Step one.

After months of inventorying every folder. Months of writing out the exact descriptions for every piece of paper, every map, every saved article, I may in a few short weeks, be done with the physical shelving of the items. (I say shelving. Really I mean shoving them into filing cabinets in alphabetical order.) Whereas with the describing I worked solo, creating some weird, bastard version of Dublin Core (the very first archival language I learned), with the filing/shelving, I had a partner. Four hands make for much faster moving of the folders, the papers, the rearranging of the drawers.

There is still some work to be done. In going through the last drawers today, for many items in the areas already completed, additional materials were found. They need to be separated by state, then county, and filed. This will likely include further shifting of drawers to accommodate the new folders. I swear half the filing cabinets are two states, where the remaining ones fill the same number of drawers as those two states.

I'm surprised by how much room there still in the drawers. Looking at the materials, the boxes to add, I thought for much of this project, I would not have enough room. Right now? I have room to spare. However, there is still more papers to inventory, still more boxes to sort, still more items to describe in my weird version of Dublin Core. Eventually that extra space will be filled as well.

In the meantime, I am going to bask in the momentary glory of finishing the first giant step of this project. And soon, I will start a new spreadsheet, and start inventorying all over again. New documents, new boxes. Over and over and over.

An Archive never sleeps.