Hello again, Special Collections!!! Hello again, to you all!!!
It was a great winter break, but all things must come to an end and reality sets in; which means getting back into gear because business awaits. In my last post, I had mentioned that I started processing the Association for Women Faculty Records (MS 334); as a carryover project from last semester it has proved to be quite difficult because I seized to work on this collection for 4 weeks.
Even when I started it, it was challenging. Since this collection consists of mostly additions- material added onto an established collection post ex facto- it was a handful. What happened is that somebody worked on this collection (in 1998?), described and arranged, and designed a finding aid for what was there- about 2 boxes. Then, December 2013 comes around and additions- 8 boxes- have been attached to this collection. It is my job to redesign this collection. What is an archivist to do but persist and pursue?
Now, being a graduate student there are many papers one has to write and, as I’m sure you are aware, writers have a thing called “writer’s block” from time-to-time. It just so happens that archivists can experience the same type of displacement- cognitive dissonance. It is truly difficult, especially in this line of work, to pick up where you left off having to get back into the swing of things: following the lines of your own contrived logic of organization and discrete order of series. I found myself asking: “what was I thinking when I put these documents in this series?” or “was I just going to re-folder these or was I going to extract items and place them elsewhere into a new series?” Ah, the things archivists think.
There are more projects underway this semester and I can’t wait to take them on.
On another note, the Special Collections has acquired some of this campus’ best. I am pleased to introduce Graduate Assistants, Liz and Alexa.
Archivist Apprenticeship 