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Re: archival experiences



Several years ago when I was new to the business, I went to a retirement
home to pick up material from a woman.  She and her husband were there, both
in their 90's and frail.  The husband was not altogether there, sitting in
the corner mumbling.  As I was in the middle of unloading the file cabinet
drawers into boxes, the woman starts screaming, "I'm having a stroke, I'm
having a stroke, call the nurse!"  I managed to get the nurse who casually
walks in and says, "Oh, she's fine, she does this all the time."  Actually,
she did die shortly after I picked up her collection.

This and other experiences with donors led me to the brilliant conclusion
that what I was taught in school about donor relations left out the really
important stuff -- donors are people.  I learned negotiations, making sure
you explain the deed, work out all the legal aspects of getting the
collection, etc.  I did not learn how to talk to someone in grief having
lost a loved one, or who is ill, or lonely.  Shouldn't people skills, caring
skills be part of our education, either initially or continuing?

Lucinda Glenn Rand
Graduate Theological Union Archives
Berkeley, CA

-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Webb <rwebb@LIBRARY.UTAH.EDU>
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 10:02 PM
Subject: archival experiences


>Whew!  Just back from one of those intense archival experiences I
>know we've all had; but this one affected me so that I want to write
>it out for people who can understand it.
>
>So there I was last week, minding my own business as always,
>when a guy who works on our web pages comes up.  He's got a
>printout from one of our pages--a well-known 1980s Utah political
>figure--and says he's been contacted by someone about the page,
>who doesn't like the photograph we have on the page to represent
>the collection.  I look, and there are only two photos in the whole
>collection; you can't post what you don't have, right?  So he has an
>email address; I write to the gentleman and say just that, politely,
>and that if he has more photos--since the last name is the same--
>we would love to have them, and would he happen to have any
>papers?  He writes back and says yes, he does have more photos,
>but his wife (for such is the relationship) of over a half century is
>now in the thrall of Alzheimers, and that furthermore just last fall he
>threw away almost 40 boxes of materials from her political career.
>
>Now for an aside: I well remember when this first came up, for it
>was when I had just been in the library a year or two; this woman
>had run for congress, twice, and had lost, twice.  She was a liberal
>Democrat, back when such existed in Utah, and this was in the
>middle of the Reagan backlash against liberal Democrats.  So I
>remember my then-boss seeking this woman's papers, but for
>some reason, nothing ever came of it.  The gentleman gave me the
>impression that we had let this slide; my colleagues who were
>involved in the transaction said that the donors put them off every
>time.  However it happened, this archive is lost forever.  It sure
>made me get out my list of donors and start calling them up.
>
>Anyway, so today then I go over to his house; right off campus, a
>nice ten minute walk.  He comes to the door trailing a little oxygen
>tube; very gracious and nice, and says we couldn't meet in the
>morning because of his cardiac therapy.  That's fine, this is fine
>with me, I say.  So we talk a bit and he says he's thought about it
>and wants me to just take everything; he doesn't want to decide on
>what to take, just take it all.  Then he takes me to the dining room,
>where in a side board are some photographs and files.  When he
>opens the drawer, there's a simple sheet of paper with a note
>written on it in ink in a big bold hand; the wife's handwriting.  It
>says (and I can quote this because it doesn't reveal any identity):
>"Closer contact with national politics has made me / less sure I am
>right / more forgiving / and less ambitious."  It was written like that
>too, almost like a haiku or something.  When he saw that on the
>top of the pile in the drawer, he recoiled like flames had come out
>of the drawer, and clutched his chest.  It only got worse; as we
>went through the photos in the drawer of his wife when she was
>vibrant, in charge, alive, at each one he would grimace and say in a
>strangled voice "Wait a minute, wait a minute," with his eyes
>closed tightly and his face turned away, again like the sight of her
>evoked what she must be now, alive but dead; and it was very
>intense!  I finally just took them out of his hands and said "Look,
>sir, I don't want to cause you this kind of pain; I can either come
>back later or we can do this another time..."  He thrust the folders
>and photos at me and said "Yes, take them, I don't want to see
>them..."
>
>All the while I'm thinking I'm sure glad I just got recertified in first
>aid and CPR last week, cause I'm going to be using it on him in a
>minute; seriously, I was rehearsing what I was going to say to the
>911 dispatcher and how I was going to check his airway before I
>began rescue breathing and on and on!
>
>Well anyway, we left the fateful drawer and went around the house
>to look at a few other files he still had, and even though the
>intensity was less the pain was still there.  I made an appointment
>to come back in a day or two and clean him out, which is what he
>wanted me to do (unfortunately I had walked, and there was too
>much to carry off in my arms); but I walked back to the library
>shaken and sweaty, like I'd just had a workout.  I know we joke
>about being ambulance chasers in this business, but this was so
>personal and so intense!  I love what I do but experiences like this
>one really set you back.  Again I can only say: Whew!
>
>Archivally yours,
>
>
>Roy Webb, C.A.
>Multimedia Archivist
>Special Collections
>J. Willard Marriott Library
>295 South 1500 East
>University of Utah
>Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
>(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
>rwebb@library.utah.edu
>
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>Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>