A Pilgrim’s Digression

My week at Cornell is drawing to a close. I have one full day of work left, tomorrow, and a half-day on Friday. At the risk of sounding clichéd, it has been an interesting and rewarding week.

Among other people, I have met folks from the Library and Archives of Canada, from CNN News Archives, from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and from several Universities and Colleges.  The farthest a participant came for this workshop was from the island of Yap, which is in Micronesia, in case you didn’t know (I sure didn’t).

Oh, and looking at my list of participants now, I see that someone I’ve been talking to routinely is actually the Counselor for Archives for the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.  She probably told me that, and it went right over my head.

Cornell has one of the ten largest research libraries in the United States. Each day, I’ve been able to spend a little time in the rare book and manuscript room, examining the public exhibits. I’ve seen parts of the library’s Melville collection. I’ve seen a Hemingway autograph letter, as well as letters from other writers, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Tolkien letter is interesting, partly because it is a perfectly ordinary letter between Tolkien and his publisher, yet he wrote it in a kind of perfect, neat calligraphic script that any reader would immediately recognize from his novels. In the letter, written in 1958, Tolkien speculates that a new edition of LOTR may be necessary, as long as the book does not sink into obscurity in the next year amidst the sea of other novels on the market.

Cornell itself is an absolutely beautiful school with an enormous, lovely campus. Unfortunately, when I was packing to come here, it did not occur to me to pack my digital camera. There have been many lost opportunities for photography this week, and I feel like my blog is somehow less attractive for the lack of photographs. I have taken a couple pictures with my cell phone, and as low quality as they are, I will post them here.

Taken from the seventh floor of one of the library buildings. Cornell sits on a hill, and with the lake below and the old stone buildings all around, it rather reminds me of another city on a hill, Quebec.

Cornell is where Nabokov lived and wrote for ten years, 1948 to 1958. He wrote Lolita here. And according to Wikipedia, 40 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with Cornell, either as faculty or as students.

It almost goes without saying, I would love for Brendan to attend this school, one day. Although my previous blog posts have been rather critical or Ithaca and its restaurants, I really like the town and school. Although I feel a little homesick for a Dennys or an Eat N’ Park, and although there is not a Wal-Mart to be found anywhere within at least sixty miles, and Starbucks, too, is notably absent, I do like Ithaca.

Incidentally, you know you’re in a college town when the graffiti written in wet cement reads “Smash Starbucks!” instead of “Josh loves Katy.”

I’ve been thinking about writing a blog post (or two) about what I’ve been doing here at Cornell. I think the subject I’ve been studying and discussing with other people in my field might be of interest to others, Digital Preservation Management.

Although the subject of the workshop is how governments, institutions, and Universities can preserve information and digital artifacts in an age in which media, software, and hardware go obsolete sometimes in a matter of months, I think there are some relevant points that individuals may find useful.

Tomorrow, I am having dinner at one of the Professor’s homes, so I may not have the chance to write tomorrow night. Friday I will be travelling home after a half-day session at which we present our class projects to the group. If tomorrow I don’t get around to blogging about what I’ve learned, maybe someone could remind me next week? I have taken copious notes, so I should be able to present those in an edited form, once I have a little time.