Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Introduction to Archival Procedures Part 2
- Speaker
- Kathy S
- Date
- 2001-09-28
Transcript
Source: Kathy S – Introduction to Archival Procedures Part 2 – 2001-09-28.mp3 File: kathy-s-introduction-to-archival-procedures-part-2-2001-09-28.mp3 Duration: 00:45:13
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Just one R. Just one R. Sorry about that. Don't want to mess you up, Jackie. Okay, R. R is for reference. Reference. And this is what I've got written for reference. Use is the ultimate goal of all other archival functions. Reference encompasses a range of activities, including developing policies for use, locating, analyzing, and providing information concerning the records to researchers. So reference is what we get to do theoretically after everything's arranged and described.
Now we all know in reality, they're going to want stuff way before you've got an idea where stuff is. So the best method to do it is to just look all the hell over the place for stuff. No, you don't do that. You have some idea already, usually when you get material, what the best location is going to be able to find something. Now, a lot of questions I know that we get are email questions or phone questions.
Can you fax me this? Can you send me that? That's no problem, as long as I've got a little bit of time in order to do stuff. And that's one of the things, I had those rules and the policies and the registration forms and the reproduction forms. Those are the kind of things that once they're established, they give a researcher an idea of what they can expect. And now if a researcher says, I need this information in the next 25 minutes, and you happen to be there, maybe you can find it.
But if you're like most places, you're going to get a message on a machine or you're going to get an email. Hi, I'm from, you know, Free to Be group, and we were wondering if you could fax us any information you have on our group. Well, that's a pretty blanket statement. You know, any information we have on a group could be pretty, pretty vague, because Free to Be could be mentioned in all of the, you know, all of the assembly reports. They could have, you know, say that Free to Be group member was the head of, I don't know, the professionals working group. What you need to do is have the researcher narrow it down.
That's okay. And you do that by conducting a reference interview. Now, if you have an email question, you may have to email the person back, say, Could you be more specific, please? If you have the person on the phone, you can say, Okay, well, let me see. You're looking for information on a particular group. Do you have any idea what district that group is in? Hopefully they'll have an idea. If they don't, you've got to go to the directory, if you have one, and look for it.
So the whole process is to narrow it down to the most specific thing that the researcher wants. Most researchers are going to do the shotgun approach. They're going to pump you with a bunch of pellets, and they're going to say, Give me everything. Well, you may be able to find everything. You may not be able to find what they want. You may find that Free to Be's folder is empty, and they're going to be a little bit sad, because they were really hoping that they would find out the day that they were formed so they could have a big birthday party, you know, to do an anniversary celebration. Well, what you can do at that point, if there's nothing in the free to be's folder, you might be able to say, Well, we've got all the assembly reports, you know, and the new groups are always mentioned in the reports. You're welcome to come down and look at this stuff.
Because, in my opinion, what I'm basically saying at that point is it would take way too much time for me to do, to go through a needle in a haystack when the needle may not even be there. But the whole idea is to conduct or to get people to be more specific about what they're looking for. Because you've got some description, you've got some finding aids, you've got an idea of basically what you hold. You know, say we don't have anything prior to 1947 because AA in Tennessee, you know, really wasn't around too much.
'41. We don't have anything since 1941 because prior to that there was no AA in Tennessee. So someone wants to know, Hey, 1925, what did AA have in Tennessee? Well, obviously they aren't from AA. Or maybe they're a newcomer and they don't know. And that's the point where we can do some education. We can say, Hey, you know, here is some information that someone wrote on early history
[00:05:04]
in, fill in the state or fill in the area. And here's some background information. Oh, this was the first person, this was the first delegate, that kind of stuff. If someone wants to know just the history of what AA is in that particular area, they may want to know what's the history of AA in general, you know, and you can give them Dr. Bob and the Oldtimers and some of the other stuff and let them look at that and point them in the right direction.
