"bagging and tagging"

Unfortunately, I made it to the historical society only once this past week, but I used that day to finally engage myself in the Sprague Collection. After meeting with my advisor about my experience so far, I knew there was really no excuse to further postpone my first day working with the points. I would have to suck it up and push myself to do something that intimidated me in order to, hopefully, one day, narrow down my interests to something I can fully pursue.

Somehow, though, through all the hype, the day didn’t seem that bad at all. It was almost disappointingly enjoyably easy — although I’m not quite at the difficult part yet. I approached Donald, who has been heavily involved with the collection, as soon as I entered the room, not allowing myself to pause for more distractions and delays. One of my greatest delay tactics, I had realized, was that I really didn’t know where to start and the scope of what I would be doing. He suggested that I look through the boxes and put everything loose or in old Ziploc bags into new, acid-free baggies.

Not too terrible.

Because each artifact needed to be in its own bag, even down to the tiniest points, I positively flew through piles of bags throughout the course of single shoebox-sized compilation of points. The monotony of unbag, rebag, set aside became more of a side note to participating in conversations with others in the room. I felt much more social than I had been when going through documents, but, at the same time, I felt less fulfilled. I wasn’t actually gaining any academic knowledge from the experience other than efficiency in bagging speed.

I still have to learn how to categorize the points. That will be my greatest endeavor regarding this collection, and I have hope that it will be more fulfilling than “bagging and tagging.” I will continue to familiarize myself for now, but soon I will take the next step and name things on my own.