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Stumpage Reports
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Tuesday, February 10, 2004 :::
Deep in the Bowels
It looked liked an abandoned building, and we couldn't find the light switch once we got in there. The institution I work for has several satellite storage facilities because we have so much stuff we are responsible for. There are three of these annexes, and there is a definite heirarchy in terms of their location, importance of the records there, and the physical characteristics of the buildings. The place I got to go to yesterday was definitely on the bottom tier. It is a decrepit looking warehouse, sandwiched between the railroad tracks and the pet food factory. It was pitch black in there, with metal shelves stretching up 20+ feet, the shelves crammed with ledger books in different stages of disrepair and cardboard boxes stuffed with paper.
We had to look for a 19th-century deed book. A patron had purchased a roll of microfilm and several pages were missing, we had to see if the pages were in the book. Once we found it, I pulled it off the shelf and untied the dusty piece of string holding it together. As I flipped through the pages while my colleague held a flashlight I thought, "This is probably what people think of when they think of an archivist." I'm sure I had images like this in the back of my mind while I was in graduate school. We found what the guy needed, climbed in our 150,000+ miles state van, and schlepped it back to main facility for copying.
It may sound like the things out there aren't being taken care of, but they are in good hands, and should be OK for hundreds of years. Of course, we have top men working on the records out there. Who? Top ... men.
::: posted by tom at 8:56 AM
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