Journal 4

09/16/13       10:00am-4:00pm      24 hours

When I arrived at the archive this morning, we had a researcher in. I remembered M mentioning something about having to track down materials for him. Then I saw the piles of folders sitting on the table by him.

“Christy, would you be willing to do some photocopying? There’s a lot that needs to be done, and it would help if you did some for like a half hour or so.”

“Sure,” I responded. I then set down my things and went to go photocopy.

Here’s the thing though. The researcher had literally asked for hundreds and hundreds of pages for us to copy. It seemed like he was trying to take home all of the papers he had read through for researching purposes. The archive has 1.5 staff members: M, and me. I knew what we were doing for the rest of the week.

I realized there was another problem as a photocopied. A lot of the paper was onionskin copies from typewriters. The type was blurry as a result. He was going to have a hard time reading this. When I told M, she pointed out that this was the best we could do. So I copied three folders, finishing about 150 pages in that time. Needing a break from the fumes, I then went back to processing box 1. I went back in after lunch to copy more. I really hope that he’s happy with the copies. If he asks for redone copies after receiving things, M and I might cry.