Hug Your Local Archivist

This is California Archives Week, an occasion perhaps not on most people’s calendars, but in celebration the California State Archives had an open house today in Sacramento. We went to this event, which featured displays from several of the archives in the vicinity (such as Sacramento State University and UC Davis), and then a behind-the-scenes tour through the state archives. My inner librarian comes out at such moments. Archivists are a bit different than run-of-the-mill librarians. For one thing, they think in terms of cubic feet—as in they just acquired 3500 cubic feet of papers from former governor Pete Wilson, but they’re prohibited from looking at them for another 50 years.

For records concerning juveniles the time period is 75 years. The archivist who lead our tour had on display a volume open to documents concerning a lad who ran away from home in 1923. He fled San Francisco bound for Los Angeles, and before being picked up got as far as San Jose entirely on roller skates!