Exhibit Notes: Theodore Sturgeon

Lilly call number: PS3545.A38

Items in the exhibit:

• The Dreaming Jewels
• Without Sorcery
• More Than Human
• More Than Human - proof copy
• "Amok Time"

Theodore Sturgeon is probably one of the lesser known writers in the exhibit.  His work has not been continuously reprinted like Bradbury or Asimov.  His stories have not been consistently turned into movies like Dick.  He is not even heavily connected with the episodes of Star Trek that he wrote, like Ellison is with "The City on the Edge of Forever."  When Becky read through my labels for the exhibit, when I would comment about an author (such as Sturgeon) being unknown outside sci-fi fandom, she would be surprised, saying she's always known who they are, but then she knows sci-fi.

"We sell bottles with things in them."

Well, for those of you who have never heard of Theodore Sturgeon, I will say one thing to you: I feel sorry for you.  I had never read anything by him before working on this exhibit, though I was extremely familiar with one of the episodes he wrote for Star Trek.  I read a few of his stories in the books I'd picked for the exhibit and I was hooked.  One of the nice things about science fiction is that most sci-fi writers do short stories and lots of them.  And short stories are, well, short.  So if you want an introduction to a new sci-fi writer, just reading a few of his stories doesn't take very long.  I began with a few stories in Without Sorcery and was so pleased that I was inspired to buy the book, which required a trip to a used book website because Sturgeon's collections haven't been reprinted.  I began with "Shottle Bop," which I chose because the picture at the beginning of the story amused me.  His stories can be surprisingly light-hearted, which is not necessarily usual for science fiction, at least not what I've read.

"It is the pon farr..."

One of the things I knew before choosing the focus of my exhibit was that I wanted to be able to include Star Trek scripts.  I'm a born and bred Trekkie and to not take advantage of the large complement of scripts the Lilly had would have been painful.  Luckily for me, good sci-fi writers wrote for original Trek.  Sturgeon wrote two, and the one in the exhibit is the more famous.  It deals with pon farr, the Vulcan mating drive and rituals.  While I hope that this exhibit might inspire people who have not read science fiction before to give it a try, I have absolutely no expectation that people who see the exhibit will want to watch Star Trek after seeing it.  But it means a lot to me, and it will mean a lot to the sci-fi fans that come through the door.  It has truly been a treat to put together an exhibit that has had so much personal meaning for me, because science fiction was such a large part of my childhood and upbringing.

Weeks 14-15: The Rest Is Silence...

I'm sitting in the reading room at the Lilly right now.  I've finished my projects, but I won't have completed my hours until noon.  I put the final flags in the John Ford exhibit and handed the paperwork over to conservation.  I put copies of the paperwork for my sci-fi exhibit with the materials and replaced a few missing flags.  It's been a long semester and I've done a lot of work, and it's a little bittersweet to see it go.  I spent the last two weeks immersed in John Ford, both here with writing the labels for the movies, and at home with watching the movies.  I answered a few reference questions early in the week and brought in a little money because all of the patrons wanted copies of the materials.  So to now sit here with nothing to do feels odd, and makes me think about what I have done all semester.

Reference:
I learned how to use the various reference materials that the Lilly has to offer: finding aids, collection guides, the physical card catalog.  Each of them was useful, though not perfect.  I spent a lot of time going through boxes, pulling materials.  One of my first solo reference questions was for pictures of John Ford with his family and Katherine Hepburn.  At the time, I was excited to be working with photographs and couldn't imagine that by the end of the semester, Becky would have turned the curation of an exhibit on Ford entirely over to me.  My favorite thing I learned from my reference work was that James Whitcomb Riley went by Jamesy.

Outreach:
One of my favorite activities at the beginning of the semester was working with Becky when she presented to classes.  I just got to sit off to the side and watch until the end, when I helped her pack the things away.  Once and awhile I'd grab supports or weights for her.  It was fun watching the students interact with the collections, particularly when they were impressed.  When I finally got the opportunity to talk about library materials with students, they were fifth graders, not undergrads, and it was almost the most fun I had all semester.  Special collections are absolutely wonderful, and I enjoyed being a part of helping other people learn this.

Science Fiction:
A large part of the semester was taken up with my personal project, curating an exhibition on science fiction authors, a topic the Lilly is uniquely suited to support.  Looking through the papers of Anthony Boucher (aka William Anthony Parker White) and reading letters by some of the sci-fi writers I grew up hearing about was just phenomenal. The work even inspired me to get back to reading science fiction, and I have worked my way through works by these authors since.  The other gratifying part of this project has been the reaction when I tell people about it.  Science fiction has always been a fringe genre, beloved of nerds and geeks.  So, naturally, I was surprised when the reaction to my topic (from people outside my immediate family) was favorable.  Many people seemed to even think it was cool :)  I know that today is being dedicated by geeks the country over to a girl named Katie who was bullied for carrying a Star Wars water bottle to school.  Well, Katie, there are plenty of us out there (and tons of us are girls), and when you grow up I know you'll find your people (I apparently did).

John Ford:
The semester ended with a return to John Ford.  When I went into my sci-fi exhibit, I may not have read most of the books I was including, but I knew what I was doing because I was familiar with the authors and the genre.  As for John Ford, not only had I never seen a single one of his films (with the exception of the clips in "Movie Tonight"), I had never seen a Western (well, a real Western.  Blazing Saddles, "A Fistful of Datas" and "Living in Harmony" don't count).  Four of the movies chosen to be featured in the exhibit were Westerns.  Well, I learned something new.  I learned I like Westerns.  I would even call The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance one of the best movies I've ever seen.  And if it weren't for this work, it might have been a long time, if ever, before I was finally introduced to Ford's films and Westerns.

