loved this conversation so much and am so thrilled Dame Karen ended up with all those beautiful Viragos. I definitely understand where Sophie is coming from with her dismay over the woman's personal library ending up on a freebie cart, but it sounds like they came with her personal papers. I'm a curator at an archives and special collections repository and in most cases, we have to do the same thing—we simply and literally don't have space, resources, or staff labor to steward every donor's book collection. There are exceptions of course and it's definitely worth challenging assumptions about whose books get saved and why, but in this scenario, letting Karen given them a second life sounds close to ideal.
I think I also was in Mr. Kennedy's senior English class! This conversation was fascinating & maybe a prequel to a... podcast? 🫶🏼
He was the best!!! (And such a silver fox in retrospect?!)
loved this conversation so much and am so thrilled Dame Karen ended up with all those beautiful Viragos. I definitely understand where Sophie is coming from with her dismay over the woman's personal library ending up on a freebie cart, but it sounds like they came with her personal papers. I'm a curator at an archives and special collections repository and in most cases, we have to do the same thing—we simply and literally don't have space, resources, or staff labor to steward every donor's book collection. There are exceptions of course and it's definitely worth challenging assumptions about whose books get saved and why, but in this scenario, letting Karen given them a second life sounds close to ideal.
❤️❤️❤️ that’s good to read — thank you, Christine!