Archives are disseminators of information. Archives are a place you can go to find questions answered. Not every question. You can't go there and say, you know, what was Jesus's birth, you know, birth weight? I don't know. You know, I've got reference questions before saying, you know, we've got a pair of sandals that we think are from Jesus's era. Can you tell us if they are? No, that's not—look at my archives.
What do I have about Jesus in my archives? AA. We are AA. If you've got a question about who the first delegate was, come to me. You know, come to the archives. Write me an email. Area 64 Archives has an email address. I don't know what the heck it is, but I'm sure someone here will tell you. You know, if you've got an email address, that's great. If your archivist has an email address, but the archives doesn't, if you feel comfortable, let that out. Say, hey, you know, at the next assembly, I'm the archivist and I've got this information. If you've got a question, email me or call me at this number.
But you've got to set some sort of standards. You've got to get that relationship down, because most people don't know how to approach an archives. It's not a library. You can't borrow stuff. You know, a lot of people, when they say, Ooh, this is East Tennessee stuff. We need to take this back. You know, I will make you a photocopy. Some people aren't going to like that. You know, and that's the things you need to think about. You know, are you going to lend stuff out?
Well, if you do, make a loan form up. If you feel so inclined. You know, infused about loaning stuff out, make a form up that says, I, fill in the person's name, am borrowing blankety-blankety-blank, and I will return it on blank. Sign. Then you've got something in writing. So six months later, when you say, Hey, Bill, we never got that first edition back, he goes, I never write anything about a first edition.
What first edition? I don't have a first edition. We say, Well, I just happen to have a form right here that says that you borrowed it. He's like, Oh, that's right. Here you go. Basically, when you have them date it and sign it. Exactly. And that's what you've got to do. You know, it's about creating a relationship and getting the facts sort of in order so that everyone knows the rules are the rules. And it sounds a little harsh sometimes, but it's not.
If you loan stuff out or you're giving stuff away, pretty soon you're going to give everything away, and you can just put the closed sign up on your shop and move out because there's not going to be anything left. What archives is, is an attraction to bring stuff. And people are going to bring stuff, and they're going to say, Hey, you can have a copy of this, but I want to keep the original. We'd rather have the original. You know, I would say that, Hey, you know what?
How about we keep the original and you take the copy? And they may say, Blow it out your butt. You know, we're keeping the original. You can have a copy or you can take a hike. And I'll say, Let me fire up the copy machine. You know, can I make two copies? So, it's dealing with people. Alcoholics, I don't know if you all know this or not, are impatient people. They don't want to wait. They will call you up and say, I emailed you yesterday.
Yeah, at midnight, yeah. And you just go, Well, okay. You know, could you tell me again what you want? And then, you know, my whole thing is that we try to answer questions as fast as we can. If it's a very in-depth question, it may be two weeks. It may be 45 minutes. I may be able to give you something. I may not. You know, I may be able to give you something this week, and a year and a half later, I may be able to find even more stuff for you because we've processed more materials, and now we know what more we have.
So it's going to be a learning curve for the archivist and for the researcher.
[00:10:04]
Now, we talked a little bit about outside researchers. What do we do when one of them, non-AA people, strolls in or calls and says, Hey, I want access to your collection? Well, there's a decision at that point. You can say, Well, okay, this is what we're going to do. You can look at a few things. We've got a whole bunch of newspaper clippings about stuff written about groups and AA in general, and we got a copy of the Saturday Evening Review, the Post or whatever the hell it was.
You know, and they can look at it because you've got like a subject file. We've got a stack of nasty old acidic newspaper clippings that I know those little old ladies in the 1960s were just cutting and clipping, cutting and clipping every time someone died who was in AA. You know, and so we've got subject files on things like that. You know, we can let people look at that kind of stuff. We can let people look at, you know, some of the other published matter.
You know, if they want to look at a Big Book, they want to look at one of the other published things, that's fine. But you need to establish right off the bat, like I had said before, is what you feel comfortable with as far as anonymity and what isn't. You know, because when people donate stuff, nine times out of ten to an A.A. archives, they're going to say, Now who's going to be able to look at this?