After I eat lunch, I will be coming back to the Lilly...to train for working the reading room desk next semester.  It's nice that this internship got me a job.  But it's fantastic that I got much more out of it than that.

Exhibit Notes: Philip K. Dick

Lilly call number: PS3554.I3

Items in the exhibit:
A Scanner Darkly
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Preserving Machine
The Variable Man
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Deus Irae
The Man in the High Castle

It is becoming a somewhat familiar refrain in these posts that Philp K. Dick isn't the most well known author.  But, as I said in his label for the exhibit, "...anyone familiar with the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report, or Total Recall (all based on his writings) is at least somewhat familiar with his work."  This gives him a bit of a leg up on Sturgeon and Ellison.  Also, I did not have to turn to the ALF (Auxiliary Library Facility) to get any of his books.  The Lilly had a ready supply up in the stacks.  He's the only author in the exhibit who only has books.  Everyone else has a script or some kind of manuscript materials (or both).  But he does have a paperback, which I don't have for any other author.  My dad has a huge collection of old sci-fi paperbacks, and I always get a kick out of seeing how much (or little) books cost back then.  And there's something more fun about handling an old sci-fi paper back, with its green edges, than an old hardcover. 

Four of the items I put in the exhibit I chose because they had stories (or were novels) off of which movies have been based.  But the other one I picked because they had interesting covers, or because they were listed among some of their best or well-known work.  Since I had not read any Dick before working on the exhibit, and I wanted to have read something in the exhibit by each author before it goes up next spring, I decided to read one of the Dick books that I hadn't heard of: The Man in the High Castle.  The edition that I got from the library and then borrowed from my dad was published by the Library of America who list as part of their mission preserving American literature.  When I told my parents that Dick was the first sci-fi writer to be published by Library of America, my mom wondered why they didn't chose someone well-known.  Well, of all the authors in this exhibit, Dick is the only one not available in modern editions.  Sturgeon's collections aren't reprinted, but at least his collected stories (all thirteen volumes) have been published.  Well, after reading The Man in the High Castle, I knew why Dick was being preserved by Library of America and why it is considered one of his classic works.  It was fantastic,  It's more alternate history than science fiction, which I should think would make it more accessible to non-science fiction readers.  Reading it made me glad that this exhibit had inspired me to get back into reading this genre, because it reminded me why I like it so much, which has been a stress-relieving gift as the semester has wound down.

Weeks 10-13: John Ford, Fifth Graders, and John Ford

So, I've been continuing my work on the John Ford exhibit.  The five movies we're focusing on are Stagecoach, Fort Apache, The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  When I began work on the exhibit, I had not seen a single John Ford film.  I had to read Becky's books about Ford to know anything about these movies.  I have now seen eight and have enjoyed them all.  The exhibit is meant to go along with the opening of the IU Cinema next term.  As part of its inaugural season next year, the Cinema will be doing a John Ford series, including all five of the films we're featuring in the exhibit.  I may have to go see a few of them on the big screen!  For those who are interested, you can find the Cinema schedule for next year here.

Working on John Ford's Westerns keeps making me think of the M*A*S*H episode "Movie Tonight."  To improve morale, Col. Potter gets a hold of his favorite movie, which he describes as having the three things that make a movie great, "horses, cowboys, and horses."  It's John Ford's My Darling Clementine .  The whole company gets really excited to see it, and they all cheer when Henry Fonda comes up o the screen (see above).  That's always been one of my favorite episodes, but it now give me some perspective on just how influential Ford and his films were.  I don't know if any troops in Korea actually watched Ford films there, but I know that the people who wrote the show did their research.  If they chose a John Ford film, it was likely representative of what was popular at the time.

A surprisingly fun break in my normal round of work came a few Mondays ago.  I gave two tours of the current exhibit to two groups of fifth graders.  I was pretty nervous in advance, not being entirely certain that I would be able to get fifth graders interested in medieval manuscripts.  I was pleasantly surprised.  They were some of the most inquisitive, interested kids I had seen in a long time.  They had heard of a Gutenberg Bible before and were suitably impressed that we had one.  They were astonished by all of the writing done by hand, particularly the really small writing.  A lot of them asked questions, many of them very good questions.  I think all of the students' favorite piece, which I saved for near the end both times, was the giant psalter.  It has the advantage of being both huge and being music.  Both groups were able to give really good answers when I asked them what made it different from modern music.  I have to admit that I am a bit cynical about the modern technology age and children.  These kids restored my faith.  I was so energized after working with both groups that going back to doing work on John Ford was anti-climactic.

It's experiences like that that make working at the Lilly such a treat.  Where else could I show off such rare and valuable items to fifth graders, and be able to tell them that they could come back any time with their parents and actually touch the things they were looking at?  This truly is a special place.

Exhibit Notes: Robert Heinlein

Lilly call number: PS3503.R18

Items in the exhibit:
The Puppet Masters
The Green Hills of Earth
The Man Who Sold the Moon
Letter to Boucher
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
Stranger in a Strange Land

Robert Heinlein was  famous for a series of short stories called his "future history" stories.  They, along with The Lord of the Rings and Asimov's Foundation trilogy, were nominated for a special Hugo award for best all time series.  Though set in the future, the stories all share a set history of what happened with humanity between Heinlein's present and the times of the stories.  As with most science fiction, it can be amusing and educational to see where they expected humanity to be at various points in their future and now our past.  Heinlein's timeline calls for interplanetary imperialism between 1970 and 2020.  Obviously, that hasn't happened yet.  Man has not yet made it beyond the moon.  But that does not make these stories any less interesting, simply because the timeline was off.  Science fiction tells us more about the time in which it was written than about an potential future.

