A Day at the Archives

 Don and I have to have badges to get anywhere in the Archives Building.  We have to have them to ride the elevator, eat lunch or even to go to the bathroom.  It is a very secure building.

 Sister Van Cleave (the sister missionary who just left decided that the room was a little drab since it use to be a shower room.  The room also can't have any windows because light will affect the cameras so she decided to paint an outdoor scene with a kiwi and also a large kiwi.  This kiwi looks after us all day.

 The documents that we are working with are from the early 1900's and so they have been tied up or put in envelopes for about 100 years.  When we take them out they are very fragile and very bent.  In order for the camera to digitize them they have to be flat so we have to prepare the documents.

 We untie them or remove them from the envelopes and lay them out on blotter paper.  They have to be in a certain order when we lay them out.  We start with the will, affidavits, motions, miscellaneous documents and end with the probate.

 This is a picture of one of the large wills.  Some are small and some are very large and very ornate.

 After they are laid out they are stacked together with a little pink slip in the corner indicating the reference number of the person and their name.  This is important when we put them back in their envelopes and refile them.

 The documents are then placed on shelves and boards are put on top of them to weigh them down.  They have to stay on the shelves for about a week or two to help flatten them out. The pink slips on the boards tell us which box they came out of and the camera operator needs this information to help them film them.

 Here is Don busy at the camera.  When he places the document where it is suppose to be he then lowers the glass and pushes a button and the picture comes up on the screen and he can then see the picture.  If it is OK he leaves it but if it is not OK he can adjust the paper and retake the picture.

 These are the boxes that are empty because all the documents are under the boards being flatten are they are being filmed.

 This is our tea room where we eat lunch every day.  It has a very nice view of the ocean and the ferry (which takes cars and people to the South Island) and we will have a very nice view of the cruise ships when they come in the summer (which is winter in the United States).

Sister and McVey and Fiona (who works for the archives) are getting boxes for us to film.  Those boxes are a very small portion on the boxes we have to film