More Adventures in Archiving

You may recall my friend from a while back. The one who was researching Andrew Jackson at an undisclosed location (hint: in Oklahoma).

He's at it again.

Apparently, he called up a Southern State Archives. When asked about their early American holdings (pre-1830 or so), they replied that almost nothing survived. No problem, our hero thought. I'll fly out for a couple of days and see what's there.

"So I zip out there, not getting any sleep at all because the plane is full of manic children in the middle of the night, then get to the archives...

...and discover that they have THOUSANDS OF PAGES of amazing documents that I need to look at, in an incredibly rich collection that would take me weeks to exhaust. So I dig in, trying to get through as much as I can in the little time available to me, except that I haven't slept for a couple of days and I keep falling asleep and then snapping awake as I fall out of the chair.

Lesson learned: Archivists do not necessarily know or care what they have."

Yup. And sometimes they fib, too. I was once stonewalled at the NY Public Library.

Archivist: "We don't have that."
Me: "But see this citation to it? I think you might have it."
Archivist: "Nope. No listing in the computer, never heard of it."
Me: "Can I make an appointment to come back and ask you to look?"
Archivist: "I suppose, but we don't have this."

We made an appointment. No one else was in the book.

That was at 3pm. At 4, my cell phone rang.
Archivist: "Can we change your appointment? Someone else needs to see that scrapbook and she can only come at the time you chose."
Me: "Suuuuure. I'll see you an hour later, then."

Upshot: At 3pm she tells me that they don't have it. She makes appointment in empty appointment book for the next day. At 4pm, she willingly makes an appointment for someone else to come see it, thus bumping me out, even though the entire rest of the day was clear. So they don't have it. For me. But for that German lady they've got it. And during my time slot. Grrr...

Archivists can be the most wonderful, helpful, knowledgeable people ever. Or they can be infuriating jerks. Research is fun because you never know which you'll get.