This whole “not knowing what’s important until you know it’s not important” thing has really skewed any time management skills I ever had (not saying much.) I was attracted to library work in the first place (and I suspect I’m not the only one) because I crave order out of chaos. I like hunting down information and sorting and labeling the previously unknown. This instinct in me means I am easily engrossed in individual stories, I want to chase down leads and I don’t want to stop until everyone has a unique identifier and a place in the grand schema. Perfect example - the Lincoln papers. See that previous entry for a description.
The problem is that, in archives, this instinct is anathema to what we’re trying to do. I am just supposed to be processing. No one told me to hunt down everything I could find on the Connecticut Kansas Colony – that’s way outside our purview. I’m just supposed to be summarizing what’s here so that researchers can find it. I don’t know why I’m finding this so hard! In some ways I think the weight of the collection is bearing on me. I want to do it right – I want to impress the CHS, I don’t want to let Barbara down. Similarly, the little real-world archives training we’ve had in school has focused on hidden collections and how it’s our job to expose these incredible finds to the light of the world. This collection is so old and so vast that I am terrified I’ll overlook something. There’s documents from 1740, documents signed by Bushnells and other fancy Connecticut names that sound vaguely familiar. One night of googling has told me that Daniel Burnap is an important guy – this collection was important enough for the CHS to obtain it. What if this collection contains groundbreaking information that I overlook?
This is all probably the kind of thing that goes away with time and experience. I remember the first time a mom came into the library to ask for a read-aloud recommendation to read to her child’s class; I totally freaked out. In my mind, this one book recommendation was going to be the difference between a good memory and trauma. I had to get the perfect book or else I was horrible at my job. This feeling went away after about a month. I would assume there’s a similar curve for archives work, though I’ve never heard it mentioned. In the meantime I have to keep reminding myself to stay on-task and try to finish some big picture, concrete things. Every day that I walk out of here without a tangible example of “this is what I did today” it just feels horrible. To the outside observer it probably looks like I’ve accomplished precisely nothing.