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SEPT. 14
90.7FM9
JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST
(Matador)
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(released)
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Warp
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**Records**
Reading into history: Writer Andrea Olsen often finds herself lost in old books, daydreaming about their previous owners and engaging her creativity. Photo illustration by jerry wang
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Of Wonder:
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// ANDREA OLSEN
How my job helped put my life into perspective
Photo illustration by Jerry Wang
"What are you doing?" my coworker asked me, and I was suddenly drawn back into the real world.
Exactly what I shouldn't be, I thought as I tried to form the words to explain myself, though I knew she would understand.
I had lost myself in the stacks once again at work, and I wasn't willing to come back just yet. While wandering the aisles, I stumbled upon a copy of A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, a 1929 first edition. It had a dark blue cover that was completely blank and pages that were soft to the touch from years of sitting on a shelf. I was drawn to the faded gold writing along the spine and the author's name.
I found myself opening it, reading the name of the original owner and the year 1930 written inside. And before I knew it I was reading the first page. I had reached the point of no return.
I read quickly, as though if I didn't keep up the words would disappear forever. As the words raced by I found I had walked my way to a stool, and sat down in between the aisles. I was so wrapped up in it, I couldn't stop.
I was supposed to be doing my actual job at the Spencer Research Library. I was supposed to be helping patrons, paging things from the shelves and returning books to their proper homes. But when there is no work to be done, I often find myself getting lost in the stacks. The rare book collection has me smitten. The thousands of books tucked behind a glass encasing are off limits to the outside world. The only public area is the North Gallery, where people can see the shelves from a distance behind a glass casing. Two levels the size of a large room holding impressive and rare books ranging from a Gutenberg Bible leaf to a large collection of children's books to ancient books written in Latin to many different selections of Shakespeare.
Now that I work there, those stacks are my domain, and I hold the key to get inside that locked door. Workers are the only ones with full access to the actual books, for we are the ones who pull the items when patrons request them.
When I walk through that door into the stacks, it's like time suddenly stops. It's just me with all of the books; all of my outside problems disappear. Homework, deadlines, friends, drama it all vanishes once the heavy metal door shuts behind me. And looking at all of those magnificent works of literature makes me realize how small I am in the grand scheme of things. All of these people came before me, just like so many more will come after me. Just like the names of the owners written in the books, I am a person
who will one day be forgotten. But the things I own and the things I touch will one day have meaning, even if my name doesn't. And all of those problems I left at the entrance won't matter in the end, so why should I get caught up in them now?
Inside that sanctuary I feel like I'm-Alice in my own Wonderland, stumbling upon new and exciting things at every turn. Everyone else has to go to the Spencer with a mission, a specific book in mind to be brought to them and read in a separate room. But I don't need a mission; the whole collection is at my fingertips. Now I can get inside that glass encasement and smell the musty, old book smell. I'll disappear for periods of time, but you can find me roaming the aisles, touching every book and flipping through pages, something the average person can't do.
For an English nerd like me, being surrounded by old books is heaven. I loved flipping
open the cover of a 1911 copy of Peter Pan and seeing the Christmas note written inside. I loved finding a first edition of The Importance of Being Earnest from 1899 and wondering who originally owned it, and I loved dreaming about how the 1818 copy of Jane Austen's Persuasion made its journey across the pond, and finally to this particular library.
For me the books don't just contain stories inside their weathered pages. To me each book has its own story, an unknown story about who owned it before, what the owner was like, how he or she got this book, how the cover got torn, how this particular book made it to this library and thousands of other narratives. The answers to those questions and stories I will never know, but I love dreaming about the endless possibilities
And that is precisely what I was doing crouched on the stool reading A Room of One's
Own. Then suddenly I was brought back to reality when I was interrupted by that voice, the voice of another worker who was surprised to find someone else lurking in the stacks.
"I was just doing some reading," I responded with a smile, hoping she wouldn't think I was too crazy.
She laughed and walked away, continuing her mission. And I turned again to Woolf, jumping back into London in the 1920s, and a woman's place in that now distant world. JP
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