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Hello, my name is Patrizia Nava. I am a curator of Special Collections and I welcome you here at the McDermott Library
I started out as a medical assistant and later on I decided to become a midwife. I worked in this profession for nearly 18 years and I decided it
was time for a change and I went back to university, and got my masters in medieval and modern history and romance languages
and I became a curator because I do like history.
My first job here at the library in Special Collections was to translate old German letters and diaries from soldiers from World War 1.
They were written in old German script and I had to transcribe them into modern language and then I translated these into English.
My favorite part of being a curator is that the documents sometimes reveal secrets and
it is nice to read old people’s letters and what they did and what they thought in their diaries
it's really very interesting. It gives us a face to the papers and the documents that we process.
This is what I like about it.
I also like interacting with people, with living people;
it is interesting to talk to people who really lived history. For instance, the civil air transport people.
I really do like this when they tell their stories about their experiences and
this gives so much more insight into the documents that we would never have.