BGS and the Gutenburg Press

Last Thursday I took part in our local SfEP group's trip to the British Geological Survey in Nottinghamshire. I was busy with work but had promised to go along (my attendance is sketchy at best) and I needed a break so I dragged myself away from the laptop (and the phone - more about that later) for a tedious queue along the M1 and an argument with the SatNav on the Nottingham ring road to a strange university campus type building that houses BGS.

I am so glad I did as the trip included two of my favourite things - fossils and books. In fact more than a couple of us were commenting about how libraries, particularly old libraries, make the little hairs on the back of our arms stand on end. Pre-children we made a trip to Dublin with some friends and while the rest of our party were happy to sit around in bars, sampling the Guinness, the highlight of my trip was the Book of Kells - in fact my 80 year old grandmother went recently on a bus trip and as I enthused that she must go and see it she looked at me rather strangely (she never made it but her trip was more tea shops than pubs). I get as excited as Stephen Fry did at the prospect of seeing a Gutenberg bible on his recent program about it (which was repeated on Friday so will still be available on iPlayer if you didn't catch it). I used to be able to indulge in this excitement in my in-house job as I was the editor in charge of producing this series (amongst others) which, at times involved handling originals to make up the facsimile texts - it made all the problems of dealing with the volume and series editors and the libraries worthwhile to hold history in my hands.

Looking at blogs (such as here and here) and sites by other freelance editors and writers a love of books seems to be a recurring theme. I think most of us would say we do the job because we care about the written (typed) word rather than the author or publisher of the final result!