St John’s Archives

Last semester the head of the St Johns archive was the teacher of the History of the Book class that I keep talking about. She took us to tour the St Johns Archive as one of our final field trips.

Well, this semester, my Archives and Manuscripts teacher took us on a field trip to…you guessed it, the St Johns Archive. Now those of us who were together in the History of the Book class and are together again in this class (around four of us) were expecting a really boring, repeat of the tour that we had last semester. And while that may have been the case when it comes to the actual area that we saw, it is still the same archive after all, it is not true for the discussions, questions and random information that we had on this visit. Surprisingly, I had a really good time. Never mind the fact that it was nice to go back and see the head of the archives and her assistants (both of whom were in the History of the Book class, but are not in the Archives class) again, but the things that we discussed this time were very different and very interesting. It just goes to show that those who say there is no point in returning to a place that you have already been, never factored in returning with a different crowd.