I wrote this this afternoon while waiting for a book.

In addition to being an intellectual and brain-oriented experience, archival research is also a physical one, a tactile one if you will. I think Pat Benatar said it best when she said that "archival research is a battlefield." For in the age-old battle of the dust of ages versus my hands, my hands generally do not seem to be faring especially well. Wearing gloves is right out, but dry, dry, dry are the hands that handle the documents all day. Paging through old manuscripts covers my hands in a light but very much feelable covering of dust. Yet though my hands are covered in dry as dust dust, washing only exacerbates the problem. Desiccated or mummified hands seem to be my fate as long as I’m working in the archive handling paper all day, though I don’t really think I’m rubbing it indiscriminately all over my hands, which is about what the final results feel like. On the up side, work is going a bit more smoothly. On the down side, double entry bookkeeping is confusing as all get out.