Where’s My Passport?

In Summer, 2015, a local academic archive generously gave me a tour of their facilities. After perusing their pleasant reading room complete with exhibit, I was introduced to their rare book restorer and his studio as well as their offices. It was wonderful to see the guts of such an institution for the first time, and exciting to catch a glimpse of an old book being carefully put back together.

I then viewed their six floors of archives. While it was clear that a tremendous amount of work had been done to process what it contained, much of it had not been fully processed. Here was the evidence that this archive was not properly staffed for the amount of documents they hold. I was told that this is a common thing.

They lamented to me their most recent donations from local, recently retired attorneys and government officials who had all dropped off large collections of dusty, packed banker boxes for which, even in their large space, they lacked room to store properly.

One such collection was in the midst of being processed. To make the boxes easy to access, they had placed them so that some of the boxes came up to the door of the room. The assigned archivist would daily place a chair in front of the door and work her way through each box, slowly moving into the room. Moving the boxes to another area with more work space, sunlight, fresh air and company was impractical for various reasons.

Earlier on the day of my visit, the donor of that particular collection had called. He had misplaced his passport and needed it for a trip later in the week. He suspected that he’d placed it in one of the many donated boxes, but couldn’t be sure. The archivists were therefore all looking forward to a day of digging through all his many donated boxes, buried deeply into a barely accessible room for a private document they may or may not find. And people wonder why this sort of task takes so long…

To me, this is deplorable behavior on the part of the donor, and provides stark evidence as to how much trouble can be caused by messiness. But if I put on a bit of empathy for the donor, I begin to wonder how old and tired he might be, and remember that most people simply don’t understand the value of organization and never will.

Archivists are not hoarders, even though their stores may be difficult to control. When it comes down to it, preserving our history is an important task. Once the task is done, as it will eventually be, the levels of satisfaction for the donor, archivist, and researcher is manifold.

I hope he was able to go on his trip.