Finding Aid

The finding aid is the entry point into the collection of archival and historic materials that make for research. It’s a slippery slope in your attempt to explain this to a researcher, because at the end of the day, they are there to search for information that they think is relevant. Regardless of what you may tell them, they’re there for their own means. Not to listen to a babbling creek. The finding aid, while helpful, is often what leads a person to go from thinking to physical. It is an overview with places you could consider, from a distance, such as the dates of history that you will visit, the person who created the finding aid, or the organization that houses the materials. But it doesn’t account for the actual story that is was once told by the human that once had these materials.

It’s a dirty job trying to dig up pieces of history, but its come to my attention that any great collection that consists of materials from your past are only as great as the people that let them go. In my attempts to explain my business case each day, I think that an archive collection can consist of stories. Straying from archival objectivity, I cannot help but think about how much of my work as a laborer hopping on the train, sleepwalking through Queens to Manhattan, and making it to work in the the nick of time, is informed by my stories, by my experiences, by anything outside of theory.

It all starts with failure, unsurprisingly. There’s a fantasy world that exists outside of the university experience. I believed after spending a couple something of years studying literature and sociology at Hunter College that I would jump into the whole, wide world and be embraced by the forces of the universe. I would write a book, and I would make my career as a living author. “All you have to do is write the book,” I would tell myself. In the latter experience of college, I sat in the back rows scribbling nonsense in the margins in attempt to convince myself that my not so unique experience was going to make a difference. I would write the greatest book in the world and influence an entire generation to do who-knows-what. During that time, I also started to tell myself that I needed to go to an MFA in order to learn how to become this so-called author. I needed to learn how to write. I needed to go through the legendary fire of feedback, edits, and commiseration that is known as the writer’s circle.

You could imagine what things I was telling myself when I received that rejection letter telling me that I was not accepted into a writing program. “You suck.” “You’ll never make it.” “Just give it up.” And so I did. Still waiting to avoid the real world, I sat behind the check-out desk of the bookstore I worked at during the time. It was when my mentor and boss at the time, [unnamed for respect of privacy of the individual], turned to me to console me.

“Why don’t you try this?”

“What do you mean this?”

He held his arms open and waved them to the books around us.

“How do you become a librarian?” I asked.

“Well, you go to library school of course!”

In the back of the room where I sat for sociology, I held the opened rejection letter in my hands, and I stared at it with disdain. “Fuck em, I don’t need this,” I thought. Looking back, maybe it could have been helpful. I could have gotten into the program and learned a lot about how to take the hits of the mythical feedback circles, imagining the destructive criticisms that could have been hurled at me for “literary effect.” But in all honesty, it might have been the greatest decision that day as I opened up my laptop in class today, and I began my application to attend library school.

In my personal statement, I masked my anger, my confusion as to why I didn’t get into writing school. Perhaps that’s why I got in. Maybe they knew that I would be willing enough to throw money at the fresh wound that I had, the realization that I wasn’t going to become what I had been deluding myself with all of these years. I was going to be a librarian, but little did I know, that wasn’t going to happen either.

The finding aid is often adapted with the knowledge you accrued while processing a collection. You are the creator of the entry points into the collection of archival and historic materials that make for research easier to the user. In a lot of ways, it is your job to keep from telling your story to them. Maybe that’s what they mean by archival objectivity. This isn’t about you. Hell, it isn’t about them either. The finding aid will lead you to places you wouldn’t consider. It’ll connect you to the person you never would have dreamed of meeting. It houses the basic information that serves as the mask for the wildly, imaginative dream that one had once lived. It is a story that was once lived by the person you are in search of.