Archives: Research Assistants

Sometimes I manage to pick up extra money at my archive by hiring out as a research assistant for patrons. This is a task I jump at whenever I can because it gives me a chance to set my own rate, which is always much higher than I make as a public employee. I find that I can charge $25 an hour and most patrons hardly bat an eye. After all, anyone serious enough about a research project to pursue professional assistance probably recognizes that paying someone a few hundred dollars is a better deal than, say, buying a plane ticket to fly out to Madison, renting a hotel room for a few nights, and paying for food and drinks when not in the archive.

But the monetary advantage aside, I also enjoy research assistance because it gives me a chance to interact with the public. Most of my work involves cataloging new collections, which certainly affects the public because it creates finding aids to help people navigate to our collections. But I seldom get feedback on how helpful the finding aids are, what kinds of projects are bringing people to our collections, or what sort of information is needed but missing from the finding aids. These are all topics I can engage by actually getting in touch with people. 

So what kind of work do I do as a research assistant? Usually a lot of reading, searching, and photocopying. A patron might ask whether we have images in a film's production stills file that relate to the topic of her paper, or whether we have studio correspondence on censorship efforts related to a given movie. These are topics that our finding aids cannot really answer because they are arranged at the folder level. So the finding aid might say we have three folders of studio correspondence about a certain film, but not what the content of each letter is. And ordinarily, a patron would come in and look through the folders herself, find any letters of interest, and make photocopies. But if she cannot come for some reason, she can hire me, tell me what to look for, and let me do the searching and copying.

This is a relationship I want to encourage all around. Archivists, consider taking on research assistant positions whenever possible. Especially if you do not work directly with the public, in which case you can gain valuable reference time. Check with your institution's reference team to see whether they maintain a list of research assistants. This will look good on your resume, boost your profile at your institution, and maybe even get you a recommendation on LinkedIn. And researchers, consider hiring archivists as research assistants. If you are debating a trip to an institution, it might be a more cost-effective option to hire someone to do the legwork. And you will help that research assistant (who is probably an upcoming archivist) gain some valuable experience. Everyone wins.

Podcast Review: HPPodcraft.com

Some podcasts come and go from my normal listening rotation, but one has stayed among my favorites for more than a year now. That is HPPodcraft.com. For those not familiar with it, this is a weekly podcast devoted to the writings of weird fiction author H. P. Lovecraft. Most episodes are detailed plot summaries for each story, punctuated by a combination of excerpt readings, host banter, and interviews with special guests, typically Lovecraft scholars or members of the ever-growing creative community that translates Lovecraft's work to other media.

The two hosts - Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer - share a passion for all things Lovecraftian. They are clearly well-read not only in the official Lovecraft canon, but also in such useful ancillary writings as Lovecraft's correspondence and S. T. Joshi's critical essays. Their podcast accomplishes something noteworthy in that it is great for both new and veteran Lovecraft fans. Their summaries of his stories give a good sense of what all his writings are about (while sparing the more wary listeners from having to read, say, "Medusa's Coil" on their own). But also, the more experienced Lovecraft fan can find many interesting details about the publication histories of his stories, his literary influences, and different adaptations of his works.

Sometimes, they also commission a reading of a particular story, and these episodes are absolute must-listens. The production values are always top-notch, the readers are excellent, and the use of stereo sound in the music and effects virtually demands listening to them via earbuds, preferably alone and in the dark. These readings are usually tied to fundraising drives for the podcast, and they might be one of the best rewards anyone can ask for donating to a podcast. Three stories have been read so far ("The Haunter in the Dark," "From Beyond," and "The Picture in the House" - one of my favorites), and two more are currently in the works.

I cannot possibly recommend their podcast highly enough. As a pulp lit nerd, I dream about emulating this model for other writers (a "Robert E. Howardcast," maybe?). However, it would take serious talent for anyone to develop as good a product as HPPodcraft.

