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Jon felt immediate regret after accepting the archiving job. He didn’t even know what an archivist did, and only had a vague idea of what an archive was. It was a library, right? Wait, then why would the Institute have a library and an archive?
But Jon was nothing if not stubborn, so when he got home he fired up wikipedia and started reading. He read the entire (fairly short) wiki page on archives, then all of the ‘see also’ articles at the bottom until they began to make sense.
The article said archivists usually had graduate degrees in library science, but a weekend-long google spree counted for something, right?
“Ah, yes, I’ll just get to… archiving.” he said lamely to Rosie while she looked at him with near customer-service politeness.
“Sounds good!” she chirped, “I’ll leave you to it then!” She fled the dank basement quickly. Jon didn’t blame her.
It probably wasn’t so good that the archives were so damp. He didn’t need to have a library science degree to know that water and paper did not mix well. Maybe it was better in the stacks, but not likely. The humidity control system probably needed updating.
He pulled out a notepad and jotted that down. There, that probably counted as proper archiving.
He logged into the desktop - big and clunky, very old - and started the search for Greenstone. According to wikipedia, it was the most commonly used archiving software and he would be surprised if Gertrude didn’t have it.
It took some digging on the computer, but he found it eventually. When he opened it his computer nearly crashed. It got there eventually, and Jon saw the reason why; it was running an extremely old version of the software. There was only one file stored, labelled “TEST TEST”.
The fans on the old clunker kicked into hyperdrive, so he closed out of the program, then deleted it for good measure. He found a more recent version of the software online, then realized he didn’t know how to download a program such that all the archiving staff would have access to it.
He called IT, and sent them a link as instructed. They told him to call back in an hour if the system wasn’t back up again, and then hung up.
(They weren’t as impolite as that sounded, he was just a bit stressed.)
He went into document storage to pass the time. It was a big room, filled wall to wall with long rows of shelves, the kinds on tracks that could be moved with a handle. He was glad he had gotten there early, because it gave him time to play with the shelves until he had them figured out.
He glanced at and in the boxes as he went, only to find no semblance of order at all. In fact, it looked like Gertrude was purposefully leaving them out of order, with a mix of different labelling systems added in just to add insult to injury.
Who had pissed her off that bad?
He picked up one of the statements and started skimming through it, but all that he could think of was that the paper was extremely brittle. Then he looked at the date of the statements and put it back down as gently as possible.
It was from the Victorian era. And it was just sitting. In a damp, dusty room.
He took the notepad out of his pocket, and noted that he would need to research how to handle really old papers.
So now he was in the position of having to preserve a ginormous room of documents, after his predecessor had spent the previous fifty years specifically not preserving them.
When Martin let the dog in, it was an almost-welcome distraction from his building panic.
“So what’s the plan, boss-man?” Tim asked when the puppy and puppy mess were well dealt with.
“First order of business is to digitize the records,” Jon said, “A lot of the papers in there are not in great shape. I’ll ask Elias to call someone about the humidity in here.”
“How do you want to start?” Sasha asked with a smile.
Hm. That was a good question.
“You and Tim each grab a box off the shelves and start transcribing and tagging the statements in the Greenstone system. As you finish, put them in chronological order.” There, that sounded like a pretty good idea.
Now, he needed something simple for Martin. Preferably something that would get him out of the archives for a bit. “Ah, Martin, could you run to an office supply store and get more of these file folders,” he held one up as an example, it was the type with a little plastic slip for the label to fit into. “I’ll order some more online later, just grab a couple dozen or so for us to use in the meantime. Also grab some file boxes, the same type that we already have.”
“Yeah, I can do that,” Martin took the card and fled, face still bright red. At least he looked appropriately ashamed about the whole dog fiasco.
(And at least Jon didn’t look like the most incompetent one here.)
“Is there anything specific you want us to tag for?” Sasha asked.
Another good question. “Ah, I’ll leave it up to your discretion. Definitely things like time period, famous people. I’ll review what we have at the end of the week to look for any trends.” that sounded reasonable enough.
Luckily, neither Tim nor Sasha had any more questions, so Jon sent them off to do their tasks while he went back into his office.
He sent Elias a question about the humidity control system in the archives. While they were at it, they may as well look into the temperature control systems, too. They were probably about the same age, after all.
Then he did research on how to handle old papers. He was going to walk outside to tell Tim and Sasha, but then decided it would be more efficient to start a Slack group, so he did that too. Then he sent them a message on how to handle old papers.
