Seventh Salon: What it is that we do.

[jenett]

Welcome to our seventh salon discussion thread. Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) You can find previous ones in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too. (Quick note: I'd originally said we'd do these through at least July. I am formally declaring that we'll keep going through at least August.)

Topic of the day:
A couple of conversations this week have gotten me thinking about jobs. One was a conversation with a friend yesterday (hi!) about job hunting, another was a meeting of a committee I'm on for staff awards, where we were asked to introduce ourselves (it's the first time we've met) with something we do that we're really good at (work or not.)

The committee is staff from all over the campus, only one of whom I already knew. And one of the things we were talking about is how recognising people for doing things well can take a lot of forms - but it's also complicated, because talking about what we do well is really hard, and sometimes (often!) other people don't really know what goes into our jobs. (And yes, I talked a little about both Imposter Syndrome and about synecdochic's weekly Pride Thread)

And yet, it's really important to talk about what we're good at, for a dozen reasons and more. (Morale, helping us do more of the really awesome stuff, helping other people do more really awesome stuff, appreciating the work other people do that keeps things running smoothly - we were talking about the school health service, and how you never hear when things are fine there, but it's important that they *are* fine.)

So, my question: What do you do, and why do you like it, and how did you get into doing that thing? I'm curious both about job-that-pays-you stuff but also about ongoing projects that aren't your job.

For bonus amusement, last January, there was a meme about describing things (your job) using the ten-thousand most common words in English. (Inspired by a xkcd cartoon). You can use a web-based tool to write one. If you did that meme and want to share in comments, that'd be awesome. (Or if you want to play with it and share something new!) Mine's in the first comment.

Currently reading: Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy - like the title says, this is gaslamp fantasy, not steampunk. Thus far I am generally agreeing with Brit Mandelo's review over on Tor.com, but even the stories that aren't quite my thing are making me think, which is pretty much what I ask for in an anthology.

Quick reminders

- jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events.
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going this week.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.

Comments

[oursin]

What I do: I'm an archivist. I fell into this somewhat by chance when I was in a job that was a very bad fit for me, soon after graduating, and applied for a clerical job in an organisation that deals with historical records. I didn't get it, but it led to a strong recommendation to apply for a fairly low-level job at one of the major UK national repositories, where they would send me on the professional diploma course and there was a chance of advancement. (This wouldn't happen these days: these days just to get on the course you need to display a commitment to archives going back to junior school and involving volunteering at your local record office - maybe I exaggerate, slightly.)

I turned out to be very good at a) finding out information for enquirers and b) producing coherent finding aids to sometimes rather disorganised groups of archives. I have discovered in the job I subsequently moved to, that I'm also rather good at doing presentations. I've even developed a certain competence at negotiating with potential depositors, though I don't consider diplomacy one of my core strengths. I really like engaging in the process that makes historical material available for people to do research on.

The liking doing research moved me in a slightly different direction, into (on the side) doing serious historical research myself. I would never want to teach but I enjoy being part of a wider scholarly community with overlapping interests. I enjoy doing research and I also enjoy writing it up, not to mention talking about it, whether in academic seminars or in radio/tv interviews.

[elisem]

I really like engaging in the process that makes historical material available for people to do research on.

How does that process work? Happy curiosity monster wants to know. ;-)

[oursin]

Heh. Quite often it starts with somebody telling us about someone or some organisation that has papers of historical interest. And then maybe, after a certain amount of toing and froing, I, or one of my colleagues, will go and look at these things in situ and decide whether they are of Real Historical Value or not (you would not believe the years of rubbish some organisations retain). Then, if they are of RHV, we talk about terms of transfer (this stage can go on and on, sometimes for years, while the person or organisation works through their separation issues). Eventually, we box the stuff up and move it to our stacks. In due course, a member of the team will do the detailed processing work of researching the person or organisation, sorting, arranging, packaging the material in archival quality containers (lately I have been putting 1000s of photos into melinex sleeves), and describing it according to our standard cataloguing protocols in our dedicated cataloguing software. This is a process that it is very hard to give a timescale for, because you never know, until you do this detailed work, what you're going to find. Sometimes what looks like a lovely series of clearly labelled files, e.g., turns out to be clearly labelled files that were repurposed for something else entirely... and not relabelled. At the end of this process you have a beautifully boxed up collection with all the produceable units given references by which they can be ordered, a lovely online catalogue whereby researchers can find out what's in the collection and also order whatever they're interested in via our online ordering system. At this point, the archivist probably writes a post for the library blog to say what a nifty collection is now available to the public, mentioning any particularly choice things they came across.

[elisem]

What kind of thing is a big find, in your work? What is really exciting to get?

[oursin]

Big finds aren't necessarily the papers of Really Important Person - sometimes their papers are really disappointing, because during the really productive phase of their career they were moving about a lot and not keeping things, so it's only the later stages that are well-documented. Sometimes a less eminent person who Knew Everybody's papers or who was just a massive preserver of records leaves much more exciting papers. And size doesn't always matter: we just acquired and I'm just processing a small collection of papers of a woman who went out to work in India in the early C20th - and wrote regular long letters home to her family about her life there.

One of our best collections is the papers of someone who was probably the kind of bore people avoided at parties, but an absolutely obsessive documenter of a very wide range of interesting phenomena over his very long life - pretty much something for everybody there.