And that you need to know right off the bat. Because someone may say, Well, I'm going to donate to you my entire copy of the Grapevine. You know, okay, that's great. We would love to have an entire run of the Grapevine. We'd love to have an entire run of the intergroup newsletter. That's cool. That's published material. That's not too bad to look at. But if someone says, I've got, you know, I've sponsored 28 people, and I've got all of my correspondence with them and with my sponsor, and I've got a few Fifth Steps in there and some Ninth Step lists, you know, even a few Tenth Step inventories I did over the years, and I'm going to donate all this stuff, but I want to make a restriction that says nobody can look at it for 50 years.
Well, it's important to you. You make that condition. Yes. John King donated—John King, the Class A trustee from General Service—donated his papers to our archives. We're talking about old 14, 15 two-by boxes, and he did put a time restriction on it because of the— Going down at General Service Office. This worked out fine. Yep. But to cover that, we, one of the first things we ever did is develop an access policy, and I use the term general use.
Okay, we can get to the general use stuff in those. I mean, we didn't go through his paper, his paper, page by page, but we selectively took groups, and, you know, we can get access to them. But not everybody's going to have access. Exactly. Access policy is the most important thing you can do to begin with. And that's one of the things you need to do right after you write the mission statement. You know, in the mission statement, in that Starting in Archives, in the last two pages, it has a mission statement for, like, the Maryknoll Archives in Michigan or something like that. That's an example. You know, a mission statement can be, We want to collect the most things we can about AA in Tennessee.
The end. And as time goes by, you can add stuff. We want to collect stuff that has to do with AA, you know, or Al-Anon, or, you know, intergroup stuff. We can add stuff like that. Then you do the access policy. And, you know, that has to do with the registration process, with the reproduction process, because, you know, some people may not want their stuff photocopied and have duplicates of it all over the place.
You know, some folks may say 50 years. If you agree to that 50-year restriction, you dang well better stick by it. Because, as we all know, bad news travels faster than anything else. And if someone says, Hey, Joe's records were sealed for 50 years, and I saw so-and-so looking through them the other day, hootin' and hollering. Because there was some good stuff in it, you know. No one's going to want to give you your archives anything.
And that's something to think about, because the more people you have access to your archives, the more potential there is for confidentiality violations. Confidentiality violations. Now, if you choose not to accept any material that
[00:15:05]
has a restriction on it, that's up to you. You may not get some things that you would like, but that's your choice. That's the archives' choice. That's the area, the district, the intergroup, whatever. It's their choice to make a decision. You're safe. In the Rochester area, our policy is that no one goes into the archives or the repository without a member of our steering committee. Good policy. Secondly, we have something what's called red flagging, inflammatory letters.
People that are in professions like, for example, airline pilots that have said that they're members of AA. Right. We don't want that material to get out. So they're in a special locked file that is not open other than through the archivist's permission. Right. And it's very rarely looked at by anyone. That's right, because it doesn't need to be. Yeah, it doesn't need to be. And so we have that there for safekeeping, but—and it's there in the record—but it's not for general use. And our policy works well that way.
We don't normally have researchers in our repository other than AA, and anything that anyone wants to look at must be approved by a member of the steering committee who knows the rules and regulations. Classifications of archival material: open to all, open to AA members, open with approval, or closed at this time. Yeah, and that pretty much—that… Yeah, and that's one of the things that, in that deed of gift form, it has a section for restrictions. And on that section for restrictions, you could write none, or you could write, you know, in seven and a half years I want to do this.
I've got some faculty members that say, when I retire, this stuff can be open, because I've retired and that university can kick my butt then if they want. You know, I don't care. But right now, while I'm working, if this stuff got out… I'll be out in the line hanging, you know, that kind of thing. So that's the kind of stuff that when, I don't know, when we have had in the past groups of individuals coming from a convention or something like that to visit the archives, a lot of times folks will bring stuff to donate.
And I'll be sitting there at a table like this, and all of a sudden I'll be like, overwhelmed, because people are running up, Here, here, look at this, I got this, and they'll drop it and run, you know. And I'll be like, Okay, who gave me this? Who gave me this? Um, you know, who gave me this? Because not only do I want a record of deed of gift for my appraisal and accession to track it, but I also want to thank them.
