Who Am I?

My name is Lydia and I am a medievalist and librarian-in-training.  I have degrees from the University of Texas at San Antonio (B.A. English, 2007) and the University of Oxford (St. Peter’s College, M.St. English 650-1550, 2008) and am currently enrolled in the University of Texas iSchool where I am focusing on academic librarianship, special collections/archives, and conservation with continuing interest in medieval and early modern printed books and manuscripts.  I first began working in libraries as a high school student at my local public library, and I am currently working at the John M. Kuehne Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy Library (PMA) at the University of Texas at Austin.

My dream job is to combine a degree in archives and rare books librarianship with my previous experience with codicology and palaeography to work as a Rare Books/Special Collections Librarian in a research institution that has holdings of medieval and early modern materials.  Academically, I want to continue to study the physical attributes of manuscripts and incunabula to establish a book’s history and provenance and to try to fill in the blanks in a book’s journey from its creation to its present home.  I hope to use my interest in and previous marketing experience with social media to raise awareness about the ongoing value of medieval and early modern resources, as well as the specific holdings of the institution I am working for.

However, I’ve spent the past three years working in medical and science libraries and have developed a love of and enthusiasm for science-based librarianship, particularly data librarianship that is focused on data informatics and research data archiving and preservation.

Professionally I am a member of the American Library Association, Association of College & Research Libraries (Literature in English, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and University Libraries sections), Special Libraries Association (Academic Libraries section), and Society of American Archivists (College & University Archives Section Member, International Archival Affairs Roundtable Member, Manuscript Repositories Section Member, Public Library Archives/Special Collections Roundtable Member).

What is book archaeology?

Book archaeology is a fancy way of saying codicology, which is the study of books as physical objects and the individual pieces and techniques that make them up — things like their parchment or vellum, paper, pigments, inks, and so on.  It also includes palaeography, the study of ancient handwriting.

Why is this blog?

In this blog, I plan to talk about my coursework as a MSIS student at the University of Texas at Austin iSchool and my previous manuscript palaeography experience at the University of Oxford, as well as my studies in papermaking, printing, and bookbinding at the Southwest School of Art.

Can I just say…?

If you would like to contact me, you can do so by adding a comment to this page or you can find me on Twitter (@lamfletcher), Academia.edu, LinkedIn, Google+ or Goodreads.  I hope you will keep checking back for more things or will add me to your RSS feed reader.

Thanks for reading!