I am scanning and scanning and scanning, page by page, a book I got by interlibrary loan, because I have not had time to sufficiently memorize it in the allotted time of a few weeks; it is a French / French Congo Bateke dictionary. This book, by the way, was published in 1911 and has apparently not been read since. At least I ascertain so by the fact that as I read through it trying to see if the dialect matched the one I have been semi-studying, I came across several pages that had not been cut apart by the printing press. No one, in almost a hundred years, had bothered to see what was between the uncut pages. So I did. I don’t know if it’s legal to use scissors on a century-old book I do not own.
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Botkin Creative 
I still have my notes, graded assignments and papers from graduate school, and I treat them sore of like they are important historical documents. I wouldn’t write on them, and I wouldn’t cut them with scissors. I know better, of course. When I pass from the scene, I should think it very strange if someone actually looked through those papers. Nay. The poor blighters assigned to clean up after me will discard those papers without a pang, and they might feel guilty for putting the papers in the dumpster instead of having them recycled. You know how people who worship at the Green Altar are.
There is mingled joy and sadness at cutting apart pages that have never been opened. One, the joy that you get to see something seen for the first time, like a mystery being found out. The sadness comes from the thought that something amazing could have been left unknown and neglected for so long.