A Front-of-House Type of Week

With Patricia safely back at home, it was back to work for me. Neal and Dave took their turn working from home (somehow Patricia's vacation had become my vacation too).

I thought, since Aliatt is back from her teaching internship, that I'd have a quiet week in the back, but it turned out to be much more front-of-house. I thought of the people at MIT who would probably tell me I should have known better. Archives work is not about being behind a desk.

Continuing with the visitor engagement trend, I gave one of the new behind the scenes tours to Freddie and Bridgett. Days later, when we ran into them at the Sand Bar, they were still thanking me for the tour. They found it fascinating. No big deal, I thought - the history here is fascinating so it's easy to talk about it. Using the artifacts we walked through TCI history: the conch shells from the recent GT-4 dig, the 1550 Spiller coin, the sword handle from the Fort St. George Survey, the oldest image of Grand Turk - the 1830's water color, the 1888 hurricane report, and the turn of the century spy glass. We covered the best bits of the history and the collection. Freddie and Bridgett are are pictured here with the 1888 report and the sword handle.

This was only the start of the week. I also fielded a phone call from a member of the Stubbs family (an old name in the TCI) who found some family papers in the National Library of Jamaica. Would we be interested in bringing those papers home? They date back to 1790. Pre-1900 records? If we get that grant we'd be VERY interested in accepting those papers. I sent an email inquiring as to the Library's policy on moving records. We'll see if I can't get in touch with them next week.

The after school program was in full swing this week too. My work in the archives got slightly stalled. I'm still working on making those labels, but almost everything is properly stored in a new box. (It seems that the order Tiffany and I put in is working out just out perfectly.) I had to work on Saturday to do it, but I'm really wanting to get the collections in order so I can start putting records into the database by the end of next week.

A very eventful week. Of course, the new A/C units are on the fritz again too - I guess it can't all be perfect.