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Re: Processing Priority Criteria / archival experiences



Morning,

I wanted to follow up briefly on my message of last week, in case
some of you were dying to know what happened, but also to
comment on something Dean said, vis:

 I daresay that librarians don't understand
> backlog in the archives, and the many differences which
> require time, staff, supplies, and especially time.

I couldn't agree more; despite our own efforts at education, we still
get blank looks from the librarians in the building when we describe
our operations.  One thing I never tire of telling them is that the
archivists and staff here in Special Collections are a microcosm of
the entire building, which has a staff of over 300.  Every one of
those functions are performed by the much smaller staff in Special
Collections.  Administration, technical services, reference, donor
relations, fund-raising, even down to moving the furniture when we
need to--we do *every* function that is performed by the entire
library.   Now I always joke, with the implementation of a web-
based time-keeping system, we do payroll too!   So think of that
when you are facing indifference, those of you in a larger library
setting: you do every job in that library.

Anyway, briefly then: I returned to the donor I wrote about last
week on Friday; the pick-up went much more smoothly and less
emotionally, even though it was a lot of work, for I forgot one of my
own rules of donor relations, the Archival Rule of Threes: if a donor
says he has a box to pick up, bring three; if they say they have
three boxes, bring nine, and so on.  So I ended up filling the six
boxes I brought and hauling a lot of stuff out loose, losing part of a
tooth when I stood up in a closet with an up-to-my-chin load of
plaques and met the clothes bar with the top of my head.   Ah well.
It was still an emotional experience; he didn't want to keep
anything, old cabinet cards of his family, photos from the war, the
kids baby books, nothing.  "If you don't take it I'm throwing it
away," he kept saying, so I took it.  I also got to thinking about the
30 or so boxes he had thrown away last year, and wondered, since
his wife was such a public figure, how much of that could be re-
captured.  We've all dealt with political collections that are stuffed
full of reports of bills, laws, and on and on that are public
documents; maybe I'm trying to rationalize the loss but I think this
woman was so much in the public eye that much of the lost boxes
wasn't as much of a loss as I first thought.  What was saved and
what I picked up was much more personal and private.

I was being facetious yesterday when I accidentally forwarded that
request for information about shovels, but I was amazed once again
at the amount of knowledge available through this list; it's become
one of my most valued professional tools.

Enough rambling, I apologize to the list for going on so about this
and other things, and promise I won't write a thing next week (when
I'll be out of the office all week!).


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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