It was simpler than he’d assumed, actually. Just wash your hands before holding them. And something about acid-free envelopes, which got added to his list of things to look into later.
It would also be good to add audio editions of the statements, he decided while looking through many varieties of envelopes and file folders. They’d need to come up with an enclosed area for people to record in, though, because Martin, Tim and Sasha’s desks were all right next to each other, and there was no way he was creating all the audio alone.
He remembered that there were two supply closets of decent size and several large cabinets through the main office. That was probably enough room, and he couldn’t possibly imagine what they’d need that much storage for. One of the closets could probably be made into a recording studio of sorts.
Martin got back from the store a few minutes later, and came in to drop off his receipts. Jon told him to go to the bigger supply closet to clear enough room for a table and chair.
“Wait, why?” Martin asked before he got to the door, then immediately looked like he regretted it.
It was a fair enough question, actually. “To make audio versions of statements.” Jon said, “For accessibility.” he should at least explain, Martin certainly needed it.
“Oh, alright.”
Jon spent the rest of the day placing orders for supplies.
Martin finished condensing the two closets into one midway through the next day. Jon was almost surprised at how quickly he got through with it. The USB microphone he’d ordered hadn’t arrived yet, so Jon decided to just let the room sit.
“Great, can you start organizing statements by date?” Jon asked. He’d put a lot of thought into it over the night - more thought than sleep, even. “Take a couple of the new boxes to use. I want at least one box per year, though you don’t have to make a box for a year until it comes up.”
“I, okay,” Martin said and hovered in the doorway some more. “Is there any specific way you want them arranged on the shelves?”
“I don’t think we’ll have enough boxes for that to be a problem yet,” Jon said, “Just put them in places where you’ll remember them, okay?”
“I- yes, okay! I can do that, certainly.” Martin left the room in a bit of a hurry. That was a bit weird.
A few minutes later, Tim sauntered into the room. Jon hoped he hadn’t caught him alt-tabbing off a wikipedia page. “So, Bossman,”
“Yes, Tim?”
“Me and Sasha have noticed a bit of a trend in the tasks you give Martin,” Tim sat down in the other chair in Jon’s office, facing backwards and with his hands hanging over he back.
“Yes, Tim?” Jon said when Tim just stared at him, “Please talk faster. I don’t have all day to humor your shenanigans.”
“Oh, you love humoring my shenanigans, admit it.” Tim smiled, then got serious again - but a Tim kind of serious. “But, ah, it seems like you’re giving Martin all the manual labor sorts of jobs? And only manual labor jobs?”
Jon realized that it was true. But it made sense, “Those jobs need to be done.” he said, “They’re very important.” and it was, there was no way they could expect to find anything while the archives were a disorganized mess, and they needed a room to make recordings in.
Martin was the only person on the archival staff without an assignment already, so it made more sense to keep him on these tasks then pull Tim or Sasha out of their groove. Martin also just seemed, in general, well suited to manual labor. He was tall enough to reach the high shelves, and he had managed to chase down and pick up that dog without breaking a sweat.
“Oh, I see.” Tim said. He looked a lot more relaxed now. “See, he thinks you’re still punishing him for the dog thing.”
“What? Why would I?” Jon asked. He was annoyed by the dog thing, sure, and it certainly affected his opinion of the man, but he had apologized and cleaned up the mess. Ultimately, it was a lapse in judgement, but no harm done. Besides, what was this, primary school? He didn’t need to dole out manual labor as punishment, he was the boss.
“Because you seemed really angry about the dog,” Tim said, “Jon, mate, you gotta work on that tone.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my tone.” Jon protested, crossing his arms. “I wanted to make sure to convey to him the severity of the situation.”
“Yes, right, right.” Tim said, “You might want to explain that to Martin, too.”
Jon was not pouting as Tim left the room. He did not have to explain that, it was perfectly obvious. Besides, Jon liked organizing, so he failed to see how that could be construed as punishment.
The recording room was perfectly adequate for one person to record a statement. All it had was a table and a chair, with shelves still lining the walls. There wasn’t anything on the shelves, Martin had cleared them completely, but it was heartening to know that there was spare room if they needed more storage.
Jon had taken the stack of statements Tim and Sasha had already digitized to read them. He plugged in the USB microphone and played around with it a bit to make sure it was actually recording.
He pulled the first statement off the stack and read it. It was, very obviously, someone who had overindulged in hallucinogens. This didn’t surprise Jon, after all, he had researched many of these statements before. He listened through the recording to make sure nothing went horribly wrong, then moved on.
