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Trip to Archives and Special Collections

 I enjoyed spending time in the Archives and Special Collections on Thursday this past week. In particular, I liked looking at all of the texts and images associated with the texts using the magnifying glasses. It was crazy how I could see precisely how everything was laid out on the page with the high-intensity magnifying glass. It surprised me that some of the older texts were in as good condition as they were. I examined the difference between one of the pieces of parchment and the papers handed out in class to mark down our findings. Obviously, the papers handed out to us were printed out in the library fairly recently. The other text, however, was printed hundreds of years ago. What shocked me was how much cleaner the older piece of paper was than the new printer paper. Also, using the high-intensity magnifying glass, I could see that the ink was much neater and more precise on the older piece of paper than the handout paper given to us. I don't understand how people could print more efficiently manually than a machine could. It is really fascinating and amazing.

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