Farewell to a Fellow

The time has come for my CCEPS fellowship to come to an end.  It has been a long semester, and my work here at the library was amongst a great number of responsibilities I had to keep up with over these past months.  So part of me is amazed I actually completed all that I had set out to do!  Last Friday, I presented a culmination of my work to friends and faculty.  You can view the presentation here.  

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I‘ve detailed many of my finds here on this blog, but in summary, I went through 25 books from Special Collections.  Looking back, many of the steps took much longer than I would have liked.  It was my goal to be fully immersed in the world of science during the Early Modern Era, but I had to be satisfied with understanding the books I had in front of me.  This was a new project for CCEPS, and I am incredibly thankful to the Special Collections librarians that I had a chance to work with.  The most challenging part was determining each next step as we came to it.  There were endless possibilities with how a project like this could pan out, and it was often quite hard deciding what was best/most doable.
Another great challenge was creating the website, which was also anticipated as the most exciting product of my work.  At least for me, navigating Omeka (with which we built the site) was very new.  Thankfully, it was also pretty intuitive and designed to be very straightforward.  The site is up and ready to be explored here.
One last triumph that I must share is that I was able to integrate my research as a CCEPS fellow into my research for senior thesis.  I will be writing on melancholy in 17th century drama and fiction (mostly focussing on Shakespeare) as well as contemporary nonfiction works within the genre of the humors.  So I will be textually analyzing three works from my collection: The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Touchstone of Complexions, and The Optick Glass of Humors.  I am beyond excited that I got such a great start on my topic.
My experience as a CCEPS fellow has been incredibly enriching, and I know I have grown a lot in my skills as a researcher, writer, and hopefully an educator.  I am so thankful for this opportunity.  All the best to the future fellows!
Yours affectionately,
Lindsey Betts