ANTHONY BARGER, ARCHIVIST
“It appears that we are getting close to the pandemic ending and approaching a new normal. As this surreal time is coming to an end, I find myself reflecting on the past year. Like everyone, the Archives Department has gone through some difficult times but has also used this period to create new ways to interact and assist patrons. Most notable of all of our losses was the passing of Ed Dewes of Covid. Ed was one of the library’s longest-serving volunteers. He started volunteering around 25 years ago and he is missed.
A difficulty for us, in the beginning, was not being able to directly interact with our patrons. A trait of the department is that we interact a lot with our patrons. It ranges from in-depth discussions about what collections to research to simple storytelling. In a department such as ours, patrons expect to see and handle the original documents. This came to a near full stop with the pandemic. Still, I admit that we have done a fine job of making sure that people got what they needed or wanted. In fact, our patrons stepped up by being both patient and going outside their comfort zone by embracing technology that previously they would not consider using.
Throughout the past year, we used our time well. Most people do not know this, but we have a room that contains thousands and thousands of documents that tell the history of our county. We have used this time to increase the entering of these collections into a database so that we can better serve the public. Also, as of recent, our director Matt McClelland wanted us to create a Digital Lab to help the people of Putnam County get their memories off of dated technologies such as 8mm film, cassettes, and VHS tapes.