It's a question that I get asked a lot - by strangers at parties, on the phone with my parents, at home by my wife. Am I really that mysterious?
I collect historical documents and other stuff for UNC's "library." That's about as simply as I can put it without lulling you to sleep. Once in a while though, it produces some interesting stories or even photo ops. Like the one shown here.
This is a bust of Senator Sam Ervin, Jr. that was recently donated to the library. I was the one called on to drive out to Burlington and get it. Of course it made most sense to me to park old Sam up in the front seat and strap him in.
What a creepy bust, right? Well, he was all jowls, all the time - the artist didn't really have much to work with.
3 comments:
Love this post, Biff. Love Sam Ervin, too, come to that, jowls or no. I have just one question. Other than driving to Burlington and collecting stuff, what DO you do? Actually, I see now that I have two questions: why did you write "library?" Is it not a real library? Is this all a front on account of you're a spy?
How'd you guess? Actually, it's not spying, but counterintelligence against Duke's archivists - they're always trying to march in on our collecting turf. Call me "The Fixer."
Believe it or not, someone once called our department and claimed that we were a front for the KKK (no lie!) because we have a collection of documents called "Ku Klux Klan Papers." That's like a normal library being accused of being followers of Hitler because they have a copy of "Mein Kampf" on their shelves. But people think what they want to, I guess.
To the issue of "What DO I do?" I'm working on my elevator speech. This is a common challenge among archivists (to define their role to the layperson), so much so that the Society of American Archivists has recently been offering this award to support this effort. So far mine goes something like this:
"I work in an archive - which is a special library that collects and preserves old letters, photographs, diaries, other original documents, and artifacts so that we can make them available to people who want to use them to research and write about the people who created these things. I'm the person who does the research on which papers and objects we should go after. Then, I find the people who have that stuff, I approach them, and help negotiate with them to get them to either donate or sell those things to the archive. After that, it's my job to promote these things that we've collected so that people know that they're available for researchers to use."
That's way more than 28 words, I guess the building would have to be pretty tall for that elevator speech to work.
I think it's no coincidence that your professional association's initials are "so, aa.."
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