Part-time Work and Me

When I think about my future, I now see myself working a range of LTE jobs and contract positions. This is a situation many of my peers in the LIS field probably are also seeing, and it has its benefits and drawbacks. When we were in school, our professors often talked about the increasing possibility of a career made up of freelance work, but still they built up the expectation of finding regular work. And I certainly know several people who have found full-time jobs. But the less I worry about finding that full-time job, the more I feel like I can pursue and enjoy where I am now. But I digress. The pros and cons:

I like the prospect of working a range of jobs because I think I prefer some variety and uncertainty in life. The thought of a long-term job does sometimes make me nervous; any time I make a major decision I am prone to worry that I made the wrong choice. Also, I have a broad range of interests, so the idea of being able to work on projects that strike my fancy is appealing. Not that every contract job I get will be something I love, but I feel like I have more flexibility to pursue things I like, whether in archival work or in writing. And, to be fair, I am pretty capricious, so it is hard for me to focus on one project for a length of time. Knowing how easy it is for me to flit from one project to another has even helped me in jobs that have a longer term; I tend to keep several smaller projects running at once, so I can jump between them.

At the same time, uncertainty can be pretty frightening. I am fortunate in that my wife has a full-time job, which gives me the comfort to pursue jobs that offer no benefits, while still enjoying health care through her work. On the other hand, I feel guilty sometimes in that I depend on her for those benefits. What if she wanted to work contract jobs, too? Also, the learning curve for contract work can be a lot higher than for more steady work. I have a contract position right now, and sometimes not having something like an HR department to guide me through writing contracts and interacting with employers can be daunting. I am having to learn those things on my own, with mixed success. And I am not generally an assertive person, so self-advocacy is hard for me.

Having said all that, I am less worried about my job options now than I was at the end of grad school. Maybe I am recognizing that a lot of my friends are also in the world of multiple part-time or contracted positions. Or maybe I've come to find the good in such positions. But these days it seems more exciting than I would have thought before. I wish I lived in a country where I had an affordable health care option, thereby removing one of my biggest anxieties about freelance work. Still, I find myself more able to envision a career future that resembles my present.

Baby Motivation?

Soon, I will have a child. And sometimes I think that I am supposed to be more nervous about this fact than I actually am. Like, socially, I should worry about how a child is going to eat up all of my time and I will not get to do the things I want, or a child will consume all of my personality and I will communicate only in comments about theoretically cute things my child did. And, to be fair, these are probable outcomes for at least the first few months. But when I give the subject any thought, I actually feel like having a child might be an interesting test of my various interests.

First, if taking care of a baby eats up a lot of my time--and as I understand it, it will--I will have to use more discrimination in picking what I do with my spare time. Already, I try to restrict my spare time to specific activities I enjoy: playing a video game, reading a book, working on a story. I am not one to passively watch TV. But it is easy for me to pick the activity that requires the least energy. The mindless task is usually the winner. My hope, however--and this sounds like bodes poorly for my parenting skills--is that many of the daily childcare tasks will be my mindless tasks, and when I have to choose my hobbies more carefully to fit into my spare moments, I will pick the hobbies with the greater stimulation. No offense to video games, but they do tend to soak up a lot of down time because they require less mental energy than, say, writing a finding aid at the archive. On the other hand, changing a diaper is pretty much a rote, repetitive task: like a creepy, gross video game no one wants to play. As long as I have to play it, though, I can make it my mindless thing and save my mind for writing.

Also, a baby makes for a great captive audience. In our family plan, I will be staying home with the baby-in-question two days a week (two more days go to my mother-in-law, and one day to my wife). So for two days a week, I will be taking care of a perfect little captive audience for me to bounce story ideas off. Can the baby provide me with useful feedback? No, I doubt it. But half the point of bouncing ideas off a friend is just to hear your idea out loud and realize, "Oh, that's a terrible idea. Back to the drawing board with that one." And really, until my child learns to speak and its first word is, like, "reaver" or "necromancy," who's to know that my baby is my story consultant?

