Saturday, August 3, 2013

The Triassic Library is finito

DONE with the second big project tossed in my path. This week I finished all the scanning and converting to searchable PDFs of 811 articles, theses, manuscripts, journals, and books, not counting how many paper jams I cleared from the copier.  It's done. And here are the fruits of my labors:
 


Twenty-four boxes crammed full. I also found a couple of fragile and important originals that are being sent to the archives for safe keeping. Listen to a big sigh of satisfaction for another good job completed.


They're not letting me rest, though. I have almost two months left and my boss went to what I call a storage closet, but everyone else calls the morgue, and dragged out six banker's boxes of records to search though for purge candidates. One of the first folders she pulled out had a brochure for a flag company from when the park was thinking about replacing the flag pole. The brochure might be a nice piece of ephemera for the flag company, but a Petrified Forest record it ain't. It now resides in the recycle bin.

This is the new project in the raw:


Luckily, we have already hit paydirt. Lots of what's in the boxes are boring and useless administrative records that should have been tossed long ago, but at least one box has enough treasures to keep me smiling and getting to work early for the rest of my time here. We've already found the original certificates from when six historic sites in the park were named to the National Register of Historic Places; the proposal, including photos, from a road off Route 66, down into the Painted Desert, and up to the tap room entrance of the Painted Desert Inn; and almost two dozen photos from a Civilian Conservation Corps exhibit, five of which I have not yet been able to locate duplicates of in the photo archives. I created a folder on the shared drive, which anyone at work can access, called Good Stuff Found in Boxes. As I get these things scanned they will go into that folder and I'll choose some to post here. Have I said that I love my job?

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Thought of the day:

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. (Eleanor Roosevelt)