The irony of my job is not lost on me. As I go to work each day, I make my way on stony streets where it seems, at times, that you can still hear the Guelfs and Ghibellines hurling abuses, and sometimes even projectiles, at one another. From time to time, I duck as an actual piece of rock comes down-falling masonry from a decaying palazzo. I arrive in the modern building that houses the State Archive near piazza Beccaria, where the staff in white lab coats has my materials ready for me (I placed my requests online while sipping my coffee at home earlier that morning). Then I take these 400-year-old documents to my desk, where, along with the other members of the Medici Archive Project team, I proceed to transcribe the handwritten words of members of the Medici court on my computer. The documents are then placed online, where they can be searched, commented upon and studied by people around the globe.
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