Ransom Center Magazine

What is Research?

The slow research of collection development

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This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. 

Shortly before the end of 2020, the papers of National Book Award–winning author Lily Tuck arrived at the Harry Ransom Center. It is always exciting when a new archive enters our building, but this arrival from New York City, in the midst of a devastating pandemic, felt especially significant. The collection’s delivery was originally scheduled for March of 2020 but was promptly put on hold as we began to learn of a dangerous, new, and rapidly spreading virus and as institutions shut down around the world. Until measures could be put into place to ensure the safety of everyone involved, the delivery of Lily Tuck’s correspondence, her research notes, manuscripts of such novels as The News from Paraguay and The Double Life of Liliane, and other material documenting her writing life had to be delayed. [Read more…] about The slow research of collection development

What is research but a conversation in search of the truth?

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by IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. 

Biography is a long, slow process of careful research … Reading diaries and letters and sifting through artifacts … I found the answers to these questions by carefully examining each document and artifact, and slowly I was able to write her story … As a biographer, going to an archive is how you find the person you are writing about.
—IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE

[Read more…] about What is research but a conversation in search of the truth?

ABOUT IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE
Iris Jamahl Dunkle writes and lives in Northern California and is the author of Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and her latest collection of poetry is West : Fire : Archive (Center for Literary Publishing, 2021). Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

ETCHED ARCHIVE: Windows at the Harry Ransom Center

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by ANNE TERRILL
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. 

Buildings tell stories. When Victorian-era critic John Ruskin looked at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, he saw a building that reminded him of an illuminated book, intended to be legible to a visitor. The façade created a space that could start doing the work of the church before the visitor even went inside; as he wrote, “both externally and internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in pictorial effect” as “a vast illuminated missal.”[1] The colors, materials, images, and ornamentation are not just objects of analysis or delight but incorporate a viewer as a participant in the building’s project and environment. [Read more…] about ETCHED ARCHIVE: Windows at the Harry Ransom Center

ABOUT ANNE TERRILL

Anne Terrill is a Visitor Services Assistant at the Harry Ransom Center. Prior to joining the Ransom Center, she worked as a guide at Glenstone, a contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland. She is currently working on a project to broaden access to information about the Center's windows.

Teaching research online during a pandemic

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by ANDI GUSTAVSON
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. 

Since the start of the pandemic, the Instructional team of the Harry Ransom Center has met every two weeks to figure out how to alter our teaching for virtual instruction. With each new class, our educators have quickly adopted a new tool or shifted our lesson plan, assessed what worked and didn’t, and then tried again. Like everyone else, we began to experience Zoom fatigue, so dispensed with long, slow discussions in favor of 10-minute interactive segments. These changes reflect the logistical necessities of teaching online in a pandemic. Yet the forced shift within our Instructional program has helped us refine our teaching and taught us a few things in the process. [Read more…] about Teaching research online during a pandemic

ABOUT ANDI GUSTAVSON

Andi Gustavson is Head of Instructional Services at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center where she teaches primary source literacy using the collections at the Center. She publishes on the ethics of teaching undergraduates with archives, digital pedagogy, and primary source literacy. She is the co-chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Section’s Instruction and Outreach Committee.

NOT SPEED READING: The slow pleasures of research

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by JULIA PANKO
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. 

Lately, I have been dreaming of archives. I have never visited the Harry Ransom Center in person, but I recently perused its finding aids and made a checklist for a future trip. Noting the items from the Virginia Woolf Collection that I want to study, I was reminded of Woolf’s essay “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.” In it, Woolf wrote, “We like to feel . . . that other hands have been before us, smoothing the leather until the corners are rounded and blunt, turning the pages until they are yellow and dog’s-eared. We like to summon before us the ghosts of those old readers.”[1] I daydream about examining the Ransom Center’s collection of books from Woolf’s personal library, summoning her ghost as I survey the physical traces left by her reading. [Read more…] about NOT SPEED READING: The slow pleasures of research

ABOUT JULIA PANKO

Julia Panko is an Associate Professor of English at Weber State University, where she directs the Literature and Textual Studies program. She is the author of Out of Print: Mediating Information in the Novel and the Book (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020).

Slowly, and then round again

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by SIMON LOXLEY
This essay is part of a slow research series, What is Research? Learn about the series and click here to add your voice to the conversation. 

During my time as a researcher, I have always been a working graphic designer. I suspect that, as a consequence, my underlying mindset has always been very results-driven. As a designer, if you want to get paid, all the ends have to be tied up, all ideas followed to a conclusion. Therefore, sitting at a desk in a library, I still feel that I have to produce something that can be shown to the world, whether this be in book form, an article, or other verbal or visual presentation. Although I always really enjoy the process of research, rightly or wrongly, a product is always at the back of my mind. Investigation, then communication. [Read more…] about Slowly, and then round again

ABOUT SIMON LOXLEY
Simon Loxley is the author of Type: the secret history of letters (2004), Printer’s Devil: the life and work of Frederic Warde (2013),Type is Beautiful: the story of fifty remarkable fonts (2016), and Emery Walker: arts, crafts and a world in motion (2019). He is a graphic designer, teacher, and writer in the UK, where he serves as designer and editor of Ultrabold, the journal of St. Bride Library.

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