Special Collections Analysis

     Of course I would be the one to find this interesting enough to write on, but as we were listening to the lady talk about the paper that the books and stories were written on, I was fascinated. She first talked about how the tiny pieces that had Greek letters written on them were made. She went on to explain that they were formed from cutting the stems of the plants that actually grow on campus and then when dry, they stick like glue. I thought it was awesome that we could make those now just as they made them 1000 years ago.
     After that, she told us how the parchment paper was made. It was a long process that was very time consuming. First the lambs had to be killed and then the skin was taken off and shed of all the hair. that dried skin acted as the parchment paper. When I personally felt the parchment paper in one of the ancient books, it felt very thick and kind of slippery.
     I just found all of the trouble that they went through to write down these stories to be pretty awesome. Now we can type on our phones, computers, paper, and napkins, so it just shows how amazing it is that we can still see all that history in one little book.