Heinlein was also a controversial author in his time.  His novel Stranger in a Strange Land, with it's polyamorous views on sexuality, was included in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" along with Catcher in the Rye and Peyton Place, two other novels that were sensations when they were written.  Another well-known novel of his that I could not put in the exhibit because the Lilly did not have a copy was Starship Troopers, which was also made into a movie.  But science fiction as a genre has always been on the side, so it's authors could more or less write whatever they wanted, because so few of them were taken seriously.  And though some science fiction novels have entered the cannon, genre novels still tend to not be taken as seriously as straight fiction, which is of course grossly unfair.  Sure, Stranger in a Strange Land may present some interesting views about human nature, but it is also a well-written book.  And what good is literature if it doesn't make us think?  I can only hope that visitors to my exhibit will realize that science fiction is as serious a literary genre as straight fiction and leave with a greater respect for it and its authors.

Exhibit Notes: Ray Bradbury

Lilly call number: PS3503.R18

Items in the exhibit:

• The Halloween Tree
• Fahrenheit 451
• Something Wicked This Way Comes
• I Sing the Body Electric
• The Illustrated Man
• The Martian Chronicles
• A letter and a postcard to Anthony Boucher

Ray Bradbury was a first, obvious choice for my exhibit.  As I sci-fi writer, he is popular and well-known outside of the general science fiction fandom.  That's a pretty impressive feat.  Not surprisingly because of this popularity, the Lilly has a lot of his books.  The difficulty for him was in deciding which books I wanted to put in the exhibit.  There were so many to choose from!  And, two of the ones I chose are not strictly science fiction.  Both The Halloween Tree and Something Wicked This Way Comes are better described as fantasy.  I ended up using them because they demonstrate the breadth of Bradbury's writing style and ability.

"It was a pleasure to burn."

In an earlier post, I mentioned that images are more interesting in an exhibit that words.  For my books, this tended to mean that I needed to use the covers, since not that many novels are illustrated.  But I think visual diversity adds as much interest to an exhibit as images do, and I wanted to open up some books for Bradbury.  Much to my pleased surprise, the first edition of Fahrenheit 451 features an awesome illustration opposite the first page, creating a great opening.  See if you can spot the woman trying to escape from the burning house.

I was encouraged to try and mix books and manuscript materials in my collection, but after seeing the things that these men wrote, I would have done it anyway.  The postcard to Boucher that I've included in the exhibit discusses some publicity plans for Bradbury visiting Berkeley.  Boucher has apparently asked about his interest in a "autograph party" (book signing) and Bradbury finds it surprising that anyone would care about him that much.  The letter I've included is a response to Boucher's criticism of Fahrenheit 451.  He and his fellow editor at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction were less than thrilled with the book.  Bradbury's response to the criticism is humble and gracious.  This is why reading manuscript materials is such a treat.  Seeing what these people were like outside the public eye is quite simply fascinating.  It's also rewarding to see when people on admires prove to be genuinely nice people.

Weeks 8 & 9: Westerns and Science Fiction Totally Go Together, Right?

The past few weeks I finished up the work on my exhibit.  I finished writing my labels, and Becky made a few comments but approved them.  I was given my own shelf and a half in the stacks to place my materials until the exhibit can go up (which ought to be in the Spring semester).  I am very pleased with how the process went, and I cannot wait to see it on display.  Writing the labels was difficult, but I think I managed to make them interesting and informative without having them be too insanely long.  I decided to do a few longer narrative labels instead of having individual labels for each item.  Each author and each theme has a label.  I hope that successfully provide useful overviews of each author's work that can be appreciated by both sci-fi fans and non-fans alike.  The other weekend, my parents came to visit and in addition to seeing some of the exciting items in the collection (such as the Oscar you can now see me holding on the blog sidebar), I also showed them some of the items that will be in my exhibit, as well as items I like but didn't think fit into the exhibit thematically.  They were duly impressed :)

Last week, after I moved my items, Becky decided that, in addition to returning to some reference duties, I could start to help her with an exhibit on John Ford's films that she is curating for the spring.   IU is opening a new film center in January (assuming it doesn't get delayed) and this exhibit will go along with that.  Working with the Ford manuscript collection has been a lot of fun.  My favorite part is looking through the movie stills we have, though the print materials we have are fun, too.  A few of my favorite items are the notices about foreign release and censorship.  Apparently, there were a few complaints from abroad that The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance being in black and white hurt its marketability.  The one comment speculated that it was probably for financial reasons, though everything I've read since said that it was a stylistic choice on Ford's part, and one that he had to fight for.  There were also a few letters relating to the fact that Stagecoach's story did not fit well with the Production Code.  Apparently, nice prostitutes and sympathetic revenge killings are bad...

As much as I enjoyed working on my own exhibit, it has been nice to get back to doing some reference work.  One question which Dave passed along to me was from a man coming to do some research on extraterrestrial intelligence, both in non-fiction and fiction.  Finding materials for him was fun.  I was pleased with some of the cool non-fiction items I found, and I hope he enjoys working with them.  I am glad that this internship has confirmed that I enjoy doing reference work (at least, online reference work).  Even if I'm doing something potentially tedious, like pulling items to scan for patrons, I get to go into the stacks and work with the collections, which is always fun.

Exhibit Notes: Harlan Ellison

 Lilly call number: PS3555.L62

Items in the exhibit:

• "The City on the Edge of Forever"
• Twilight Zone: Crazier than a Soup Sandwich
• Strange Wine
• Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled
• Alone Against Tomorrow

"Here I stand before them...a man with a substantial body of work behind him, books that express the artist's view of the world (and after all, isn't that why they paid me to come speak?  Surely it can't be my winsome manner!), and they persist in asking me what it was like to work on Star Trek or what Jimmy Caan is really like...I get angry with them...And they don't like me for it." - Harlan Ellison, in "Revealed at Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don't Look So Terrific Yourself," the introduction to Strange Wine (1978).

