There's something about the hushed, dim environment of an archives that sends shivers down my spine. The musty smell of old papers and books are as inviting as ever, enlivening the scholar inside me that has been dormant of late. The opportunity to make new discoveries and furthermore, to make them available to the public, is very exciting to me.
That's probably a tad abnormal, but hey, it's what gets my juices flowing. I'd forgotten how much it stirred in me. I so want this job, not just because it would finally bring some stability (no matter how temporarily, since it's grant funded and not guaranteed beyond a year), but because of all those cubic feet of boxes waiting to come to light.
My interview, despite my nervousness, went very well. I relaxed to the point of chatting with the staff for awhile afterwards. Plus, I managed to get back to Lexington without running out of gas. It's now on fumes, but I get paid tomorrow, so let's just hope it holds out a bit.
They were very up front about the possibilities and yet the drawbacks of the position, and I was very appreciative of that. It will be a leap of faith to leave a steady yet part-time position for one that may not be around in a year, but I'm ready to take it. I'm actually up for two positions, cataloguer/archivist and the manuscript technician, since I was qualified for both, and there isn't a huge difference in the pay, I decided to try. But I would love, all these years after specialising in cataloguing and archives in school, to be doing the intellectual work of the archivist position. I'll have to learn a lot, but I thrive on learning new things. There's standards to learn that adapt cataloguing rules to archival collections, and descriptive coding that's kind of like HTML on steroids, but they didn't seem to think my lack of practical experience with those would hold me back for long, for which I'm grateful.
So now, it's a waiting game. I have to admit, I'm almost as nervous now as when I went into the interview. Wish me luck.
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