The Pathfinder Less Travelled

Just as I had hoped, today was full of new and exciting things! After processing a collection, the next part is to create a pathfinder that helps identify what is in the collection and where specifically it is located. It was actually really fun to create one! A little overwhelming at first when I had to look at the collection as a whole and decide exactly how I wanted to organize it, but eventually once I got the general trends I had in my head out onto paper, it was making more sense. The only reason that it was a little difficult was because my collection is an addendum, so someone had already come up with an organization system. And while their's made sense, it was different from mine so their organization was not as applicable as I thought it would be at first. Regardless, it was fun to look at the larger picture and really feel like I was forming a coherent thing.

As much as I felt like there were more exciting and new things for me in store for today, I feel the same way for tomorrow. I really enjoy feeling like I am doing productive work as well as learning something completely new. Until becoming a history major, I had no idea what an archivist was. Intuitively, I think I always knew there had to be a position like this, but it was not until I really began looking at the different aspects of history that I truly understood what an archives is. History is written by the victors, and that has never made as much sense to me as it does now. Through Historical Methods I was able to really see the different aspects of history, whether gendered, social, cultural, environmental, etc. Before college I never really gave it a thought as to who decides what people learn or remember from an event. Now that seems like all I can see. I read things and immediately think of the context that they are writing in. I can see how a rich white guy will write about a historical event, and how it is completely and wholly different from what a woman, or slave, or minority would see in it. By looking different types of history, I saw the many different influences that history is subjugated to. Working at the WLA is no different. I bring just as much bias to this as anyone else. Some material is going to be important no matter what, I can hardly imagine throwing the original charter out as irrelevant, but some falls into a grey area. With my background, and my view of the organization, I can see something as extremely important, while someone else could see it as the most pointless aspect of the whole collection. This is one of the reasons why I love studying history. You can spend your entire life looking at the same event, and learn something completely new everyday about it. There is an infinite capacity to learn, and explore. And I get to do that three days a week and consider it "work."