Third, kids apparently make people think about their legacies. And although I don't really think to much about what I want to leave behind, a child can be a good motivator for me to think, "Wouldn't it be cool if my child could tell his classmates about the fantasy story his pop wrote"? (Oh, that's right: my kid is calling me papa.) Or, "Hey, I'm taking our child to the H.P. Lovecraft convention next weekend!" And I have a whole new person to fill with information about the Cthulhu Mythos or tales of Conan the Cimmerian. A person, I might add, who will not have acquired the skills to politely brush me off.

So I am all over this parenting thing. Mainly because I see ways to make it benefit my nerdy self.

Writing and the "What-If" Game

When I get stuck on a story, I find that I like to play the "What-if" game with my stories. I think I arrived at this idea from a combination of different sources (I recall Orson Scott Card giving advice in a book on character that worked into it), but it has become a key tool in my own writing, and sometimes I use when criticizing other stories.

The "What-if" game is pretty simple in theory: Reading through my story, I look for things I imagine to be important, and I ask "What if things turned out differently?" Maybe Character A has wronged Character B and asks for forgiveness. Character B forgives him and the story moves on, but later I feel like the story is lacking in something. So I go back and ask, "What if Character B had not forgiven him? How would it change the story?" I then go to the appropriate notebook and start listing how I think the new scenario would change the story. Sometimes it is a great way to get over writer's block.

It can also work in the outlining phase of story writing. I have been working on one story for a while, and I used the "What-if" game to try all the different permutations of my characters. What if Character A was female? What if Character A was older? Not all of these decisions drastically affect my story; I would not, for example, assume that a female character could not do anything a male character could. But it might affect how I think other characters might respond, or how I think readers might respond. And when a given relationship seems too cliche, nothing helps like changing the characters' identities. And if I start out by imagining several different permutations for each character (instead of insisting that any character has to have a given set of traits), then I am able to outline several different scenarios and pick the one that interests me most.

The game is helpful when considering a different turn of events that has serious consequences on the plot. But what about where I cannot see a significant change to the story by changing a given detail? Well, that is a good sign that the detail I am considering is not too important, for one. Changing a character's gender might or might not change the course of the story (although it might have broader cultural implications); if a character could be male or female with no significant change to the story, I have no need to insist on one gender, beyond what I think is more interesting. But it could be kept in the background, or maybe even left to the reader's imagination. On the other hand, whether a certain character lives or dies probably will change the course of the story significantly. If it doesn't, I probably should not bother with that plot point at all.

The "What-if" game is a pretty basic writing tool, maybe, but I think it is good to keep in mind. If you are stuck in a story, try it out as a way to get creative. Even if you are not stuck, try it out and see whether it leads to any new ideas you like more. Our first ideas for stories often come from what feels natural, but that's not always the most interesting. Sometimes thinking of all the alternatives can help you find the great idea you would otherwise miss.

Emil's Hiatus

I am a world-class procrastinator. I can stall on work projects, returning phone calls, or even writing for great lengths of time. In fact, if I knew of a procrastination competition, I would probably apply for it. Tomorrow.

So in this case, I kept putting off updating my blog under the logic that I had nothing to write about. I told myself I would write tomorrow, and then the next day I said the same thing, and pretty soon a month had passed without me writing anything. Not that I didn't spend that month worrying about how I was not writing anything to my blog, I just lacked the gumption to actually change my situation.

So what did I do with this past month? I kept busy with work, holding down two part-time appointments at the archive and a third position doing freelance cataloging work. I got my apartment in order for the impending birth of my first child (three weeks to go!). I started learning how to drive a car, which is less terrifying than I remember from my ill-conceived attempt to learn it in high school. And I read a lot.

Several of these things are probably blog-worthy in themselves and will hopefully appear here soon, in some (entertaining, I hope) form. Also, I have much to say about my writing, ideas about writing and the arts in general, and my various vague goals for future projects. I did not want to write an apology post for not writing because that does not seem particularly interesting. But I wanted to give an update for now, and aim for a new and interesting post very soon!