In this profession, cataloguing, creating meta-data, indexing and other types of organization are generally delivered with a great degree of precision. The near-comprehensive nature of such meta-data means that it is fairly easy to find a book quickly. That said, there is something to be said for the joys of unexpected discoveries. I’d like to highlight two particular discoveries of unknown, uncatalogued materials today; one case in the UK and one in Canada. These kind of discoveries really put me in a good mood, I must say. We should aspire to do the best cataloguing work we can, but occasional finds like these are great too.

Earlier this week,  Alan Houston, professor of political science at UC San Diego, discovered some long lost letters while researching at the British Library found forty seven letters by, to and about Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of America’s greatest citizens who served as a diplomat, publisher, founded America’s first public library in Philadelphia and much more, in addition to his contributions as an author, scientist and politician. Most of the letters concern the 18th century conflict known in the US as the French and Indian War (known in Europe and elsewhere as the Seven Years War). The letters in question were copied by Thomas Birch who was, “… a contemporary of Franklin’s who was a prodigious – almost inveterate – compiler and transcriber of historical documents.” If you’re interested to know more, have a look at this article released about it at UC San Diego. I know somebody who has doing quite a lot of research at the British Library lately and I wonder if they will (or have made?) any similar serendipitous discoveries.

The Canadian case is rather different and interesting in different ways. In 2007, “Elaine Hoag, a rare book librarian with Library and Archives Canada while she was cataloguing items in the collection. The document had been tucked into a 150-year-old scrapbook that was donated to Library and Archives Canada by the Library of Parliament in 1973.” Later, it was found that there was a playbill dated 1796 that is know believed to be the oldest surviving example of anything being printed in Australia. LAC has an article providing more details on the find and the decision of the Canadian government to return it to Australia. I gather that the document has also raised new questions about the history of theatre in Australia. That is probably the best part of this discovery – that it opens new questions. Reading an article in the Australian media, I’m happy to report that the document was made available to the public in a special exhibition in Canberra.

No related posts.