By Maddy Moison
As we descend down a long, forgotten hallway we come across an area of the building seldom visited. Large wooden tables with warm desk lamps stand guard over the old books that line the walls. The lamps do little to cut through the cold air that permeates the room. The climate controls kick in with a gentle hum in the background, the only noise in the room. I have ventured into the proverbial crypt of history. Few have dared to walk this path and even fewer have returned to tell the tale. Why have I risked life and limb you ask? Well, dear reader, I have managed to secure an interview with a rare species. No, not a vampire…. an archivist.
Trapped below ground in Fitchburg State University’s archive I am stuck by how new everything looks; no cobwebs or dust bunnies here. Asher Jackson, the archivist in question, comments that the university has undergone many renovation projects in the past four years, one of which was the creation of a new archive. What wasn’t anything more than a large closet with boxes stacked unceremoniously in piles when I attended Fitchburg State is now a brand new archive. The reading room is small but has enough seats to hold a class of students.
Mr. Jackson is the only trained archivist on staff. He gently moves a cardboard box off of our table so that we can see each other. Mr. Jackson found his way to this quiet reading room through a series of seemingly coincidental and haphazard choices. After dropping out of college and getting a job at a law firm in their records management department he spent his time wondering why arranging the files was such a difficult task. Paperwork was lost all the time, never to be found unless by happy chance. “I didn’t know it then but I was working in a sort of archive. I kept asking: if libraries could do this why was this so hard?” After a bit of research Mr. Jackson found himself applying to go back to school, this time for library and information science at Simmons College in Boston. He found the archives track and finally fit all the puzzle pieces together. After a stint in the muggy climate of Delaware, working at the University of Delaware, he made the move back to Boston. Soon after, he moved to Fitchburg with a friend, an organ player at a local church (I will keep my vampire speculations to a minimum, dear reader, I promise).
What makes Mr. Jackson’s job unique is his interactions with students. It’s the most rewarding part off the job for him. The differences between a job in university archives and one in a historical society or museum is the opportunity to interact with students. Of course, many students on campus don’t know what an archive is or that there even is one on campus. However, as Mr. Jackson points out, “People in university communities understand what primary resources are, and they understand the important uniqueness of that.” Here in the basement of the student center, classes are brought in to conduct research. Jackson’s favorite project every year is working with a writing class on a paper about the origins of superstitions. He helps them find resources, showing them how to navigate an archive for source material. At the completion of the project, each student designs a gallery exhibition to display their research. This ‘crypt,’ as it turns out, is a livelier place than I had anticipated.
Among its many treasures, the archive holds the papers of Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate Wars, as well as those of R.A. Salvatore, creator of the Dark Elf trilogy. Both lived and worked in the Fitchburg area and attended Fitchburg State University. As Mr. Jackson enthusiastically shows me around the archive, he singles out Cormier’s old typewriter. With unabashed joy, he holds the typewriter and lets me touch the well-worn keys.
As he talks, Jackson makes it very clear that he understands the importance of FSU’s archives to the city of Fitchburg. “Fitchburg is one of those places that is overlooked as a working man’s town… I want to force people to look and see that you can live here and be successful. Look at all the amazing things that were happening here.” As a part of his work with the Salvatore collection, Jackson worked closely with the author to create a welcoming space for fans. He points out a number of pieces from the collection, including fan art and letters Salvatore sent back asking permission to include them in his collection. “I wanted to make this place as accessible as possible so everyone can come and look at all of this.”
All of this outreach and work comes at a cost and Jackson, a realist, is quick to point out that his situation at the University is rather precarious. Fitchburg, for instance, does not provide him with his own budget. Consequently, he chips away what he can from the library’s budget. With money tight, he does what he can to minimize time spent on certain activities, “I could either take out all of these paperclips or actually or
ganize [the collections].” When he is not helping students or going through a new collection, Jackson is on call at the local historical society, lending a hand whenever questions arise. He is the only trained archivist in the area; yet, there are limits to his ability to help. He admits, for instance, that his preservation skills are not where he would like them to be. Nevertheless, the prohibitive cost of outsourcing preservation work means that he has to make do with his own skills. As such, he wants to learn more about preservation tactics to do more in house repairs.
I thank my host for sharing his time and make my escape back to the world of daylight and warmth to reflect on my time in the archive.
There was such a vast array of information there to be unearthed and helpful staff there to walk you through your excavation. Such a hidden world should not be left unexplored. Dear reader, I encourage you to seek out your local archivist. I promise you, the archive is not as scary a place as you might think.