by Elizabeth Chase, Coordinator for Research Services, MARBL
Elizabeth Chase shows a selection of
scrapbooks to students in Walter Reed's
History of Reading course.
For many of the students who come to MARBL for the first time, their visit to the archives is pure happenstance. They happen to sign up for a course because of its time slot, the general education requirement it fulfills, or its topic. They may not know that the course involves MARBL materials, or even that MARBL exists. While many of the students who conduct research in MARBL are humanities majors, many intend to pursue law, medicine, business, or the sciences. They come to the 10th floor often having never seen a rare book or manuscript, and if we're lucky, and do our jobs well, they leave as converts.
