archives in the spring

This past Saturday was the spring 2010 meeting of the New England Archivists in Amherst, MA. It was a pretty good conference, but until just a few days before it began I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go. The short version is that I thought I had a ride, then, about one week before the meeting, I learned I no longer had a ride and set about scrambling to find one again. At one point I almost gave up and decided not to go, but that would have been the wrong choice. By Wednesday night I had secured my ride again and could rest easy.

Because the meeting was in Amherst, I got up at 5am on Saturday to meet my group at the rental car (by the way, I'm pretty sure ZipCars are the best thing ever for city dwellers). We managed to make only one wrong turn on the way there, for which Christina was demoted from her role as Navigator. She should have kept her position, because on the way back our new navigator failed big time, and only Christina's photographic memory of which stores we had passed on the way there was able to get us back on track.

The campus at UMass Amherst is actually very nice. During our lunch break I went outside and walked around a lovely pond full of ducks and geese. The sessions were pretty good too, for the most part, and I picked up some awesome swag, like tin acid-free boxes big enough only for business cards.

The best part of the day, however, came after lunch at a session on international archives. One of the presenters, who works at Tufts, is from Austria and spent time talking about the state of Austrian archival institutions. How awesome is that? When the session ended I introduced myself and got her card. Later on this spring we're going to meet and talk about libraries and archives in Austria! How much more perfect could that moment have been? I guess I really was supposed to go to this event.

-Kim