Getting Dirty in the Archives

After getting my normal amount of requests filled this morning, and planning a meeting tomorrow, I went back to the Triangle (a nook behind the stacks where the audio visual center was placed) to look at some of the audio visual equipment for a project and then I realized something...

Tomorrow I will have interviewed at CUA two years ago. The equipment has been extremely disorganized since my interview. It has not been organized though it has been on my to-do list for almost two years. The OCD in me can't stand to be around it. Ugh.

After a brief freak-out brought on by the disorganization, I took a deep breath, took off my cardigan and scarf, and went to work.

I arranged some of the audio visual collections that were intermixed on the equipment shelves on the new shelving we received a month ago, and then spent several hours organizing the equipment by genre (photographic, audio, moving image), and then by format (slide, microfiche/film, steroview, phonograph, reel to reel, cassette, 8mm/16mm film, videotape recorder/player, Umatic, Beta, and Laserdisc). The VHS is hooked up to the TV because that's something we use frequently. I started to organize the supplies for the equipment, but then I realized I was dirty and sore, so that's another day's work. At least I can now have my student worker write a complete inventory without moving things around, and we will actually know what we have and where it is!

After the supplies are organized, the next step is to get the new A/V Mac up and running, and to start organizing the most-likely-to-be-used equipment on the heavy-duty A/V desk.