I want to write them a letter, real short, real sweet, that says, Thanks for donating what you did. Thanks for donating blank, you know, 52 copies of the Grapevine with those little cool green holders, you know, because people like to hear that. People like to know their stuff is appreciated. You mentioned something just a second ago, and I think it's very, very important. It was for us to go ahead and construct the history of AA in Arkansas.
And that was the little agency cut out the little newspaper clippings. If they're in the day, if there is any way to go back and where that paper came from, they're practically useless. We got word out, if you're going to do this, we love you dearly, make sure that it's got a date and we know where that newspaper came from. It might come from Perry up in Idaho. We want to know it came from there. We want to know that Susie went to Boise, Idaho and got drunk and, you know, sort of a thing. At least it gives a track record.
Yeah, yeah. At least it gives a track record. So now we've got some little old ladies that are down there in old WEN, and they are actually reconstructing and making sure the dates and everything are on those articles. That's great, you know, and that's what volunteers can really be used for. Moving right along to O. Flyers. For outreach, flyers are a whole another session. They're evil. You're right.
You know, we're having a potluck. Come. You know, Route 42. You know, and of course, once again, no time, no date, no nothing. Me being from Pennsylvania, looking at my map, where's Route 42? Okay, Route 42. Oh, hell, it goes all the way through the damn state. Oh, well, we'll put that in Mifflinius for now, you know. But outreach. In my area, we've been having trouble finding an archivist, and our archives committee is very small.
I know that I'm responsible and the other active member is, but I wouldn't feel comfortable taking something and saying I'm going to put a 50-year restriction on this, because I don't know who's going to be doing the work two years from now, let alone ten. Well, you don't put a restriction on it necessarily. The person gives it to you, and they have that option. Now, you know, if someone in their wisdom decides to drop a stack of Fifth Steps off on your doorstep and
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run, and you can't tell who they are because all it said was, I stole, I kill, I murdered, I slept with, you know, well, if you're going to keep it, which I don't see any reason to keep it, Fifth Steps, you know, if you do keep it in a fireproof safe because they're eventually going to blow up, and you don't want them to destroy the other records. You don't really put the restrictions on. The archivist doesn't, unless someone has given you—say Bobby Joe Kegel gave me his records, and he said, No restrictions.
But in there, I found a letter that was, I considered very inflammatory. Very—he wrote someone, one of his friends, and said, This person, that person, this person's a lying, stupid snake. And that person's still alive. I may call Bobby Joe up and say, Hey, you know what? There's this letter in here, and I think I'm going to flag it, and we're going to keep it restricted because it could really cause someone some harm.
And Bobby Joe may even want it back. He may say, You know what? Just give me that piece of trash. I'm going to do something with it. Or he may say, Okay, restrict it. But that's your responsibility as an archivist. If you're going through something that someone has freely given you, and you find something like that, then you might want to contact the person. But you don't normally make the restrictions.
I wouldn't normally. I guess what I'm saying is that if somebody donated something and said, I want a 10-year restriction, I wouldn't feel comfortable making that promise right now. Well, and you may say that. I don't feel comfortable. I can guarantee you the maintenance of restriction for 10 years. And they may say, Okay, well, how about I just keep it for a while until you all get set up? Or they may say, Well, you know what?
I trust you. And you may still not even feel comfortable with it and say, You know what? Let's just keep it. How about you keep it? But if they say to you, like what that lady said, that cripple said to you, Take these three boxes of things or we're going to throw them away. Take them. You know, it's a judgment call. Probably the deciding factor is, do I have space? Right. You know, if it's got a big enough archives to worry about to begin with, well, you know, space. And some people think…
but to back that deciding factor up, rather than see something thrown out by the family, you know, can we stack it up, put it in the corner over there? As long as I'm doing 70, 50, temp and humidity, or as close to it, I can stack it up in the corner for a long time. We got boxes stacked up. Marianne Huggins, Area 71 archivist. We have two examples. One was a letter that was written back in the early 1950s stating people in the program who had gone through Western State Hospital, and we keep it in a file where it's not accessible because it's got names, addresses, telephone numbers, everything, and that's not something that we feel like should be open to the public or open to anybody. Another one we got was an oral history of a woman that's been in the program 45 years plus, and she said, I'm giving you this oral history. It cannot be published until my death.
