A Special Collections based lesson plan for two, 1.5 hour sessions of a Freshman Writing Seminar, “It’s a Dogs Life” taught by Li Qi Peh.

A virtual lesson plan for an hour long Special Collections based session for a class on “Reconsidering the Archive”.

On this cold December day, almost a year into a global pandemic, here is the story of my favorite reference interaction of my career (so far). It is, I swear, completely true.

Why in this day and age do you assume that all folks who work in this Special Collections library are men?

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Letter from the Birmingham Jail

The year is 2075. Two young adults sit on the wooden floor of an attic under a small wall of record cartons.
The pair has fallen in a recognizable rhythm: grab a box, open the lid, peer inside, pull things out, laugh, read, question, cry over the contents, conscientiously put things back in the order they found them.
“Oh my god, is this grandma?!” one exclaims to the other, carefully holding out a photograph in a mylar sleeve. “You have the same exact nose!”
It continues like this for some time.
Then, one opens the lid of a box and finds a small pile of fabric. For a moment, there is bewilderment, but then, one by one, they pull out the series of colorful face masks and place them on the floor in front of them.

At this moment, it is ten am. I sit, my back resting against the armrest. My legs extending in front of me, reaching across the seats of the dove gray second-hand West Elm pull-out couch that lives in the small guest bedroom of my apartment. I am wearing slippers.

In another universe, it is also ten am. I am in a basement, slouched over a height-adjustable desk, sitting in a very serviceable office chair, under mediocre florescent lighting, my back to a window that faces into a room with windows that face outside. I am wearing shoes.

Welcome. This is a blog. I had an embarrassing and somewhat silly blog once as a young person that I half hope has been lost to the wilds of the internet and half hope is out there as a testament to a time in my life. Either way, this blog will be different.

Today, I am a librarian.