Re: Position Announcement - Cornell - 40 lbs of dust

[Christopher Mullin <christopher.<mullin@UMONTANA.EDU>>]

In many cases, it's very reasonable to require the archivist to lift heavy
weights.  Here at The University of Montana, for instance,  it's fairly
frequent  that there would be nobody around while the reading room is open
except the archivist and  one student assistant.  It's  quite possible
that some student might be temporarily or even permanently incapable of
lifting, or that the  archivist might  have a temporary problem lifting.
In any case, if the archivist needs to go into the stacks, she cannot
always call on somebody else to help her lift a box of  unporocessed
material.  If only two people are here, and one of them is in the reading
room supervising users, the other one is normally be expected to  do the
fetching and carrying. Furthermore, there is also the situation where the
archivist might be the ONLY person  out at somebody's house picking up a
donation.

As others have said, in a big department there may be many willing hands
to help.  But a lot of archives don't have  much staff. --Chris Mullin


--
Christopher Mullin             | I buy good
Special Collections Librarian  | Regular 8mm
Mansfield Library              | movie cameras
University of Montana-Missoula |406.243.4036
Missoula MT 59812-9936         |FAX 406.243.4067
Who else has THESE opinions?  Not The University!