Interesting discovery

Karl has been showing me many of the new maps in the library and a good few of them happen to be very impressive maps of France, that would be perfect for the exhibit. This week we took a new route to finding interesting artifacts on France by looking at the reference list in the back of a book about the history of traveling in France (the same book we were using to pull quotes from). We looked up some of the older books on mirlyn and sure enough we had a few of them in special collections. Karl pointed out a particular book about the travels of a balloon pilot over France and I sought it out at special collections. I did some research about the author, Dr. John Jeffries, and I found some very interesting things. As it turns out, he was one of the main witnesses for the defense for the case that followed the Boston Massacre, and supposedly he was also one of the surgeons that dealt with the injuries that followed. He was also the first person to successfully cross the English Channel by air, and he did this in a helium balloon. The book was very interesting, and included anecdotes such as a signed dedication to the science society that he presented it to. I talk about this more in my other blog if you're interested (annarborking.blogspot.com). Anyways, the book has a few pages that are visually interesting and could potentially be displayed, however, we could also use it to pull quotes from or even show a picture of it in a poster write up somewhere in the exhibit. While I may have looked at most of the maps of France, there are plenty of other routes for research that this method (looking at the references) has opened up for me! With 8 million items in the library's collection there's a good chance that my research on France could continue for a long time!