Bulgarian Books and New Projects

Week 1 is underway!

I’m writing to you all on my day off, enjoying an iced latte from a coffee shop in Bethesda. My game plan is to explore all the coffee shops in DC by the time the summer is over!

I’ve had an awesome first week at the Library. I’m currently working on three projects; alternating between them depending on their respective timelines.

I mentioned my first project in my last blog post: whenever I have free time, I go to the binder full of “sign in sheets” to continue tallying up the research subjects listed under their corresponding countries.

I’ve also started working with the Library’s Romanian periodicals. This project is a small battle in the larger war the European Division is waging. Mr. Harris (My boss, and the Division Head), has told me that he is constantly pressured by Congressmen and other politicians to downsize and consolidate with other reading rooms. “Why do we need separate reading rooms for different languages/topics? Why not just one big happy library?”. Mr. Harris and the other librarians have lots of compelling arguments for specialization, but I won’t get into that here.

Anyway, my job is to find all of the Library’s Romanian-American periodicals, and consolidate them in our division. These newspapers, phonebooks, and magazines are valuable tools for researchers interested in genealogies, Romanian-American culture, etc., but many of them are wasting away in the stacks! I’m on the hunt to collect them and make them available for our readers.

I’ve also been allowed to try my hand at curation. The Library is working on an exhibit about WWI which will be featured at the end of June. Our division has been brought on board to provide the European perspective to add some diversity to an otherwise “American-centric” display.

To do this, Mr. Harris has asked me to find specifically French songs which were popularized during WW1. So, I made a list of 6 popular songs and headed to the division of performing arts and recorded sound to ask about exhibit pieces. I’m looking for things that are visually engaging: 10 inch discs, colorful sheet music, or phonograph cylinders.

I’ve put in orders for some discs, and am still looking for more!

In other news, yesterday the Ambassador of Bulgaria stopped in! He was here for a ceremony to view the Library’s Medieval Bulgarian collection and donate new Bulgarian literature for the library’s collection. Some of the Bulgarian authors were there, and they were so excited to be recognized! To have your piece written in your native tongue added to the Library’s collections is a big deal, and a privilege many English authors take for granted.

I’m quickly learning that English is not the only language in the world! Language is a political and cultural emblem, and to have it recognized means a lot. Needless to say, there were lots of Bulgarians taking lots of pictures, haha!