Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Wonderful Wednesday, part one

Good morning, faithful readers! Thank you for joining me for today's escapades in the archives. Today is day 3 of the "day in the life" series of postings. It is almost 8:30am, and my day is off to a slow start. I have a raging sore throat, but I'm at the office. I feel fine other than that, so I don't know what's going on. (Update - I now have a headache, too.)

Today is Wednesday, which means Special Collections is closed to the public, and my two assistants are both off. I may have some student workers appear later in the day, however. So far today I have dropped off two bags of trash at our local recycling center, made it to work, caught up with Twitter and FriendFeed, and started plowing through work email. I think it's time for some caffeine of the fizzy variety! (I'm not a coffee drinker.)

Rather than yesterday's play-by-play, I think I'll just summarize today's achievements, such as they are.

The only email I have to act on is one inviting me to write an article for the newsletter of the Archivists of Religious Collections Section for the Society of American Archivists. Apparently I volunteered to do that on last year's membership survey. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time! I only need to write a paragraph or so according to the email. But what shall I say? Just looked over some back issues of the newsletter, Archival Spirit. Looks like most folks submit information on new collections or projects they are undertaking. I'll have to think about something regarding our Baptist collections to share; most of our recent acquisitions have related more to our university side.

Yesterday's pile-sorting and inbox-cleaning yielded a couple of checks and a book order for the Georgia Baptist Historical Society. I've prepared a deposit slip, copied the checks, updated our membership list, mailed the books, and sent the checks/deposit slip to the bank. While I was in the mailroom, I discovered that my recent Gaylord supply order has arrived, so I brought the boxes upstairs. I'll let a student unpack them later and make sure everything is accounted for. I also chatted with some folks from Technical Services while I was downstairs. Special Collections can be pretty quiet, so it's nice to visit other departments when I can.

Weather check: 64F and rainy. I need to go out for an allergy shot, but I'm also going out at lunchtime and again to the chiropractor this afternoon. I think I'll wait and get the shot after I go to the chiro. Just spent some time reading other people's "day in the life" postings. Librarians and archivists do a lot of neat things! And I'm always relieved to see that other folks procrastinate (like I do) and struggle to find projects for their student assistants (like I do). It's nice to know you aren't alone in this business.

Our dean mentioned an Educause e-book in our library management group meeting the other day. I thought the title sounded familiar, so I looked it up. Yes, I recalled correctly - my former office-mate and I cited it in our article for the 2006 issue of Provenance, the journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists. Maybe I'll check out the print version instead of trying to skim the online copy again. I haven't read it in several years.

Ok. I have an hour until lunch. I think I'll work on a paper I have to write and present this spring. I'll go ahead and post this much now; hopefully I can add more this afternoon. Enjoy your day!

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