When I read Isaac Asimov's letters to Anthony Boucher, I wanted to meet him because he seemed like he would be the nicest, sweetest man I would have ever met.  When I read stories by Harlan Ellison, or his introductions to these stories, I want to meet him because he seems like a guy who it would be fun to have an argument with.  He is that most frustrating of people: someone who thinks highly of himself and has the talent to justify it. 

I always saw Ellison's books on my parents' bookcase growing up.  In high school, they convinced me to read two stories by him: "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," and "Repent, Harlequin! said the Ticktockman."  I only remembered the first as being pretty strange, and I remembered the second being funny and involving Harlequin throwing jelly beans at people.  I have re-read both since starting this exhibit.  The first was profoundly disturbing and I must not have understood it all when I first read it, or I would have remembered it as more than just "strange."  The second was just as wonderful as I remembered it being. I have read more of his work since, and I have enjoyed it all (I highly recommend "A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet." It's priceless).

Because I like his work so much, I was saddened that the Lilly had comparatively few items by Ellison.  Whereas there was a treasure trove of items to choose from for Clarke, Asimov, and Bradbury, Ellison was underrepresented.  I had to request some of what I wanted from the ALF (Auxiliary Library Facility, which is off-site storage).  Things only end up in the ALF if they are items that are not in high demand.  Since exhibits are meant to expose people to the variety of collections available at the library, I'm hoping that seeing his work in the exhibit will inspire more people to read him.  After all, who can resist a short story collection called Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled?  If I could easily get a copy of it (which I cannot, at least not form local libraries) I would be reading it.  So, to everyone who is reading this: read some Harlan Ellison.  Check out some of the most brilliant, twisted writing you will ever encounter.  And then move on to some of the sane writers.

Week 7: Laying it on the Line

I spent most of last week putting together the layouts for my exhibit. Four cases, four layouts. I have two different kinds of cases to work with, both of which presented pluses and challenges. Two of them are Foyer/Portrait Gallery cases. I used one case of this style for my Manuscripts exhibit in the spring. The other two are Lincoln Room cases (which makes sense because the exhibit will be in the Lincoln Room). The Foyer style cases are long and thin, and they have a wooden bar down the middle of the top, visually dividing the case in half. They are tall, which means that you can angle materials, but the sides are wooden, so you can't put anything too close to the front if you want people to be able to see the bottom of it without craning their necks. The Lincoln Room cases aren't as long, but they are wider. They are also shorter. But the sides are glass and the entire top is glass. It's easier to look at the whole case in one go, which you cannot easily do with the Foyer cases. I popped into the Lincoln Room a few times to look at the cases to get an idea of how things would look in them.

I did not use as many items as I'd taken notes on, which is what I anticipated would happen. I'm a firm believer in having more things than you can actually use. Taking things out is easier than finding things to put in. On Friday, Becky okayed my layouts, which meant that I could start writing labels. Since I finally had my items selected, I began to put flags in them, identifying what item number they are (to match with the layout and the item list), what number case they will be in, and if they will be open to a certain page or remain closed. I also began working on the explanatory labels. Instead of having an individual label for each item, I'm putting in narrative labels. Each author will have a label discussing their work, and each theme will also have a label. The picture above is what my table looked like on Friday. Those are the items I've selected for the Ray Bradbury section of the exhibit (well, most of them. The manuscript pieces aren't out). There's my notebook with my notes about the books, the item list with the item slips sitting on top, Fahrenheit 451 open on foam rests, and the other books piled up on the side.

I will make a point of saying that being able to have so many items out on the table at once is highly unusual. When a patron is using items in the reading room, they can have one item on the table at once (or one folder if it is manuscript materials). If they need to compare two items, they can receive special permission to have both items out at once. Exceptions are made for super special researchers and for people who work at the library, particularly if they're working on an exhibit. I love being able to have so many of my items out at once. They may not be centuries old, but I find them exciting. Of the six books I've pulled for Bradbury, four are first editions and two of them are signed. I know that not everyone finds this super exciting. And that's completely fine. But these are books and authors that I grew up hearing about or seeing on my parents' bookcases. That, if nothing else, makes them special to me.

What Is Science Fiction?

So the first specific section of my exhibit that I'm going to discuss is the only one that is not dedicated to a specific author. When I first decided to include this section in my exhibit, it sounded easy and necessary enough. Tell my audience what science fiction is, both in case they do not know and to help put the items and authors in context. The problem is that defining anything, particularly as diffuse a concept as science fiction, is nigh impossible.

A quick look at the beginning of Robert Heinlein's essay "Science Fiction: Its Nature, Faults and Virtues" shows that not even science fiction authors can agree on the definition of what it is they write. Heinlein even accused Theodore Sturgeon of creating a definition so narrow that it excluded some of Sturgeon's own work. Heinlein also brings up the distinction (or lack there of) between the terms "science fiction" and "speculative fiction." Heinlein believed the phrases should be used interchangeably, but he does describe some work as more speculative rather than scientific, which implies that there is a difference. That is an issue which I will be addressing in the portion of the exhibit devoted to Harlan Ellison, as he was an acknowledged master of speculative fiction.

This part of the exhibit will have the most boring text on display. I will use the tombstones (the official term for exhibit labels) to try and draw the viewers attention to passages and phrases in the text to look for. Unfortunately, showing a closed book of science fiction criticism might look more interesting, but it does not convey the same level of meaning that the body of the work can. My favorite piece in this section of the exhibit is not a book, however. It is a transcript of an award acceptance speech made by Arthur C. Clarke, and in it he rhapsodizes about the importance of science fiction. It's rather beautiful.

