Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Learning on the job

As the Archives product here at my library, I've been entrusted with a manuscript collection that was donated by a former professor. Unfortunately, there are complications:

1) the donation was made through a channel that doesn't deal with archival materials and so there is no donor agreement;
2) some of the documents may not properly belong to the donor, but rather to a certain international health organization;
3) some of the most interesting documents contain private information which will probably require them to be kept sealed;
4) they were given to a library with no special collections and therefore no permanent expertise;
5) I have a nagging fear that there will turn out to be an uncomfortable relationship between the donor and his former organization and I will have blundered into the center of it.

Did I say "unfortunately?" Not really - this is going to be the most educational thing I could have done right out of school.

1 comment:

Heather Thams said...

Hmm, sounds interesting. Let us know if the plot thickens.