‘Round here we shy away from the label “miscellaneous” to describe an assortment of items we can’t really mentally pull together … It’s like archival taboo. In fact, on the ArchivesNext blog post “You guys really don’t like Sharpies–the #badarchivists Twitter meme,” @allysoneb says that “#badarchivists use the word ‘miscellaneous.'”
Not wanting to be a “bad archivist,” I’m going to be a “hair-splitting archivist.”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word miscellany as “A mixture, medley, or assortment; (a collection of) miscellaneous objects or items.”
In the case of the gobs of Peck’s lantern slides we digitized, uploaded, and categorized into Flickr sets, the miscellany here is all that is left. Looking back to the OED you can think of the delightful examples they provide to frame this really random set:
- Bacon in 1617 used the term to describe “A Miscellany and Confusion of Causes of all Natures.”
- E. Bulwer-Lytton in 1833 said “Turn your eyes now to the ultra Radicals, what a motley, confused, jarring, miscellany of irreconcilable theorists!”
- Z. N. Hurston in 1934 offered “John‥returned with a miscellany of weird objects in bottles, in red flannel, and in toadskin.”
As always, enjoy!