It cannot be used in any way, shape, or form, shown to anybody. And we put that in a file and marked it. Right there on the copyright it says, Cannot be used until her death, and you have to respect that or not accept it. And, you know, if you do something like that too, where you do 50 years or until person's death, you got to keep track of that. You know, I may not be around in 50 years. I plan on being around in 50 years. I don't know if my butt's going to be attached to the 64 archives like it is right now.
I may have moved on to Canada or something like that. You know, but the thing is, is that you need to keep track with that. If she dies, well, then it's open. Now someone's going to have to go back and do the research to see if that lady is dead. But, you know, that's something that, that's another thing to think about. There's a lot of administrative bureaucratic functions in an archives. An archives is a nonprofit business, basically.
You know, we don't take in money. We are attached. You know, we are AA. We got AA stuff. But we are also a semi-independent run organization. Did I mention about having an archives advisory board? Well, I found that I was a little skeptical at first because you know how many cooks get into the kitchen. But I have found that for Tennessee, it works real well to have the experience, strength, and wisdom of a bunch of people from across the state, east, west, and middle, who are delegates, former delegates, people with lots of experience, and people who have been
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associated with the archives in AA for Tennessee for many years. You know, some of those people that took it from that little tiny box and passed it along until it became what it is today. And there's about six or seven of them that meet about once a year. And what we do is we sit down and say, okay, these are our goals for the next year. You know, of course we'd like more money. You know, we always ask for more money, whether we get it or not.
Jim's a money, money, money guy. You know, and we ask for support. You know, how do you feel about us spending more time working on the tape collection this year? By damn it, we are going to get through that list, you know, if we have to chain someone up to do it. You know, they may say, you know what, that goal sounds unrealistic. You might want to shoot a little lower. Get half the list done this time.
You know, something like that. I mean, there are other issues that come up over the year of running an archives. You know, if you're just starting an archives, you may say, look, you know, here's these people who in the experience, strength, and hope, you can say, this is what we've come up for a registration form. This is what we've come up for a deed form. What do you all think about them? They may say, Too vague.
You need to be more specific. And they may give you some experience on that, how it could work better. It has worked very well for Tennessee. It has not clustered up like I thought it would. But I think that's a really good, besides the district and the, I mean, besides the area committee, I think they're a good intermediary because of their experience. And anyway, that was a little diversion. Back to my O. Outreach.
Outreach is sort of what you see out here. It's displays. It's getting called the day before an old-timers meeting and saying, Hey, can you drive across the county, across the state, across the river and into the valley to tape these old-timers at 6 p.m. tomorrow? You know, maybe you can't. But maybe you know someone who can. You know, maybe you have someone who's got the willingness to do the taping, but they just can't drive anymore.
So you go around, you scrounge up someone who has a legal driver's license and a car, or one or the other, and you get them to that meeting. You know, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you say, You know what? Next time, how about you give me a little bit more lead time? Maybe three days, four days, two weeks, you know, something like that. That's the kind of outreach. What I have here for outreach is promoting awareness of historical records and encouraging increased use of archival records, the development of activities which inform people of your holdings. Now this is the beginning of the evil cycle.
You let people know what you have. They will come. They will come. You have to do the description. You have to get the arrangement. They will bring stuff. There's the exception and appraisal. It is a never-ending cycle. The more that they know you have, the more they will bring. The more they bring, the more you got to process. The more you process, the more they'll come. You know, and it never ends. Job security.
