What a Week...

Apologies for the breaking in blogging...I was actually in the middle of writing a new post last night, when my hard drive died. So now, after spending a full day at the Apple Store, I have a new drive, more or less updated. (Thank God for extended warranties and external hard drives. I'm really glad I picked one up before I left, otherwise I would have lost all of the photos I've been taking in the archives.)

The dead hard drive capped a really mediocre week in the archives. This was supposed to be my first full week (without weddings, holidays, etc.) to work, but so far I've managed only to get in a full day on Monday, and two half days - Tuesday and Wednesday. I started the week with 14 boxes of materials at NARA, thinking that would take me the better part of the week. I found some great stuff on Monday, but when I got back to the archives on Tuesday morning, I realized that at least 8 of the boxes weren't useful at all, and much of the materials in two other boxes just didn't relate. (You just never know beforehand.) Plus the archivist I'd been working with wasn't going to be back in until Thursday, so I decided to call it a day.

With the lull in materials, I decided to head to the Library of Congress, to check out the Emanuel Celler Papers. It took me a bit of time to find the correct entrance ot the building, and to get to the research room, so by the time I got there, it was closer to 9:45am. I got to the front desk, and the woman tells me: "We're shutting the building. You need to leave now." Considering it was still early, I was a bit confused, but she reitreated. "We're shutting the building for an emergency preparedness drill in five minutes. If you don't leave immediately, you'll be locked in with no power in the building. Come back after 11." Great. Just great. So I came back at 11, with all of the other people who had been kicked out, waited on a very long line to get my reader's card, and finally go into the manuscript division closer to noon.

I've got a lot more to say about the Library of Congress and their collections, but I'll save that for another post...