In case anyone is curious about why I'm working so hard at Persian, Armenian, etc. This is your occasional reminder that UCLA has about 15,000 Near Eastern Manuscripts with descriptions like this: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt7779q44r/entire_text/?query=Persian%20Manuscripts

Even under the BEST conditions, we're looking at years of work for teams of people. From descriptions to access to conservation to curatorial care. The job is too big for any single unit/person.

So sure - I could just stick to my wheelhouse of East Asian and EM European materials - I was basically poised to start banging out research articles. But part of what attracted me to librarianship was the desire to help make things accessible in order to change our narratives.

In other words, I'm more interested in background spade-work to change the structures and super-structures of scholarship - and doing that work is collaborative, uncelebrated, and each pivot takes years of preparation in terms of study + skills acquisition.

Anyways, this thread was prompted by looking at my calendar - going "Oh shit" - and for the fifth time this week realizing I've stumbled my way into essentially a full-course load + a full-time job + all the other stuff.