Great News!

Matt went and got himself a dream of a job today that will last until this August. Starting on Monday he will be working 20 hours a week as a library assistant in the Harry Ransom Center archive. What is an archive exactly, you ask? It is sort of like a museum that meets a library*. An archive focuses less on objects and more on documents, letters, books, etc. The materials in an archive, like the Harry Ransom Center, are available for both research and curated exhibitions. Most of Matt's work will comprise of moving some of the permanent collection into an annex and creating finding aids for the materials so they can be easily retrieved when needed. This is pretty exciting stuff for a fellow like Matt who collects caligraphy inks and pens, fetishizes typewriters and enjoys solitude in projects.

More on the Ransom Center. If you are not library nerds then you may not be as familiar with it. To give you an idea of how cool this is though, I once heard this place described as a "kick-ass archive". I thought that was a pretty silly thing to say until I went to one of their latest exhibits on the history of film. This exhibition was pretty incredible. It included all kinds of treasures like the actual red dress Scarlett wore in Gone with the Wind and the preliminary storyboards from Martin Scorcesi's Raging Bull. They also have, as part of their permanent collection, an original Gutenburg Bible. I think we can all agree this adds up to a pretty cool archive, maybe even kick-ass job...?

*Funny that I didn't end up in an archive but I think it is mainly because I need a little more "people time" than Matt does.