The next statement was from someone who, apparently, didn’t know that sometimes old houses were just noisy for no good reason. The one after that, he wasn’t sure what it was about. He never saw the statement-giver, but they appeared to have written it while drunk.
They weren’t true but, according to his extensive Google research, the point of archiving isn’t to store true information, it’s to store first-hand information for future research. It wrung on his nerves to see all these obviously lying or confused people, but checking the veracity of statements was Research’s job.
The next statement was from a drunk man who saw a freaky shadow in an alley at night. This one got to Jon in a way the others did not, though he couldn’t exactly tell why. The statement giver just had a special way with words.
Jon stopped the recording and frowned. The waveform on the computer looked odd, choppy and different from the relatively smooth line of all the other statements. He didn’t even know the two tracks could be unsymmetrical like they were.
He listened back to the audio and, after his short introduction, the audio dissolved into static and odd electric noises. He caught a few words every now and again, but they didn’t even sound like his voice anymore.
He tried recording it again, but halfway through he looked up at the screen and saw the waveform was all weird again. He stopped and said a few tongue twisters into the mic, but they all came out normal.
That was certainly an interesting mystery, but he didn’t have time to deal with it right now. He added a note on the file in the system that the audio was unavailable and moved on. All the other statements that day recorded just fine.
Jon passed along the stack of papers to Martin to organize, without the problem statement. Martin had a nice set up in document storage, with a foldable desk to hold the statements while he worked.
“Here,” Jon said, handing him the stack, “These should be ready to be sorted as well.”
“Oh, alright,” Martin took the papers from him, “Oh, I had an idea actually.” he paused and looked at Jon, checking to see if he was interested.
“Go on,” Jon was too out of his depth to not consider suggestions, though he didn’t think he’d agree with anything Martin suggested.
“Well, with how we’re organizing and digitizing at the same time, it’s very easy for statements we have digitized to become mixed with statements we have not digitized,” Martin started, then blanched at his own words, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that! I agree that we should be digitizing and organizing at the same time, and…”
“Spit it out,” Jon had other things to do.
“These stickers,” Martin pulled out a pack of stickers, simple little dots that could be bought just about anywhere. “We put them on the statements we’ve already digitized so that we can tell at a glance. Not the paper itself, of course, just on the file folder. Like, up near the label bit.”
That… was a good idea, actually. Jon hadn’t even thought about the possibility of mixing up digitized and non-digitized statements. “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” he said as much. “Tell me what brand and when you’re running out so I can order more, yeah?”
“Yes! Of course!” Martin beamed.
That did make Jon think back to his conversation with Tim a few weeks ago. “Martin… you do realize that this isn’t a punishment, right?”
“Huh?”
“Tim said that me giving you this job could be misinterpreted as me punishing you. I’m not, it’s just a job that needs doing and, uh,” should he really say this? “You’re the only one tall enough to reach the top shelf without a step ladder.”
“I, oh,” Martin looked between Jon and the shelf, measuring them against each other. “Oh. alright.”
“I do appreciate the set up you’ve got here,” Jon said, “It looks efficient,”
“Well, I did a lot of organizing in the library, so,”
Oh, that’s right. Martin worked in the library before being transferred to the archives. Jon did remember him saying something about that during the Dog Incident, but he had that memory pretty well repressed. The library was a lot more similar to archiving than working in research, so Martin may turn out to be more of a resource than Jon initially thought.
“Hey, Jon,” Sasha knocked on the door as she entered his office. If anything, he was glad for the respite from tag-wrangling. “I’ve got another statement that won’t record.”
“Hm? What is it?” he asked. There was something up with the statements that wouldn’t record, he knew, but whatever the pattern was, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Jon would love to spend all of his time figuring out why, but organizing this hellscape of an archive took priority. The most he could spare was a passing interest.
“Timothy Hodge, a fairly contemporary one,” Sasha held it up, “He had a bad hookup that, apparently, ended with the woman turning into worms.”
“Worms?”
“Worms.” Sasha nodded, “He said that he burned the place down, the fire brigade came and everything. I could probably find some more information if you wanted?”
“No, no,” Jon said. “That’s Research’s job. We can’t waste time on looking into statements while there’s still so much to organize.”
As much as Jon hated it, it was true. The papers were all brittle, almost despite their actual age, and Martin recently reported to him that a lot of the statements, new and old, were bound with staples. Martin then also had to explain to him why staples were bad, and now there was a print bulletin pinned to the wall repeating the same facts.
