London Librarian Finds Byron ManuscriptHow completely fascinating. I have lots of things to complain about this week, but how to choose? Sexual harassment or slow-walkers (sort of like low-talkers)?
A University College London librarian has discovered the only known
original manuscript of a poem by English poet Lord Byron inside a book in the
library’s Strong Room Collections. Rare Books Librarian Susan Stead was
doing routine cataloging when she found the 12-line poem—which is dated
April 12, 1812, and begins “Absent or present still to thee”—inscribed in an
1810 copy of Samuel Rogers’s The Pleasures of Memory. “I just opened the
book and there it was,” Stead said in a January 3 BBC news report.
The poem was published in 1816 but there had been no known autograph manuscript of it until Stead’s discovery. The manuscript, which was later authenticated by Byron experts, will remain in the library’s collection, where it will be available to researchers, the Guardian reported January 4.
Sex is always more interesting, I guess. So although I am loathe to talk about my workplace, I will just say that there's this guy who comes into the library a couple times a week, doesn't speak English very well, and is in general very annoying. I made the mistake of trying to be very friendly and helpful the first time I saw him, so now every time he's here he acts very nauseating in a difficult-to-describe way, and either asks me for my personal information or tries to offer me his. I've made it quite clear (at least as I see it) that I have no interest in him whatsoever, but he persists. What creeps me out is that he keeps trying to give me his address, as though I would be stupid enough to go alone to his home, and last time he was here (after I had already refused the offer of his home address) he told me that he owned many businesses and wanted to talk to me about offering me a job. *Shiver* *Vomit* I of course told him that I was not interested.
So my defense against him has been to act as cold, unfriendly, and rude as possible in the hopes that he will eventually get the message and stop coming here, but I hate doing that in front of other patrons because it's unprofessional and sends a bad message about the library. And yet, isn't my personal safety more important? I think so. I don't feel exactly physically threatened by this person, at least not yet, it's just that he skeeves me out. I realize that every woman who lives and breathes on this earth and doesn't live in a cave fifty miles underground has to deal with this kind of thing at some point in their lives. It's just not fair, though.
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