Assembling this portion of the exhibit has clarified in my mind that I have no idea what the definition of science fiction actually is. And I am okay with that. I also think it will make it more interesting for the viewers this way. If they begin with this section, it will not prescribe for them how to interpret the rest of the exhibit. If they see it at the end, they might feel willing to draw their own conclusions or form their own definition based on what they saw in the rest of the exhibit. Either way, I am all about making viewers think! I confess that I am worried that this will be the weakest part of the entire exhibit. But I hope that the other parts are quite simply awesome, so "weakest" being a relative term, this part of the exhibit will be fine.

Week 6: Space, the Final Frontier...

Last week was an all exhibit, all the time week, which was good because I spent most of the week sick. As sickness = low cognitive ability, having my week narrowed down to filling out call slips, paging books for myself, and writing down a few notes about each item worked well for me. At the beginning of the week, I discussed my proposed exhibit focus with Becky and got her okay on it. The exhibit will focus on a variety of different science fiction authors, and I will be using each author (or in some cases, a pair of authors) to highlight a different theme or aspect of science fiction writing. There will also be a section that looks at the definition of science fiction, mostly according to the writers themselves. I began the week thinking about the different visual impacts of open versus closed books. I shortly realized that before I worried about that, I would need to come to terms with just how many items I could use.

My previous exhibit experience happened in my Manuscripts class this past spring, which I took with the Lilly's manuscripts curator, Cherry Williams. I had one case in the foyer, and I chose to work with music manuscripts, which are rather large. I fit a grand total of six items into my case, which was many fewer than most of my classmates. But it allowed my to tell the story I wanted to tell, as well as having an interesting looking display that wasn't overly cluttered.

So, when I began to select items at the beginning of the week, measuring them and trying to decide whether to display them open or closed, I was in the mindset that I would not be able to fit too many items into each case. And then I did a little bit of math and it hit me. Hardcover books are significantly smaller than the music manuscripts I worked with in the spring. And, unlike the music, they tend to make more of an impact when closed (which makes them smaller still). Bare text, after all, is not visually striking. The score on the right, for example, took up one fourth of my display space. And that worked because it is visually impressive. (If you look at the picture on the top of my blog, you can see at the far right). A hardcover book will never do that, especially if it is open. Even if it has a fantastic illustration, it is simply too small to command so much of the physical space of an exhibit (with very few exceptions).

This put me in a much different position than with curating the music exhibit. I was cutting items out of that one right through my meeting with the woman from preservation who would choose mounts for the item. This time, I realized that I would have space for more items than I imagined. So I decided to add a few more authors to my list. At present, the works of the following authors will be featured in my exhibit:

• Isaac Asimov
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Philip K. Dick
  
• Robert Heinlein
• Ray Bradbury
• Theodore Sturgeon
• Harlan Ellison

Since I have four cases, each of which is divided in half (thematically if not visually), the eighth section is the "What Is Science Fiction?" section. I have a variety of materials with this group of authors, including movie and television scripts, a proof copy of a novel, a paperback book that cost $.35 when it was published, and handwritten manuscripts. And, of course, a lot of books. Over the next few weeks, keep an eye out for extra posts each week about each segment of my exhibit. So, if you are unfamiliar with some of these authors, you will get the opportunity to learn more about them. Exciting, isn't it?

Week 5: And By 1980, We'll Have Permanent Colonies on the Moon...

The past week was a pretty quiet one for me, internship-wise (when it came to one of my jobs, it was absolutely insane!). One Monday, I got to sit in on a meeting with a student and professor from the English Dept. (if I'm not mistaken) who are working on putting together an online exhibit about Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Becky showed them some of the things that showed up in IUCAT (the school's online catalog) that might be useful, as well as giving them some suggestions of manuscript collections to explore. One of the funniest things we came across, however, were the subject headings for one copy of A Christmas Carol that we looked at on IUCAT. For those who do not know, subject headings are words or phrases attached to books and other items in catalogs to help users find works on certain topics. And I think we can all think of some obvious possible headings for A Christmas Carol, such as ghosts and maybe, I dunno, Christmas. Here were the three headings that showed up in the record:

• Poor families
• Crippled children
• Misers

Yup. We had looked at these before the professor showed up, and when we told her about them she started laughing. It was pretty awesome. One of the things Becky told them that I will do my best to keep in mind for my exhibit (though it may be difficult) is that people respond better to images than words in exhibits. Illustrations, book covers, that sort of thing. I really enjoy getting to sit in on these meetings. The more I work with Becky, the more I realize that she knows more about the collections at the Lilly then just about anyone else. It never ceases to impress me.

I also got to pull some items for another class presentation and sit in on the class. It was a class in what I believe is called Hispanic and Portuguese Studies. It was a history class, and they were particularly interested in the conquest and post-conquest in Latin America. It was fabulous to listen to the students look at and touch documents that have survived for hundreds of years. They are all in such awe. It pleases me that undergraduates can still be impressed by these things. And some of them were actually asking intelligent questions about how old these things were and what they were written on and made out of. I think that I will cry the day that we cease to be in awe of these types of items. Here's hoping it doesn't happen in my life time.

