So What's the Second Largest federal building in DC?

Anyone, Anyone?? Well it happens to be the Archives building in College Park, MD, on the University of Maryland campus. It really is huge, and I get to work there once a week. What's better, I get to do preservation work here, which really gets at what the Archives is all about.

There are two different types of preservation work that I do at Archives II (the nickname for this building). The first one is called collections management, and I am specifically working with World War I military records. I go through page by page and assess the amount of damage that the record has. Many of them are folded or creased, others have rusty pins and paper clips attached to them. What I do is smooth out documents, remove old clips and pins and then replace them with new ones, put those who are in serious damage into special preservation folders, and refer really worn documents to special preservation archivists. Most of these records look as if they have never seen the face of daylight since they were made over 90 years ago, which is a little disappointing to a historian, but it is really cool to be the first one to read some of these records since they were created! Today, for instance, I was working with records of discharged soldiers, many of whom wanted to return to their native countries in Europe to see relatives.

The second area of preservation that I help with is in the stacks, doing preliminary preservation work. Specifically, the records that I work with are South American Consulate records from World War II. Once again I go box by box, but not record through record this time, and assess the condition of the records. Some are in excellent condition, but others are covered in mold, soot from fires, or are torn or out of order. Should any of these be the case, they are referred to an archivist for preservation. Many of the records that I have come across are bound in volumes, some of which are in good condition, and others that are not. I don't get as much time to looking through these records, but I have come across many classified records, some of which are still so secret that they have been pulled from the file. The best document that I have found so far though, are secret codes from WWII from Brazilian spies! I felt like I was 10 years old again! Hopefully there will be more treasure to find amongst the shelves in the few weeks I have left here; I'll keep my eyes open for more good records on the loose!