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4) During the time I couldn’t go to archives, I did other research things, tried other approaches, and I found that I like them too. But this trip proved to me, in the end, that I still love archival research, and I worry a bit about its place in an increasingly neoliberal university. (13/13)

3) I also wonder how the increasing availability of digitized sources will change these on-site stings of archival research – maybe they’ll become less frequent, but perhaps also more overwhelming for us when they happen? (12/13)

2) Long days (8 hours +, not that anyone needs to do them) are probably more feasible with archives/collections/documents you know very well. Not so much when you are still learning the ropes. (11/13)

Learning how a new (to you) archive works (organization, timings to get your documents, how archivists like to work) is success. Learning how to effectively read and process a new type of document is success. (10/13)

A few reflections/notes to self: 1) “Success” at an archive can mean many things. Determining that an archive is not as promising as you initially thought and hence you can divert the rest of your time elsewhere, is success. (9/13)

Plus, this time, my project does not have such obvious sources anymore. Most of them are not even music-specific sources –I am working with administrative and military archives, for example, which I did not have experience of before. (8/13)

By contrast, by the end of this trip (still a week to go), I will have visited nine different archives and special collections. I have only ever worked in one of them before –many many years ago, for one single afternoon, as an undergraduate. (7/13)

3) When you’ve spent the last 3 years doing a demanding but not particularly coveted or thankful administrative role, your mind starts telling you your are most valuable to the institution when you are crouched down on an Excel spreadsheet, not reading 19th century script in an archive. (6/13)

In retrospect, there were a few reasons. 1) Since my PhD, I’ve done most of my archival research in a few archives/special collections I know by now extremely well. 2) My research has often been built around the sources themselves: composers’ archives, historical sound collections, etc. (5/13)

Then the following week, things started to go a bit awry –collections that were initially promising were useless, or inaccessible. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t remember it being so difficult even in my first forays into archival research. I thought I had lost it as a researcher. (4/13)

The first week I had a couple of “archive highs”, that adrenaline rush I had missed so much –being surrounded by documents no one had probably looked at in several decades, even discovering the odd lead to shape a project that was (is) pretty much in its infancy. (3/13)

Archival research was my bread-and-butter. I “discovered” it as a PhD student and was probably the main single reason why I wanted to stay in academia. I’d never gone as long as this without it, and I was both looking forward (90%) and dreading (10%) the return. (2/13)

75. Paola Capriolo, Il nocchiero

74. Forrest Gander, Como amigo

73. Lana Bastašić, Denti da latte