3
Watching a documentary on the Library of Congress, I learned they have a full-time staff of 12 just to repair and rebind their collection.
Found that stat in a PBS special last night, and it made me wonder, for those who do institutional work, what's the biggest single project you've ever taken on?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
walker.hayden12h ago
Our local archive once spent three years just cataloging a single donor's lifetime of postcards.
6
black.mark9h ago
Okay, "cataloging" might be a bit off. I mean, they were probably processing the whole collection. That's way more than just typing up a list. You've got to sort them, figure out the dates and places, put them in acid-free folders, maybe scan some. A big postcard collection could have thousands of items, all mixed up. So three years for one person's life work? That actually sounds right, idk.
1