“Alright,” Sasha frowned, “I might kick this one back up to Research, though. It feels incomplete to me.”
“I mean, go ahead.” Jon said, “But usually they only send a statement down here once it’s been a month with no leads.”
“Hm. Yeah, you’re right.”
After a while, they gave up on trying to re-record the problem statements. Jon spent an entire day locked in the recording rooms, just recording those statements on every single device in the archives that would hold audio. No dice.
He worked straight through lunch, so he was very grouchy when Tim came by touting an old tape recorder.
“If technology’s getting you down, let’s go old school,” he suggested.
“No, the point of this whole endeavor is to digitize the statements, not move them from one analog medium to another,” Jon snapped, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Jeez, sorry,” Tim tossed the tape in the air then caught it again. “Just thought it was an idea.”
“It’ll be easier to just tag that there’s no audio available for now,” Jon said, “We can look into it later when we don’t have quite so much to do,” he gestured all around him, the walls of the once-empty storage room was used for storing some of the sorted statements now.
Martin came into the room a few minutes later with tea. It was chamomile, which meant Martin thought Jon had been especially bitchy that morning. Fair enough, probably.
“What is it?” he asked when Martin hovered.
“You do know this is a marathon, not a sprint, right?” Martin asked. “You need to pace yourself.”
“I would, but all those papers are just dissolving away in there,” he said, “We need to get them digitized quickly.”
“Yes, but you working through lunch isn’t going to help that,” Martin said. “Take breaks and sleep, or your work will suffer.” he glared and then left.
A woman came in with a live statement to give. Jon quickly decided that, instead of having her write out her experience, he’d record her statement then transcribe it later. He left her in his office and grabbed the USB microphone.
Her statement was one of those enchanting ones, the ones that grabbed him by the collar and dragged him along for the ride. Dread grew in his stomach, and not just because of the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck or fog at his feet. He looked at the recording software and, sure enough, the waveform looked all types of wrong.
“That sounds very unfortunate.” Jon said when he was done. He didn’t really have many other words to describe her experience, and half his brain power was devoted to figuring out how to ask her to relive that experience again, but this time in writing.
He ended up just taking a few notes on what he could remember of what she said, then sent her on her way. He’d send what he could remember up to research to look into, but didn’t have high hopes.
In the future he’d just have to remember their recording software was unreliable at best and not even bother to get spoken statements.
“I am certainly impressed with all the progress you’ve made in digitizing the archives,” Said Elias, and he truly did sound surprised.
He sounded surprised because he was surprised. None of his previous archivists had gotten nearly so far in archiving before their own curiosity pulled them off topic. But Jon, despite being one of the most curious archivists, seemed intent on doing the whole ‘archiving’ thing properly.
“Ah, thank you.” Jon said. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, and kept glancing nervously at all the portraits of Institute heads lining the walls. Perhaps he would notice that all the portraits were making the same exact expression, perhaps not. “It’s been a lot of work. Gertrude certainly left them in a state.”
“I’ve noticed,” Elias said. “I have also noticed, however, that there are a few statements that you haven’t made audio recordings for. Why is that?”
“Ah, yes.” Jon stiffened up, raising his shoulders. It was funny that that motion was how people responded to anxiety, as it only made it harder to breathe. “We seem to be having some issues with our equipment. Some of the statements just refuse to be recorded digitally.”
“Some, but not all?” Elias prodded.
“I- yes, that’s correct.”
“Do you have any idea why that is?”
“I do not,” Jon said, “There might be some pattern, but it’s not obvious.”
“I see,” Elias leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers in front of him. “Are you looking into it further?”
“Uh, no.” Jon felt like he was giving the wrong answer. “Our primary focus right now is organizing and digitizing the archives. Honestly, I’m amazed some of the older papers have survived as long as they have in these conditions.”
Did he accidentally hire someone with a library science degree?
“Well,” Elias thought, “You will look into it, yes?”
“I don’t really anticipate having enough free time to do that in the near future.” Jon said, “Uh, maybe I could ask research to look into it? Because, that is what research is for.”
Elias shook his head. “Alright, whenever you get around to it.” He’d make sure the memo didn’t get to research. He didn’t want the researchers gaining the favor of the Eye.
Jon left.
Elias wanted to push harder, maybe even scare him into it a bit, but, well.
Apparently the Eye liked all the proper organization.
(And this continued for a while. The archives were much more organized than they had ever been, the staff were all good friends with no strained relationships.)
(So, Elias had to Reset and try again.)