just because you know it's there doesn't mean you know it's there

5:45 PM Genoa 3.4.08

This afternoon in the archive was on the tiring side. To date, I have found a couple of interesting items, but nothing to sustain a longer project. I've made my way through 2 of 3 stacks of loose documents surviving from Genoa's office of robbery/piracy and today began looking at the third, which was supposed to have a set of documents pertaining to Cyprus that I hoped that (even if short) would provide some grist for the grand millstone of history. I had read in a guide to these sources that the materials I wanted would be found in documents labeled CLXXVII, CLXXVIII, and CLXXX. No problem - sure there were somewhere around 300 total, but I figured locating the needle in the haystack wouldn't be difficult if they each had a unique label. I figured wrong.

Here is a small sampling of the ‘order’ prevailing in the documents I looked at:
ccxxv
(unnumbered)
cclxxiiii
cclxxx
li
cxxviiii
ccviii
cxxvii
ccxxxvi
cxxi
ccxxxxvii
7
ccxxxxiiii

Complicating the whole process was the fact that the scribes who labeled the documents (apparently in the medioevo itself) didn't actually make much distinction between writing x and i. In the end, I found the documents I was looking for, but only after spending 85% of my time this afternoon leafing through page after page. There was at least some silver lining though, as I found a few small nuggets I hadn't anticipated that may wind up being of at least minor interest.

This is not meant, by the way, as a complaint. I know there are people out there who have much bigger problems in doing archival research: sources that are ‘lost’ until palms are greased, sources that are actually lost, unhelpful clerks, et al. But, if you’re curious about what archival work is like (and some of you have indicated you are), it’s worth keeping in mind that it isn’t really that much like working in most of the libraries you might find yourself in, at least in the states. Closed stacks, arcane filing systems, difficult documents all can make ‘work’ seem a bit more like ‘going fishing’ on the inevitable days when the road isn’t so smooth.