As an undergraduate English major with a concentration in creative writing, I had always regarded books as a portal into the world of fiction, a place where I could study plots and themes, setting and syntax. I had never stopped to consider books as historical objects until my first class in English 241: Archeology of Text. The assignment for the final research paper seemed simple: use what we learned during the semester to explore, analyze, and describe a document of interest from Goucher’s Special Collections.