Because of outreach is the way we can touch the average AA person, just the newcomer. You know, I don't know how many times I have heard, I brought my little pigeons with me, and we're going to sit here and we're going to learn about AA. This is their big AA history day. They come in, you know, and they're just like, I can't smoke in here? What's wrong? You know, I have to have a cigarette. You know. So after we put the lids on their coffee, you know, and get the cigarettes out of their mouths, we sit them down.
We start hitting them with, you know, some of the written histories of, you know, East Tennessee AA. Well, here's Middle Tennessee AA, you know, and West Tennessee AA, and, you know, here's some of the, you know, here's a picture of Bob. This is what Bob looked like. Here's a picture of what Bill looked like. This is Lois, you know, that kind of thing. Here's Ebby, you know, because we got all those pictures up on the wall.
We got plastered all sorts of those banners that you got to make. Bigger the banners, the more we got to store them, you know. But the thing is, is that that brings people in. They will then go to their friends and say, Hey, cool, did you know AA in Tennessee started in 1941? The first person sober was bloody blah blah blah. He started a meeting in, you know, blah blah blah, Chattanooga or something like that, you know. That's the kind of stuff that.
You know, that's the kind of stuff that will bring people along. Going to conventions and having these little setups, that doesn't have to be fancy.
[00:30:04]
You know, you can just stand there with a bunch of photocopied early newsletters and say, Hey, you want a copy of this? This is a newsletter from 1952 when there was only 48 meetings across the state. Isn't that cool? You know, say, That's cool. Can I have that? Sure. Come on back sometime. Bring some friends. You know, and that starts that whole culture. It's that whole stardom young thing. You know, train them right.
You bring them in. You know, nothing old-timers like better than sitting down looking at pictures of themselves. Look, look, look. I was in prison there. Ah, I look so cute. Ah, weighed a lot less then too. Oh, you know, he's dead. Yeah, he's dead too. You know, and then that's how you can sit there because you didn't know. I mean, old-timers are a great resource. You know, you've really got to cultivate people.
You know, I have found for myself that archives is really a people profession. When I first started in archives about ten years ago, I was happy just sitting in a basement processing, not talking to people. You know, and then I realized when I started talking to myself a lot that I like to talk to people, and I got involved in reference. And that's my profession now, is I'm a reference archivist, and I work with people, and I enjoy working with people, even genealogists.
And they're a whole different seminar in themselves. You know, and it's just, it's a people profession, because what you basically are doing is holding people's lives in your hands. You know, when I first started, I went to school to be an archivist a number of years ago. My mom asked me, Why do you want to be an archivist? And first of all, she called me an archivist. And I said, I don't work in an archives. I work in an archives.
And she said, Well, why do you want to be an archivist? I said, Mom, I said, because it's the best job in the world. She said, How could it be? I said, You get to do nothing all day but read other people's mail. How much fun is that? You know, looking at, ooh, okay, and you know, that's when you get sucked into reading stuff. But to me, archives is a passion. It's my livelihood. It's my passion. If I can wrap AA and archives together, there's nothing better in the world.
Because by preserving my history and preserving everyone's history here, we get to perpetuate it. You know, and it's that whole thing. If you don't give it away, you can't keep it. So by saving it, you're giving it away, because in the future generations are going to be able to look at it later on. And they may say, Why the hell did they use that tape on that book? You know, but they're going to be thinking about you at least. You know, but they're going to be saying, Oh, why didn't they save this stuff? There's always second guessing.
Nobody's perfect. You know, I mean, every person here probably can say, Oh, I threw something away I probably should have kept. You know, because I'm a stacker. I got stacks of stuff all over the house. And eventually, something my roommate calls the Taylor bulldozer comes through. And she warns me, the terrible brothers coming through. And it's nothing like you have seen before. She just gets big old hefty bags, like all of my Time magazines from 1974, you know.
But, you know, that's me. Archives is very important to me. And outreach is probably, once you get past the AAA drop, dro, outreach is important. And that's the kind of stuff that we can do by just sitting down and talking to people. Because nine times out of ten, someone's going to say, What is an archives? Well, you could give them the definition and bore the hell out of them. Or you could say it's got a place that has really cool stuff, you know, and that usually is the hook. Once you got really cool stuff in there, you know, you could say, Do you want to see a Big Book, first edition, first printing?
