The archive relies heavily on a team of interns,
most of them UA students, to help document
new arrivals, repair equipment, update
the database, curate exhibits and send out
items on loan to other researchers around
the world.
Their assistants range in age from 11 to
somewhere in their 60s. Multilingual interns are
especially helpful when it comes to cataloging
items with foreign titles that would otherwise be
impossible to ile away and ind again.
At the moment, though, there are several ile
drawers illed with fresh artifacts waiting to
be processed.
McAllister says “casual donations” account for
most of the backlog. “It’s not uncommon for us
to come into the archive and discover a Hefty
bag full of random stuf with no attribution
whatsoever. You know, maybe just (a note that
says), ‘Thought you guys might want this,’”
he says.
Occasionally, they get a request for an item they
don’t already have, so they will seek it out from a
collector or on eBay.
“We have a tiny little acquisition budget,
and if it’s important enough, we’ll go ahead
and acquire it. But that’s pretty unusual,”
McAllister says.
They also try to keep duplicate items on hand
so they can ix or replace things that wear out or
get broken during use.
They aren’t terribly picky about
submissions, either.
On his way to work last week, Ruggill ished
a couple of Playstation games out of his