Special Collections, in memoriam

I worked in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University for about 18 months. I loved working there (almost all the time). I made a lot of friends and I learned a lot of really cool stuff. I love looking through the collections, and I love organizing things. AND, I loved working for my supervisor, John Murphy. I think he might actually be the nicest guy in the world. So, I want to pay homage to my ex-employers.

My favorite collections (that I worked on)
1. The George Q. Cannon family correspondence
2. Nellie Gubler family papers
3. Clinton Larson papers
4. That one collection of WW2 letters from Hunkey and Punkey

 My work buddy was Liz. Liz Ballif. My very favorite person to talk to in the morning. We had a blast together. And seriously, she was amazing at listening to all my weird and often boring stories. For hours.

All summer long we worked almost 8 hours a day. We sat there and read obituaries or worked on whatever our assigned collection was, and chatted away. For hours and hours and hours.

But we did often find ourselves bored and tired of sitting in our little room (put a big emphasis on the word "often"). So we made a list of things to do for "refreshment."

1. walk in place
2. eat raisins (Liz brought them)
3. visit work flows (that's the place you go if you have questions or have a new project to turn in)
4. bathroom break
5. get a drink
6. take a trip to receiving (that's where they keep all the office supplies at the library. We used to go there for post-it notes)
7. Undergo massive reorganization of the storage area and update all our inventory of collections.
8. Take about a 30 second break to check our email (I don't think that was allowed.)

We recorded memorable quotes on post-it notes and stuck them on the wall
Quotes on the wall:
1. Geoff: "You don't know how hard it is to be a boy!" (followed by uproarious laughter) (Geoff was the employee of the century. He ran everything. He knew the answer to everything. Even the curators would refer us to Geoff when we asked them questions. He had been working there for like 5 years. Yeah, super duper senior. And he also came by our office to tell us all sorts of "interesting" things that we didn't actually want to hear about (like ants or the history of typesetting). I adored the boy though. Loved his visits. They were my favorite.)
2. Audrey: "I am the person I am today because of Harry Potter."
3. Liz: "People who pretend they don't like Zac Efron because they want to be different just bug me."
4. Moroni Jensen collection (LTPSC, HBLL, BYU) "The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep." (this quote was our light at the end of the tunnel. We knew that we could go home from a long and miserable day at work, take a nap, and then be as good as new)

We also have a wall where we put new grammar rules that Liz learned in her English language classes.
AND Liz went through a phase where she loved dinosaurs. So we both enjoyed our share of dinosaur jokes.

How do you ask a tyrannosaurus out to lunch? Tea, Rex?
Why do museums have old dinosaur bones? Because they can't afford new ones.
*stupid* Why did the dinosaur get in bed? because it was tired.
What do you do when a dinosaur sneezes? get out of the way.

and then a Christmas joke:
*stupid* Who do dasher and dancer get to take a lot of coffee breaks? because they're santa's "star bucks!"

(we had to start labeling the stupid ones when we left them for each other on post-its so we didn't try too hard to understand the ones that you aren't supposed to "get.")

And then this school year, we got a new employee buddy in our office. Pete. A recently returned missionary from Orderville, Utah. He is everything that being from a small Utah town implies and more. He was a delight. An interesting delight.  I loved working with Pete.

Some more reasons why I loved working there:
1. I pretty much made my own hours.
2. I came in "late" about every day. It didn't actually matter when I arrived. So I came in roughly around 9.
3. Sometimes the library throws parties for their employees. And gives them presents.
4. I had the opportunity to be on the Student Library Advisory Council for a semester. We didn't do much, but it was fun, and I got free lunch every other Friday.
5. The people in workflows had treats on Friday, and they shared with us.
6. The reference people let me check out books under the name of the curator I worked for and I could take them back to my office to do research instead of sitting in the reading room. (this was work-related research, not personal)
7. We had training meetings every other Thursday at eleven. I went through the same trainings 3 times. But they were entertaining. Usually they consisted of a lot of grumbling, no one answering the questions (except for Geoff, who would cave and give the answer after no one else said anything), and an hour of getting paid for doing no actual work.
8. Sometimes I got to shred paper. Or make copies. I love officey things.
9. My friend Jen Bruton worked at the front desk. So I came in to work every morning and talked to her for like ten minutes before retreating to my office.

Anyway, I loved working at the Special Collections. And it was such a privilege to work there. I'm proud to say that I was an employee there. I am so grateful for that opportunity.