#archivist things

[conservethis]

Government cuts lead to creative solutions, at least that’s the story in my head as I’ve been working through one of our senator’s papers collection at work…and keep finding these little drawings of paperclips and binders clips instead of the real thing

[griddleharkbrainrot]

Working in an archive shelving the rare book collection, I have to check everything for that damn nameplate

[itmightbemikey]

SAVE COOKIE'S BUSTLE!

[historicity-was-already-taken]

my boss: so is the finding aid done yet? me: I'M AN ARTIST, SUSAN

this post is a work of creative nonfiction intended to depict my current state of mind (or #mood), as opposed to any actual conversation i’ve had with a supervisor. also, my boss is not named susan. anymore. at one point both my boss and my grandboss were named susan.

[dragonsthough101]

Absolutely horrifically dogshit. Not just at our site, but every site. This declassified example is just the tip of the iceberg, but use it as a trend: If the government managed to lose all of its own records on how to build a necessary and frankly simple material necessary for a nuclear warhead…

Imagine how bad everything else must be.

Honestly, things government needs: Clearanced carpenters, clearanced plumbers, clearanced roofers, and 100% a clearanced librarian. At least one per site.

I would absolutely be banging my head on a desk if I didn’t already have a headache 😂😭

(Actually, I was being reductive in my tags, what you actually need is an archivist, and also a records manager (preferably both, though one person can do both jobs), not a librarian)

But also I am horrified by the imagined horrors

(For the curious-records managers deal with storage, access, and disposal of currently active/in use records, and those being kept for only certain lengths of time, while archivists deal with storage, organization, access, and display of inactive records that need to be kept permanently but are no longer in active use. It is not uncommon to see a combination archivist/records manager, and while you can have combination archivist/librarian jobs, they are two separate fields with different practices and training.)

This feels like something that NARA should ideally/properly deal with, but there are probably funding and/or bureaucracy issues on top of any additional clearance stuff. (ETA: this is assuming US government, but it may not be, it just sounds like it easily could be, and probably is)

(My librarian career goal is to be a university reference librarian and answer questions and help people with research and help them find useful stuff and fix problems, but things like what you describe where someone really needs to come in and unfuck all the document storage/organization/etc. issues do call to my librarian soul (which also has archivist training and experience and a records management class in grad school))