Doing the Grant: Low Points

Unfortunately, as with all research and research projects, the high points are counterpointed by low points. For this grant, they revolved largely around pacing:  the slow pace of research and archival work, the equally slow pace of university systems, within and between institutions, the difficulties of connecting with partners in different locations who are already overworked, and my own slowness due to health issues. At times I have felt I was trapped in Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” like Scrooge, dreading the inexorable movement of the clock.

As the time for the end of the grant looms, I nonetheless feel optimistic and excited about seeing what our final project will look like, although it will spill over into the New Year.  In January I will work with two colleagues from the School of Education, Kris Sunday and Kathleen Shannon, to work with an afterschool program at a private elementary school. We will engage the children in making simple movable books with a winter theme: “snow play.” We decided on this theme because we kept in mind the likely slowness of receiving IRB approval. Consequently we had thought about and then rejected time-restricted activities like Halloween or Thanksgiving–winter lasts longer. Although visions of moveable skeletons and turkeys had danced in my head, it turned out to be a prudent decision.

Doing the Grant: High Points Part Two

Working with Interesting People; Or, It Takes a Village to Build a Project

Another high point of working on this project has been the people I have been able to meet and to work with. I have already mentioned John Harwood, Cole Camplese, Dave Stong, Sandy Stelts, and Linda Friend. Another is Mark Mattson, who made a lovely bibliography of all known metamorphosis or turn-up books. He began by using my word-processed and hand-annotated lists from different libraries I had visited or obtained lists from, such as the Osborne, the Bodleian, UCLA, and the Lilly. He supplemented these by scouring online library catalogues and WorldCAT to form a substantial list. To date he has over 300 items in his union catalogue!

More indirectly, I have also been connected with several young people working as Bednar Undergraduate Interns for the Penn State Libraries. Initially it was Brian Maynard, along with graduate student Sarah Nesbit; then Seth Wiener and more recently Caitlin Schaeppi. They work with Professor Carlos Rosas of the Interdisciplinary Digital Studio in the School of Visual Arts. Brian began building a virtual book based on the two published Metamorphosis items that Penn State owns, one in English and one in German. He developed this using the Unity platform. The images he used were Sarah’s high-resolution photos made under the tutelage of Digitization and Preservation photographer Curt Krebs, who allowed the use of the Betterlight digital camera. Seth continued with the Unity project, and the newest intern Caitlin Schaeppi is working with a different program for another type of interactive animation. She is animating digital images we obtained from the British Library of the earliest known version of the Beginning, Progress and End of Man (B. Alsop 1650), pasted into a large folio that forms part of the BL’s Thomason Collection of English Civil War Tracts.

Sandy Stelts gives an account of the early phases of the project in a section of a book called Student Engagement and the Academic Library, edited by Loanne Snavely (2012, p. 67).