I spent the rest of the week looking through items for my exhibit. I've still been doing some work with Boucher's writings. He interviewed a whole group of science fiction writers for a round table to be published in Playboy, and I began looking through some of those documents on Friday. I have a great deal of respect for science fiction writers and the things that they can come up with, but reading about their predictions for the future was sometimes hysterically funny. These interviews took place in 1963, so years before Apollo 11 brought the first men to the moon. One of the writers correctly predicted that we would have landed on the moon by 1970, but then the next obvious step was that we would have permanent stations and such on the moon by 1980. If only. There were also some interesting discussions of sex in the future, which naturally included sex with aliens (one person had some interesting speculations about sex involving telepathy). But there was also an interesting discussion of whether nationalism and national boundaries would be carried into space. Some said yes, some said no. Well, there's an American flag on the moon, but we now have an international space station. So, I guess we have a bit of both, but I'm glad to see that we seem to be moving in the less-nationalistic direction. There were also tons of other things, but I really shouldn't go on about this forever.

So, I should be talking the Becky about my concept for the exhibit this week, and I will probably have my usual routine of reference questions and exhibit work. And now that the last week of insanity for one of my paying jobs is out of the way, the rest of the semester should be smooth sailing!

Week 4: Science Fiction Double Feature

As part of what my supervisor wants me to do during my internship, I get to curate an exhibit. Last week, I was given plenty of time to begin working on it. The broad topic Becky approved is science fiction. Now, before I go any further, I would just like to get something off my chest:

STAR TREK!!!!!!

Ahem. Okay. So, in case you did not guess, I am rather fond of Star Trek (and, yes, that is an understatement). When I discovered just how large of a collection of Star Trek scripts the Lilly holds, I knew I wanted to do an exhibit that could include at least a few of them. So, I began my exploration of the Lilly's science fiction collections by looking at the scripts for some of my favorite episodes. The sad thing was that, as a huge nerd, I could tell differences between the final scripts and the actual episodes. There is a two-part episode of Star Trek: Voyager from season 4 called "The Killing Game" that my sister and I particularly like. One of our (or at least my) favorite lines is from the doctor, "I'll reattach any severed limbs, just don't misplace them." Naturally I noticed when this line was absent from the script. For some of the scripts, particularly with Voyager, there were also early drafts and technical and research notes on the scripts. Since large parts of "The Killing Game" take place in Nazi-occupied France, many of the notes discussed the historical accuracy of the things mentioned in the dialogue.

Of course, there is more to the wide world of science fiction than just Star Trek. There are many great sci-fi authors, especially from back before I was born, like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, you get the idea. Now, the Lilly has many of their great books (some in first editions). But, beyond that, there is correspondence. Most importantly, there is a collection known as the White mss. These are the papers of a man who is most familiar by his pseudonym Anthony Boucher. He was a mystery writer (which is why the mystery convention Bouchercon is named after him). He was also a critic of science fiction and fantasy writing. Because of this he corresponded with some of the big sci-fi authors of his day (sometimes a great deal). I have only read through a portion of the correspondence so far, but I've read enough to know that these men wrote letters as well as they wrote novels and short stories. They often discussed their families (the Bradbury's apparently had perpetual trouble find good, long term babysitters). But they also wrote a lot about their work. One of the most fascinating aspects of the correspondence is reading Boucher's letters to them when they're available. He was completely honest with them about his opinions on their works. His praise was usually effusive and exuberant. But if he did not like something, he would tell the author. He would do it kindly and apologetically, but he didn't sugarcoat things. The wonderful part is how gracious the authors were about receiving this criticism. Bradbury's letter in response to one from Boucher which rather ripped Fahrenheit 451 to shreds was very kind.

Just because I've started on my exhibit doesn't mean that I haven't done other things as well. I've continued my reference duties, as well as helping Becky get items ready for classes. Things are still going well, and my internship continues to be a fun, low-stress aspect of my life.

Week 3: The Puzzling World of Puzzle Manuscripts

Okay, so they aren't really all that puzzling. But they are fun. As I said in my last post, I got to step outside my normal realm of duties for the week and hang out in processing. I spent the whole week working with boxes from the Jerry Slocum collection. The beginning of the week was the trial box. Thick transcripts, pages of patents, copious correspondence. I also got to look at the Rubik's cube research box with folders of solutions. Folders of them, I say. In English, Russian, and what I think might be Hebrew. Fertile ground for all those Rubik's cube nerds out there (and I know that they exist because I'm related to a few). And because Mr. Slocum was all into puzzles, he kept in contact with other puzzle people. He had manuscripts and puzzle designs from a friend of his. As someone who enjoys puzzles, seeing some design sketches for puzzles that did and didn't work was really cool. Many of the puzzles involved fitting certain sets of wooden pieces in certain shapes, and he would have computer nerds run his puzzles through programs to see if he had the only solution, or if there were others. I had never thought about the use of computers and algorithms in designing puzzles.

I also got to put index cards and big nifty puzzle description cards into super special archival boxes. But what did these super special boxes go into? These:Exciting looking, aren't they? These are the kind of basic archival boxes that we use for folders of materials that don't need to be stored flat. I also recall that LVM kept legal files in some like this... For most of the week, the boxes I worked with were all prepared with materials in them. But when I got to the index cards and other small items that went into their special little boxes, I had to put together my own boxes. Space is a premium in, well, just about every institution these days, but especially in special collections. We worry about having enough space for our full boxes, we don't have enough space for empty boxes. So they get delivered flat, with some assembly required. So I got to learn how to assemble archival boxes. Another useful life skill to add to my list.

What I love about interning at the Lilly is that they don't treat us like we're stupid because we're students. They show us something the first time and then they leave us to do it ourselves. We're welcome to ask questions if we still have problems, and they never seem annoyed like we're wasting their time. I worked pretty independently all week, though I could ask Craig questions any time I needed to. He allowed me to do things as I saw fit, just like a real archival/manuscript processor would. And that's where the real experience comes from. Knowing that someone is going to check what you've done, but that what you've done is still the real work that everyone will be using. It's a nice feeling.

