In the hot spot...

We've reached that point in the semester where I am completely overrun--with reference, with students, with requests for my time and my brain and our records.  Working part-time when there are full-time demands is definitely not the way to go.  Not this week.

Fortunately, my student archivist has become bored with sleeving photographs, her current project, and eagerly took on two reference requests.  One was on the history of the lately departed Carson Hall; the other, how the furniture pieces in the Farm School's woodworking shop were sold or marketed.  Her attention to this level of detail and research will serve her well, as she is patiently sifting through a huge folder of financial records.  Awesome. Because I'm sifting through a pile of Henry Randolph correspondence from 1928 for a lecture I'm giving next Thursday.

And that means, of course, records go unprocessed, undescribed, uncataloged.  How to balance the life of research with that of making the records available.  The eternal dilemma of the lone arranger.