Well, I’m back in Montana. San Francisco was a very unique experience, both professionally and personally. I learned a great deal about living at a Zen Center and a little about archiving practices. Mostly, I learned some very practical tips for conducting oneself in a more deliberate way. Namely:
1. Use both hands! I cannot stress how vitally important this is in archiving and, I’m increasingly convinced, life in general. When you start getting stressed and flustered, stop and tell yourself, out loud if necessary, “Use both hands.” By reminding yourself to handle each situation as it comes, to hold and attend to one thing at a time, you not only calm yourself but you also risk less damage to the work at hand. In the world of archives, which is full of delicate, unique, and often irreplaceable artifacts, such an approach is much safer. There is much to be said for the ability to multitask, but at some point you really have to draw the line and allow yourself to focus on what is precisely in front of you instead of the crazy world roiling about your periphery.
2. Easily half of active archiving is moving boulders. Okay, not actual boulders. Although, depending upon the materials within your collection… (check out this rock library in London!) Truly, though, many archived documents are kept in file folders in boxes that get very heavy. You end up moving them a lot. You need some strength, both of body and of heart, to keep constantly moving these boxes. We often drew comparisons between our box-moving and the practice of moving boulders or creating sand mandalas only to have move or destroy them upon completion of the project. It will sometimes seem like unnecessary work. Get over it. It usually must be done. In a perfect world the materials would be house in super cool, Ender’s Game style zero-gravity chambers where we could rearrange and preserve them to our heart’s content. Until humanity conquers long-term space travel and living, we’re stuck with that heartless bitch, Gravity, and her equally heartless cousin, Limited Space.
3. A long-term plan with carefully laid-out steps of completion, definitive guidelines of practice, and clearly-defined roles for the various participants will go a long way toward mitigating your inevitable frustration at the constant boulder-moving. We started out somewhat aimlessly in the Zen Center archives, we had 4 different people working on the project, we were hampered by little or no Internet accessibility, and we had no designated space in which to work. We made it work…it would have worked much more efficiently if we had had all the points I suggest above covered from the beginning. Be on the same page with your fellow archivists as often as is humanly possible. A shared real-time spreadsheet (such as a Google doc) can really help with this. Near the end of our inventory, we spent an inordinate amount of time combining and reformatting our individual inventories.
4. Don’t librarian the project up. Yes, I just used my profession as a verb. We are, by and large, an unquestionably awesome bunch and our zeal to provide access to information is totally laudable and worthy. If we do our librarian thing in the archives, we will completely disrupt the context of the materials and render more than a few of them meaningless. Let the context be! Accept the fact that you cannot control how someone decided to organize this material in the past and simply focus on carefully documenting that organization scheme. It may not be how YOU would organize the material. It may not be the best organization scheme for a potential researcher. You need to let it go! And, if it really bothers you that much, apply your frustration to your own personal documents and files. Reorganize your film collection. Relabel your computer files. Rearrange your albums on Facebook to make more sense to you. Paws off the archives!
5. Don’t lose your sense of wonder. It’s easy to tire of year after year of line-item budgets. But the moment you happen upon something that truly captures your interest, you feel like IndianafreakingJones discovering the Lost Ark. You’ve hacked history! Primary documents are like a drug that calls you back to the files, the carbon paper, the unreadable, obsolete tech-storage time and time again. Remind yourself of that when you feel your motivation flagging, when you’re covered in book rot, when you’re caught in a sneezing fit brought on by dust and God only knows what else.
Now that I’m working in the Montana Historical Society Archives, I can confirm that these 5 tips can be applied in more than just the San Francisco Zen Center. The parallels are very satisfying, to say the least.
Archiving Power!
High Plains Librarian 