Well, my week in processing is done and tomorrow I go back to my normal routine of, well, I don't really have a normal routine yet. But I'm sure it will involve reference questions. So, catch you on the flip side.

There's No Such Thing As Wasted Experience

I know that this title is a potentially dangerous thing to say. This is not a justification for doing stupid things. It's a rationale for gaining a wide variety of experience. This week, my supervisor is busy with the tenure and promotion committee (she has my deepest sympathies), so I have been handed off to Craig, who works in processing. This may not seem like valuable experience for someone who wants to go into reference, but I believe it is (as does Craig, for that matter). How can you effectively find or help people find information or items if you are not familiar with how that information is organized? What's the rationale? Why is there more description for this document and less for this? Even if I never do reference in a rare books library and I get to point patrons toward more...straightforward sources, I will not regret getting to do this. And you will get to hear more about the process of processing when the week is over.

But the real reason I decided that there's not such thing as wasted experience is because of what I'm processing. Back in the '80s, there was a trial about the patents behind the Rubik's Cube. Jerry Slocum, the man with whose collection I am working, was called as an expert witness in the trial. Well, his papers contain a variety of documents from the trial, including copies of patents and patent applications. Back in the day (aka a few years ago), I spent a summer as a clerk in an intellectual property law firm where my mom works. Mostly, I scanned old case files and stored the documents in a digital database so the physical documents could be destroyed. During that summer I became quite familiar with patents and their structure, and I have also gotten to listen to my mom talk about patent litigation and everything that goes into it. I can't say that knowing all of this is necessarily going to make my processing of this collection more effective (though it might), but it is certainly making my job more fun, because I can understand the documents I'm looking at. I recognize the different parts of the puzzle patents, and I know what the correspondence is talking about when the participants are discussing one puzzle infringing on certain claims from an earlier patent. Heck, I even know what it means that Slocum was an expert witness. Like I said, it may not make any actual difference to the job, but it makes a difference to me and my enjoyment of what I'm doing.

And if none of that is reason enough for you to agree that no experience is wasted, look at it this way: the more experience you gain, the more things you know. The more things you know, the better you get at Trivial Pursuit. Think about it.

Week 2: Locks of Hair, Pop-up Books, and John Ford

It's been a busy week for me at the Lilly. I learned how to man the desk in the reading room (watch everyone like a hawk) and how to answer reference questions (which I wrote another post about). As I mentioned last week, the Lilly does presentations to classes at IU as part of its outreach. Becky talked to quite a few classes last week, and I got to sit on one. She was talking to the Children's Lit class, and since it's a SLIS class, I knew some of the students. The Lilly has an excellent collection of children's materials. She didn't pull out the first edition Harry Potters, but she did have some of the hornbooks I picked out last week, a variety of didactic works from the 1700s, even a book called Chaucer for Children. Given what I remember from the Canterbury Tales, I'm not sure how I feel about sharing much of it with children. The book had annotations and footnotes and everything. It was kind of special. But Becky had also pulled out early movable books, where kids could open things or pull things or whatever. Given that they were made by hand, they were impressive. She also pulled out a modern pop-up book of the Wizard of Oz. It was one of the most beautiful pop-up books I have ever seen. I think I enjoyed getting to see the materials as much as the students did.

The Lily is in the process of transitioning between some exhibits right now. I got to help de-install the most recent main exhibit, Cabbages and Kings: Unexpected Treasures of the Lilly. This meant first taking the books off of their supports so they could rest closed a little. We then went case by case, putting all of the materials in their various cases and folders (if they had them) and checking them off of the original installation list. We got to put away a variety of interesting items, including locks of George Washington's and Edgar Allen Poe's hair, a copy of Hamlet in Klingon (taH pagh taHbe'. DaH mu'tlheghvam vIqelnIS), and two copies of the Little Red Book. I didn't get to help put away the issues of Rolling Stone or Playboy because the cases they were in required more people to open them. The next exhibit is Gilding the Lilly, and it will be full of medieval manuscripts. Man, I love medieval manuscripts and the Lilly has a fabulous collection. I have to say that I really hope I get to help install it, but we'll see...

After learning to answer reference questions on Monday, I was tossed out by myself to see how I could do. My favorite one to work on was on Friday. We have a large John Ford manuscript collection, and I was looking to see if we had pictures of Ford and a) his wife, b) his children, and c) Katharine Hepburn. There were nine folders of photographs labeled as "friends and family" but only a small handful identified who was in them. So I first had to find out what Ford, his wife, and his children looked like. It took me most of my three hour shift to go through those nine folders. It was a lot of fun, and by then end I had a pretty good idea what his family looked like. But I didn't even get to the Katharine Hepburn ones (and I actually know what she looks like!). That's one of the things about manuscript collections. No mater how much cataloging and description you'd like to do on them, there's only so much that we have the time and resources to do. I'm sure it can get annoying to wade through folders of material to find the one item you need, but isn't that what makes research fun? At least it does to me...

A Side-note About Lilly Policy: Many people envision the everyone working with manuscripts or old books wears white gloves. There is actually a bit of debate on this in the field. The opinion at the Lilly is that gloves make it more difficult for patrons to be careful with that materials. So there are only two types of materials that receive white glove treatment: metal items and photographs. So I got to pull out the glove for the materials.

One of the perks about working with Lilly materials as a reference librarian (well, librarian-to-be) is that I get to page my own materials. The students who work at the library as pages and get materials for patrons are only allowed to page books. If patrons want manuscripts, they must be paged by one of the librarians. However, since I am working reference and retrieving my own materials, I am allowed to retrieve all of my own materials, including manuscripts. The only things I need a librarian to get are items from the Vault, and that was only an issue when I picked out the hornbooks for Becky last week.

