Finally, I'm a real librarian! I get to catalog manuscript collections at the Oregon Historical Society - collections that have been briefly cataloged once before, in card form, but now need to be brought into the 21st century!
Yes, this is the very same job that I didn't get two months ago - but luckily for everyone, the girl they hired over me got an even better job (for her) at the county archives, so, as the second person on the original 2 person short list, I got the call. I'm really glad it worked out this way, because I like my predecessor, but it was hard for me to overcome my jealousy and be nice when she had the job I wanted. So now we both have jobs and everyone is happy!
So far I've gotten to catalog some interesting stuff, including some letters from President Buchanan to various people, including President Polk, about the "Oregon Question."
By far the MOST interesting item I've come across I didn't actually get to catalog myself, the former Project Cataloger cataloged it as she was training me to take over: a paper purporting that many, if not most, Pacific Northwest place names that we generally accept as Native American in origin are actually Russian. Including Sacagawea, which he asserts is actually Russian for "Fat Bitch." The author makes these claims without any citations whatsoever, without even using the international phonetic alphabet to back up his claims of similar pronunciation, and finally, without anything even resembling a historical linguistic analysis.
Perhaps that's why it has been sitting in the OHS vault uncatalogued for 60 years. In any case, it's sure to be a fascinating read for students of either linguistics or the racism of the 50s.
