2007
you said describe to me the hairstyle of the devil
maura @ 6:51 pm
We’re doing a lot of home reorganizing this month, moving stuff around, painting the bedrooms, etc. In preparation for all of this I’m trying to get rid of everything I don’t need, all of the accumulated detritus of my past selves.
Today’s mission: reprints! Man, do I have a lot of article reprints. On paper. You know, from the before-time, when journals weren’t all newfangled and electronic.
We have a giant 4-drawer file cabinet that historically has been mostly mine, but I’d like to give some space to Jonathan for his files. The bottom 2 drawers are all reprints from my archaeology days, so I thought: no problem, I can clear out AT LEAST one of those drawers, I don’t need those articles and isn’t everything on the interwebs these days anyway?
(JUST KIDDING! I didn’t believe that even before I went to library school.)
Some of these articles are easy to toss. Anything having to do with the Paleolithic or physical anthropology is gone, because of all the new subspecies and other data that seem to be turning up every few minutes these days. And anything on the scientific side is out, too — do I really need a 20 yr old article about a “new” dating technique*? I don’t think so.
* Har, sometimes it is funny to be an archaeologist: I had a whole folder of articles labeled “dating techniques.” First, invite your beloved out to dinner…
But you know, I am having a hard time getting rid of some of these articles, though I know it’s unlikely I’ll ever read them again. It’s not a surprise that I’d have trouble parting with articles I used for my dissertation, but it turns out that I’m loathe to toss reprints from my masters’ thesis, too. Which was 13 yrs ago (eep!).
All of these articles represent an investment in time, money and labor. I used to spend HOURS xeroxing articles to read for classes and research, and I’m sure that is influencing my willingness to chuck them out.
My masters’ thesis was an overview of Iron Age/Early Christian sites in Ireland. While researching and writing it I consulted a vast number of site reports from all manner of obscure Irish archaeology journals from the 1940s-1990s. Many of these were stored at the NYPL’s annex on 11th Ave., which I don’t even think is there anymore (I think their old stuff is all at offsite storage in New Jersey).
I always felt kind of excited to go to the NYPL annex for those journals, like I was mining a secret resource. I was often the only patron there. It’s definitely one of my happy library (and archaeology) memories, despite the drudgery of hours of xeroxing.
But even though I’ve identified the nostalgic basis for my unwillingness to get rid of these reprints, I’m still no closer to actually being able to get rid of them. Maybe the pain of unloading the whole file cabinet to move it into the other room will spur me on.