You know, and you may say, Oh, you know, someone may be thrilled by that. Someone may be like, Ooh, touching the Holy Grail. Ooh, I feel the power, you know, and someone else may not be. Someone may say, Wow, look at the first meeting in my hometown was in my church. That's cool, you know. And different things strike different people different ways. You know, when you go to a young people's meeting, the young people's whatever it is, ticky-paw, icky-paw thing, icky-paw, you know, once you get past them saying icky, icky-paw-paw all the time, you know, you relate to them on that level.
[00:35:03]
You know, you say, You want to see some really cool stuff, you know. Someone may say, Hey, it's my grandfather. I don't know, he was in AA. Oops, broke his anonymity, you know. But the thing is, is that a lot of, of course we're generational kind of folks. We breed alcoholics, a lot of us, you know. So it's a history. It's a way of reaching people from all different areas and getting that common point.
It's just like, you know, we all may be different, but we all got the same thing going on. We're alcoholics. Yes. One thing that we found that's very, very beneficial for us alcoholics are real funny. You put something in structure and invariably you're going to be the devious few that want to make sure that they know everything there is to know about the structure. What we did, we put all our committees under structure, and it's in black and white.
Oh, you'd be surprised what an interest that has derived to archives area for archives. Oh yeah, yeah. And spell it out, every cotton-picking thing that we do. Oh, and in archives especially too, you know, the next time some big event happens in one of your assembly meetings, you bet there's going to have someone have been there researching that topic. You know, they want to create a new position in the service structure.
Someone's going to be there because, like you said, you want to know, and what the place to go is the archives. And someone who may not have been a big archives fan, if they have to go to the archives once to find something verified or not verified, they're next going to be an archives fan. Because either their point can be proved, and if it's not proved, then they'll say, That damn archives doesn't have crap, you know, because that should have been there. But they still know what an archives is now. And the thing is, is that that's, you know, and that's part of the point where I think an archivist is split here in AA, is that an archivist can't be all things to all people.
Much like we are in most things in life. The thing is, is that cultivating a nice committee—not of nice people, but just a committee—you know, that you can say, Hey, you're a really good people person. You got a car. You can drive out of the county without telling your probation officer. How about, you know, you be the taper, you know, and someone can go with you. And you can, you know, next time there's an old-timers meeting, you can go tape it, you know, and that may be something. They may say, Oh, I hate doing that.
They may say, Okay, well, how about you sit down and type up some, you know, some lists, and that may be their bag, you know. It's finding the right people, you know, and like Jim has said, he's not over there anymore, but we have gone through some volunteers. Volunteers are kind of a—you got to put your kit gloves on with them sometimes. Sometimes you got to kick their butts, but sometimes you got to treat them with kid gloves, because they are volunteering.
You can't necessarily order them around. You will be here at eight o'clock in the morning. You will get one break. No bathroom pots for you, you know, and then we will work till five, and at five you're released. You know, they may say, I can come for 45 minutes before I have to pick my kid up at school. That's cool, you know, that's fine. Find something for them to do, you know. There are some people I have found out who would rather clean toilets than sit in front of a computer and type. Pink, pink.
You know, and I'd rather have them clean toilets too, because at that rate, I'm going to grow old and get gray hair before they finish one list up. So the thing is, is that, you know, you may go through them, you may run through them. If you find out that you run through like 20 or 30 volunteers, look at yourself. You may be the problem. You know, but if you can find some volunteers who are dedicated to it, you know, you know, it's the old routine.
You get someone sponsee, you know, you hold on to them. They stay sober, they get a sponsee, you get a whole chain in there interested in A. I brought my sponsee down one time. She's a pharmacist. And I said, Okay, Nancy, you stand there, write a list up. She wrote the list up. She's like, I hate this. This is boring. I was like, Okay, let's find something else for you to do. You know, she found out that what she liked to do was pick the weeds out in the front yard. I said, Cool.
Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. You know, that's something that needs to be done. That's fine. She planted flowers. That looks great too. You know, every person has a hidden talent. That middle case that Tennessee brought, some guy saw the case that we had originally, said, Ooh, this thing is hideous. I can do much better than this. Showed up with that. Who knew he was a woodworking kind of guy? He just did. Here, said, Here.
Here's for you guys. Take this.
[00:40:00]
Everyone looks like crap. Get it out of here. That's cool. You know, so volunteering and outreach is important. The P. We have gotten to the P. I will just briefly touch on the P, which is preservation, because Bob's going to get more into that. Preservation, my manual says, is the maintenance of archival materials in all formats to ensure that they will be available for use by future generations, concentrating on everyday activities which is done to extend the life of the entire archival collection. Look at the whole area.
No smoking. I know we've gone through that already. Low light. You know, stuff fades. Stuff fades bad. You know, what we managed to do was, for a few dollars, like about thirty dollars, we took one of those archival catalogs. We purchased those little tiny tubes that go over the UV lights, over the fluorescent lights, that block the UV rays. That's not going to guarantee your stuff isn't going to fade if you leave it out in the sun by a window day after day after day.
But it will help. If you have a display case with lights in it, turn it off when you leave. There's no need for it to be on. Mice don't care. They can read in the dark. Let me see here. No food. Jim, my friend Jim Dorcott, thanks. Now you may look at me and say, You could believe this, but he thinks that if he brings me a dozen donuts, I will somehow magically appear at the archives. Kathy, come on down to the archives.
I'll have some donuts. It doesn't take the donuts. The donuts are a plus, you know, but it doesn't take a dozen donuts to get my butt to an archives. But he thinks so. I make him have the donuts outside. Well, he's smoking up a storm. I'm getting powdered sugar all over my face. I wash my hands before I come back. Drink, once again, you know, I'm pretty much attached to a coffee cup. I'm feeling a little jittery because I don't have one right now.
But I try to keep a lid on it. You know those plastic carrying cups that everyone and their brother has now. You got one right there. You know, that's the kind of thing you do. If you knock it over, it won't just completely spill everything. There is a difference between preservation and conservation. Bob's going to do a lot of conservation, which is physically treating the materials. Preservation, you've got to look at from a whole, too.
Is the whole building? Is the whole room? Seventy-fifty. If you don't know what that means, you will by the time Bob leaves. Seventy degrees, fifty percent humidity. Those are the averages you'd like to keep it at. The archives in my university, we keep it at 62 degrees with about 50 percent humidity. Now, I'm a Yankee. I like cold weather. You can stick me down there any time. I got a little old secretary with no meat on her bones. She walks through the archives, through the vault, turns blue.
I was like, okay, you need not be here. I've got a researcher who wears those little gloves with the fingers cut out of them and a scarf around her neck because she thinks it's too cold. I love it. Go down there. Oh, yeah. Feels so good. I go down there in the summer because, you know, Tennessee heat, ugh, you know, and I just go down there, oh, I'll be working down here today. Yeah, I feel it. You know, I even tour this collection again.
Anyway, there is a difference between preservation and conservation. What you want to try to do, I know someone said that they have their stuff in a storage shed. If you can, and it doesn't mean it's going to actually work, if you can afford it, get a heated and cooled storage shed. Storage shed. You know, because every time that paper gets real hot and humid, real cold and dry, it breathes. And I always say in my archives, in my vault, when the air conditioners broke, you can hear the books wheezing. They're like, ugh, they're groaning because paper expands and paper contracts.
And it, you know, there's nothing worse than 1940s paper. And when did AA get started? June the 10th. June the 10th, what year? '35. '35, okay. Then we had World War I. Before that, we had World War II. After that, World War II, they changed the composition of paper. It became highly acidic. 1940s paper will not last as long as paper from 1825. 1825 paper has a higher rag content. 1940s, 19— Ten. 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, right up until they got to the Permanence Act in the 1990s, the paper is very acidic. Now Bob's going to tell you how to deal with that.