As an undergrad at Yale, I was seduced by the collection of incunabula and velum wrapped books on display in the glass enclosed stacks @BeineckeLibrary. I wanted very badly to get inside that glass case. https://twitter.com/DigitalHistory_/status/1293006277250031616

As a 1st gen, work study student I had first dibs at applying to campus jobs and got lucky with a position as a gopher in the technical services division working for the head of the department, now director of the library, E.C. Schroeder.

We bonded over our love of books, history and the library and EC often sent me on errands into the stacks saying I should "take my time." So I did and truly there are treasures in those halls.

I can't relate all the marvelous things I stumbled on in my wanderings, but two items truly stopped me in my tracks. 1) a crumbling, black box with an indecipherable label.

The library had so much uncatalogued material, received through bulk purchases and donations, that often items sat around for years waiting to be discovered and put into the system. This box was one such item.

Inside, I found individual pages of a hand written text on velum in what I realized was an old form of Italian. I couldn't read much of it but a name did pop out: Cristoforo Colombo.

They were legal documents belonging to Christopher Columbus. I was stunned. There I was, a Puerto Rican woman born on an island this man had completely reoriented and set on a colonial course from which it has yet to emerge,

and I was literally holding some of the last pieces of him in my hands. I carefully put the lid back on the box and placed Cristoforo back on his shelf to be forgotten anew until some other curious soul rediscovered him.

2) I have EC to thank for the second find as he sent me to rehouse a collection of random periodicals. Sometimes when the library had multiple copies of periodicals we'd go through and remove the copies in order to re-home them at other libraries.

These periodicals were a mish-mash from various collections that someone years before had decided to combine and we were trying to make sense of them as well as put them in protective folders and boxes.

It took me weeks to work my way through the collection and it was often boring and tedious. But one day I began to notice handwritten notes and inscriptions on the periodicals. And better still, I began to see poetry chapbooks mixed in with the magazines and journals.

Some of the chapbooks were uncut, meaning they had never been read and were pristine and new. A personal dedication on one of the chapbooks led me to realize that these were Langston Hughes' magazine and chapbook collection!

It had gotten mixed in with the other periodicals. I was looking at Hughes handwritten notes and marginalia for days and didn't even know it!

The chapbooks were such a lovely surprise amid so many magazines that I had spent hours reading his collection while making my way through the more mundane stuff. It felt like a small gift from the ancestor for carefully handling his legacy.

Anyway, for a kid from rural Puerto Rico to have had those experiences was life changing. I am the scholar I am today thanks in part to my time in the @BeineckeLibrary. And, if I never said it before, thank you E.C. for letting me take my time.