That comment is, of course, "Fuck you, anonymous miniature trimmer. Fuck you and your shitty scissors."
-Vaulting
4 comments:
Nikar
said...
That makes me sick. When I was doing the manuscript segment of the Colloquium for my Medieval Studies degree they told us about a guy who came in a few years previously and had clipped two of the manuscripts that they have there. >.<
For one of my papers I was working on tenth-century papal bulls, of which I needed facsimiles, and it quickly became very clear that someone in the same research library at some point earlier had also experienced the same need *so much* that he or she had clipped them all out and taken them away. This happens all over, even if rarely, and it's crap.
Oh, this happened to me once. I was hot on the backtrail of the actual source of some famous (but anonymous) quote. I had followed a footnote in an article back to a 19th-century source. Said source gave me only the vaguest of descriptors ("from the blahblah codex"), but I managed to figure out what town it was in, then a fortuitous meeting with an archivist the afternoon before I left said town convinced me that the book I wanted was in his archive. The next morning, with only 4 hours before my train left, I made a stop at the archive, where the archivist brought out about 8 books that might be the Blahblah Codex in question. I paged through until I found the one I thought was correct. Then I paged through that one, and realized that I'd hit upon what was the right section (a mini-chronicle embedded in a volume of miscellany). Then the chronicle started getting closer and closer to the dates I wanted, and I just new that with another page or two I'd have it -- the reference that no one had been able to directly cite for... well, forever.
And then I turned the page, to find two pages of the text, carefully razored out.
Dear God! It's completely unconscionable. And yet, let's hope that any pages removed, defaced, etc. were at least targeted because someone wanted the evidence for themselves, and not because they wanted to remove the evidence of the evidence never actually having been there, if you see what I'm saying.
I mean, thanks a bunch buddy. Now nobody can ever verify that 'famous' quote... I just hope for the sake of your soul it doesn't turn out that you faked it, because we can all imagine what charming circle of hell that is going to land you in; as if defacing a priceless document wasn't bad enough!
P.S. Can't tell you how glad I am not to have an experience to contribute to the horrifying litany!
Two medievalists – one medieval art historian, one medieval linguist – jointly blogging about cathedral vaulting and languages written on vellum, and occasionally life as alternatively employed medievalists, too.
The left-hand side of the header is a picture of the vaulting at Saint-Denis, taken by Vellum. The right-hand side is part of a photograph by flickr user Celeste, a Creative Commons Licensed picture called "El espinazo del Diablo" -- check it out.
4 comments:
That makes me sick. When I was doing the manuscript segment of the Colloquium for my Medieval Studies degree they told us about a guy who came in a few years previously and had clipped two of the manuscripts that they have there. >.<
For one of my papers I was working on tenth-century papal bulls, of which I needed facsimiles, and it quickly became very clear that someone in the same research library at some point earlier had also experienced the same need *so much* that he or she had clipped them all out and taken them away. This happens all over, even if rarely, and it's crap.
Oh, this happened to me once. I was hot on the backtrail of the actual source of some famous (but anonymous) quote. I had followed a footnote in an article back to a 19th-century source. Said source gave me only the vaguest of descriptors ("from the blahblah codex"), but I managed to figure out what town it was in, then a fortuitous meeting with an archivist the afternoon before I left said town convinced me that the book I wanted was in his archive. The next morning, with only 4 hours before my train left, I made a stop at the archive, where the archivist brought out about 8 books that might be the Blahblah Codex in question. I paged through until I found the one I thought was correct. Then I paged through that one, and realized that I'd hit upon what was the right section (a mini-chronicle embedded in a volume of miscellany). Then the chronicle started getting closer and closer to the dates I wanted, and I just new that with another page or two I'd have it -- the reference that no one had been able to directly cite for... well, forever.
And then I turned the page, to find two pages of the text, carefully razored out.
Motherf***ers.
Dear God! It's completely unconscionable. And yet, let's hope that any pages removed, defaced, etc. were at least targeted because someone wanted the evidence for themselves, and not because they wanted to remove the evidence of the evidence never actually having been there, if you see what I'm saying.
I mean, thanks a bunch buddy. Now nobody can ever verify that 'famous' quote... I just hope for the sake of your soul it doesn't turn out that you faked it, because we can all imagine what charming circle of hell that is going to land you in; as if defacing a priceless document wasn't bad enough!
P.S. Can't tell you how glad I am not to have an experience to contribute to the horrifying litany!
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