The book traces event held by Dr. Stauffer was enjoyable and piped my interests as an archivist. The event was well described by Dr. Stauffer as he outlined his goals to us in the class. The goals were to use texts dating from the 1800’s up to 1929, the age of copyright, to find annotations written by their original owners and to interpret the meaning of these annotations and what the book represented in the 19th century. He explained how books back then were shared possessions and that they often switched hands. People used to communicate using books and was a common form of messaging, such as how we have electronic texting and emails today. His books were host to a variety of materials, love letters, lecture notes, analytical satire, physical we can better understand 19th century culture and values. The class event went really well, with each of us receiving a copy of one of his historical books from his library in Virginia. He was incredibly excited to share his findings and for us to interpret them.
He gave me a book that was heavily transcribed by the original owner. It seems as if he was making fun of the book by adding lines of his own and adding his own form of humor between the pages. It seemed like this copy was meant to be passed to a friend because of the way it is written. Its a lot of language devices to make the text humorous and more enjoyable for the next reader. The book is a book of poems and are very sappy and romantic in nature. Its possible to believe that this person hated that form of writing and wanted to make light of it and belittle the lesser known author.
The lecture after class was a little less comprehensive due to time constraints and topics he was focusing on. the presentation regarding flowers in books was somewhat shaky towards the end and I felt that he got really nervous presenting to the large group that appeared. Every teacher from the history department was there and there felt like a pressure from the back of the room. He wasn’t a 100% confident on the flora in the books which also lead to a rough patch in his lecture since it was focusing on that exact flora he couldn’t name. The flora is often symbolic as he describes in his speech and is used to mark a passage often in memory to the life of a loved one or to add depth to a poem or piece of scripture. It seems like an easy fix with some identification help and I could be misinterpreting the situation at the end of the lecture. In comparison to his class lecture, I felt that he was much more enthusiastic and dealt with the smaller group on a personal level and a fluidity that you couldn’t find in his group lecture. I left the class feeling inspirited to help with archival work and better prepared to keep an eye out for annotations in books. They provide insight to that era’s thoughts, feelings, and culture. To me these things are irreplaceable and once we lose them, they’re gone forever to history. understanding the feelings of an era allows us to better understand our future. Another reason history and culture need to be respected and observed.
-Review by Cory Price
