Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Pro/Con

First the con: the first day of watching all that microfilmed newspaper scroll past me made me feel motion-sick. (I think it also didn't help that I'd eaten some really heavy food before I started.)

Then the pro: I got to send my supervisor an email today, telling him that the first set of microfilm arrived, that I spent a few hours getting through most of the first roll today, and that I'm doing well and am making progress. That feels good.


Okay, two more good things, associated with the First Day of Microfilm:
1.) Just as I was starting to feel apprehensive about dealing with this pile of microfilm, I got an email from Inter-Library Loans telling me that they'd already renewed the film for me, and I have it for a full month. Dude: a full month. Does that ever help.

2.) For some reason, I went there expecting the newspapers to be printed in old-timey German typeface (where I still can't tell when it's supposed to be an f and when it's an s most times), and it turned out that I was mistaken: regular old Latin alphabet, and I could read everything easily. Hooray! (I have encountered some usage of the Fraktur script, but so far it looks like the big newspapers had long since discarded it by 1929.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read a lot of microfilm one summer, and it made me feel sea sick too.
I found that sucking on hard candies helped. But don't forget to brush your teeth!

C said...

the most fun is to put the microfilm on the slowest setting and watch it for an hour, and then stop it. the room keeps moving! awesome! hours of fun! prob best not to try and read it while it is moving, but scanning should be ok. you will get used to it!

LynnieC said...

When I was a researcher I would spend HOURS in the library going through microfilm. I eventually had to schedule in outside-walking-around breaks, because of the number of times I nearly charfed. So, you should do that from the beginning. And bring something cold to drink/put on the back of your neck (I don't mean bring a cold compress, but a bottle of cold water on the back of the neck never hurt anyone).

Also, it is beyond outrageous that you aren't here.

Queen of West Procrastination said...

I know! It's ridiculous! I demand that someone cut out a picture of my head and paste it onto Bronwyn's wedding pictures.

Queen of West Procrastination said...

Also: a cold drink is a very good idea. I had soothing tea today, which was okay (but it helped even more that I took some Tums right before I went). But a cold drink sounds like a better idea.

The Blog Fodder said...

Drink half a litre of vodka. It won't help but you won't care.