1. As I predicted, I found nothing of particular intrigue in the 5 boxes of receipts, ledgers, and tax records in the Lucy Dean Record Collection.
2. Interesting happenings in the political world have taken up most of the inexplicably little blogging time I've gotten.
3. Several other things have come up since the last blog post including moving my workspace upstairs to the stacks.
The route to said workstation looks like this:
Step 1) Step off elevator that makes inordinate amount of noise and turn right to walk down dimly lit hallway. Make right.
Step 2) Turn left and speculate on what's in the big blue box from Vietnam you're not allowed to open. Current theory: Body Parts. Mysterious boxes always contain body parts.
Step 3) Walk down another dimly lit hallway. Say hello to Bobby and/or Chastin from the Vietnam Archive, who sometimes make appearances in the stacks on the left and always seem to be looking at the same things. Turn right.
Step 4) You made it! Without getting lost! Admire comfy chair that makes up for crappy desk, slow computer, and spotty network connection.
Indeed, the Audio/Visual room just doesn't seem able to handle me. My new project is processing the ~2500 tape reels that were donated to the Southwest Collection by a local recording studio run by Don Caldwell dating back to the 70s. In fact, the Crossroads Archive, according to my boss, was created specifically for this collection. This process involves first scanning the tape boxes and entering the information on them into a database. The next step involves baking the tapes in a food dehydrator to evaporate the moisture built up on the tapes that destroys them during playback. Ultimately I will be digitizing all 2500 of them.
So far, however, I've only completed the box scans of a little over 200 of them, i.e. 2 shelves that look like this...:
....that are in cases that look like this:
(That's the end of the tapes 4 columns in)
While initially overwhelming, I quickly got over the conclusion that I may not get to work my "co-workers" downstairs for a very long time when I realized that working on this collection has several awesome perks.
Firstly is the fact that while everyone else has to put up with triple-digit weather all day, I'm wearing a sweater and enjoying my constant 60 degrees stacks temperature for 8 hours a day.
Second, I no longer have to deal with people having to squeeze past me in the hallway and shoot me dirty looks for taking up space.
Thirdly, the bathroom upstairs has one toilet, a locking door, and makes an excellent fortress of solitude to contemplate life and ponder the mysteries of the universe while relieving oneself.
Finally, I can listen to whatever I want and turn my speakers all the way up because not only is there rarely people close to my corner, but the stacks have surprisingly good soundproofing capabilities.
All this comes with the ease of mind knowing that Don Caldwell's Endless Tape-A-Thon pretty much gives me job security for the next 7-8 months at least.
Not a bad trade-off for not getting to work in the A/V room if I do say so myself.
Interesting tape #1: Natalie Maines' Demo that got her and the Dixie Chicks their first record deal:
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