Visiting Geisel Library
On Friday, May 6, the American Studies students visited the Special Collections Room at the Geisel Library at UCSD.
After finishing their discussion on WWII, students were assigned a research project on modern and postmodern poets. At UCSD, they used the online catalog to research their poets and learned how to use microfiche and microfilm.
Students also spent time with a special collections librarian learning how collections get into the archives, how the works are preserved, and what archivists are doing to retain the born digital archives of our own time for future scholars.
Students handled a few rare items: Jack Kerouac’s letters, poetry annotations from Allen Ginsberg, and a 19th-century handwritten Mexican cookbook to name a few. There were also a few that they could look at—but not touch—including several of Theodore Geisel’s political cartoons from World War II and a limited edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, signed by the author.
