Woe unto me for not doing my preliminary research diligently enough. For the senior research paper, I had intended to write about the sharing of information between colonial newspapers. Since the Mack Library at BJU has the series Early American Imprints, a microfiche collection of everything printed in the United States from 1639 to 1820 still extant, I assumed that it would have all the newspapers as well. All the early American newspapers are cataloged in Early American Imprints, but all the microfiche that I thought would have the newspapers reproduced instead read, “Please see the Readex collection Early American Newspapers.” The Mack Library does have part of that collection, but not all of it. Therefore, I must either shift my paper topic or somehow get all the sources. In sum, to date I have no topic and very few sources. It will require an extraordinary amount of diligence to recover from my incompetence.

On a more cheerful note, the collection Early American Newspapers is on rolls of microfiche, not microfiche cards. The rolls are more convenient to use, and the whirring sound of the microfiche reader winding them up is ever so enjoyable.