I've been catalog librarian for 12 years and department head for 11 years, here in the former home of the Aroma You Can Cut With A Knife. (Greeley used to have feedlots within city limits. Phew!!). On Monday, the rest of the faculty accepted my transfer to another department -- Archival Services -- that happens to live on the lower level of our building (thus the "Stupid Person Basement" thing).
This is going to be a Very Kewl Move for me, and here's why. Our library is named for James A. Michener, who is one of the U.S.'s better known 20th century popular novelists. He started his career at this school as a social studies teacher in the 1940's, and later went on to write some very big books (both physically and figuratively) like Centennial, Space, The Drifters, and Hawaii, among others. My mom used to joke that all of Michener's books started with the history of dirt, and the story got rolling around page 250 because he usually starts with the prehistory and geology of a region (and you thought Naruto moves slowly sometimes!)
The Dean of our library met Mr. Michener about six years before his death in the late 90's, and they truly hit it off. We already had all of Michener's research notebooks and other papers concerning Centennial, because it was set here and the 1970's TV mini-series was filmed here. But a year or so before his death, Michener donated some five million dollars to us to create an endowment that would support the James A. Michener Archive. We were to have all of his "stuff", either in the original or microfilmed copies.
Fast forward five years or so, and we've been through a couple of people in the Michener Archivist position. And the collection still isn't anywhere near where it needs to be in terms of making it accessible to folks. The last time the position opened up, I inquired about moving downstairs, because, well, I am a closet Michener junkie from my teen years and would kill to work with his papers. It never worked out, because I'm senior faculty and they couldn't afford to take my salary out of the endowment, yadda yadda.
But THIS time!! This time it was just *offered* to me out of the clear blue sky!! My boss knew I wanted a change where I could work instead of supervising. The new Head of Archives (half my age, twice my energy) is a DOLL, and she and I are going to have the largest blast in the entire world working together. It was basically her idea! I asked her "are you SURE about this??!!
). Oh yes, she was very excited. Our backgrounds and interests will complement each other's very nicely, and we will have two very experienced support staff working with us. I won't be working *solely* with the Michener collection, but that will be my primary responsibility.GRIN....GRIN....STUPID GRIN...
Of course, I still have to be cataloger until they find someone for my chair. But I can last another few months, what the hey
Raise? nope. Demotion? ("you won't be a manager any more! isn't that a demotion?") nope. SANE JOB? You betcha!! Something new to learn!! ... I'll be formally trained in 3 fields, how can you beat that (librarianship, archival science and educational technology).
This is the biggest plum that has ever been handed to me. The only thing that could possibly make it any better would be if my Mom had been alive to know this. She loved Michener's books and, in fact, recommended Hawaii to me (my first encounter with the "history of dirt" experience
). I know this probably means nothing much to a whole lot of you but -- just BE HAPPY for me!!
You guys have helped me survive the worst working year of my entire life and come out the other end with a BETTER JOB. I can barely believe my good fortune.http://www.unco.edu/library/archives/ar ... rvices.htm
