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Well, less than 12 hours and I'll be "wheels in the well" and heading south for San Bruno. This will be the fourth archives branch I've been to, albeit I only managed three hours at Laguna Niguel.
Preparations for a research trip is like any other, with perhaps some odd items on the checklist. Laptop & scanner? check. Spare scanner? Well, not enough room since I'll be walking in and need to pack a sling bag. All associated cables I might ever need and won't be able to go drive to pick up a new one if I forget? check, check, and check! Business cards in case I run into another researcher on-site I'd like to keep in contact with? Check. Full battery charge on all my cordless devices and camera and chargers for same? check. Cheat-sheet of Navy File Codes that I want to keep in my head as I'm scanning the finding aids? half done and I'll finish it on the flight down. Headphones for music to keep the pure scanning sessions a little less monotonous so that I'm not brain-fried by 3/4s of the day and miss things? check!
These are just some of the little touches you learn about over time to maximize the productivity of the time you have.
Biggest regret? No car means no chance to hit an In-N-Out Burger. Still want to figure out a way to bring my spare scanner.
Blog for Researcher@Large; a World War Two researcher, IT Consultant, and plastic model builder.
About Me
- Tracy White
- I'm an IT consultant by trade who uses his interest in World War II and proximity to a branch of the National Archives as a stress break by researching and posting documents.
2 comments:
Aw man, I miss In-N-Out burger! Have fun @ the archives!
Maybe an old, ancient even, Logitech ScanMan handheld would do for a spare?
Not having used one before I'm not entirely sure.. maybe for textual records, probably not for photographic. I repacked things and managed to get the spare in... I figure I'm going to have the laptop out for security and during the flight, so I might as well just carry it the entire time and use the space for the spare scanner. I rather fancy the idea of having both scanners going at once ;)
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