"Well, their hair certainly looked plenty hair-like." 

"I hope we can find some medically-inclined shoggoth somewhere, I suspect Nereus may eventually get bored with all the poking and prodding."

"Hm. Quite possibly. Although if boredom is the limiting factor that could perhaps be mitigated somewhat." 

"Possibly! And we could try to be very efficient with our sampling."

"Which reminds me; we should stop at a bookstore on the way back so I can pick up that anatomy book for them." 

"I'll remind you."

"Thank you." 

They reach Miskatonic. Finding the librarian is surprisingly easy. 

Getting to see the Necronomicon is slightly less so. No, neither of them is to their knowledge related to anyone named Whately. No, he's never heard of another albino named Lavinia. He's from Providence and she's from England, neither of them has ever been to Dunwich. Yes, he's curious about other people who've wanted to see the Necronomicon. Yes, sure, this Wilbur person sure does sound suspicious. Purely intellectual reasons. Yes. Really. 

By the time the two of them are allowed into the room with the Necronomicon, under Professor Armitage's watchful eye, the whole incident where a Wilbur Whately read the thing and wanted to borrow it but Armitage thought he was suspicous so he didn't even let him copy any of it and he's the prime suspect for an incident shortly earlier wherein someone broke into the library but was chased off by dogs who were left with a weird yellowish fluid on their muzzles. 

She innocently makes a note of the name, the location, and the relevant incidents in her journal.

Amity makes a point of discussing the intricacies of early Latin translations from ancient Arabic and what might be divined about the superstitions of the times. She's a historian, really.

And he is her completely innocent cousin-in-law who got dragged along to take notes for her and makes a point of performing skepticism and disgust with the actual contents of the book, all the while taking notes in a personal shorthand on everything that looks remotely interesting. 

There is a lot that looks remotely interesting. 

Yes, well, it is not the historian's place to judge the past, merely to record it, is what she expresses out loud.

Her own interest - and what few notes she makes - does indeed seem to be towards actual historical information. (After all, it's important to know your context, especially if she ever wants a hope of reconstructing the original.)

The Necronomicon knows about the Elder Things which created the shoggoths and, apparently, came from space. It mentions shoggoths as a thing the Elder Things have created on other planets but is of the opinion that there are none on Earth. 

Interesting.

What does it know of other 'mythological' creatures?

The Deep Ones are a thing! They intermarry with humans sometimes; the resulting offspring look human at first but slowly transform into the shape of a Deep One; here is a formula to accelerate that transformation. There are semi-canid humanoid beings called ghouls who eat human remains. Certain beings from Outside are capable of manifesting partially on Earth and reproducing with humans. The Mi-Go: also a thing. They live on Yuggoth. Beware. 

Yuggoth? Why beware?

Yuggoth! It's in the solar system, probably. Mi-Go show up on earth sometimes for mysterious suspicious reasons. People who interact with them are often never seen again. 

(So they have space-faring, possibly unfriendly neighbors. Joy).

She keeps reading.

Also there's the Yithians. They came from space, too, originally, but instead of straightforwardly spacefaring they swapped their minds into the bodies of a local species about which nothing pre-Yith is known. The last confirmed Yithian artifacts existed in the time of the dinosaurs; they may have left for another planet when the asteroid hit? Unknown. Also there's these weird flying polypous things, which are known to have warred with both the Elder Things and the Yithians, who banished them to caverns deep beneath the surface. Also whatever lived in the Nameless City. Probably not aliens? At least, there's no specific reason to think they were aliens. 

Are any of the aliens or other non-human sapients friendly?

Well, the Necronomicon doesn't think so, but it also describes shoggoths as unspeakably horrible, so. 

Certainly a book with its biases, yes.

Also of interest: A complicated ritual to bring back the dead (requires an intact corpse), and apparently some wizards can auto-revivify. 

She's interested in where that ritual diverges from theirs.

It's basically founded on completely different principles? Except it also invokes Yog-Sothoth. 

Yog-Sothoth. What does the book say about that entity?

"Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraver, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."