too. I suppose perhaps they attract me because they are uncommon. You just know by looking at them that they will prove special because someone put extra thought into their assembly, wanted to make an impact with their size. So today I flipped through a few folio facsimilies. One was the manuscript text to a novel I read a few years ago for my "Concepts of Tragedy" course, Sons and Lovers. How fun to read Lawrence's original text alongside his amendments! The other facsimilie was the Book of Kells, which I leafed through sitting cross-legged on the floor between the stacks, breathing in the familiar odor of old books, which isn't exactly a musty smell, though it is a distinctly old and comforting one.

I, of course, looked through and inspected (for I really was working, most of the time) many other large tomes today as well. Had you been standing near me you would often have heard a sharp intake of breath followed by a low "ooohhhhhhh" as I pulled out shelf after shelf of books. There were sixteenth and seventh century Bibles with their heavy metal clasps (http://libwww.syr.edu/information/spcollections/conservation/clasp2.jpg) still in place and functioning just as well today as they ever did, holding the book tightly shut and keeping all the pages crisp and clean. My jaw dropped over a box set of the first two books of Gulliver's Travels that had the voyage to Lilliput in duodecimo form of only a few inches high and tiny print and the voyage to Brobdingnag as a double folio with large print to give one something of the perspective of Gulliver while reading. I marvled over a book which was probably better than a foot thick and bound in corderoy. Not at all practical to use, for the spine will never bear such weight, but intriguing nonetheless. They finally kicked me out at 5:00, but I trust it was nothing personal. I mean, it was closing time.