My research into Huxley has ground to a halt. Again. Or at least part of it.
We keep hearing about how much information is ‘online’ and has been digitised. And it is amazing just how much you can find out by using the internet, as you zip around the world visiting institutions and cultural centres and drawing on resources (that are freely available and searchable) that you become complacent and begin to expect ALL information to be available at the tap of a few computer keys.
But this is an illusion. In one aspect of my research for example, I can go online and see where in a collection information that I need might be, but the details of that information are only available if I turn up at the library and physically search the archives.
In some ways of course, this is part of what research is all about, going to a library and actually touching the books, letters and accounts that exist in a mass of documentation, and emerging with the salient information necessary to make your point.
My problem is the information I require is in a special collection in the University of Reading and not in a library in Barcelona a few km down the road. Pity.
There is another solution, and that is to get a researcher who is already in Britain to do some research on your behalf. I am investigating this option, but there are, as you can imagine, a certain number of practical problems about that. Still, letters have been sent off and I await developments with interest.
Nearer to home, tomorrow will take us to Barcelona for to me see (and more importantly listen to) a second performance of Aida. It will be interesting to see if the two people who will be accompanying me tomorrow share my evaluation of the production.
Meanwhile the correct ingredients for a Sangria de Cava continue to be the subject of some considerable discussion, but I think that I have now settled on a recipe that will satisfy. It remains to be seen if my guests agree with me!