I'm still having a blast there, and I am savoring the experience of getting to work with awesome materials in such a special library.

Behind the Scenes: Working Online Reference

So, one of the things I get to do this semester is working with Dave, one of the reference librarians. He works with answering the reference questions sent in by e-mail. Things have been pretty slow for him lately, but today I was able to help out with answering a question. To give you an idea of what it's like, I'm going to walk you through what we did.

1) Search the Lilly website
Apparently, many people discover that the Lilly might have something useful to them by doing a search on the internet. So, we search the Lilly website for what they want information about (in this case, a specific person). We found the name in question in the Latin American mss. page, though it had no useful context.

2) Browse the card catalog
Now that we knew our information was in one of the manuscript collections, we turned to the manuscript index in the reading room card catalog. I looked the person up by last name and found two cards for him: one listing correspondence he wrote and the other saying who to look up to find correspondence to him. So, we pulled the card listing what he wrote, and then we pulled the second card with the letter to him. We then photocopied the cards, so we didn't have to re-write out the information, before replacing them in the catalog.

3) Hit the stacks
We took our photocopies of the cards down to the manuscript stacks to find the physical letters. I got to find the boxes in the appropriate collection (Latin American mss. - Peru). For each item, we had to fill out a pink (a pink slip used for calling up manuscript items) to put in the box to mark its place. Keeping manuscript and archival items in order, whether it's an order imposed by the institution or kept from the original donor, is extremely important. Not only can it help you find materials, but if it is the order from the donor, it can provide some insight into the person who created the collection. The letters we pulled went into new folders, labeled with their collection and other pertinent information, before going into another box for the trip upstairs. We also checked each item off of our photocopy of the catalog cards to make sure we'd found all of the items.

4) Respond to the patron
The first thing I was told about communication with patrons is to be polite. First of all, it is common courtesy. Second, we are representing a prestigious institution, and we would like to be able to maintain the Lilly's good reputation. The second thing I learned was to lay out our process as clearly as possible, so that another reference librarian reading our response would be able to easily find what we did without having to go through it all again. We included in the e-mail the exact descriptions of the materials listed on the cards, and described our photocopying policy and prices, as well as telling the patron what the current wait for processing copying requests is. We're supposed to put as much information as possible (as unambiguously as possible) in the first e-mail to save extra correspondence.

5) Wait for a response
Not all patrons follow up on their reference questions. We like to keep things in order, however, so we are prepared if they do respond. We printed out the response e-mail, stapled it to the photocopy of the catalog cards, and placed it on a holding shelf on top of the box with the materials. We also wrote the date on the e-mail and that we were waiting for information on whether to photocopy the documents.

It was a fun experience, particularly pulling materials from the stacks. The e-mail was signed with my name, which felt all nice and professional, and I'm looking forward to getting to do more reference work over the course of the semester.

Week 1: Tours, Exhibtions, and Homemade Hornbooks

It's been a busy first week of classes here at IU. Aside from taking a few classes (because I am a still a student) and guest speaking in twelve different sections of a physiology lab for non-majors, I began an internship at the Lilly Library. The Lilly is the fantastic rare books and manuscripts library at Indiana University. I was lucky enough to take a class there on manuscript librarianship last spring, and so I'm thrilled to be interning there this fall. I am working under the Head of Reference and Public Services, Becky Cape. So far, she has been fantastic. If my first week at the Lilly is any indication, then working with her should be pretty exciting.

For those who aren't familiar with my other blog, You Know You're A History Major When..., here's a little bit about myself. I'm just starting my second year in the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. Before coming to Bloomington, I recieved my B.A. in history from Washington College, a lovely liberal arts college in rural Maryland. Both of my parents and my sister are scientists, so I'm something of the black sheep of the family. But if there's one thing that my parents instilled in both my sister and me, it's a love of books and reading. So being able to work with the collections at the Lilly is a huge treat for me.

The week began nice and low key, with a tour of the library. I got to walk through both the rare books and manuscripts stacks, and learned all the fun secrets of the stacks, like remembering to turn off lights (because lights are bad for special collections) and where to find pads to soak up water (because water is also bad for special collections). I met a lot of people, but I only remembered a few of their names (which I will work on). Becky also walked through the online and print finding aids to the collections, as well as how to use the card catalogs scattered throughout the library. Not only might I have to help patrons use these resources, but I will definitely need to be able to use them myself when answering reference questions.

On my second day, I got to sit in on a meeting with the head of the Fine Arts Library, who is curating an exhibit of artists' books in January. Since I had to make a small exhibit when I was in the Manuscripts class, I recognized the sheets Becky gave him. We walked around the main exhibit room looking at which cases he wanted to use and where, and where to put a table for books that patrons could handle. Since the Lilly believes that its exhibits are one of the best ways to give their collections exposure and publicity, being able to see that process from the beginning is pretty cool.

Another important part of Lilly outreach is exposing the undergraduates at IU to the collections by giving talks to classes. Becky told me about some classes she's going to be talking to next week about education in early America and it's relationship to morality. Aside from looking at some materials she'd already pulled, she allowed me to look through the hornbook collection and choose which of those she would show. There's a nice list of the hornbooks on the library web page, so I looked through that and choose some that seemed promising. I couldn't get them myself because they were in one of the vaults (where we keep extra valuable items). Once they'd been brought up, though, I got to hold them and look at them. And I can tell you that there's nothing quite like holding a homemade wooden hornbook that some kid once learned to read from back in the 1700s. Becky was pleased with my choices, which was excellent. I hope that the students next week enjoy them as much!

I'll be updating this every week or so (more often if I can find the time). Please keep reading and ask any questions you have!