The archive looked as I thought it would, but I wasn’t expecting it to be located across several different rooms and on different floors – which of course it would be, given the sheer volume of material and the range of media: sound recordings, photographs, maps, music, books… Navigating the building from one section of the archive to another is like a treasure hunt in itself. A slight panic set in, that I might get stuck in one room – wonderfully stuck – but that I might follow one strand of research and would miss so many gems in the other rooms as a result. This feeling was swiftly dispelled by Cathlin as she showed us round and explained how everything worked – I can see I’m going to have to be methodical about this or I won’t get any sleep.
In the main archive room, there are black and white photographs of people on the wall above the cabinets of index cards – I saw this as a reminder of the real people behind all this material; also that we are part of this continuum. That it struck me showed me the reminder was necessary. I hope and expect that once I really get started with the material, this distance will dissolve.
I had a couple of hours before my train back to Liverpool, so at the end of the session I was able to stay for a while by myself. I used my time responsibly, testing myself using the indexes and record books to make sure I’d been paying attention. Then I looked up werewolves.
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